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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by 
+Count Philip de Segur
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History of the Expedition to Russia
+       Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812
+
+Author: Count Philip de Segur
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #18113]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE EXPEDITION TO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs, Graeme Mackreth and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF THE
+
+EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,
+
+UNDERTAKEN BY THE
+
+EMPEROR NAPOLEON,
+
+IN THE YEAR 1812.
+
+
+
+
+BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.
+
+
+
+  Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,
+  Incipiam--.
+
+VIRGIL.
+
+
+_SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED._
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES,
+
+WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+LONDON:
+
+TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, JUN. AND RICHTER,
+30, SOHO-SQUARE.
+
+1825.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of Napoleon]
+
+
+
+
+TO THE
+
+VETERANS OF THE GRAND ARMY.
+
+
+COMRADES,
+
+I have undertaken the task of tracing the History of the Grand Army and
+its Leader during the year 1812. I address it to such of you as the ices
+of the North have disarmed, and who can no longer serve their country,
+but by the recollections of their misfortunes and their glory. Stopped
+short in your noble career, your existence is much more in the past than
+in the present; but when the recollections are so great, it is allowable
+to live solely on them. I am not afraid, therefore, of troubling that
+repose which you have so dearly purchased, by placing before you the
+most fatal of your deeds of arms. Who is there of us but knows, that
+from the depth of his obscurity the looks of the fallen man are
+involuntarily directed towards the splendor of his past existence--even
+when its light illuminates the shoal on which the bark of his fortune
+struck, and when it displays the fragments of the greatest of
+shipwrecks?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For myself, I will own, that an irresistible feeling carries me back
+incessantly to that disastrous epoch of our public and private
+calamities. My memory feels a sort of melancholy pleasure in
+contemplating and renewing the painful traces which so many horrors have
+left in it. Is the soul, also, proud of her deep and numerous wounds?
+Does she delight in displaying them? Are they a property of which she
+has reason to be proud? Is it rather, that after the desire of knowing
+them, her first wish is to impart her sensations? To feel, and to excite
+feeling, are not these the most powerful springs of our soul?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But in short, whatever may be the cause of the sentiment which actuates
+me, I have yielded to the desire of retracing the various sensations
+which I experienced during that fatal war. I have employed my leisure
+hours in separating, arranging, and combining with method my scattered
+and confused recollections. Comrades! I also invoke yours! Suffer not
+such great remembrances, which have been so dearly purchased, to be
+lost; for us they are the only property which the past leaves to the
+future. Single, against so many enemies, ye fell with greater glory than
+they rose. Learn, then, that there was no shame in being vanquished!
+Raise once more those noble fronts, which have been furrowed with all
+the thunders of Europe! Cast not down those eyes, which have seen so
+many subject capitals, so many vanquished kings! Fortune, doubtless,
+owed you a more glorious repose; but, such as it is, it depends on
+yourselves to make a noble use of it. Let history inscribe your
+recollections. The solitude and silence of misfortune are propitious to
+her labours; and let truth, which is always present in the long nights
+of adversity, at last enlighten labours that may not prove unproductive.
+
+As for me, I will avail myself of the privilege, sometimes painful,
+sometimes glorious, of telling what I have seen, and of retracing,
+perhaps with too scrupulous attention, its most minute details; feeling
+that nothing was too minute in that prodigious Genius and those gigantic
+feats, without which we should never have known the extent to which
+human strength, glory, and misfortune, may be carried.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+VOLUME FIRST.
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+CHAP. I.--Political relations of France and Russia since 1807       1
+
+II.--Prussia.--Frederick William                                    6
+
+III.--Turkey.--Sultans Selim--Mustapha--Mahmoud                    18
+
+IV.--Sweden.--Bernadotte                                           32
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAP. I.--Feelings of Napoleon's grandees at the approaching
+contest--their objections, with Napoleon's replies--real motives which
+urged him to the struggle                                          49
+
+II.--Arguments against the war by the Dukes of Frioul and Vicenza and
+the Count de Segur.--Napoleon's replies                            56
+
+III.--His manner of gaining proselytes to his opinions--his avowals to
+his own family--his discussions with Cardinal Fesch--his declaration to
+Prince Kourakin                                                    67
+
+IV.--Circumstances inclining him to delay the contest--his proposals to
+England and to Russia--Russian ultimatum                           75
+
+V.--Preparations for commencement--Talleyrand--opinions of the
+military--of Napoleon's ministers and generals--fresh obstacles to his
+departure                                                          80
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+CHAP. I.--Napoleon's departure from Paris--dispositions of the
+east of France--of the Germans--assemblage of sovereigns at
+Dresden                                                            86
+
+II.--Arrival in Poland--complaints by the inhabitants of the disorders
+of his troops--his ineffectual attempts to check them--meeting with
+Davoust--quarrel between that officer and Berthier--unfavourable
+impression of Napoleon against the former--arrival at Königsberg   97
+
+III.--March from the Vistula to the Niemen--Napoleon's manners with
+the soldiers--positions of the different corps--dispositions of the
+army                                                              105
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+CHAP. I.--Addresses of Napoleon and Alexander to their
+respective armies--Position of the Russian forces--Napoleon's plans in
+consequence--Sketch of the operations of his left and right wings during
+the campaign                                                      115
+
+II.--Passage of the Niemen--Dreadful storm and its fatal
+effects--Melancholy catastrophe--Napoleon's arrival at Wilna--Political
+arrangements                                                      121
+
+III.--Feelings of the Lithuanians--Napoleon's answer to the address of
+the Polish confederation--Coolness of the Lithuanians, and discussion of
+its causes                                                        131
+
+IV.--Distress of the army and its excesses--Manner in which Napoleon was
+affected by them                                                  143
+
+V.--Arrival of Balachoff from Alexander--Quarrel between Napoleon and
+Caulaincourt--Progress of the invading army to the 10th of July   149
+
+VI.--Operations of the King of Westphalia's and of Davoust's
+divisions--Perilous situation and narrow escape of Bagration      157
+
+VII.--Napoleon's departure from Wilna--Retreat of the Russian army from
+Drissa to Witepsk--Arrival of the different French corps at
+Beszenkowiczi--Different partial actions near Witepsk             166
+
+VIII.--General engagement before Witepsk--French attack ordered to
+cease in expectation of a decisive battle on the following day--Retreat
+of the Russians--Napoleon's disappointment--Position of his different
+corps                                                             177
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+CHAP. I.--Napoleon's first plans for halting at Witepsk--afterwards
+abandoned, and his determination to proceed to Smolensk           188
+
+II.--Discussions with the officers of his household--their reasons for
+dissuading him from advancing further, and his replies--Feelings of the
+army in general                                                   199
+
+III.--Operations of Oudinot's corps against that of Wittgenstein--partial
+successes on both sides--Napoleon determines to change his line of
+operation                                                         210
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+CHAP. I.--Manner in which this manoeuvre was effected--The
+army crosses the Boristhenes--Character of the Jewish and native
+population                                                        216
+
+II.--Surprise of Newerowskoi's corps beyond Krasnoë--Bold retreat of
+that officer                                                      222
+
+III.--Movements of the main Russian army--Plans of Barclay--his
+dissension with Bagration--hastens to the relief of Smolensk--about to
+be surprised by Napoleon--Unsuccessful attack of the French on Smolensk
+                                                                  227
+
+IV.--Retreat of the Russian army, and fresh disappointment of
+Napoleon--Ineffectual attempts of Murat to dissuade his farther
+advance--Capture of Smolensk                                      234
+
+V.--Napoleon's reflections on the conduct of the Russians--Intelligence
+of Regnier's victory over Tormasof--Opinions of the Emperor's principal
+officers as to the impolicy of proceeding farther                 240
+
+VI.--State of the allied army--its immense losses from various causes,
+independent of the enemy--Napoleon's professed intention to stop, but
+real determination to proceed                                     248
+
+VII.--Final evacuation of Smolensk by the Russians after setting it on
+fire--their army overtaken by Murat and Ney--Death of General
+Gudin--Battle of Valoutina--Narrow escape of the Russians in consequence
+of Junot's irresolution                                           254
+
+VIII.--Results of the battle--Recompenses and rewards conferred by
+Napoleon--Enthusiasm of the army--Melancholy state of the
+wounded--Animosity of the Russian population                      264
+
+IX.--Napoleon's plans of moving the Russian peasantry to
+insurrection--Conduct of their nobles to ward off the danger--Napoleon's
+hesitation as to the plan he should pursue                        271
+
+X.--Saint Cyr's victory over Wittgenstein on the 18th of
+August--Dissension between Murat and Davoust--Discord in the Russian
+camp in consequence of Barclay's continued retreat--Napoleon's advance
+to Dorogobouje                                                    276
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+CHAP. I.--Manner in which the allied army was supplied on its
+march--Details of the organization of Davoust's corps             285
+
+II.--Napoleon's bulletin and decrees at Slawkowo--Fresh quarrels
+between Murat and Davoust--Description of the Russian mode of retreat
+and of Murat's method of pursuit                                  290
+
+III.--Advance to Wiazma and to Gjatz--Refusal of Davoust to obey
+Murat--Full development of the Russian plan of destroying their cities
+and towns                                                         297
+
+IV.--Clamours of the Russians against Barclay--Kutusof sent to supersede
+him--Great merit of Barclay's plan of retreat                     304
+
+V.--Near prospect of a battle--Character of Kutusof--Sanguinary and
+partial action on the 4th of September--Anecdote of Murat--Napoleon's
+survey of the ground                                              309
+
+VI.--Disposition of the Russian army on the field of Borodino--Napoleon's
+plan of battle                                                    317
+
+VII.--Plan proposed by Davoust rejected by Napoleon--Feelings of the
+French army--Proclamation of Napoleon                             322
+
+VIII.--Preparations of the Russians--Feelings of their
+soldiery--Napoleon's anxiety--his indisposition on the night before the
+battle                                                            328
+
+IX. X. XI.--Battle of Borodino on the 7th of September            334
+
+XII.--Results of the battle--immense loss on both sides--faults
+committed by Napoleon--how accounted for--incompleteness of his victory
+                                                                  356
+
+XIII.--Advance to, and skirmish before Mojaisk--Gallantry of fifty
+voltigeurs of the 33d--Surprising order in the Russian retreat--Napoleon's
+distress                                                          364
+
+
+
+VOLUME SECOND.
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+CHAP. I.--The Emperor Alexander's arrival at Moscow after his
+retreat from Drissa--Description of that city--Sacrifices voted by the
+nobility and the merchants to meet the threatened danger            1
+
+II.--Alarm in consequence of the advance of the French
+army--Determination of the Governor, Count Rostopchin, and his
+preparations for destroying the capital--Evacuation of Moscow by the
+principal part of the inhabitants on the 3d of September           10
+
+III.--State of that city just before and after the battle of
+Borodino--The Governor's departure                                 18
+
+IV.--Napoleon advances to Moscow on the 14th of September--Feelings of
+the army on approaching it--Disappointment at finding it deserted  27
+
+V.--Murat's entrance into the city                                 34
+
+VI.--Napoleon's entrance into the Kremlin--Discovery of the
+conflagration of the city                                          38
+
+VII.--Danger which he ran in escaping through the flames to
+Petrowsky--Hesitation as to his future plans                       47
+
+VIII.--His return to the Kremlin--Description of the camps outside the
+city--System of general plunder--Reproaches made to the army, and
+vindication of it                                                  52
+
+IX.--Conduct of Kutusof after abandoning Moscow--Rostopchin sets fire to
+his seat at Woronowo--Partial actions at Czerikowo and Vinkowo--Anxiety
+and uneasiness of Napoleon--consultation with his chief officers--Sends
+Lauriston to the Emperor                                           60
+
+X.--Conference of Lauriston with Kutusof--Artful conduct of the
+latter--Armistice--Infatuation of Murat--Distress of the French
+army--Warnings of the impending danger--Napoleon's obstinacy in
+remaining                                                          71
+
+XI.--Illusions by which he kept up his own and his army's
+hopes--Count Daru's advice--Rupture of the armistice--Incapacity
+of Berthier--Disastrous engagement at Vinkowo--Napoleon determines
+to leave Moscow                                                    82
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+CHAP. I.--Departure from Moscow--Composition of the army           94
+
+II.--Battle of Malo-Yaroslawetz                                    98
+
+III.--Distress of the Emperor--Danger which he ran from a sudden attack
+of the Cossacks                                                   107
+
+IV.--Field of Malo-Yaroslawetz--Council held by the Emperor--Opinions of
+Murat, Bessičres, and Davoust--Napoleon determines to retreat     113
+
+V.--Kutusoff's similar determination to retreat from Malo-Yaroslawetz,
+ineffectually opposed by Sir Robert Wilson--Napoleon's projected plan of
+retreat                                                           118
+
+VI.--Mortier's proceedings at Moscow after the departure of the main
+army--Blowing up of the Kremlin--Devastations committed by both
+armies--Capture of General Winzingerode--Napoleon's behaviour to him 126
+
+VII.--Arrival at Mojaisk--Alarming news of the Russian army--View of
+the field of Borodino                                             134
+
+VIII.--Abandonment of the wounded in the Abbey of Kolotskoi--Horrible
+conduct of the suttlers--Massacre of 2000 Russian prisoners--Arrival at
+Gjatz                                                             139
+
+IX.--Napoleon's arrival at Wiazma--Reproaches to Davoust for his tardy
+mode of retreat, and that officer's vindication--Danger of the latter
+and Eugene--Arrival of Miloradowitch                              144
+
+X.--Battle between Eugene and Davoust and Miloradowitch, near Wiazma, on
+the 3d November--heavy loss of the French                         149
+
+XI.--Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November--its effects upon the
+troops                                                            155
+
+XII.--Arrival of the intelligence of Mallet's conspiracy--impression
+produced by it upon Napoleon and his officers--Message from
+Ney--Perilous situation of that marshal                           160
+
+XIII.--Defeat and entire dissolution of the Viceroy's corps at the
+passage of the Wop                                                167
+
+XIV.--Arrival at Smolensk--Dreadful sufferings of the troops--Bad
+arrangements of the administrators--Reasons assigned by the latter in
+their vindication                                                 175
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+CHAP. I.--Wittgenstein's attack upon Saint Cyr at Polotsk--Retreat of
+the latter--Want of concert in the movements of the Russian generals
+                                                                  183
+
+II.--Junction of the corps of Saint Cyr and Victor at Smoliantzy on the
+31st October--Opportunity lost by the latter of defeating the
+enemy--General view of the state of the army--Errors committed by
+Napoleon and his commanders                                       192
+
+III.--Napoleon's departure from Smolensk--Dispositions of the Russian
+army to interrupt his farther retreat--Bravery of Excelmans--Arrival at
+Krasnoë                                                           205
+
+IV.--March of Eugene from Smolensk to Krasnoë with the remains of his
+corps--his narrow escape                                          211
+
+V.--Successful nocturnal attack by Roguet on the Russian camp at
+Chickowa--Desperate situation of Napoleon--Wilson's fruitless efforts to
+induce Kutusof to surround and destroy him--Battle of Krasnoë--Bravery
+of the guard under Mortier                                        219
+
+VI.--Napoleon's arrival at Dombrowna--Nocturnal false alarm--General
+disorganization of the army--Davoust's ineffectual efforts to check it
+                                                                  231
+
+VII.--Council held at Orcha to determine the farther course of
+retreat--Opinion of Jomini--Napoleon decides on Borizof--Quits Orcha on
+the 20th of November without hearing any thing of Ney--Re-appearance of
+that Marshal after his departure                                  239
+
+VIII. IX.--Details of Ney's retreat from Smolensk until his arrival at
+Orcha                                                             248
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+CHAP. I.--Capture of Minsk by the Russians--Different opinions
+in the army as to the causes of their disasters--Rumoured treachery of
+Schwartzenberg--Napoleon's reproaches to him and Schwartzenberg's reply
+                                                                  270
+
+II.--Details of the loss of Minsk--Movements of Dombrowski, Oudinot, and
+Victor--Distress and malady of Napoleon--Remarkable conversation with
+Count Daru                                                        278
+
+III.--Passage through the Forest of Minsk--Junction of the remains of
+the grand army with Victor and Oudinot's corps--State of the former
+                                                                  284
+
+IV. V.--Preparations for crossing the Berezina                    289
+
+VI.--Circumstances which led the Russian general, Tchaplitz, into error
+as to the point where Napoleon was to cross the Berezina, and
+consequences of that error--Napoleon crosses that river at Studzianka on
+the 27th November                                                 299
+
+VII.--Capture and destruction of Partouneaux's division           304
+
+VIII.--Attack made by the Russians under Wittgenstein and Platof on the
+left side, and by Tchitchakof on the right side of the Berezina, and
+repelled by the French                                            308
+
+IX.--The burning of the bridge over the Berezina                  315
+
+X.--Napoleon's situation during the preceding actions--Passage over the
+morasses--His manners to his officers                             321
+
+XI.--Napoleon's arrival at Malodeczno--Announcement on the 3d of
+December of his intention to set out for France                   325
+
+XII.--Increased severity of the winter--Partial actions of Ney and
+Maison with the Russians between Pleszezenitzy and Malodeczno--Quarrel
+between Ney and Victor                                            330
+
+XIII.--Napoleon's arrival at Smorgony--his parting interview with his
+marshals                                                          335
+
+
+BOOK XII.
+
+CHAP. I.--Napoleon's journey from Smorgony to Paris--Impression
+produced in the army by his departure--Dreadful effects of the increased
+cold                                                             339
+
+II.--Picture of the sufferings of the army from the cold and the climate
+                                                                 346
+
+III.--Arrival at Wilna--Consternation of the inhabitants--Fatal effects
+of not distributing the provisions collected among the troops--State of
+the wounded in the hospitals--Arrival of the Russians--Flight of
+Murat--Evacuation of Wilna--Immense losses which that occasioned--Disaster
+at Ponari                                                        353
+
+IV.--Details of Ney's mode of retreat--Losses occasioned to the Russians
+by the severity of the winter--Arrival at Kowno--Ney's defence and
+evacuation of that place                                         364
+
+V.--First symptoms of Murat's defection--Arrival at Königsberg   372
+
+VI. VII. VIII. IX.--Marshal Macdonald's retreat from Riga--Details of
+the defection of the Prussian Army under Yorck                   377
+
+X.--Conduct of Schwartzenberg and defection of the Austrians--Atrocities
+committed on the French prisoners at Wilna and Königsberg        396
+
+XI.--Defection of Murat                                          401
+
+XII.--Conclusion                                                 403
+
+
+
+
+DIRECTIONS FOR PLACING THE PLATES.
+
+I. Portrait of Napoleon                  to face Title, Vol. I.
+
+II. Map of the countries between Paris and Moscow        page 1
+
+III. Passage of the Niemen                                  124
+
+IV. Portrait of Murat, King of Naples                       311
+
+V. Portrait of the Emperor Alexander    to face Title, Vol. II.
+
+VI. Conflagration of Moscow                                  48
+
+VII. Portrait of Marshal Ney                                268
+
+VIII. Passage of the Berezina                               315
+
+[Illustration: Map of the countries between Paris and Moscow]
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF
+
+NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION
+
+TO
+
+RUSSIA.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+Ever since 1807, when the space between the Rhine and the Niemen had
+been overrun, the two great empires of which these rivers were the
+boundaries had become rivals. By his concessions at Tilsit, at the
+expense of Prussia, Sweden, and Turkey, Napoleon had only satisfied
+Alexander. That treaty was the result of the defeat of Russia, and the
+date of her submission to the continental system. Among the Russians, it
+was regarded by some as attacking their honour; and by all it was felt
+to be ruinous to their interests.
+
+By the continental system Napoleon had declared eternal war against the
+English; to that system he attached his honour, his political existence,
+and that of the nation under his sway. That system banished from the
+Continent all merchandise which was English, or had paid duty in any
+shape to England. He could not succeed in establishing it but by the
+unanimous consent of the continental nations, and that consent could not
+be hoped for but under a single and universal dominion.
+
+France had besides alienated the nations of Europe from her by her
+conquests, and the monarchs by her revolution and her new dynasty.
+Henceforward she could no longer look forward to have either friends or
+rivals, but merely subjects; for the first would have been false, and
+the second implacable: it followed that all must be subject to her, or
+she to all.
+
+With feelings of this kind, her leader, influenced by his position, and
+urged on by his enterprising character, filled his imagination with the
+vast project of becoming the sole master of Europe, by overwhelming
+Russia, and wresting Poland from her dominion. He had so much difficulty
+in concealing this project, that hints of it began to escape him in all
+directions. The immense preparations which so distant an enterprise
+required, the enormous quantities of provisions and ammunition
+collecting, the noise of arms, of carriages, and the march of such
+numbers of soldiers--the universal movement the majestic and terrible
+course of all the forces of the West against the East--every thing
+announced to Europe that her two colossuses were about to measure their
+strength with each other.
+
+But, to get within reach of Russia, it was necessary to go beyond
+Austria, to cross Prussia, and to march between Sweden and Turkey; an
+offensive alliance with these four powers was therefore indispensable.
+Austria was as much subject to the influence of Napoleon as Prussia was
+to his arms: to them he had only to declare his intentions; Austria
+voluntarily and eagerly entered into his plans, and Prussia he easily
+prevailed on to join him.
+
+Austria, however, did not act blindly. Situated between the two great
+colossuses of the North and the West, she was not displeased to see them
+at war: she looked to their mutually weakening each other, and to the
+increase of her own strength by their exhaustion. On the 14th of March,
+1812, she promised France 30,000 men; but she prepared prudent secret
+instructions for them. She obtained a vague promise of an increase of
+territory, as an indemnity for her share of the expenses of the war, and
+the possession of Gallicia was guaranteed to her. She admitted, however,
+the future possibility of a cession of part of that province to the
+kingdom of Poland; but in exchange for that she would have received the
+Illyrian provinces. The sixth article of the secret treaty establishes
+that fact.
+
+The success of the war, therefore, in no degree depended on the cession
+of Gallicia, or the difficulties arising from the Austrian jealousy of
+that possession. Napoleon, consequently, might on his entrance into
+Wilna, have publicly proclaimed the liberation of the whole of Poland,
+instead of betraying the expectations of her people, astonishing and
+rendering them indifferent by expressions of wavering import.
+
+This, however, was one of those prominent points, which in politics as
+well as in war are decisive, with which every thing is connected, and
+from which nothing ought to have made him swerve. But whether it was
+that Napoleon reckoned too much on the ascendancy of his genius, or the
+strength of his army, and the weakness of Alexander; or that,
+considering what he left behind him, he felt it too dangerous to carry
+on so distant a war slowly and methodically; or whether, as we shall
+presently be told by himself, he had doubts of the success of his
+undertaking; certain it is, that he either neglected, or could not yet
+determine to proclaim the liberation of that country whose freedom he
+had come to restore.
+
+And yet he had sent an ambassador to her Diet. When this inconsistency
+was remarked to him, he replied, that "that nomination was an act of
+war, which only bound him during the war, while by his words he would be
+bound both in war and peace." Thus it was, that he made no other reply
+to the enthusiasm of the Lithuanians than evasive expressions, at the
+very time he was following up his attack on Alexander to the very
+capital of his empire.
+
+He even neglected to clear the southern Polish provinces of the feeble
+hostile armies which kept the patriotism of their inhabitants in check,
+and to secure, by strongly organizing their insurrection, a solid basis
+of operation. Accustomed to short methods, and to rapid attacks, he
+wished to imitate himself, in spite of the difference of places and
+circumstances; for such is the weakness of man, that he is always led
+by imitation, either of others, or of himself, which in the latter case,
+that of great men, is habit; for habit is nothing more than the
+imitation of one's self. So true it is, that by their strongest side
+these extraordinary men are undone!
+
+The one in question committed himself to the fortune of battles. Having
+prepared an army of six hundred and fifty thousand men, he fancied that
+that was doing sufficient to secure victory, from which he expected
+every thing. Instead of sacrificing every thing to obtain victory, it
+was by that he looked to obtain every thing; he made use of it as a
+_means_, when it ought to have been his _end_. In this manner he made it
+too necessary; it was already rather too much so. But he confided so
+much of futurity to it, he overloaded it with so much responsibility,
+that it became urgent and indispensable to him. Hence his precipitation
+to get within reach of it, in order to extricate himself from so
+critical a position.
+
+But we must not be too hasty in condemning a genius so great and
+universal; we shall shortly hear from himself by what urgent necessity
+he was hurried on; and even admitting that the rapidity of his
+expedition was only equalled by its rashness, success would have
+probably crowned it, if the premature decline of his health had left the
+physical constitution of this great man all the vigour which his mind
+still retained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+As to Prussia, of which Napoleon was completely master, it is not known
+whether it was from his uncertainty as to the fate which he reserved for
+her, or as to the period at which he should commence the war, that he
+refused, in 1811, to contract the alliance which she herself proposed to
+him, and of which he dictated the conditions, in 1812.
+
+His aversion to Frederick William was remarkable. Napoleon had been
+frequently heard to speak reproachfully of the cabinet of Prussia for
+its treaties with the French republic. He said, "It was a desertion of
+the cause of kings; that the negotiations of the court of Berlin with
+the Directory displayed a timid, selfish, and ignoble policy, which
+sacrificed its dignity, and the general cause of monarchs, to petty
+aggrandizements." Whenever he followed with his finger the traces of the
+Prussian frontiers upon the map, he seemed to be angry at seeing them
+still so extensive, and exclaimed, "Is it possible that I have left this
+man so large a territory?"
+
+This dislike to a mild and pacific monarch was surprising. As there is
+nothing in the character of Napoleon unworthy of historical remembrance,
+it is worth while to examine the cause of it. Some persons trace back
+the origin of it to the rejection which he experienced, when First
+Consul, from Louis XVIII. of the propositions which he made to him
+through the medium of the king of Prussia; and they suppose that
+Napoleon laid the blame of this refusal upon the mediator. Others
+attribute it to the seizure of Rumbold, the English agent at Hamburgh,
+by the orders of Napoleon, and to his being compelled to give him up by
+Frederick, as protector of the neutrality of the north of Germany.
+Before that time, Frederick and Napoleon had carried on a secret
+correspondence, which was of so intimate a nature, that they used to
+confide to each other even the details of their household; that
+circumstance, it is said, put an end to it.
+
+At the beginning of 1805, however, Russia, Austria, and England, made
+ineffectual attempts to engage Frederick in their third coalition
+against France. The court of Berlin, the queen, the princes, the
+minister Hardenberg, and all the young Prussian military, excited by the
+ardour of displaying the inheritance of glory which had been left them
+by the great Frederick, or by the wish of blotting out the disgrace of
+the campaign of 1792, entered heartily into the views of the allied
+powers; but the pacific policy of the king, and of his minister
+Haugwitz, resisted them, until the violation of the Prussian territory,
+near Anspach, by the march of a corps of French troops, exasperated the
+passions of the Prussians to such a degree, that their cry for immediate
+war prevailed.
+
+Alexander was then in Poland; he was invited to Potsdam, and repaired
+thither immediately; and on the 3d of November, 1805, he engaged
+Frederick in the third coalition. The Prussian array was immediately
+withdrawn from the Russian frontiers, and M. de Haugwitz repaired to
+Brünn to threaten Napoleon with it. But the battle of Austerlitz shut
+his mouth; and within a fortnight after, the wily minister, having
+quickly turned round to the side of the conqueror, signed with him the
+participation of the fruits of victory.
+
+Napoleon, however, dissembled his displeasure; for he had his army to
+re-organize, to give the grand duchy of Berg to Murat, his
+brother-in-law, Neufchatel to Berthier, to conquer Naples for his
+brother Joseph, to mediatize Switzerland, to dissolve the Germanic body,
+and to create the Rhenish confederation, of which he declared himself
+protector; to change the republic of Holland into a kingdom, and to give
+it to his brother Louis. These were the reasons which induced him, on
+the 15th of December, to cede Hanover to Prussia, in exchange for
+Anspach, Cleves, and Neufchatel.
+
+The possession of Hanover at first tempted Frederick, but when the
+treaty was to be signed, he appeared to feel ashamed, and to hesitate;
+he wished only to accept it by halves, and to retain it merely as a
+deposit. Napoleon had no idea of such timid policy. "What!" said he,
+"does this monarch dare neither to make peace nor war? Does he prefer
+the English to me? Is there another coalition preparing? Does he despise
+my alliance?" Indignant at the idea, by a fresh treaty, on the 8th of
+March, 1806, he compelled Frederick to declare war against England, to
+take possession of Hanover, and to admit French garrisons into _Wesel_
+and _Hameln_.
+
+The king of Prussia alone submitted; his court and his subjects were
+exasperated; they reproached him with allowing himself to be vanquished
+without attempting to fight; and elevating themselves on the remembrance
+of their past glory, they fancied that for them alone was reserved the
+honour of triumphing over the conqueror of Europe. In their impatience
+they insulted the minister of Napoleon; they sharpened their swords on
+the threshold of his gate. Napoleon himself they loaded with abuse. Even
+the queen, so distinguished by her graces and attractions, put on a
+warlike attitude. Their princes, one of them particularly (whose
+carriage and features, spirit and intrepidity, seemed to promise them a
+hero), offered to be their leaders. A chivalrous ardour and fury
+animated the minds of all.
+
+It is asserted, that at the same time there were persons, either
+treacherous or deceived, who persuaded Frederick that Napoleon was
+obliged to show himself pacific, that that warrior was averse to war;
+they added, that he was perfidiously treating for peace with England, on
+the terms of restoring Hanover, which he was to take back from Prussia.
+Drawn in at last by the general feeling, the king allowed all these
+passions to burst forth. His army advanced, and threatened Napoleon;
+fifteen days afterwards he had neither army nor kingdom; he fled alone;
+and Napoleon dated from Berlin his decrees against England.
+
+Humbled and conquered as Prussia thus was, it was impossible for
+Napoleon to abandon his hold of her; she would have immediately rallied,
+under the cannon of the Russians. Finding it impossible to gain her to
+his interests, like Saxony, by a great act of generosity, the next plan
+was to divide her; and yet, either from compassion, or the effect of
+Alexander's presence, he could not resolve to dismember her. This was a
+mistaken policy, like most of those where we stop half-way; and Napoleon
+was not long before he became sensible of it. When he exclaimed,
+therefore, "Is it possible that I have left this man so large a
+territory?" it is probable that he did not forgive Prussia the
+protection of Alexander; he hated her, because he felt that she hated
+him.
+
+In fact, the sparks of a jealous and impatient hatred escaped from the
+youth of Prussia, whose ideas were exalted by a system of education,
+national, liberal, and mystical. It was among them that a formidable
+power arose in opposition to that of Napoleon. It included all whom his
+victories had humbled or offended; it had all the strength of the weak
+and the oppressed, the law of nature, mystery, fanaticism, and revenge!
+Wanting support on earth, it looked up for aid to Heaven, and its moral
+forces were wholly out of the reach of the material power of Napoleon.
+Animated by the devoted and indefatigable spirit of an ardent sect, it
+watched the slightest movements and weakest points of its enemy,
+insinuated itself into all the interstices of his power, and holding
+itself ready to strike at every opportunity, it waited quietly with the
+patience and phlegm which are the peculiar characteristics of the
+Germans, which were the causes of their defeat, and against which our
+victory wore itself out.
+
+This vast conspiracy was that of the _Tugendbund_[1], or _Friends of
+Virtue_. Its head, in other words, the person who first gave a precise
+and definite direction to its views, was _Stein_. Napoleon perhaps might
+have gained him over to his interests, but preferred punishing him. His
+plan happened to be discovered by one of those chances to which the
+police owes the best part of its miracles; but when conspiracies enter
+into the interests, passions, and even the consciences of men, it is
+impossible to seize their ramifications: every one understands without
+communicating; or rather, all is communication--a general and
+simultaneous sympathy.
+
+[Footnote 1: In 1808, several literary men at Königsberg, afflicted with
+the evils which desolated their country, ascribed it to the general
+corruption of manners. According to these philosophers, it had stifled
+true patriotism in the citizens, discipline in the army, and courage in
+the people. Good men therefore were bound to unite to regenerate the
+nation, by setting the example of every sacrifice. An association was in
+consequence formed by them, which took the title of _Moral and
+Scientific Union_. The government approved of it, merely interdicting it
+from political discussions. This resolution, noble as it was, would
+probably have been lost, like many others, in the vagueness of German
+metaphysics; but about that time William, Duke of Brunswick, who had
+been stripped of his duchy, had retired to his principality of Oels in
+Silesia. In the bosom of this retreat he is said to have observed the
+first progress of the _Moral Union_ among the Prussians. He became a
+member of it; and his heart swelling with hatred and revenge, he formed
+the idea of another association, which was to consist of men resolved to
+overthrow the confederation of the Rhine, and to drive the French
+entirely out of Germany. This society, whose object was more real and
+positive than that of the first, soon swallowed up the other; and from
+these two was formed that of the _Tugendbund_, or _Friends of Virtue_.
+
+About the end of May, 1809, three enterprises--those of Katt, Dörnberg,
+and Schill--had already given proofs of its existence. That of Duke
+William began on the 14th of May. He was at first supported by the
+Austrians. After a variety of adventures, this leader, abandoned to his
+own resources in the midst of subjugated Europe, and left with only 2000
+men to combat with the whole power of Napoleon, refused to yield: he
+stood his ground, and threw himself into Saxony and Hanover; but finding
+it impossible to raise them into insurrection, he cut his way through
+several French corps, which he defeated, to Elsfleth, where he found an
+English vessel waiting to receive and to convey him to England, with the
+laurels he had acquired.]
+
+This focus spread its fires and gained new partizans every day; it
+attacked the power of Napoleon in the opinion of all Germany, extended
+itself into Italy, and threatened its complete overthrow. It was already
+easy to see that, if circumstances became unfavourable to us, there
+would be no want of men to take advantage of them. In 1809, even before
+the disaster of Esslingen, the first who had ventured to raise the
+standard of independence against Napoleon were Prussians. He sent them
+to the galleys; so important did he feel it to smother that cry of
+revolt, which seemed to echo that of the Spaniards, and might become
+general.
+
+Independently of all these causes of hatred, the position of Prussia,
+between France and Russia, compelled Napoleon to remain her master; he
+could not reign there but by force--he could not be strong there but by
+her weakness.
+
+He ruined the country, although he must have known well that poverty
+creates audacity; that the hope of gain becomes the moving principle of
+those who have nothing more to lose; and finally, that in leaving them
+nothing but the sword, he in a manner obliged them to turn it against
+himself. In consequence, on the approach of the year 1812, and of the
+terrible struggle which it was to produce, Frederick, uneasy and tired
+of his subservient position, was determined to extricate himself from
+it, either by an alliance or by war. In March, 1811, he offered himself
+to Napoleon as an auxiliary in the expedition which he was preparing. In
+the month of May, and again in the month of August, he repeated that
+offer; and as he received no satisfactory answer, he declared, that as
+the great military movements which surrounded, crossed, or drained his
+kingdom, were such as to excite his apprehension that his entire
+destruction was meditated, "he took up arms, because circumstances
+imperiously called upon him to do so, deeming it far preferable to die
+sword in hand than to fall with disgrace."
+
+It was said at the same time, that Frederick secretly offered to
+Alexander to give him possession of Graudentz, and his magazines, and
+to put himself at the head of his insurgent subjects, if the Russian
+army should advance into Silesia. If the same authorities are to be
+believed, Alexander received this proposition, very favourably. He
+immediately sent to Bagration and Wittgenstein sealed marching orders.
+They were instructed not to open them until they received another letter
+from their sovereign, which he never wrote, having changed his
+resolution. A variety of causes might have dictated that change; 1st, a
+wish not to be the first to commence so great a war, and his anxiety to
+have divine justice and the opinion of mankind on his side, by not
+appearing the aggressor; 2d, that Frederick, becoming less uneasy as to
+the plans of Napoleon, had resolved to follow his fortunes. It is
+probable, after all, that the noble sentiments which Alexander expressed
+in his reply to the king were his only motives: we are assured that he
+wrote to him, "That in a war which might begin by reverses, and in which
+perseverance was required, he only felt courageous for himself, and that
+the misfortunes of an ally might shake his resolution; that it would
+grieve him to chain Prussia to his fortune if it was bad; that if it was
+good he should always be ready to share it with her, whatever line of
+conduct necessity might oblige her to pursue."
+
+These details have been certified to us by a witness, although an
+inferior one. However, whether this counsel proceeded from the
+generosity or the policy of Alexander, or Frederick was determined
+solely by the necessity of the case, it is certain that it was high
+time for him to come to a decision; for in February, 1812, these
+communications with Alexander, _if there were such_, or the hope of
+obtaining better terms from France having made him hesitate in replying
+to the definitive propositions of Napoleon, the latter, becoming
+impatient, sent additional forces to Dantzic, and made Davoust enter
+Pomerania. His orders for this invasion of a Swedish province were
+repeated and pressing; they were grounded on the illicit commerce
+carried on by the Pomeranians with the English, and subsequently on the
+necessity of compelling Prussia to accede to his terms. The Prince of
+Eckmühl even received orders to hold himself in readiness to take
+immediate possession of that kingdom, and to seize the person of her
+sovereign, if within eight days from the date of these orders the latter
+had not concluded the offensive alliance dictated to him by France; but
+while the marshal was tracing the few marches necessary for this
+operation, he received intelligence that the treaty of the 21st of
+February, 1812, had been ratified.
+
+This submission did not altogether satisfy Napoleon. To his strength he
+added artifice; his suspicions still led him to covet the occupation of
+the fortresses, which he was ashamed not to leave in Frederick's hands;
+he required the king to keep only 50 or 80 invalids in some, and desired
+that some French officers should be admitted into others; all of whom
+were to send their reports to him, and to follow his orders. His
+solicitude extended to every thing. "Spandau," said he, in his letters
+to Davoust, "is the citadel of Berlin, as Pillau is that of Königsberg;"
+and French troops had orders to be ready to introduce themselves at the
+first signal: the manner he himself pointed out. At Potsdam, which the
+king had reserved for himself, and which our troops were interdicted
+from entering, his orders were, that the French officers should
+frequently show themselves, in order to observe, and to accustom the
+people to the sight of them. He recommended every degree of respect to
+be shown, both to the king and his subjects; but at the same time he
+required that every sort of arms should be taken from the latter, which
+might be of use to them in an insurrection; and he pointed out every
+thing of the kind, even to the smallest weapon. Anticipating the
+possibility of the loss of a battle, and the chances of Prussian
+_vespers_, he ordered that his troops should be either put into barracks
+or encampments, with a thousand other precautions of the minutest
+description. As a final security, in case of the English making a
+descent between the Elbe and the Vistula, although Victor, and
+subsequently Augereau, were to occupy Prussia with 50,000 men, he
+engaged by treaty the assistance of 10,000 Danes.
+
+All these precautions were still insufficient to remove his distrust;
+when the Prince of Hatzfeld came to require of him a subsidy of 25
+millions of francs to meet the expenses of the war which was preparing,
+his reply to Daru was, "that he would take especial care not to furnish
+an enemy with arms against himself." In this manner did Frederick,
+entangled as it were in a net of iron, which surrounded and held him
+tight in every part, put between 20 and 30,000 of his troops, and his
+principal fortresses and magazines, at the disposal of Napoleon[2].
+
+[Footnote 2: By this treaty, Prussia agreed to furnish two hundred
+thousand quintals of rye, twenty-four thousand of rice, two million
+bottles of beer, four hundred thousand quintals of wheat, six hundred
+and fifty thousand of straw, three hundred and fifty thousand of hay,
+six million bushels of oats, forty-four thousand oxen, fifteen thousand
+horses, three thousand six hundred waggons, with harness and drivers,
+each carrying a load of fifteen hundred weight; and finally, hospitals
+provided with every thing necessary for twenty thousand sick. It is
+true, that all these supplies were to be allowed in deduction of the
+remainder of the taxes imposed by the conquest.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+These two treaties opened the road to Russia to Napoleon; but in order
+to penetrate into the interior of that empire, it was necessary to make
+sure of Sweden and Turkey.
+
+Military combinations were then so much aggrandized, that in order to
+sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the
+configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course
+of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were
+contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the
+general and relative position of every state with a universal _coup
+d'oeil_; it was no longer on single maps, but on that of the whole
+globe, that their policy had to trace its plans of hostility.
+
+Russia is mistress of the heights of Europe; her flanks are supported by
+the seas of the north and south. Her government can only with great
+difficulty be driven into a straight, and forced to submit, in a space
+almost beyond the imagination to conceive: the conquest of which would
+require long campaigns, to which her climate is completely opposed. From
+this, it follows, that without the concurrence of Turkey and Sweden,
+Russia is less vulnerable. The assistance of these two powers was
+therefore requisite in order to surprise her, to strike her to the heart
+in her modern capital, and to turn at a distance, in the rear of its
+left, her grand army of the Niemen,--and not merely to precipitate
+attacks on a part of her front, in plains where the extent of space
+prevented confusion, and left a thousand roads open to the retreat of
+that army.
+
+The meanest soldier in our ranks, therefore, expected to hear of the
+combined march of the Grand Vizir towards Kief, and of Bernadotte
+against Finland. Eight sovereigns were already enlisted under the
+banners of Napoleon; but the two who had the greatest interest in the
+quarrel were still deaf to his call. It was an idea worthy of the great
+emperor to put all the governments and all the religions of Europe in
+motion for the accomplishment of his great designs: their triumph would
+have been then secured; and if the voice of another Homer had been
+wanting to this king of so many kings, the voice of the nineteenth
+century, the great century, would have supplied it; and the cry of
+astonishment of a whole age, penetrating and piercing through futurity,
+would have echoed from generation to generation, to the latest
+posterity!
+
+So much glory was not in reserve for us.
+
+Which of us, in the French army, can ever forget his astonishment, in
+the midst of the Russian plains, on hearing the news of the fatal
+treaties of the Turks and Swedes with Alexander; and how anxiously our
+looks were turned towards our right uncovered, towards our left
+enfeebled, and upon our retreat menaced? _Then_ we only looked at the
+fatal effects of the peace between our allies and our enemy; _now_ we
+feel desirous of knowing the causes of it.
+
+The treaties concluded about the end of the last century, had subjected
+the weak sultan of the Turks to Russia; the Egyptian expedition had
+armed him against us. But ever since Napoleon had assumed the reins of
+power, a well-understood common interest, and the intimacy of a
+mysterious correspondence, had reconciled Selim with the first consul: a
+close connexion was established between these two princes, and they had
+exchanged portraits with each other. Selim attempted to effect a great
+revolution in the Turkish customs. Napoleon encouraged him, and was
+assisting him in introducing the European discipline into the Ottoman
+army, when the victory of Jena, the war of Poland, and the influence of
+Sebastiani, determined the sultan to throw off the yoke of Alexander.
+The English made hasty attempts to oppose this, but they were driven
+from the sea of Constantinople. Then it was that Napoleon wrote the
+following letter to Selim.
+
+"_Osterode, April_ 3, 1807.
+
+"My ambassador informs me of the bravery and good conduct of the
+Mussulmans against our common enemies. Thou hast shown thyself the
+worthy descendant of the Selims and the Solimans. Thou hast asked me for
+some officers; I send them to thee. I regretted that thou hadst not
+required of me some thousand men,--thou hast only asked for five
+hundred; I have given orders for their immediate departure. It is my
+intention that they shall be paid and clothed at my expense, and that
+thou shalt be reimbursed the expenses which they may occasion thee. I
+have given orders to the commander of my troops in Dalmatia to send thee
+the arms, ammunition, and every thing thou shalt require of me. I have
+given the same orders at Naples; and artillery has been already placed
+at the disposal of the pasha of Janina. Generals, officers, arms of
+every description, even money--I place all at thy disposal. Thou hast
+only to ask: do so in a distinct manner, and all which thou shalt
+require I will send thee on the instant. Arrange matters with the shah
+of Persia, who is also the enemy of the Russians; encourage him to stand
+fast, and to attack warmly the common enemy. I have beaten the Russians
+in a great battle; I have taken from them seventy-five pieces of cannon,
+sixteen standards, and a great number of prisoners. I am at the distance
+of eighty leagues beyond Warsaw, and am about to take advantage of the
+fifteen days' repose which I have given to my army, to repair thither,
+and there to receive thy ambassador. I am sensible of the want thou hast
+of artillerymen and troops; I have offered both to thy ambassador; but
+he has declined them, from a fear of alarming the delicacy of the
+Mussulmans. Confide to me all thy wants; I am sufficiently powerful, and
+sufficiently interested in thy prosperity, both from friendship and
+policy, to have nothing to refuse thee. Peace has been proposed to me
+here. I have been offered all the advantages which I could desire; but
+they wished that I should ratify the state of things established
+between the Porte and Russia by the treaty of Sistowa, and I refused. My
+answer was, _that it was necessary that the Porte should be secured in
+complete independence; and that all the treaties extorted from her,
+during the time that France was asleep, should be revoked_."
+
+This letter of Napoleon had been preceded and followed by verbal but
+formal assurances, that he would not sheath the sword, until the Crimea
+was restored to the dominion of the crescent. He had even authorized
+Sebastiani to give the divan a copy of his instructions, which contained
+these promises.
+
+Such were his words, with which his actions at first corresponded.
+Sebastiani demanded a passage through Turkey for an army of 25,000
+French, which he was to command, and which was to join the Ottoman army.
+An unforeseen circumstance, it is true, deranged this plan; but Napoleon
+then made Selim the promise of an auxiliary force of 9000 French,
+including 5000 artillerymen, who were to be conveyed in eleven vessels
+of the line to Constantinople. The Turkish ambassador was at the same
+time treated with the greatest distinction in the French camp; he
+accompanied Napoleon in all his reviews: the most flattering attentions
+were paid to him, and the grand-equerry (Caulaincourt,) was already
+treating with him for an alliance, offensive and defensive, when a
+sudden attack by the Russians interrupted the negotiation.
+
+The ambassador returned to Warsaw, where the same respect continued to
+be shown him, up to the day of the decisive victory of Friedland. But
+on the following day his illusion was dissipated; he saw himself
+neglected; for it was no longer Selim whom he represented. A revolution
+had just hurled from the throne the monarch who had been the friend of
+Napoleon, and with him all hope of giving the Turks a regular army, upon
+which he could depend. Napoleon, therefore, judging that he could no
+longer reckon upon the assistance of these barbarians, changed his
+system. Henceforward it was Alexander whom he wished to gain; and as his
+was a genius which never hesitated, he was already prepared to abandon
+the empire of the East to that monarch, in order that he might be left
+at liberty to possess himself of that of the West.
+
+As his great object was the extension of the continental system, and to
+make it surround Europe, the co-operation of Russia would complete its
+development. Alexander would shut out the English from the North, and
+compel Sweden to go to war with them; the French would expel them from
+the centre, from the south, and from the west of Europe. Napoleon was
+already meditating the expedition to Portugal, if that kingdom would not
+join his coalition. With these ideas floating in his brain, Turkey was
+now only an accessary in his plans, and he agreed to the armistice, and
+to the conferences at Tilsit.
+
+But a deputation had just come from Wilna, soliciting the restoration of
+their national independence, and professing the same devotion to his
+cause as had been shown by Warsaw; Berthier, whose ambition was
+satisfied, and who began to be tired of war, dismissed these envoys
+rudely, styling them traitors to their sovereign. The Prince of Eckmühl,
+on the contrary, favoured their object, and presented them to Napoleon,
+who was irritated with Berthier for his treatment of these Lithuanians,
+and received them graciously, without, however, promising them his
+support. In vain did Davoust represent to him that the opportunity was
+favourable, owing to the destruction of the Russian army; Napoleon's
+reply was, "that Sweden had just declared her armistice to him; that
+Austria offered her mediation between France and Russia, which he looked
+upon as a hostile step; that the Prussians, seeing him at such a
+distance from France, might recover from their intimidation; and
+finally, that Selim, his faithful ally, had just been dethroned, and his
+place filled by Mustapha IV., of whose dispositions he knew nothing."
+
+The emperor of France continued, therefore, to negotiate with Russia;
+and the Turkish ambassador, neglected and forgotten, wandered about our
+camp, without being summoned to take any part in the negotiations which
+terminated the war; he returned to Constantinople soon after, in great
+displeasure. Neither the Crimea, nor even Moldavia and Wallachia, were
+restored to that barbarous court by the treaty of Tilsit; the
+restitution of the two latter provinces was only stipulated by an
+armistice, the conditions of which were never meant to be executed. But
+as Napoleon professed to be the mediator between Mustapha and Alexander,
+the ministers of the two powers repaired to Paris. But there, during
+the long continuance of that feigned mediation, the Turkish
+plenipotentiaries were never admitted to his presence.
+
+If we must even tell the whole truth, it is asserted, that at the
+interview at Tilsit, and subsequently, a treaty for the partition of
+Turkey was under discussion. It was proposed to Russia to take
+possession of Wallachia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, and a part of Mount Hemus.
+Austria was to have Servia and a part of Bosnia; France the other part
+of that province, Albania, Macedonia, and all Greece as far as
+Thessalonica: Constantinople, Adrianople, and Thrace, were to be left to
+the Turks.
+
+Whether the conferences respecting this partition were really of a
+serious nature, or merely the communication of a great idea, is
+uncertain; so much is certain, that shortly after the interview at
+Tilsit, Alexander's ambition was very sensibly moderated. The
+suggestions of prudence had shown him the danger of substituting for the
+ignorant, infatuated, and feeble Turkey, an active, powerful, and
+unaccommodating neighbour. In his conversations on the subject at that
+time, he remarked, "that he had already too much desert country; that he
+knew too well, by the occupation of the Crimea, which was still
+depopulated, the value of conquest over foreign and hostile religions
+and manners; that besides, France and Russia were too strong to become
+such near neighbours; that two such powerful bodies coming into
+immediate contact, would be sure to jostle; and that it was much better
+to leave intermediate powers between them."
+
+On the other side, the French emperor urged the matter no further; the
+Spanish insurrection diverted his attention, and imperiously required
+his presence with all his forces. Even previous to the interview at
+Erfurt, after Sebastiani's return from Constantinople, although Napoleon
+still seemed to adhere to the idea of dismembering Turkey in Europe, he
+had admitted the correctness of his ambassador's reasoning: "That in
+this partition, the advantages would be all against him; that Russia and
+Austria would acquire contiguous provinces, which would make their
+dominions more complete, while we should be obliged to keep 80,000 men
+continually in Greece to retain it in subjection; that such an army,
+from the distance and losses it would sustain from long marches, and the
+novelty and unhealthiness of the climate, would require 30,000 recruits
+annually, a number which would quite drain France: that a line of
+operation extending from Athens to Paris, was out of all proportion;
+that besides, it was strangled in its passage at Trieste, at which point
+only two marches would enable the Austrians to place themselves across
+it, and thereby cut off our army of observation in Greece from all
+communication with Italy and France."
+
+Here Napoleon exclaimed, "that Austria certainly complicated every
+thing; that she was there like a dead weight; that she must be got rid
+off; and Europe must be divided into two empires: that the Danube, from
+the Black Sea to Passau, the mountains of Bohemia to Königsgratz, and
+the Elbe to the Baltic, should be their lines of demarcation. Alexander
+should become the emperor of the north, and he of the south of Europe."
+Abandoning, subsequently, these lofty ideas, and reverting to
+Sebastiani's observations on the partition of European Turkey, he
+terminated the conferences, which had lasted three days, with these
+words: "You are right, and no answer can be given to that! I give it up.
+Besides, that accords with my views on Spain, which I am going to unite
+to France."--"What do I hear?" exclaimed Sebastiani, astonished, "unite
+it! And your brother!"--"What signifies my brother?" retorted Napoleon;
+"does one give away a kingdom like Spain? I am determined to unite it to
+France. I will give that nation a great national representation. I will
+make the emperor Alexander consent to it, by allowing him to take
+possession of Turkey to the Danube, and I will evacuate Berlin. As to
+Joseph, I will indemnify him."
+
+The congress at Erfurt took place just after this. He could have no
+motive at that time for supporting the rights of the Turks. The French
+army, which had advanced imprudently into the very heart of Spain, had
+met with reverses. The presence of its leader, and that of his armies of
+the Rhine and the Elbe, became there every day more and more necessary,
+and Austria had availed herself of the opportunity to take up arms.
+Uneasy respecting the state of Germany, Napoleon was therefore anxious
+to make sure of the dispositions of Alexander, to conclude an alliance
+offensive and defensive with him, and even to engage him in a war. Such
+were the reasons which induced him to abandon Turkey as far as the
+Danube to that emperor.
+
+The Porte therefore had very soon reason to reproach us for the war
+which was renewed between it and Russia. Notwithstanding, in July, 1808,
+when Mustapha was dethroned, and succeeded by Mahmoud, the latter
+announced his accession to the French emperor; but Napoleon had then to
+keep upon terms with Alexander, and felt too much regret at the death of
+Selim, detestation of the barbarity of the Mussulmans, and contempt for
+their unstable government, to allow him to notice the communication. For
+three years he had returned no reply to the sultan, and his silence
+might be interpreted into a refusal to acknowledge him.
+
+He was in this ambiguous position with the Turks, when all of a sudden,
+on the 21st of March, 1812, only six weeks before the war with Russia
+commenced, he solicited an alliance with Mahmoud: he demanded that,
+within five days from the period of the communication, all negotiation
+between the Turks and Russians should be broken off; and that an army of
+100,000 men, commanded by the sultan himself, should march to the Danube
+within nine days. The return which he proposed to make for this
+assistance was, to put the Porte in possession of the very same Moldavia
+and Wallachia, which, under the circumstances, the Russians were but too
+happy to restore as the price of a speedy peace; and the promise of
+procuring the restoration of the Crimea, which he had made six years
+before to Selim, was again renewed.
+
+We know not whether the time which this despatch would take to arrive at
+Constantinople had been badly calculated, whether Napoleon believed the
+Turkish army to be stronger than it really was, or whether he had
+flattered himself with surprising and captivating the determination of
+the divan by so sudden and advantageous a proposition. It can hardly be
+supposed that he was ignorant of the long invariable custom of the
+Mussulmans, which prevented the grand signor from ever appearing in
+person at the head of his army.
+
+It appears as if the genius of Napoleon could not stoop so low as to
+impute to the divan the brutish ignorance which it exhibited of its real
+interests. After the manner in which he had abandoned the interests of
+Turkey in 1807, perhaps he did not make sufficient allowance for the
+distrust which the Mussulmans were likely to entertain of his new
+promises; he forgot that they were too ignorant to appreciate the change
+which recent circumstances had effected in his political views; and that
+barbarians like them could still less comprehend the feelings of dislike
+with which they had inspired him, by their deposition and murder of
+Selim, to whom he was attached, and in conjunction with whom he had
+hoped to make European Turkey a military power capable of coping with
+Russia.
+
+Perhaps he might still have gained over Mahmoud to his cause, if he had
+sooner made use of more potent arguments; but, as he has since expressed
+himself, it revolted his pride to make use of corruption. We shall
+besides shortly see him hesitating about beginning a war with Alexander,
+or laying too much stress on the alarm with which his immense
+preparations would inspire that monarch. It is also possible, that the
+last propositions which he made to the Turks, being tantamount to a
+declaration of war against the Russians, were delayed for the express
+purpose of deceiving the Czar as to the period of his invasion. Finally,
+whether it was from all these causes, from a confidence founded on the
+mutual hatred of the two nations, and on his treaty of alliance with
+Austria, which had just guaranteed Moldavia and Wallachia to the Turks,
+he detained the ambassador whom he sent to them on his road, and waited,
+as we have just seen, to the very last moment.
+
+But the divan was surrounded by the Russian, English, Austrian, and
+Swedish envoys, who with one voice represented to it, "that the Turks
+were indebted for their existence in Europe solely to the divisions
+which existed among the Christian monarchs; that the moment these were
+united under one influence, the Mahometans in Europe would be
+overwhelmed; and that as the French emperor was advancing rapidly to the
+attainment of universal empire, it was him whom the Turks had most
+reason to dread."
+
+To these representations were added the intrigues of the two Greek
+princes Morozi. They were of the same religion with Alexander, and they
+looked to him for the possession of Moldavia and Wallachia. Grown rich
+by his favours and by the gold of England, these dragomans enlightened
+the unsuspecting ignorance of the Turks, as to the occupation and
+military surveys of the Ottoman frontiers by the French. They did a
+great deal more; the first of them influenced the dispositions of the
+divan and the capital, and the second those of the grand vizir and the
+army; and as the proud Mahmoud resisted, and would only accept an
+honourable peace, these treacherous Greeks contrived to disband his
+army, and compelled him, by insurrections, to sign the degrading treaty
+of Bucharest with the Russians.
+
+Such is the power of intrigue in the seraglio; two Greeks whom the Turks
+despised, there decided the fate of Turkey, in spite of the sultan
+himself. As the latter depended for his existence on the intrigues of
+his palace, he was, like all despots who shut themselves up in them,
+obliged to yield: the Morozi carried the day; but afterwards he had them
+both beheaded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+In this manner did we lose the support of Turkey; but Sweden still
+remained to us; her monarch had sprung from our ranks; a soldier of our
+army, it was to that he owed his glory and his throne: was it likely
+that he would desert our cause on the first opportunity he had of
+showing his gratitude? It was impossible to anticipate such ingratitude;
+still less, that he would sacrifice the real and permanent interests of
+Sweden to his former jealousy of Napoleon, and perhaps to a weakness too
+common among the upstart favourites of fortune; unless it be that the
+submission of men who have newly attained to greatness to those who
+boast of a transmitted rank, is a necessity of their position rather
+than an error of their self-love.
+
+In this great contest between aristocracy and democracy, the ranks of
+the former had been joined by one of its most determined enemies.
+Bernadotte being thrown almost singly among the ancient courts and
+nobility, did every thing to merit his adoption by them, and succeeded.
+But his success must have cost him dear, as in order to obtain it, he
+was first obliged to abandon his old companions, and the authors of his
+glory, in the hour of peril. At a later period he did more; he was seen
+marching over their bleeding corses, joining with all their, and
+formerly his, enemies, to overwhelm the country of his birth, and
+thereby lay that of his adoption at the mercy of the first czar who
+should be ambitious of reigning over the Baltic.
+
+On the other hand, it would appear that the character of Bernadotte, and
+the importance of Sweden in the decisive struggle which was about to
+commence, were not sufficiently weighed in the political balance of
+Napoleon. His ardent and exclusive genius hazarded too much; he
+overloaded a solid foundation so much that he sank it. Thus it was, that
+after justly appreciating the Swedish interests as naturally bound up
+with his, the moment he wished to weaken the power of Russia, he fancied
+that he could exact every thing from the Swedes without promising them
+any thing in return: his pride did not make any allowance for theirs,
+judging that they were too much interested in the success of his cause,
+for them ever to think of separating themselves from it.
+
+We must, however, take up the history a little earlier; facts will prove
+that the defection of Sweden was as much attributable to the jealous
+ambition of Bernadotte as to the unbending pride of Napoleon. It will be
+seen that her new monarch assumed to himself a great part of the
+responsibility of the rupture, by offering his alliance at the price of
+an act of treachery.
+
+When Napoleon returned from Egypt, he did not become the chief of his
+equals with all their concurrence. Such of them as were already jealous
+of his glory then became still more envious of his power. As they could
+not dispute the first, they attempted to refuse obedience to the second.
+Moreau, and several other generals, either by persuasion or surprise,
+had co-operated in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire: they afterwards
+repented having done so. Bernadotte had refused all participation in it.
+Alone, during the night, in Napoleon's own residence, amidst a thousand
+devoted officers, waiting only for the conqueror's orders, Bernadotte,
+then a strenuous republican, was daring enough to oppose his arguments,
+to refuse the second place in the republic, and to retort upon his anger
+by threats. Napoleon saw him depart, bearing himself proudly, and pass
+through the midst of his partizans, carrying with him his secrets, and
+declaring himself his enemy, and even his denouncer. Either from respect
+to his brother, to whom Bernadotte was allied by marriage, from
+moderation, the usual companion of strength, or from astonishment, he
+suffered him to depart quietly.
+
+In the course of the same night, a conventicle, consisting of ten
+deputies of the Council of Five Hundred, met at the house of S----;
+thither Bernadotte repaired. They settled, that at nine o'clock next
+morning the Council should hold a sitting, to which those only should be
+invited who were of the same way of thinking; that there a decree should
+be passed, that in imitation of the Council of Ancients, which had
+prudently named Bonaparte general of its guard, the Council of Five
+Hundred had appointed Bernadotte to command theirs; and that the latter,
+properly armed, should be in readiness to be summoned to it. It was at
+S----'s house that this plan was formed. S---- himself immediately
+afterwards ran to Napoleon, and disclosed the whole to him. A threat
+from the latter was quite sufficient to keep the conspirators in order;
+not one of them dared show his face at the Council, and the next day the
+revolution of the 18th Brumaire was completed.
+
+Bernadotte was prudent enough afterwards to feign submission, but
+Napoleon had not forgotten his opposition. He kept a watchful eye on all
+his movements. Not long after, he suspected his being at the head of a
+republican conspiracy which had been forming against him in the west. A
+premature proclamation discovered it; an officer who had been arrested
+for other causes, and an accomplice of Bernadotte, denounced the
+authors. On that occasion Bernadotte's ruin would have been sealed, if
+Napoleon had been able to convict him of it.
+
+He was satisfied with banishing him to America, under the title of
+minister of the Republic. But fortune favoured Bernadotte, who was
+already at Rochefort, by delaying his embarkation until the war with
+England was renewed. He then refused to go, and Napoleon could no longer
+compel him.
+
+All the relations between them had thus been those of hatred; and this
+check only served to aggravate them. Soon after, Napoleon was heard
+reproaching Bernadotte with his envious and treacherous inaction during
+the battle of Auerstadt, and his order of the day at Wagram, in which
+he had assumed the honour of that victory. He also spoke reproachfully
+of his character, as being much more ambitious than patriotic; and
+perhaps of the fascination of his manners,--all of them things
+considered dangerous to a recently established government; and yet he
+had showered rank, titles, and distinctions upon him, while Bernadotte,
+always ungrateful, seemed to accept them merely as in justice due to his
+merits, or to the want which was felt of him. These complaints of
+Napoleon were not without foundation.
+
+Bernadotte, on his side, abusing the emperor's moderation and desire to
+keep on terms with him, gradually incurred an increase of his
+displeasure, which his ambition was pleased to call enmity. He demanded
+why Napoleon had placed him in such a dangerous and false position at
+Wagram? why the report of that victory had been so unfavourable to him?
+to what was he to attribute the jealous anxiety to weaken his eulogium
+in the journals by artful notes? Up to that time, however, the obscure
+and underhand opposition of this general to his emperor had been of no
+importance; but a much wider field was then opened to their
+misunderstanding.
+
+By the treaty of Tilsit, Sweden, as well as Turkey, had been sacrificed
+to Russia and the continental system. The mistaken or mad politics of
+Gustavus IV. had been the cause of this. Ever since 1804 that monarch
+appeared to have enlisted himself in the pay of England; it was he also
+who had been the first to break the ancient alliance between France and
+Sweden. He had obstinately persevered in that false policy to such an
+extent at first, as to contend against France when she was victorious
+over Russia, and afterwards with Russia and France united. The loss of
+Pomerania, in 1807, and even that of Finland and the islands of Aland,
+which were united to Russia in 1808, were not sufficient to shake his
+obstinacy.
+
+It was then that his irritated subjects resumed that power which had
+been wrested from them, in 1772 and 1788, by Gustavus III., and of which
+his successor made so bad a use. Gustavus Adolphus IV. was imprisoned
+and dethroned; his lineal descendants were excluded from the throne; his
+uncle was put in his place, and the prince of Holstein-Augustenburg
+elected hereditary prince of Sweden. As the war had been the cause of
+this revolution peace was the result of it; it was concluded with Russia
+in 1809; but the newly-elected hereditary prince then died suddenly.
+
+In the beginning of 1810, France restored Pomerania and the Island of
+Rugen to Sweden, as the price of her accession to the continental
+system. The Swedes, worn out, impoverished, and become almost islanders,
+in consequence of the loss of Finland, were very loath to break with
+England, and yet they had no remedy; on the other side they stood in awe
+of the neighbouring and powerful government of Russia. Finding
+themselves weak and isolated, they looked round for support.
+
+Bernadotte had just been appointed to the command of the French army
+which took possession of Pomerania; his military reputation, and still
+more that of his nation and its sovereign, his fascinating mildness, his
+generosity, and his flattering attentions to the Swedes, with whom he
+had to treat, induced several of them to cast their eyes upon him. They
+appeared to know nothing of the misunderstanding between this marshal
+and the emperor; they fancied that by electing him for their prince,
+they should not only obtain an able and experienced general, but also a
+powerful mediator between France and Sweden, and a certain protector in
+the emperor: it happened quite the contrary.
+
+During the intrigues to which this circumstance gave rise, Bernadotte
+fancied that to his previous complaints against Napoleon he had to add
+others. When, in opposition to the king, and the majority of the members
+of the diet, he was proposed as successor to the crown of Sweden; when
+his pretensions were supported by Charles's prime minister, (a man of no
+family, who owed, like him, all his illustration to himself,) and the
+count de Wrede, the only member of the diet who had reserved his vote
+for him; when he came to solicit Napoleon's interference, why did he,
+when Charles XIII. desired to know his wishes, exhibit so much
+indifference? Why did he prefer the union of the three northern crowns
+on the head of a prince of Denmark? If he, Bernadotte, succeeded in the
+enterprise, he was not at all indebted for it to the emperor of France;
+he owed it to the pretensions of the king of Denmark, which
+counteracted those of the duke of Augustenburg[3], his most dangerous
+rival; to the grateful audacity of the baron de Moerner, who was the
+first to come to him, and offer to put him on the lists, and to the
+aversion of the Swedes to the Danes; above all he owed it to a passport
+which had been adroitly obtained by his agent from Napoleon's minister.
+It was said that this document was audaciously produced by Bernadotte's
+secret emissary, as a proof of an autograph mission with which he
+pretended to be charged, and of the formal desire of the French emperor
+to see one of his lieutenants, and the relation of his brother, placed
+upon the throne of Sweden.
+
+[Footnote 3: Brother of the deceased prince of that name.]
+
+Bernadotte also felt that he owed this crown to the chance, which
+brought him in communication with the Swedes, and made them acquainted
+with his characteristic qualities; to the birth of his son, which
+secured the heredity succession; to the address of his agents, who,
+either with or without his authority, dazzled the poverty of the
+Scandinavians with the promise of fourteen millions with which his
+election was to enrich their treasury; and finally to his flattering
+attentions, which had gained him the voices of several Swedish officers
+who had been his prisoners. But as to Napoleon, what did he owe to him?
+What was his reply to the news of the offer of several Swedes, when he
+himself waited upon him to inform him of it? "I am at too great a
+distance from Sweden, to mix myself up in her affairs. You must not
+reckon upon my support." At the same time it is true, that either from
+necessity, from his dreading the election of the duke of Oldenburg; or
+finally from respect for the wishes of fortune, Napoleon declared that
+he would leave it to her to decide: and Bernadotte was in consequence
+elected crown prince of Sweden.
+
+The newly-elected prince immediately paid his respects to the emperor,
+who received him frankly. "As you are offered the crown of Sweden, I
+permit you to accept it. I had another wish, as you know; but, in short,
+it is your sword which has made you a king, and you are sensible that it
+is not for me to stand in the way of your good fortune." He then entered
+very fully with him into the whole plan of his policy, in which
+Bernadotte appeared entirely to concur; every day he attended the
+emperor's levee together with his son, mixing with the other courtiers.
+By such marks of deference, he completely gained the heart of Napoleon.
+He was about to depart, poor. Unwilling that he should present himself
+to the Swedish throne in that necessitous state, like a mere adventurer,
+the emperor generously gave him two millions out of his own treasury; he
+even granted to his family the dotations which as a foreign prince he
+could no longer retain himself; and they parted on apparent terms of
+mutual satisfaction.
+
+It was natural that the expectations of Napoleon as to the alliance with
+Sweden should be heightened by this election, and by the favours which
+he had bestowed. At first Bernadotte's correspondence with him was that
+of a grateful inferior, but the very moment he was fairly out of France,
+feeling himself as it were relieved from a state of long and painful
+constraint, it is said that his hatred to Napoleon vented itself in
+threatening expressions, which, whether true or false, were reported to
+the emperor.
+
+On his side, that monarch, forced to be absolute in his continental
+system, cramped the commerce of Sweden; he wished her even to exclude
+American vessels from her ports; and at last he declared that he would
+only regard as friends the enemies of Great Britain. Bernadotte was
+obliged to make his election; the winter and the sea separated him from
+the assistance, or protected him from the attacks, of the English; the
+French were close to his ports; a war with France therefore would be
+real and effective; a war with England would be merely on paper. The
+prince of Sweden adopted the latter alternative.
+
+Napoleon, however, being as much a conqueror in peace as in war, and
+suspecting the intentions of Bernadotte, had demanded from Sweden
+several supplies of rigging for his Brest fleet, and the despatch of a
+body of troops, which were to be in his pay; in this manner weakening
+his allies to subdue his enemies, so as to allow him to be the master of
+both. He also required that colonial produce should be subjected in
+Sweden, the same as in France, to a duty of five per cent. It is even
+affirmed that he applied to Bernadotte to allow French custom-house
+officers to be placed at Gottenburg. These demands were eluded.
+
+Soon after, Napoleon proposed an alliance between Sweden, Denmark, and
+the grand duchy of Warsaw; a northern confederation, of which he would
+have declared himself protector, like that of the Rhine. The answer of
+Bernadotte, without being absolutely negative, had the same effect; it
+was the same with the offensive and defensive treaty which Napoleon
+again proposed to him. Bernadotte has since declared, that in four
+successive letters written with his own hand, he had frankly stated the
+impossibility he was under of complying with his wishes, and repeated
+his protestations of attachment to his former sovereign, but that the
+latter never deigned to give him any reply. This impolitic silence (if
+the fact be true,) can only be attributed to the pride of Napoleon,
+which was piqued at Bernadotte's refusals. No doubt he considered his
+protestations as too false to deserve any answer.
+
+The irritation increased; the communications became disagreeable; they
+were interrupted by the recall of Alquier, the French minister in
+Sweden. As the pretended declaration of war by Bernadotte against
+England remained a dead letter, Napoleon, who was not to be denied or
+deceived with impunity, carried on a sharp war against the Swedish
+commerce by means of his privateers. By them, and the invasion of
+Swedish Pomerania on the 27th of January, 1812, he punished Bernadotte
+for his deviations from the continental system, and obtained as
+prisoners several thousand Swedish soldiers and sailors, whom he had in
+vain demanded as auxiliaries.
+
+Then also our communications with Russia were broken off. Napoleon
+immediately addressed himself to the prince of Sweden; his notes were
+couched in the style of a lord paramount who fancies he speaks in the
+interest of his vassal, who feels the claims he has upon his gratitude
+or submission, and who calculates upon his obedience. He demanded that
+Bernadotte should declare a real war against England, shut her out from
+the Baltic, and send an army of 40,000 Swedes against Russia. In return
+for this, he promised him his protection, the restoration of Finland,
+and twenty millions, in return for an equal amount of colonial produce,
+which the Swedes were first to deliver. Austria undertook to support
+this proposition; but Bernadotte, already feeling himself settled on the
+throne, answered like an independent monarch. Ostensibly he declared
+himself neutral, opened his ports to all nations, proclaimed his rights
+and his grievances, appealed to humanity, recommended peace, and offered
+himself as a mediator; secretly, he offered himself to Napoleon at the
+price of Norway, Finland, and a subsidy.
+
+At the reading of a letter conceived in this new and unexpected style,
+Bonaparte was seized with rage and astonishment. He saw in it, and not
+without reason, a premeditated defection on the part of Bernadotte, a
+secret agreement with his enemies! He was filled with indignation; he
+exclaimed, striking violently on the letter, and the table on which it
+lay open: "He! the rascal! he presume to give me advice! to dictate the
+law to me! to dare propose such an infamous act[4] to me! And this from
+a man who owes every thing to my bounty! What ingratitude!" Then, pacing
+the room with rapid strides, at intervals he gave vent to such
+expressions as these: "I ought to have expected it! he has always
+sacrificed every thing to his interests! This is the same man, who,
+during his short ministry, attempted the resurrection of the infamous
+Jacobins! When he looked only to gain by disorder, he opposed the 18th
+Brumaire! He it was who was conspiring in the west against the
+re-establishment of law and religion! Has not his envious and perfidious
+inaction already betrayed the French army at Auerstadt? How many times,
+from regard to Joseph, have I pardoned his intrigues and concealed his
+faults! And yet I have made him general-in-chief, marshal, duke, prince,
+and finally king! But see how all these favours and the pardon of so
+many injuries, are thrown away on a man like this! If Sweden, half
+devoured by Russia, for a century past, has retained her independence,
+she owes it to the support of France. But it matters not; Bernadotte
+requires the baptism of the ancient aristocracy! a baptism of blood, and
+of French blood! and you will soon see, that to satisfy his envy and
+ambition, he will betray both his native and adopted country."
+
+[Footnote 4: Napoleon no doubt spoke of the proposal which Bernadotte
+made to him to take Norway from Denmark, his faithful ally, in order by
+this act of treachery to purchase the assistance of Sweden.]
+
+In vain did they attempt to calm him. They represented the difficulties
+which Bernadotte's new situation had imposed on him; that the cession of
+Finland to Russia had separated Sweden from the continent, almost made
+an island of that country, and thereby enlisted her in the English
+system.--In such critical circumstances, all the need which he had of
+this ally was unable to vanquish his pride, which revolted at a
+proposition which he regarded as insulting; perhaps also in the new
+prince of Sweden he still saw the same Bernadotte who was lately his
+subject, and his military inferior, and who at last affected to have cut
+out for himself a destiny independent of his. From that moment his
+instructions to his minister bore the impress of that disposition; the
+latter, it is true, softened the bitterness of them, but a rupture
+became inevitable.
+
+It is uncertain which contributed most to it, the pride of Napoleon, or
+the ancient jealousy of Bernadotte; it is certain that on the part of
+the former the motives of it were honourable. "Denmark" he said, "was
+his most faithful ally; her attachment to France had cost her the loss
+of her fleet and the burning of her capital. Must he repay a fidelity
+which had been so cruelly tried, by an act of treachery such as that of
+taking Norway from her to give to Sweden?"
+
+As to the subsidy which Sweden required of him, he answered, as he had
+done to Turkey, "that if the war was to be carried on with money,
+England would always be sure to outbid him;" and above all, "that there
+was weakness and baseness in triumphing by corruption." Reverting by
+this to his wounded pride, he terminated the conference by exclaiming,
+"Bernadotte impose conditions on me! Does he fancy then that I have need
+of him? I will soon bind him to my victorious career, and compel him to
+follow my sovereign impulse."
+
+But the active and speculative English, who were out of his reach, made
+a judicious estimate of the weak points of his system, and found the
+Russians ready to act upon their suggestions. They it was who had been
+endeavouring for the last three years to draw the forces of Napoleon
+into the defiles of Spain, and to exhaust them; it was they also who
+were on the watch to take advantage of the vindictive enmity of the
+prince of Sweden.
+
+Knowing that the active and restless vanity of men newly risen from
+obscurity is always uneasy and susceptible, in the presence of ancient
+_parvenus_, George and Alexander were lavish of their promises and
+flattery, in order to cajole Bernadotte. It was thus that they caressed
+him, at the time that the irritated Napoleon was threatening him; they
+promised him Norway and a subsidy, when the other, forced to refuse him
+that province of a faithful ally, took possession of Pomerania. While
+Napoleon, a monarch deriving his elevation from himself, relying on the
+faith of treaties, on the remembrance of past benefits, and on the real
+interests of Sweden, required succours from Bernadotte, the hereditary
+monarchs of London and Petersburgh required his opinion with deference,
+and submitted themselves by anticipation to the counsels of his
+experience. Finally, while the genius of Napoleon, the grandeur of his
+elevation, the importance of his enterprise, and the habit of their
+former relations, still classed Bernadotte as his lieutenant, these
+monarchs appeared already to treat him as their general. How was it
+possible for him not to seek to escape on the one hand from this sense
+of inferiority, and on the other to resist a mode of treatment, and
+promises so seductive? Thus the future prospects of Sweden were
+sacrificed, and her independence for ever laid at the mercy of Russian
+faith by the treaty of Petersburgh, which Bernadotte signed on the 24th
+of March, 1812. That of Bucharest, between Alexander and Mahmoud, was
+concluded on the 28th of May.--Thus did we lose the support of our two
+wings.
+
+Nevertheless, the emperor of the French, at the head of more than six
+hundred thousand men, and already too far advanced to think of
+retreating, flattered himself that his strength would decide every
+thing; that a victory on the Niemen would cut the knot of all these
+diplomatic difficulties, which he despised, probably too much; that
+then all the monarchs of Europe, compelled to acknowledge his
+ascendancy, would be eager to return into his system, and that all those
+satellites would be drawn into its vortex.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Napoleon meanwhile was still at Paris, in the midst of his great
+officers, who were alarmed by the terrible encounter which was
+preparing. The latter had nothing more to acquire, but much to preserve;
+their personal interest, therefore, was united with the general desire
+of nations, which were fatigued with war; and without disputing the
+utility of this expedition, they dreaded its approach. But they only
+confessed this to each other in secret, either from fear of giving
+umbrage, of impairing the confidence of nations, or of being proved
+wrong by the result. For that reason, in Napoleon's presence they
+remained silent, and even appeared to be uninformed as to a war, which
+for a considerable time had furnished a subject of conversation to the
+whole of Europe.
+
+But at length this respectful taciturnity, which he himself had taken
+pains to impose, became disagreeable; he suspected that it proceeded
+more from disapprobation than reserve. Obedience was not sufficient for
+him; it was his wish to combine it with conviction: that was like
+another conquest. Besides, no one was more convinced than himself of
+the power of public opinion, which, according to him, _created or
+destroyed sovereigns_. In short, whether through policy or self-love, it
+was his desire to persuade.
+
+Such were the dispositions of Napoleon and of the grandees who
+surrounded him, when the veil being about to be rent, and war evident,
+their silence towards him assumed a greater appearance of indiscretion
+than hazarding a few timely words. Some of them, therefore, commenced
+the task, and the emperor anticipated the others.
+
+A show was made[5] at first of comprehending all the emergencies of his
+position. "It was necessary to complete what had been begun; it was
+impossible to stop in the midst of so rapid an acclivity, and so near
+the summit. The empire of Europe was adapted to his genius; France would
+become its centre and its base; great and entire, she would perceive
+around her none but states so feeble and so divided, that all coalition
+among them would become contemptible or impossible; but with such an
+object why did he not commence the task by subjecting and partitioning
+the states immediately around him?"
+
+[Footnote 5: The arch-chancellor.]
+
+To this objection Napoleon replied, "That such had been his project in
+1809, in the war with Austria, but that the misfortune of Esslingen had
+deranged his plan; that that event, and the doubtful dispositions which
+Russia had since exhibited, had led him to marry an Austrian princess,
+and strengthen himself by an alliance with the Austrian against the
+Russian emperor.
+
+"That he did not create circumstances, but that he would not allow them
+to escape him; that he comprehended them all, and held himself in as
+much readiness as possible for their appearance; that in order to
+accomplish his designs, he was fully aware that twelve years were
+necessary, but that he could not afford to wait so long.
+
+"That besides, he had not provoked this war; that he had been faithful
+to his engagements with Alexander; proofs of which were to be found in
+the coldness of his relations with Turkey and Sweden, which had been
+delivered up to Russia, one almost entirely, the other shorn of Finland,
+and even of the Isle of Aland, which was so near Stockholm. That he had
+only replied to the distressed appeal of the Swedes, by advising them to
+make the cession.
+
+"That, nevertheless, since 1809, the Russian army destined to act in
+concert with Poniatowski in Austrian Gallicia had come forward too late,
+was too weak, and had acted perfidiously; that since that time,
+Alexander, by his ukase of the 31st of December, 1810, had abandoned the
+continental system, and by his prohibitions declared an actual war
+against French commerce; that he was quite aware that the interest and
+national spirit of the Russians might have compelled him to that, but
+that he had then communicated to their emperor that he was aware of his
+position, and would enter into every kind of arrangement which his
+repose required; in spite of which, Alexander, instead of modifying his
+ukase, had assembled 80,000 men, under pretence of supporting his
+custom-house officers; that he had suffered himself to be seduced by
+England; that, lastly, he even now refused to recognize the
+thirty-second military division, and demanded the evacuation of Prussia
+by the French; which was equivalent to a declaration of war."
+
+Through all these complaints, some persons thought they perceived that
+the pride of Napoleon was wounded by the independent attitude which
+Russia was daily resuming. The dispossession of the Russian Princess of
+Oldenburg of her duchy led to other conjectures; it was said that hints
+had been given both at Tilsit and Erfurt about a divorce, after which a
+closer alliance might be contracted with Russia; that these hints had
+not been encouraged, and that Napoleon retained a resentful remembrance
+of it. This fact is affirmed by some, and denied by others.
+
+But all those passions which so despotically govern other men, possessed
+but a feeble influence over a genius so firm and vast as his: at the
+utmost, they may have imparted the first momentum which impelled him
+into action earlier than he would have wished; but without penetrating
+so deeply beneath the folds of his great mind, a single idea, an obvious
+fact, was enough to hurry him, sooner or later, into that decisive
+struggle,--that was, the existence of an empire, which rivalled his own
+in greatness, but was still young, like its prince, and growing every
+day; while the French empire, already mature, like its emperor, could
+scarcely anticipate any thing but its decrease.
+
+Whatever was the height to which Napoleon had raised the throne of the
+south and west of Europe, he perceived the northern throne of Alexander
+ever ready to overshadow him by its eternally menacing position. On
+those icy summits of Europe, whence, in former times, so many floods of
+barbarians had rushed forth, he perceived all the elements of a new
+inundation collecting and maturing. Till then, Austria and Prussia had
+opposed sufficient barriers; but these he himself had humbled and
+overthrown: he stood, therefore, single, front to front with what he
+feared; he alone remained the champion of the civilization, the riches,
+and the enjoyments of the nations of the south, against the rude
+ignorance, and the fierce cupidity, of the poorer people of the north,
+and against the ambition of their emperor and his nobility.
+
+It was obvious, that war alone could decide this great
+arbitrament,--this great and eternal struggle between the poor and the
+rich; and, nevertheless, this war, with reference to us, was neither
+European, nor even national. Europe entered into it against her
+inclination, because the object of the expedition was to add to the
+strength of her conqueror. France was exhausted, and anxious for repose;
+her grandees, who formed the court of Napoleon, were alarmed at the
+double-headed character of the war, at the dispersion of our armies from
+Cadiz to Moscow; and even when admitting the _eventual_ necessity of the
+struggle, its _immediate_ urgency did not appear to them so
+legitimately proved.
+
+They knew that it was more especially by an appeal to his political
+interest that they had any chance of shaking the resolution of a prince,
+whose principle was, "that there exist individuals whose conduct can but
+rarely be regulated by their private sentiments, but always by
+surrounding circumstances." In this persuasion, one of his ministers[6]
+said to him, "that his finances required tranquillity;" but he replied,
+"On the contrary, they are embarrassed, and require war." Another[7]
+added, "that the state of his revenues never, in fact, had been more
+flourishing; that, independent of a furnished account of from three to
+four millions, it was really wonderful to find France unencumbered with
+any urgent debts; but that this prosperous condition was approaching its
+termination, since it appeared that with the year 1812 a ruinous
+campaign was to commence; that hitherto, war had been made to support
+the expense of war; that we had every where found the table laid out;
+but that, in future, we could no longer live at the expense of Germany,
+since she had become our ally; but, on the contrary, it would be
+necessary to support her contingents, and that without any hope of
+remuneration, whatever the result might be; that we should have to pay
+at Paris for every ration of bread which would be consumed at Moscow, as
+the new scenes of action offered us no harvest to reap, independent of
+glory, but cordage, pitch, and shipping-tackle, which would certainly go
+but a small way towards the discharge of the expenses of a continental
+war. That France was not in a condition to subsidize all Europe in this
+manner, especially at a moment when her resources were drained by the
+war in Spain; that it was like lighting a fire at both ends at once,
+which, gaining ground upon the centre, exhausted by so many
+efforts,--would probably end in consuming ourselves."
+
+[Footnote 6: Count Mollien.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The Duke of Gaeta.]
+
+This minister was listened to; the emperor surveyed him with a smiling
+air, accompanied with one of his familiar caresses. He imagined that he
+had secured conviction, but Napoleon said to him,--"So you think that I
+shall not be able to find a paymaster to discharge the expenses of the
+war?" The duke endeavoured to learn upon whom the burden was to fall,
+when the emperor, by a single word, disclosing all the grandeur of his
+designs, closed the lips of his astonished minister.
+
+He estimated, however, but too accurately all the difficulties of his
+enterprise. It was that, perhaps, which drew upon him the reproach of
+availing himself of a method which he had rejected in the Austrian war,
+and of which the celebrated Pitt had set the example in 1793.
+
+Towards the end of 1811, the prefect of police at Paris learnt, it was
+said, that a printer was secretly counterfeiting Russian bank-bills; he
+ordered him to be arrested; the printer resisted; but in the result his
+house was broken into, and himself taken before the magistrate, whom he
+astonished by his assurance, and still more by his appeal from the
+minister of police. This printer was instantly released: it has even
+been added, that he continued his counterfeiting employment; and that,
+from the moment of our first advance into Lithuania, we propagated the
+report that we had gained possession at Wilna of several millions of
+Russian bank-bills in the military chests of the hostile army.
+
+Whatever may have been the origin of this counterfeit money, Napoleon
+contemplated it with extreme repugnance; it is even unknown whether he
+resolved on making any use of it; at least, it is certain that during
+the period of our retreat, and when we abandoned Wilna, the greater part
+of these bills were found there untouched, and burnt by his orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Prince Poniatowski, however, to whom this expedition appeared to hold
+out the prospect of a throne, generously united his exertions with those
+of the emperor's ministers in the attempt to demonstrate its danger.
+Love of country was in this Polish prince a great and noble passion; his
+life and death have proved it; but it never infatuated him. He depicted
+Lithuania as an impracticable desert; its nobility as already become
+half Russian; the character of its inhabitants as cold and backward:
+but the impatient emperor interrupted him; he required information for
+the sake of conducting the enterprise, and not to be deterred from it.
+
+It is true that the greater part of these objections were but a feeble
+repetition of all those which, for a long time past, had presented
+themselves to his own mind. People were not aware of the extent to which
+he had appreciated the danger; of his multiplied exertions, from the
+30th of December 1810, to ascertain the nature of the territory which,
+sooner or later, was destined to become the theatre of a decisive war;
+how many emissaries he had despatched for the purpose of survey; the
+multitude of memorials which he caused to be prepared for him respecting
+the roads to Petersburgh and Moscow; respecting the dispositions of the
+inhabitants, especially of the mercantile class; and, finally, the
+resources of every kind which the country was enabled to supply. If he
+persevered, it was because, far from deceiving himself as to the extent
+of his force, he did not share in that confidence which, perhaps,
+precluded others from perceiving of how much consequence the humiliation
+of Russia was to the future existence of the great French empire.
+
+In this spirit, he once more addressed himself to three[8] of his great
+officers, whose well-known services and attachment authorized a tone of
+frankness. All three, in the capacity of ministers, envoys, and
+ambassadors, had become acquainted with Russia at different epochs. He
+exerted himself to convince them of the utility, justice, and necessity
+of this war; but one[9] of them, in particular, often interrupted him
+with impatience; for when a discussion had once commenced, Napoleon
+submitted to all its little breaches of decorum.
+
+[Footnote 8: The Duke of Frioul, the Count de Segur, (the author's
+father,) the Duke of Vicenza.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Duke of Vicenza.]
+
+That great officer, yielding to the inflexible and impetuous frankness
+which he derived from his character, from his military education, and,
+perhaps, from the province which gave him birth, exclaimed, "That it was
+useless to deceive himself, or pretend to deceive others; that after
+possessing himself of the Continent, and even of the states belonging to
+the family of his ally, that ally could not be accused of abandoning the
+continental system. While the French armies covered all Europe, how
+could the Russians be reproached for increasing their army? Did it
+become the ambition of Napoleon to denounce the ambition of Alexander?
+
+"That, in addition to this, the determination of that prince was made
+up; that, Russia once invaded, no peace could be expected, while a
+single Frenchman remained upon her soil; that, in that respect, the
+national and obstinate pride of the Russians was in perfect harmony with
+that of their emperor.
+
+"That, it was true, his subjects accused Alexander of weakness, but very
+erroneously; that he was not to be judged of by the complacency which,
+at Tilsit and at Erfurt, his admiration, his inexperience, and some
+tincture of ambition, had extorted from him. That this prince loved
+justice; that he was anxious to have right on his side, and he might,
+indeed, hesitate till he thought it was so, but then he became
+inflexible; that, finally, looking to his position with reference to his
+subjects, he incurred more danger by making a disgraceful peace, than by
+sustaining an unfortunate war.
+
+"How was it possible, moreover, to avoid seeing that in this war every
+thing was to be feared, even our allies? Did not Napoleon hear their
+discontented kings murmuring that they were only his prefects? When
+they, all of them, only waited a suitable occasion in order to turn
+against him, why run the risk of giving that occasion birth?"
+
+At the same time, supported by his two colleagues, the duke added, "that
+since 1805 a system of war which compelled the most disciplined soldier
+to plunder, had sown the seeds of hatred throughout the whole of that
+Germany, which the emperor now designed to traverse. Was he then going
+to precipitate himself and his army beyond all those nations whose
+wounds, for which they were indebted to us, were not yet healed? What an
+accumulation of enmity and revenge would he not, by so doing, interpose
+between himself and France!
+
+"And upon whom did he call, to be his _points d'appui_?--on Prussia,
+whom for five years we had been devouring, and whose alliance was hollow
+and compulsive? He was about, therefore, to trace the longest line of
+military operations ever drawn, through countries whose fear was
+taciturn, supple, and perfidious, and which, like the ashes of
+volcanoes, hid terrific flames, the eruption of which might be provoked
+by the smallest collision[10].
+
+[Footnote 10: The Duke of Vicenza, the Count de Segur.]
+
+"To sum up all[11], what would be the result of so many conquests? To
+substitute lieutenants for kings, who, more ambitious than those of
+Alexander, would, perhaps, imitate their example, without, like them,
+waiting for the death of their sovereign,--a death, moreover, which he
+would inevitably meet among so many fields of battle; and that, before
+the consolidation of his labours, each war reviving in the interior of
+France the hopes of all kinds of parties, and reviving discussions which
+had been regarded as at an end.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Count de Segur.]
+
+"Did he wish to know the opinion of the army? That opinion pronounced
+that his best soldiers were then in Spain; that the regiments, being too
+often recruited, wanted unity; that they were not reciprocally
+acquainted; that each was uncertain whether, in case of danger, it could
+depend upon the other; that the front rank vainly concealed the weakness
+of the two others; that already, from youth and weakness, many of them
+sank in their first march beneath the single burden of their knapsacks
+and their arms.
+
+"And, nevertheless, in this expedition, it was not so much the war
+which was disliked, as the country where it was to be carried on[12].
+The Lithuanians, it was said, desired our presence; but on what a soil?
+in what a climate? in the midst of what peculiar manners? The campaign
+of 1806 had made those circumstances too well known! Where could they
+ever halt, in the midst of these level plains, divested of every species
+of position fortified by nature or by art?
+
+[Footnote 12: The Duke of Frioul, the Count de Segur, the Duke of
+Vicenza.]
+
+"Was it not notorious, that all the elements protected these countries
+from the first of October to the first of June? that, at any other time
+than the short interval comprised between these two epochs, an army
+engaged in those deserts of mud and ice might perish there entirely, and
+ingloriously?" And, they added, "that Lithuania was much more Asiatic
+than Spain was African; and that the French army, already all but
+banished from France by a perpetual war, wished at least to preserve its
+European character.
+
+"Finally, when face to face with the enemy in these deserts, what
+different motives must actuate the different armies! On the side of the
+Russians were country, independence, every description of interest,
+private and public, even to the secret good wishes of our allies! On our
+side, and in the teeth of so many obstacles, glory alone, unassociated
+even with that desire of gain, to which the frightful poverty of these
+countries offered no attraction.
+
+"And what is the end of so many exertions? The French already no longer
+recognized each other, in the midst of a country now uncircumscribed by
+any natural frontier; and in which the diversity was so great in
+manners, persons, and languages." On this particular point, the
+eldest[13] of these great officers added, "That such an extension was
+never made without proportionate exhaustion; that it was blotting out
+France to merge it in Europe; for, in fact, when France should become
+Europe, it would be France no longer. Would not the meditated departure
+leave her solitary, deserted, without a ruler, without an army,
+accessible to every diversion? Who then was there to defend her?" "_My
+renown!_" exclaimed the emperor: "_I leave my name behind me, and the
+fear inspired by a nation in arms._"
+
+[Footnote 13: M. de Segur.]
+
+And, without appearing in the least shaken by so many objections, he
+announced "that he was about to organize the empire into cohorts of
+_Ban_ and _Arričre Ban_; and without mistrust to leave to Frenchmen the
+protection of France, of his crown, and of his glory.
+
+"That as to Prussia, he had secured her tranquillity by the
+impossibility in which he had placed her of moving, even in case of his
+defeat, or of a descent of the English on the coasts of the North Sea,
+and in our rear; that he held in his hands the civil and military power
+of that kingdom; that he was master of Stettin, Custrin, Glogau, Torgau,
+Spandau, and Magdeburg; that he would post some clear-sighted officers
+at Colberg, and an army at Berlin; and that with these means, and
+supported by the fidelity of Saxony, he had nothing to fear from
+Prussian hatred.
+
+"That as for the rest of Germany, an ancient system of policy, as well
+as the recent intermarriages with Baden, Bavaria, and Austria, attached
+her to the interest of France; that he made sure of such of her kings as
+were indebted to him for their new titles: that after having suppressed
+anarchy, and ranged himself on the side of kings, strong as he was, the
+latter could not attack him without inciting their people by the
+principles of democracy; but that it was scarcely probable that
+sovereigns would ally themselves with that natural enemy of thrones--an
+enemy, which, had it not been for him, would have overthrown them, and
+against which he alone was capable of defending them.
+
+"That, besides, the Germans were a tardy and methodical people, and that
+in dealing with them he should always have time on his side; that he
+commanded all the fortresses of Prussia; that Dantzic was a second
+Gibraltar." This was incorrect, especially in winter. "That Russia ought
+to excite the apprehension of all Europe, by her military and conquering
+government, as well as by her savage population, already so numerous,
+and which augmented annually in the proportion of half a million. Had
+not her armies been seen in all parts of Italy, in Germany, and even on
+the Rhine? That by demanding the evacuation of Prussia, she required an
+impossible concession; since to abandon Prussia, morally ulcerated as
+she was, was to surrender her into the hands of Russia, in order to be
+turned against ourselves."
+
+Proceeding afterwards with more animation, he exclaimed, "Why menace my
+absence with the different parties still alleged to exist in the
+interior of the empire? Where are they? I see but a single one against
+me; that of a few royalists, the principal part of the ancient
+_noblesse_, superannuated and inexperienced. But they dread my downfall
+more than they desire it. This is what I told them in Normandy. I am
+cried up as a great captain, as an able politician, but I am scarcely
+mentioned as an administrator: that which I have, however, accomplished,
+of the most difficult and most beneficial description, is the stemming
+the revolutionary torrent; it would have swallowed up every thing,
+Europe and yourselves. I have united the most opposite parties,
+amalgamated rival classes, and yet there exist among you some obstinate
+nobles who resist; they refuse my places! Very well! what is that to me?
+It is for your advantage, for your security, that I offer them to you.
+What would you do singly by yourselves, and without me? You are a mere
+handful opposed to masses. Do you not see that it is necessary to put an
+end to the struggle between the _tiers-état_ and the _noblesse_, by a
+complete fusion of all that is best worth preservation in the two
+classes? I offer you the hand of amity, and you reject it! but what need
+have I of you? While I support you, I do myself an injury in the eyes of
+the people; for what am I but the king of the _tiers-état_: is not that
+sufficient?"
+
+Passing more calmly to another question: "He was quite aware," he said,
+"of the ambition of his generals; but it was diverted by war, and would
+never be sanctioned in its excesses by French soldiers, who were too
+proud of, and too much attached to their country. That if war was
+dangerous, peace had also its dangers: that in bringing back his armies
+into the interior, it would enclose and concentrate there too many
+daring interests and passions, which repose and their association would
+tend to ferment, and which he should no longer be able to keep within
+bounds: that it was necessary to give free vent to all such aspirations;
+and that, after all, he dreaded them less without the empire than within
+it."
+
+He concluded thus: "Do you dread the war, as endangering my life? It was
+thus that, in the times of conspiracy, attempts were made to frighten me
+about Georges; he was said to be every where upon my track: that
+wretched being was to fire at me. Well! suppose he had! He would at the
+utmost have killed my _aide-de-camp_: but to kill me was impossible! Had
+I at that time accomplished the decrees of fate? I feel myself impelled
+towards a goal of which I am ignorant. As soon as I shall have reached
+it, so soon shall I no longer be of service,--an atom will then suffice
+to put me down; but till then, all human efforts can avail nothing
+against me. Whether I am in Paris, or with the army, is, therefore,
+quite indifferent. When my hour comes, a fever, or a fall from my horse
+in hunting, will kill me as effectually as a bullet: our days are
+numbered."
+
+This opinion, useful as it may be in the moment of danger, is too apt to
+blind conquerors to the price at which the great results which they
+obtain are purchased. They indulge a belief in pre-destination, either
+because they have experienced, more than other men, whatever is most
+unexpected in human destiny, or because it relieves their consciences of
+too heavy a load of responsibility. It was like a return to the times of
+the crusades, when these words, _it is the will of God_, were considered
+a sufficient answer to all the objections of a prudent and pacific
+policy.
+
+Indeed, the expedition of Napoleon into Russia bears a mournful
+resemblance to that of St. Louis into Egypt and Africa. These invasions,
+the one undertaken for the interests of Heaven, the other for those of
+the earth, terminated in a similar manner; and these two great examples
+admonish the world, that the vast and profound calculations of this age
+of intelligence may be followed by the same results as the irregular
+impulses of religious frenzy in ages of ignorance and superstition.
+
+In these two expeditions, however, there can be no comparison between
+their opportunities or their chances of success. The last was
+indispensable to the completion of a great design on the point of being
+accomplished: its object was not out of reach; the means for reaching it
+were not inadequate. It may be, that the moment for its execution was
+ill chosen; that the progress of it was sometimes too precipitate, at
+other times unsteady; but on these points facts will speak sufficiently:
+it is for them to decide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+In this manner did Napoleon reply to all objections. His skilful hand
+was able to comprehend and turn to his purpose every disposition; and,
+in fact, when he wanted to persuade, there was a kind of charm in his
+deportment which it was impossible to resist. One felt overpowered by
+his superior strength, and compelled, as it were, to submit to his
+influence. It was, if it may be so expressed, a kind of magnetic
+influence; for his ardent and variable genius infused itself entirely
+into all his desires, the least as well as the greatest: whatever he
+willed, all his energies and all his faculties united to effect: they
+appeared at his beck; they hastened forward; and, obedient to his
+dictation, simultaneously assumed the forms which he desired.
+
+It was thus that the greater part of those whom he wished to gain over
+found themselves, as it were, fascinated by him in spite of themselves.
+It was flattering to your vanity to see the master of Europe appearing
+to have no other ambition, no other desire than that of convincing you;
+to behold those features, so formidable to multitudes, expressing
+towards you no other feeling but a mild and affecting benevolence; to
+hear that mysterious man, whose every word was historical, yielding, as
+if for your sake alone, to the irresistible impulse of the most frank
+and confiding disclosure; and that voice, so caressing while it
+addressed you, was it not the same, whose lowest whisper rang throughout
+all Europe, announced wars, decided battles, settled the fate of
+empires, raised or destroyed reputations? What vanity could resist a
+charm of so great potency? Any defensive position was forced on all
+points; his eloquence was so much more persuasive, as he himself
+appeared to be persuaded.
+
+On this occasion, there was no variety of tints with which his brilliant
+and fertile imagination did not adorn his project, in order to convince
+and allure. The same text supplied him with a thousand different
+commentaries, with which the character and position of each of his
+interlocutors inspired him; he enlisted each in his undertaking, by
+presenting it to him under the form and colour, and point of view, most
+likely to gratify him.
+
+We have just seen in what way he silenced the one who felt alarmed at
+the expenses of the conquest of Russia, which he wished him to approve,
+by holding out the perspective, that another would be made to defray
+them.
+
+He told the military man, who was astonished by the hazard of the
+expedition, but likely to be easily seduced by the grandeur of ambitious
+ideas, that peace was to be conquered at Constantinople; that is to say,
+at the extremity of Europe; the individual was thus free to anticipate,
+that it was not merely to the staff of a marshal, but to a royal
+sceptre, that he might elevate his pretensions.
+
+To a minister[14] of high rank under the ancient _régime_, whom the idea
+of shedding so much blood, to gratify ambition, filled with dismay, he
+declared "that it was a war of policy exclusively; that it was the
+English alone whom he meant to attack through Russia; that the campaign
+would be short; that afterwards France would be at rest; that it was the
+fifth act of the drama--the _dénouement_."
+
+[Footnote 14: Count Molé.]
+
+To others, he pleaded the ambition of Russia, and the force of
+circumstances, which dragged him into the war in spite of himself. With
+superficial and inexperienced individuals, to whom he neither wished to
+explain nor dissemble, he cut matters short, by saying, "You understand
+nothing of all this; you are ignorant of its antecedents and its
+consequents."
+
+But to the princes of his own family he had long revealed the state of
+his thoughts; he complained that they did not sufficiently appreciate
+his position. "Can you not see," said he to them, "that as I was not
+born upon a throne, I must support myself on it, as I ascended it, by
+my renown? that it is necessary for it to go on increasing; that a
+private individual, become a sovereign like myself, can no longer stop;
+that he must be continually ascending, and that to remain stationary
+will be his ruin?"
+
+He then depicted to them all the ancient dynasties armed against his,
+devising plots, preparing wars, and seeking to destroy, in his person,
+the dangerous example of a _roi parvenu_. It was on that account that
+every peace appeared in his eyes a conspiracy of the weak against the
+strong, of the vanquished against the victor; and especially of the
+great by birth against the great by their own exertions. So many
+successive coalitions had confirmed him in that apprehension! Indeed, he
+often thought of no longer tolerating an ancient power in Europe, of
+constituting himself into an epoch, of becoming a new era for thrones;
+in short, of making every thing take its date from him.
+
+It was in this manner that he disclosed his inmost thoughts to his
+family by those vivid pictures of his political position, which, at the
+present day, will probably appear neither false nor over-coloured: and
+yet the gentle Josephine, always occupied with the task of restraining
+and calming him, often gave him to understand "that, along with the
+consciousness of his superior genius, he never seemed to possess
+sufficient consciousness of his own power: that, like all jealous
+characters, he incessantly required fresh proofs of its existence. How
+came it, amidst the noisy acclamations of Europe, that his anxious ear
+could hear the few solitary voices which disputed his legitimacy? that
+in this manner his troubled spirit was always seeking agitation as its
+element: that strong as he was to desire, but feeble to enjoy, he
+himself, therefore, would be the only one whom he could never conquer."
+
+But in 1811 Josephine was separated from Napoleon, and although he still
+continued to visit her in her seclusion, the voice of that empress had
+lost the influence which continual intercourse, familiar habits of
+affection, and the desire of mutual confidence, impart.
+
+Meanwhile, fresh disagreements with the pope complicated the relations
+of France. Napoleon then addressed himself to cardinal Fesch. Fesch was
+a zealous churchman, and overflowing with Italian vivacity: he defended
+the papal pretensions with obstinate ardour; and such was the warmth of
+his discussions with the emperor, on a former occasion, that the latter
+got into a passion, and told him, "that he would compel him to obey."
+"And who contests your power?" returned the cardinal: "but force is not
+argument; for if I am right, not all your power can make me wrong.
+Besides, your majesty knows that I do not fear martyrdom."--"Martyrdom!"
+replied Buonaparte, with a transition from violence to laughter; "do not
+reckon on that, I beseech you, M. le Cardinal: martyrdom is an affair in
+which there must be two persons concerned; and as to myself, I have no
+desire to make a martyr of any individual."
+
+It is said that these discussions assumed a more serious character
+towards the end of 1811. An eye-witness asserts that the cardinal, till
+that time a stranger to politics, then began to mix them up with his
+religious controversies; that he conjured Napoleon not thus to fly in
+the face of men, the elements, religion, earth and heaven, at the same
+time; and that, at last, he expressed his apprehension of seeing him
+sink under such a weight of enmity.
+
+The only reply which the emperor made to this vehement attack was to
+take him by the hand, and leading him to the window, to open it, and
+inquire, "Do you see that star above us?"--"No, sire."--"Look
+again."--"Sire, I do not see it."--"Very well! _I_ see it!" replied
+Napoleon. The cardinal, seized with astonishment, remained silent,
+concluding that there was no human voice sufficiently loud to make
+itself heard by an ambition so gigantic, that it already reached the
+heavens.
+
+As to the witness of this singular scene, he understood in quite a
+different sense these words of his sovereign. They did not appear to him
+like the expression of an overweening confidence in his destiny, but
+rather of the great distinction which Napoleon meant to infer as
+existing between the grasp of his genius and that of the cardinal's
+policy.
+
+But granting even that Napoleon's soul was not exempt from a tendency to
+superstition, his intellect was both too strong and too enlightened to
+permit such vast events to depend upon a weakness. One great inquietude
+possessed him; it was the idea of that same death, which he appeared so
+much to brave. He felt his strength decaying; and he dreaded that when
+he should be no more, the French empire, that sublime trophy of so many
+labours and victories, would fall a prey to dismemberment.
+
+"The Russian emperor," he said, "was the only sovereign who pressed upon
+the summit of that colossal edifice. Replete with youth and animation,
+the strength of his rival was constantly augmenting, while his was
+already on the decline." It seemed to him that Alexander, on the banks
+of the Niemen, only waited the intelligence of his death, to possess
+himself of the sceptre of Europe, and snatch it from the hands of his
+feeble successor. "While all Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, and
+the whole of Germany, were marching under his banners, why should he
+delay to anticipate the danger, and consolidate the fabric of the great
+empire, by driving back Alexander and the Russian power, enfeebled as
+they would be by the loss of all Poland, beyond the Boristhenes?"
+
+Such were his sentiments, pronounced in secret confidence; they,
+doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his
+precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the
+instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his
+blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which,"
+added he, "battles are not to be gained,") undermined his constitution.
+
+A profound knowledge of the organization and mysteries of the human
+frame would probably enable us to decide whether this concealed malady
+was not one of the causes of that restless activity which hurried on the
+course of events, and in which originated both his elevation and his
+fall.
+
+This internal enemy testified its presence, more and more, by an
+internal pain, and by the violent spasms of the stomach which it
+inflicted. Even in 1806, at Warsaw, during one of its agonizing crises,
+Napoleon was[15] heard to exclaim, "that he carried about with him the
+germ of premature dissolution; and that he should die of the same malady
+as his father."
+
+[Footnote 15: By the count Lobau.]
+
+Short rides in hunting, even the most gentle gallop of his horse,
+already began to fatigue him: how then was he to support the long
+journeys, and the rapid and violent movements preparatory to battles?
+Thus it was, that while the greater part of those who surrounded him
+concluded him to be impelled into Russia by his vast ambition, by his
+restless spirit and his love of war, he in solitude, and almost
+unobserved, was poising the fearful responsibilities of the enterprise,
+and urged by necessity, he only made up his mind to it after a course of
+painful hesitation.
+
+At length, on the 3d of August, 1811, at an audience in the midst of all
+the ambassadors of Europe, he declared himself; but the burst of
+indignation which was the presage of war, was an additional proof of his
+repugnance to commence it. It might be that the defeat which the
+Russians had just sustained at Routschouk had inflated his hopes;
+perhaps he imagined that he might, by menace, arrest the preparations of
+Alexander.
+
+It was prince Kourakin whom he addressed. That ambassador having just
+made protestations of the pacific intentions of his master, he
+interrupted him: "No," exclaimed he, "your master desires war; I know,
+through my generals, that the Russian army is hurrying towards the
+Niemen! The emperor Alexander deludes, and gains all my envoys!" Then,
+perceiving Caulaincourt, he rapidly traversed the hall, and violently
+appealing to him, said: "Yes, and you too have become a Russian: you
+have been seduced by the emperor Alexander." The duke firmly replied,
+"Yes, sire; because, in this question, I consider him to be a
+Frenchman." Napoleon was silent; but from that moment, he treated that
+great dignitary coldly, without, however, absolutely repelling him:
+several times he even essayed, by fresh arguments, intermixed with
+familiar caresses, to win him over to his opinion, but ineffectually; he
+always found him inflexible; ready to serve him, but without approving
+the nature of the service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+While Napoleon, prompted by his natural character, by his position, and
+by circumstances, thus appeared to wish for, and to accelerate the
+period of conflict, he preserved the secret of his embarrassment. The
+year 1811 was wasted in parleys about peace, and preparations for war.
+1812 had just begun, and the horizon was already obscured. Our armies in
+Spain had given way; Ciudad Rodrigo was taken by the English (on the
+19th of January, 1812); the discussions of Napoleon with the Pope
+increased in bitterness; Kutusof had destroyed the Turkish army on the
+Danube (on the 8th of December, 1811); France even became alarmed about
+her means of subsistence; every thing, in short, appeared to divert the
+attention of Napoleon from Russia; to recall it to France, and fix it
+there; while he, far from blinding his judgment, recognized in these
+contrarieties the indications of his ever-faithful fortune.
+
+It was, especially in the midst of those long winter nights, when
+individuals are left more than usually to their own reflections, that
+his star seemed to enlighten him with its most brilliant illumination:
+it exhibited to him the different ruling genii of the vanquished
+nations, in silence awaiting the moment for avenging their wrongs; the
+dangers which he was about to confront, those which he left behind him,
+even in his own family: it showed him, that like the returns of his
+army, the census of the population of his empire was delusive, not so
+much in respect to its numerical as to its real strength; scarcely any
+men were included in it but those who were old in years, or worn out in
+the service, and children--few men in the prime of life. Where were
+they? The tears of wives, the cries of mothers answered! bowed in
+sadness to the earth, which, but for them, would remain uncultivated,
+they cursed the scourge of war as identified in his person.
+
+Nevertheless, he was about to attack Russia, without having subjected
+Spain; forgetting the principle of which he himself so often supplied
+both the precept and example, "never to strike at two points at once;
+but on one only, and always in mass." Wherefore, in fact, should he
+abandon a brilliant, though uncertain position, in order to throw
+himself into so critical a situation, that the slightest check might
+ruin every thing; and where every reverse would be decisive?
+
+At that moment, no necessity of position, no sentiment of self-love,
+could prompt Napoleon to combat his own arguments, and prevent him from
+listening to himself. Hence he became thoughtful and agitated. He
+collected accounts of the actual condition of the different powers of
+Europe; he ordered an exact and complete summary of them to be made; and
+buried himself in the perusal: his anxiety increased; to him of all men,
+irresolution was a punishment.
+
+Frequently was he discovered half reclined on a sofa, where he remained
+for hours, plunged in profound meditation; then he would start up,
+convulsively, and with an ejaculation, fancying he heard his name, he
+would exclaim, "Who calls me?" Then rising, and walking about with
+hurried steps, he at length added, "No! beyond a doubt, nothing is yet
+sufficiently matured round me, even in my own family, to admit of so
+distant a war. It must be delayed for three years!" And he gave orders
+that the summary which reminded him of the dangers of his position
+should be constantly left on his table. It was his frequent subject of
+consultation, and every time he did so, he approved and repeated his
+first conclusions.
+
+It is not known what dictated so salutary an inspiration; but it is
+certain, that about that epoch (the 25th of March, 1812), Czernicheff
+was the bearer of new proposals to his sovereign. Napoleon offered to
+make a declaration that he would contribute, neither directly nor
+indirectly, to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Poland; and to
+come to an understanding about the other subjects in dispute.
+
+At a later period, (on the 17th of April,) the Duke of Bassano proposed
+to Lord Castlereagh an arrangement relative to the Peninsula, and the
+kingdom of the Two Sicilies; and in other respects offered to negotiate
+on the basis, that each of the two powers should keep all that war could
+not wrest from it. But Castlereagh replied, that the engagements of good
+faith would not permit England to treat without making the recognition
+of Ferdinand VII. as king of Spain a preliminary of the negotiation.
+
+On the 25th of April, Maret, in apprising Count Romanzoff of this
+communication, recapitulated a portion of the complaints which Napoleon
+made against Russia;--firstly, the ukase of the 31st of December, 1810,
+which prohibited the entry into Russia of the greater part of French
+productions, and destroyed the continental system; secondly, the protest
+of Alexander against the union of the duchy of Oldenburg; and thirdly,
+the armaments of Russia.
+
+This minister referred to the fact of Napoleon having offered to grant
+an indemnity to the Duke of Oldenburg, and to enter into a formal
+engagement not to concur in any undertaking for the re-establishment of
+Poland; that, in 1811, he had proposed to Alexander, to give Prince
+Kourakin the requisite powers to treat with the duke of Bassano
+respecting all matters in dispute; but that the Russian emperor had
+eluded the overture, by promising to send Nesselrode to Paris; a promise
+which was never fulfilled.
+
+The Russian ambassador, almost at the same time, transmitted the emperor
+Alexander's ultimatum, which required the entire evacuation of Prussia;
+that of Swedish Pomerania; a reduction of the garrison of Dantzic. On
+the other hand, he offered to accept an indemnity for the duchy of
+Oldenburg; he was willing to enter into commercial arrangements with
+France; and finally promised empty modifications of the ukase of the
+31st December, 1810.
+
+But it was too late: besides, at the point to which both parties were
+now arrived, that ultimatum necessarily led to war. Napoleon was too
+proud, both of himself and of France, he was too much overruled by his
+position, to yield to a menacing negotiator, to leave Prussia at liberty
+to throw herself into the open arms of Russia, and thus to abandon
+Poland. He was too far advanced; he would be obliged to retrograde, in
+order to find a resting point; and in his situation, Napoleon considered
+every retrograde step as the incipient point of a complete downfall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+His wishes for delay being thus frustrated, he surveyed the enormous
+volume of his military strength; the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt
+were revived; he received with complacency delusive information
+respecting the character of his rival. At one time, he hoped that
+Alexander would give way at the approach of so menacing an invasion; at
+another, he gave the reins to his conquering imagination; he indulgently
+allowed it to deploy its masses from Cadiz to Cazan, and to cover the
+whole of Europe. In the next moment his fancy rioted in the pleasure of
+being at Moscow. That city was eight hundred leagues from him, and
+already he was collecting information with respect to it, as if he was
+on the eve of occupying it. A French physician having recently arrived
+from that capital, he sent for, and interrogated him as to the diseases
+there prevalent; he even went back to the plague which had formerly
+desolated it; he was anxious to learn its origin, progress, and
+termination. The answers of this physician were so satisfactory, that
+he immediately attached him to his service.
+
+Fully impressed, however, with a sense of the peril in which he was
+about to embark, he sought to surround himself with all his friends.
+Even Talleyrand was recalled; he was to have been sent to Warsaw, but
+the jealousy of a rival and an intrigue again involved him in disgrace;
+Napoleon, deluded by a calumny, adroitly circulated, believed that he
+had been betrayed by him. His anger was extreme; its expression
+terrible. Savary made vain efforts to undeceive him, which were
+prolonged up to the epoch of our entry into Wilna; there that minister
+again sent a letter of Talleyrand to the emperor; it depicted the
+influence of Turkey and Sweden on the Russian war, and made an offer of
+employing his most zealous efforts in negotiating with those two powers.
+
+But Napoleon only replied to it by an exclamation of contempt: "Does
+that man believe himself to be so necessary? Does he expect to teach
+me?" He then compelled his secretary to send that letter to the very
+minister who stood most in dread of Talleyrand's influence.
+
+It would not be correct to say, that all those about Napoleon beheld the
+war with an anxious eye. Inside the palace, as well as without it, many
+military men were found who entered with ardour into the policy of their
+chief. The greater part agreed as to the possibility of the conquest of
+Russia, either because their hopes discerned in it a means of acquiring
+something, according to their position, from the lowest distinction up
+to a throne; or that they suffered themselves to participate in the
+enthusiasm of the Poles; or that the expedition, if conducted with
+prudence, might fairly look to success; or, to sum up all, because they
+conceived every thing possible to Napoleon.
+
+Among the ministers of the emperor, several disapproved it; the greater
+number preserved silence: one alone was accused of flattery, and that
+without any ground. It is true he was heard to repeat, "That the emperor
+was not sufficiently great; that it was necessary for him to become
+greater still, in order to be able to stop." But that minister was, in
+reality, what so many courtiers wished to appear; he had a real and
+absolute faith in the genius and fortune of his sovereign.
+
+In other respects, it is wrong to impute to his counsels a large portion
+of our misfortunes. Napoleon was not a man to be influenced. So soon as
+his object was marked out, and he had made advances towards its
+acquisition, he admitted of no farther contradiction. He then appeared
+as if he would hear nothing but what flattered his determination; he
+repelled with ill-humour, and even with apparent incredulity, all
+disagreeable intelligence, as if he feared to be shaken by it. This mode
+of acting changed its name according to his fortune; when fortunate, it
+was called force of character; when unfortunate, it was designated as
+infatuation.
+
+The knowledge of such a disposition induced some subalterns to make
+false reports to him. Even a minister himself felt occasionally
+compelled to maintain a dangerous silence. The former inflated his hopes
+of success, in order to imitate the proud confidence of their chief, and
+in order, by their countenance, to stamp upon his mind the impression of
+a happy omen; the second sometimes declined communicating bad news, in
+order, as he said, to avoid the harsh rebuffs which he had then to
+encounter.
+
+But this fear, which did not restrain Caulaincourt and several others,
+had as little influence upon Duroc, Daru, Lobau, Rapp, Lauriston, and
+sometimes even Berthier. These ministers and generals, each in his
+sphere, did not spare the emperor when the truth was to be told. If it
+so happened that he was enraged by it, Duroc, without yielding, assumed
+an air of indifference; Lobau resisted with roughness; Berthier sighed,
+and retired with tears in his eyes; Caulaincourt and Daru, the one
+turning pale, the other reddening with anger, repelled the vehement
+contradictions of the emperor; the first with impetuous obstinacy, and
+the second with short and dry determination.
+
+It should, however, be added here, that these warm discussions were
+never productive of bad consequences; good temper was restored
+immediately after, apparently without leaving any other impression than
+redoubled esteem on the part of Napoleon, for the noble frankness which
+they had displayed.
+
+I have entered into these details, because they are either not known, or
+imperfectly known; because Napoleon in his closet was quite different
+from the emperor in public; and because this portion of the palace has
+hitherto remained secret; for, in that new and serious court, there was
+little conversation: all were rigorously classed, so that one _salon_
+knew not what passed in another; finally, because it is difficult to
+comprehend the great events of history, without a perfect knowledge of
+the character and manners of the principal personages.
+
+Meantime a famine threatened France. The universal panic quickly
+aggravated the evil, by the precautions which it suggested. Avarice,
+always prompt in seizing the means of enriching itself, monopolized the
+corn while at a low price, and waited till hunger should repurchase it
+at an exorbitant rate. The alarm then became general. Napoleon was
+compelled to suspend his departure; he impatiently urged his council;
+but the steps to be taken were important, his presence necessary; and
+that war, in which the loss of every hour was irreparable, was delayed
+for two months longer.
+
+The emperor did not give way to this obstacle; the delay, besides, gave
+the new harvests of the Russians time to grow. These would supply his
+cavalry; his army would require fewer transports in its train: its
+progress being lightened, would be more rapid; he would sooner reach the
+enemy; and this great expedition, like so many others, would be
+terminated by a battle.
+
+Such were his anticipations; for, without deceiving himself as to his
+good fortune, he reckoned on its influence upon others; it entered into
+his estimate of his forces. It was for this reason that he always
+pushed it forward where other things failed, making up by that whatever
+was deficient in his means, without fearing to wear it out by constant
+use, in the conviction that his enemies would place even more faith in
+it than himself. However, it will be seen in the sequel of this
+expedition, that he placed too much reliance on its power, and that
+Alexander was able to evade it.
+
+Such was Napoleon! Superior to the passions of men by his native
+greatness, and also by the circumstance of being controlled by a still
+greater passion! for when, indeed, are these masters of the world ever
+entirely masters of themselves? Meantime blood was again about to flow;
+and thus, in their great career, the founders of empires press forward
+to their object, like Fate, whose ministers they seem, (and whose march
+neither wars nor earthquakes, nor all the scourges which Providence
+permits, ever arrest,) without deigning to make the utility of their
+purposes comprehensible to their victims.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The time for deliberation had passed, and that for action at last
+arrived. On the 9th of May, 1812, Napoleon, hitherto always triumphant,
+quitted a palace which he was destined never again to enter victorious.
+
+From Paris to Dresden his march was a continued triumph. The east of
+France, which he first traversed, was a part of the empire entirely
+devoted to him; very different from the west and the south, she was only
+acquainted with him by means of benefits and victories. Numerous and
+brilliant armies, attracted by the fertility of Germany, and which
+imagined themselves marching to a prompt and certain glory, proudly
+traversed those countries, scattering their money among them, and
+consuming their productions. War, in that quarter, always bore the
+semblance of justice.
+
+At a later period, when our victorious bulletins reached them, the
+imagination, astonished to see itself surpassed by the reality, caught
+fire; enthusiasm possessed these people, as in the times of Austerlitz
+and Jena; numerous groups collected round the couriers, whose tidings
+were listened to with avidity; and the inhabitants, in a transport of
+joy, never separated without exclamations of "Long live the emperor!
+Long live our brave army!"
+
+It is, besides, well known, that this portion of France has been warlike
+from time immemorial. It is frontier ground; its inhabitants are nursed
+amidst the din of arms; and arms are, consequently, held there in
+honour. It was the common conversation in that quarter, that this war
+would liberate Poland, so much attached to France; that the barbarians
+of Asia, with whom Europe was threatened, would be driven back into
+their native deserts; that Napoleon would once more return, loaded with
+all the fruits of victory. Would not the eastern departments profit most
+by that event? Up to that time, were they not indebted for their wealth
+to war, which caused all the commerce of France with Europe to pass
+through their hands? Blockaded, in fact, in every other quarter, the
+empire only breathed and received its supplies through its eastern
+provinces.
+
+For ten years, their roads had been covered with travellers of all
+ranks, hastening to admire the great nation, its daily embellished
+metropolis, the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of all the arts, and of all ages,
+which victory had there assembled; and especially that extraordinary man
+who seemed destined to carry the national glory beyond every degree of
+glory hitherto known. Gratified in their interests, flattered in their
+vanity, the people of the east of France owed every thing to victory.
+Neither were they ungrateful; they followed the emperor with their
+warmest wishes: on all sides were acclamations and triumphal arches; on
+all sides the same intensity of devotion.
+
+In Germany, there was less affection, but, perhaps, more homage.
+Conquered and subjected, the Germans, either as soothing to their
+vanity, or from habitual inclination for the marvellous, were tempted to
+consider Napoleon as a supernatural being. Astonished, beside
+themselves, and carried along by the universal impulse, these worthy
+people exerted themselves to _be_, sincerely, all that it was requisite
+to _seem_.
+
+They hurried forward to line both sides of the long road by which the
+emperor passed. Their princes quitted their capitals, and thronged the
+towns, where the great arbiter of their destiny was to pass a few short
+moments of his journey. The empress, and a numerous court, followed
+Napoleon; he proceeded to confront the terrible risks of a distant and
+perilous war, as if he were returning victorious and triumphant. This
+was not the mode in which he was formerly accustomed to meet a conflict.
+
+He had expressed a wish that the Emperor of Austria, several kings, and
+a crowd of princes, should meet him at Dresden on his way: his desire
+was fulfilled; all thronged to meet him--some led by hope, others
+prompted by fear: for himself, his motives were to make sure of his
+power, to exhibit and to enjoy it.
+
+In this approximation with the ancient house of Austria, his ambition
+delighted in exhibiting to Germany a family meeting. He imagined that
+so brilliant an assemblage of sovereigns would advantageously contrast
+with the isolated state of the Russian monarch; and that he would
+probably be alarmed by so general a desertion. In fact, this assembly of
+coalesced monarchs seemed to announce that this war with Russia was
+European.
+
+He was then in the centre of Germany, exhibiting to it his consort, the
+daughter of its emperors, sitting by his side. Whole nations had quitted
+their homes to throng his path; rich and poor, nobles and plebeians,
+friends and enemies, all hurried to the scene. Their curious and anxious
+groups were seen crowding together in the streets, the roads, and the
+public places; they passed whole days and nights with their eyes fixed
+on the door and windows of his palace. It was not his crown, his rank,
+the luxury of his court, but him only, on whom they desired to feast
+their eyes; it was a memento of his features which they were anxious to
+obtain: they wished to be able to tell their less fortunate countrymen
+and posterity, that they had seen Napoleon.
+
+On the stage, poets so far degraded themselves as to make him a
+divinity. It was in this manner that whole nations became his
+flatterers.
+
+There was, in fact, little difference between kings and people in the
+homage of admiration; no one waited for the example of imitation; the
+agreement was unanimous. Nevertheless, the inward sentiments were very
+different.
+
+At this important interview, we were attentive in observing the
+different degrees of zeal which these princes exhibited, and the various
+shades of our chieftain's pride. We had hoped that his prudence, or the
+worn-out feeling of displaying his power, would prevent him from abusing
+it; but was it to be expected that he, who, while yet an inferior, never
+spoke, even to his superiors, but in the language of command, now that
+he was the conqueror and master of them all, could submit to tedious and
+minute details of ceremony? He, however, displayed moderation, and even
+tried to make himself agreeable; but it was obviously an effort, and not
+without allowing the fatigue it gave him to be perceived. Among these
+princes, he had rather the air of receiving them, than of being by them
+received.
+
+As to them, it might be said, that, knowing his pride, and become
+hopeless of subduing him, except by means of himself, these monarchs and
+their people only humbled themselves before him, in order to aggravate
+the disproportion of his elevation, and by so doing, to dazzle his moral
+vision. In their assemblies, their attitude, their words, even the tone
+of their voice, attested his ascendancy over them. All were assembled
+there for his sake alone! They scarcely hazarded an objection, so
+impressed were they with the full conviction of that superiority, of
+which he was himself too well aware. A feudal lord could not have
+exacted more of his vassal chiefs.
+
+His levee presented a still more remarkable spectacle! Sovereign princes
+came to it in order to wait for an audience of the conqueror of Europe.
+They were so intermingled with his officers, that the latter were
+frequently warning each other to take care, and not to crowd upon these
+new courtiers, who were confounded with them. It was thus that the
+presence of Napoleon made distinctions disappear; he was as much their
+chief as ours. This common dependency appeared to put all around him on
+a level. It is probable that, even then, the ill-disguised military
+pride of several French generals gave offence to these princes, with
+whom they conceived themselves raised to an equality; and, in fact,
+whatever may be the noble blood and rank of the vanquished, his victor
+becomes his equal.
+
+The more prudent among us, however, began to be alarmed; they said, but
+in an under-tone, that a man must fancy himself more than human to
+denaturalize and displace every thing in this manner, without fearing to
+involve himself in the universal confusion. They saw these monarchs
+quitting the palace of Napoleon with their eyes inflamed, and their
+bosoms swoln with the most poignant resentment. They pictured them,
+during the night, when alone with their ministers, giving vent to the
+heartfelt chagrin by which they were devoured. Every thing was
+calculated to render their suffering more acute! How importunate was the
+crowd which it was necessary to pass through, in order to reach the gate
+of their proud master, while their own remained deserted! Indeed, all
+things, even their own people, appeared to betray them. While boasting
+of his good fortune, was it not evident that he was insulting their
+misfortunes? They had, therefore, come to Dresden in order to swell the
+pomp of Napoleon's triumph--for it was over them that he thus triumphed:
+each cry of admiration offered to him was a cry of reproach to them; his
+grandeur was their humiliation, his victory their defeat.
+
+Doubtless they, in this manner, gave vent to their bitter feelings; and
+hatred, day after day, sank more deeply into their hearts. One prince
+was first observed to withdraw precipitately from this painful position.
+The Empress of Austria, whose ancestors General Buonaparte had
+dispossessed in Italy, made herself remarked by her aversion, which she
+vainly endeavoured to disguise; it escaped from her by an involuntary
+impulse, which Napoleon instantly detected, and subdued by a smile: but
+she employed her understanding and attraction in gently winning hearts
+to her opinion, in order to sow them afterwards with the seeds of her
+hatred.
+
+The Empress of France unintentionally aggravated this fatal disposition.
+She was observed to eclipse her mother-in-law by the superior
+magnificence of her costume: if Napoleon required more reserve, she
+resisted, and even wept, till the emperor, either through affection,
+fatigue, or absence of mind, was induced to give way. It is also
+asserted that notwithstanding her origin, remarks calculated to wound
+German pride escaped that princess, in extravagant comparisons between
+her native and her adopted country. Napoleon rebuked her for this, but
+gently; he was pleased with a patriotism which he had himself inspired;
+and he fancied he repaired her imprudent language by the munificence of
+his presents.
+
+This assemblage, therefore, could not fail of irritating a variety of
+feelings: the vanity of many was wounded by the collision. Napoleon,
+however, having exerted himself to please, thought that he had given
+general satisfaction: while waiting at Dresden the result of the marches
+of his army, the numerous columns of which were still traversing the
+territories of his allies, he more especially occupied himself with his
+political arrangements.
+
+General Lauriston, ambassador from France at Petersburgh, received
+orders to apply for the Russian emperor's permission to proceed to
+Wilna, in order to communicate definitive proposals to him. General
+Narbonne, aid-de-camp of Napoleon, departed for the imperial
+head-quarters of Alexander, in order to assure that prince of the
+pacific intentions of France, and to invite him to Dresden. The
+archbishop of Malines was despatched in order to direct the impulses of
+Polish patriotism. The King of Saxony made up his mind to the loss of
+the grand duchy; but he was flattered with the hope of a more
+substantial indemnity.
+
+Meantime, ever since the first days of meeting, surprise was expressed
+at the absence of the King of Prussia from the imperial court; but it
+was soon understood that he was prohibited from coming. This prince was
+the more alarmed in proportion as he had less deserved such treatment.
+His presence would have been embarrassing. Nevertheless, encouraged by
+Narbonne, he resolved on making his appearance. When his arrival was
+announced to the emperor, the latter grew angry, and at first refused to
+see him:--"What did this prince want of him? Was not the constant
+importunity of his letters, and his continual solicitations sufficient?
+Why did he come again to persecute him with his presence? What need had
+he of him?" But Duroc insisted; he reminded Napoleon of the want that he
+would experience of Prussia, in a war with Russia; and the doors of the
+emperor were opened to the monarch. He was received with the respect due
+to his superior rank. His renewed assurances of fidelity, of which he
+gave numerous proofs, were accepted.
+
+It was reported at that time, that this monarch was led to expect the
+possession of the Russo-German provinces, which his troops were to be
+commissioned to invade. It is even affirmed that, after their conquest,
+he demanded their investiture from Napoleon. It has been added, but in
+vague terms, that Napoleon allowed the Prince-Royal of Prussia to aspire
+to the hand of one of his nieces. This was to be the remuneration for
+the services which Prussia was to render him in this new war. He
+promised, so he expressed himself, that he would go and sound her. It
+was thus that Frederick, by becoming the relation of Napoleon, would be
+enabled to preserve his diminished power; but proofs are wanting, to
+show that the idea of this marriage seduced the King of Prussia, as the
+hope of a similar alliance had seduced the Prince of Spain.
+
+Such at that time was the submission of sovereigns to the power of
+Napoleon. It offers a striking example of the empire of necessity over
+all persons, and shows to what lengths the prospect of gain and the fear
+of loss will lead princes as well as private persons.
+
+Meanwhile, Napoleon still waited the result of the negotiations of
+Lauriston and of Narbonne. He hoped to vanquish Alexander by the mere
+aspect of his united army, and, above all, by the menacing splendour of
+his residence at Dresden. He himself expressed this opinion, when, some
+days after, at Posen, he said to General Dessolles, "The assemblage at
+Dresden not having persuaded Alexander to make peace, it was now solely
+to be expected from war."
+
+On that day he talked of nothing but his former victories. It seemed as
+if, doubtful of the future, he recurred to the past, and that he found
+it necessary to arm himself with all his most glorious recollections, in
+order to confront a peril of so great a magnitude. In fact, then, as
+since, he felt the necessity of deluding himself with the alleged
+weakness of his rival's character. As the period of so great an invasion
+approached, he hesitated in considering it as certain; for he no longer
+possessed the consciousness of his infallibility, nor that warlike
+assurance which the fire and energy of youth impart, nor that feeling of
+success which makes it certain.
+
+In other respects, these parleys were not only attempts to preserve
+peace, but an additional _ruse de guerre_. By them he hoped to render
+the Russians either sufficiently negligent, to let themselves be
+surprised, dispersed, or, if united, sufficiently presumptuous to
+venture to wait his approach. In either case, the war would be finished
+by a _coup-de-main_, or by a victory. But Lauriston was not received.
+Narbonne, when he returned, stated, "that he had found the Russians in a
+state of mind as remote from dejection as from boasting. From their
+emperor's reply to him, it appeared that they preferred war to a
+dishonourable peace; that they would take care not to expose themselves
+to the hazards of a battle against too formidable an enemy; and that, in
+short, they were resolved on making every sacrifice, in order to spin
+out the war, and to baffle Napoleon."
+
+This answer, which reached the emperor in the midst of the greatest
+display of his glory, was treated with contempt. To say the truth, I
+must add, that a great Russian nobleman had contributed to deceive him:
+either from mistaken views, or from artifice, this Muscovite had
+persuaded him, that his own sovereign would recede at the sight of
+difficulties, and be easily discouraged by reverses. Unfortunately, the
+remembrance of Alexander's obsequiousness to him at Tilsit and at Erfurt
+confirmed the French emperor in that fallacious opinion.
+
+He remained till the 29th of May at Dresden, proud of the homage which
+he knew how to appreciate, exhibiting to Europe princes and kings,
+sprung from the most ancient families of Germany, forming a numerous
+court round a prince deriving all distinction from himself. He appeared
+to take a pleasure in multiplying the chances of the great game of
+fortune, as if to encircle with them, and render less extraordinary,
+that which placed him on the throne, and thus to accustom others as well
+as himself to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+At length, impatient to conquer the Russians, and escape from the homage
+of the Germans, Napoleon quitted Dresden. He only remained at Posen long
+enough to satisfy the Poles. He neglected Warsaw, whither the war did
+not imperiously call him, and where he would have again been involved in
+politics. He stopped at Thorn, in order to inspect his fortifications,
+his magazines, and his troops. There the complaints of the Poles, whom
+our allies pillaged without mercy, and insulted, reached him. Napoleon
+addressed severe reproaches, and even threats, to the King of
+Westphalia: but it is well known that these were thrown away; that their
+effect was lost in the midst of too rapid a movement; that, besides, his
+fits of anger, like all other fits, were followed by exhaustion; that
+then, with the return of his natural good humour, he regretted, and
+frequently tried, to soften the pain he had occasioned; that, finally,
+he might reproach himself as the cause of the disorders which provoked
+him; for, from the Oder to the Vistula, and even to the Niemen, if
+provisions were abundant and properly stationed, the less portable
+foraging supplies were deficient. Our cavalry were already forced to cut
+the green rye, and to strip the houses of their thatch, in order to feed
+their horses. It is true, that all did not stop at that; but when one
+disorder is authorized, how can others be forbidden?
+
+The evil augmented on the other side of the Niemen. The emperor had
+calculated upon a multitude of light cars and heavy waggons, each
+destined to carry several thousand pounds weight, through a sandy
+region, which carts, with no greater weight than some quintals, with
+difficulty traversed. These conveyances were organized in battalions and
+squadrons. Each battalion of light cars, called _comtoises_, consisted
+of six hundred, and might carry six thousand quintals of flour. The
+battalion of heavy vehicles, drawn by oxen, carried four thousand eight
+hundred quintals. There were besides twenty-six squadrons of waggons,
+loaded with military equipages; a great quantity of waggons with tools
+of all kinds, as well as thousands of artillery and hospital waggons,
+one siege and six bridge equipages.
+
+The provision-waggons were to take in their loading at the magazines
+established on the Vistula. When the army passed that river, it was
+ordered to provide itself, without halting, with provisions for
+twenty-five days, but not to use them till they were beyond the Niemen.
+In conclusion, the greater part of these means of transport failed,
+either because the organization of soldiers, to act as conductors of
+military convoys, was essentially vicious, the motives of honour and
+ambition not being called into action to maintain proper discipline; or
+chiefly because these vehicles were too heavy for the soil, the
+distances too considerable, and the privations and fatigues too great;
+certain it is that the greater number of them scarcely reached the
+Vistula.
+
+The army, therefore, provisioned itself on its match. The country being
+fertile, waggons, cattle, and provisions of all kinds, were swept off;
+every thing was taken, even to such of the inhabitants as were necessary
+to conduct these convoys. Some days after, at the Niemen, the
+embarrassment of the passage, and the celerity of the first hostile
+marches, caused all the fruits of these requisitions to be abandoned
+with an indifference only equalled by the violence with which they had
+been seized.
+
+The importance of the object, however, was such as might excuse the
+irregularity of these proceedings. That object was to surprise the
+Russian army, either collected or dispersed; in short, to make a
+_coup-de-main_ with 400,000 men. War, the worst of all scourges, would
+thus have been shortened in its duration. Our long and heavy
+baggage-waggons would have encumbered our march. It was much more
+convenient to live on the supplies of the country, as we should be able
+to indemnify the loss afterwards. But superfluous wrong was committed as
+well as necessary wrong, for who can stop midway in the commission of
+evil? What chief could be responsible for the crowd of officers and
+soldiers who were scattered through the country in order to collect its
+resources? To whom were complaints to be addressed? Who was to punish?
+All was done in the course of a rapid march; there was neither time to
+try, nor even to find out the guilty. Between the affair of the day
+before, and that of the following day, how many others had sprung up!
+for at that time the business of a month was crowded into a single day.
+
+Moreover, some of the leaders set the example; there was a positive
+emulation in evil. In that respect, many of our allies surpassed the
+French. We were their teachers in every thing; but in copying our
+qualities, they caricatured our defects. Their gross and brutal plunder
+was perfectly revolting.
+
+But the emperor was desirous to have order kept in the middle of
+disorder. Pressed by the accusing reproaches of two allied nations, two
+names were more especially distinguished by his indignation. In his
+letters are found these words; "I have suspended generals ---- and ----. I
+have suppressed the brigade ----; I have cashiered it in the face of the
+army, that is to say, of Europe.--I have written to ----, informing him
+that he ran great risks of being broke, if he did not take care." Some
+days after he met this ----, at the head of his troops, and still
+indignant, he called to him, "You disgrace yourself; you set the example
+of plunder. Be silent, or go back to your father; I do not want your
+services any further."
+
+From Thorn, Napoleon descended the Vistula. Graudentz belonged to
+Prussia; he avoided passing it; but as that fortress was important to
+the safety of the army, an officer of artillery and some fireworkers
+were sent thither, with the ostensible motive of making cartridges; the
+real motive remained a secret; the Prussian garrison, however, was
+numerous, and stood on its guard, and the emperor, who had proceeded
+onward, thought no more of it.
+
+It was at Marienburg that the emperor again met Davoust. That marshal,
+whether through pride, natural or acquired, was not well pleased to
+recognize as his leader any other individual than the master of Europe.
+His character, besides, was despotic, obstinate, and tenacious; and as
+little inclined to yield to circumstances as to men. In 1809, Berthier
+was his commander for some days, during which Davoust gained a battle,
+and saved the army, by disobeying him. Hence arose a terrible hatred
+between them: during the peace it augmented, but secretly; for they
+lived at a wide distance from each other, Berthier at Paris, Davoust at
+Hamburgh; but this Russian war again brought them together.
+
+Berthier was getting enfeebled. Ever since 1805, war had become
+completely odious to him. His talent especially lay in his activity and
+his memory. He could receive and transmit, at all hours of the day and
+night, the most multiplied intelligence and orders; but on this occasion
+he had conceived himself entitled to give orders himself. These orders
+displeased Davoust. Their first interview was a scene of violent
+altercation; it occurred at Marienburg, where the emperor had just
+arrived, and in his presence.
+
+Davoust expressed himself harshly, and even went so far as to accuse
+Berthier of incapacity or treachery. They both threatened each other,
+and when Berthier was gone, Napoleon, influenced by the naturally
+suspicious character of the marshal, exclaimed, "It sometimes happens
+that I entertain doubts of the fidelity of my oldest companions in arms;
+but at such times my head turns round with chagrin, and I do my utmost
+to banish so heart-rending a suspicion."
+
+While Davoust was probably enjoying the dangerous pleasure of having
+humbled his enemy, the emperor proceeded to Dantzic, and Berthier, stung
+by resentment, followed him there. From that time, the zeal, the glory
+of Davoust, the exertions he had made for this new expedition, all that
+ought to have availed him, began to be looked upon unfavourably. The
+emperor had written to him "that as the war was about to be carried into
+a barren territory, where the enemy would destroy every thing, it was
+requisite to prepare for such a state of things, by providing every
+thing within ourselves:" Davoust had replied to this by an enumeration
+of his preparations--"He had 70,000 men, who were completely organized;
+they carried with them twenty-five days' provisions. Each company
+comprised swimmers, masons, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, armourers, and
+workmen of every class. They carried every thing they required with
+them; his army was like a colony; hand-mills followed. He had
+anticipated every want; all means of supplying them were ready."
+
+Such great exertions ought to have pleased; they, however, displeased;
+they were misrepresented. Insidious observations were overheard by the
+emperor. "This marshal," said they to him, "wishes to have it thought
+that he has foreseen, arranged, and executed every thing. Is the
+emperor, then, to be no more than a spectator of this expedition? Must
+the glory of it devolve on Davoust?"--"In fact," exclaimed the emperor,
+"one would think it was he that commanded the army."
+
+They even went further, and awakened some of his dormant fears: "Was it
+not Davoust who, after the victory of Jena, drew the emperor into
+Poland? Is it not he who is now anxious for this new Polish war?--He who
+already possesses such large property in that country, whose accurate
+and severe probity has won over the Poles, and who is suspected of
+aspiring to their throne?"
+
+It is not easy to say whether the pride of Napoleon was shocked by
+seeing that of his lieutenants encroaching so much on his own; or
+whether, in the course of this irregular war, he felt himself thwarted
+more and more by the methodical genius of Davoust; certain it is, the
+unfavourable impression against him struck deeper; it was productive of
+fatal consequences; it removed from his confidence a bold, tenacious and
+prudent warrior, and favoured his predilection for Murat, whose rashness
+was much more flattering to his ambitious hopes. In other respects,
+these dissensions between his great officers did not displease Napoleon;
+they gave him information; their harmony would have made him uneasy.
+
+From Dantzic the emperor proceeded, on the 12th of June, to Königsberg.
+At that place ended the inspection of his immense magazines, and of the
+second resting-point and pivot of his line of operations. Immense
+quantities of provisions, adequate to the immensity of the undertaking,
+were there accumulated. No detail had been neglected. The active and
+impassioned genius of Napoleon was then entirely directed towards that
+most important and difficult department of his expedition. In that he
+was profuse of exhortations, orders, and even money, of which his
+letters are a proof. His days were occupied in dictating instructions on
+that subject; at night he frequently rose to repeat them again. One
+general received, on a single day, six despatches from him, all
+distinguished by the same solicitude.
+
+In one, these words were remarked, "For masses like these, if
+precautions be not taken, the grain of no country can suffice." In
+another, "It will be requisite for all the provision-waggons to be
+loaded with flour, bread, rice, vegetables, and brandy, besides what is
+necessary for the hospital service. The result of all my movements will
+assemble 400,000 men on a single point. There will be nothing then to
+expect from the country, and it will be necessary to have every thing
+within ourselves." But, on the one hand, the means of transport were
+badly calculated; and, on the other, he allowed himself to be hurried on
+as soon as he was put in motion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+From Königsberg to Gumbinnen, he reviewed several of his armies;
+conversing with the soldiers in a gay, frank, and often abrupt style;
+well aware that, with such unsophisticated and hardy characters,
+abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness
+as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers
+bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than
+weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign
+language, which they do not understand, and the accents of which strike
+them as ridiculous.
+
+According to his usual custom, he promenaded before the ranks. Knowing
+in which of his wars each regiment had been with him, at the sight of
+the oldest soldiers he occasionally halted; to one he recalled the
+battle of the Pyramids; another he reminded of Marengo, Austerlitz,
+Jena, or Friedland, and always by a single word, accompanied by a
+familiar caress. The veteran who believed himself personally recognized
+by his emperor, rose in consequence in the estimation of his junior
+companions, who regarded him as an object of envy.
+
+Napoleon, in this manner, continued his inspection; he overlooked not
+even the youngest soldiers: it seemed as if every thing which concerned
+them was to him matter of deep interest; their least wants seemed known
+to him. He interrogated them: Did their captains take care of them? had
+they received their pay? were they in want of any requisite? he wished
+to see their knapsacks.
+
+At length he stopped at the centre of the regiment; there being apprised
+of the places that were vacant, he required aloud the names of the most
+meritorious in the ranks; he called those who were so designated before
+him, and questioned them. How many years' service? how many campaigns?
+what wounds? what exploits? He then appointed them officers, and caused
+them to be immediately installed, himself prescribing the forms;--all
+particularities which delighted the soldier! They told each other how
+this great emperor, the judge of nations in the mass, occupied himself
+with them in their minutest details; that they composed his oldest and
+his real family! Thus it was that he instilled into them the love of
+war, of glory and himself.
+
+The army, meantime, marched from the Vistula to the Niemen. This last
+river, from Grodno as far as Kowno, runs parallel with the Vistula. The
+river Pregel, which unites the two, was loaded with provisions: 220,000
+men repaired thither from four different points; there they found bread
+and some foraging provisions. These provisions ascended that river with
+them, as far as its direction would allow.
+
+When the army was obliged to quit the flotilla, its select corps took
+with them sufficient provisions to reach and cross the Niemen, to
+prepare for a victory, and to arrive at Wilna. There, the emperor
+calculated on the magazines of the inhabitants, on those of the enemy
+and on his own, which he had ordered to be brought from Dantzic, by the
+Frischhaff, the Pregel, the Deine, the canal Frederic, and the Vilia.
+
+We were upon the verge of the Russian frontier; from right to left, or
+from south to north, the army was disposed in the following manner, in
+front of the Niemen. In the first place, on the extreme right, and
+issuing from Gallicia, on Drogiczin, Prince Schwartzenberg and 34,000
+Austrians; on their left, coming from Warsaw, and marching on Bialystok
+and Grodno, the King of Westphalia, at the head of 79,200 Westphalians,
+Saxons, and Poles; by the side of them was the Viceroy of Italy, who had
+just effected the junction, near Marienpol and Pilony, of 79,500
+Bavarians, Italians and French; next, the emperor, with 220,000 men,
+commanded by the King of Naples, the Prince of Eckmühl, the Dukes of
+Dantzic, Istria, Reggio, and Elchingen. They advanced from Thorn,
+Marienwerder, and Elbing, and, on the 23d of June, had assembled in a
+single mass near Nogarisky, a league above Kowno. Finally, in front of
+Tilsit, was Macdonald, and 32,500 Prussians, Bavarians, and Poles,
+composing the extreme left of the grand army.
+
+Every thing was now ready. From the banks of the Guadalquivir, and the
+shores of the Calabrian sea, to the Vistula, were assembled 617,000 men,
+of whom 480,000 were already present; one siege and six bridge
+equipages, thousands of provision-waggons, innumerable herds of oxen,
+1372 pieces of cannon, and thousands of artillery and hospital-waggons,
+had been directed, assembled, and stationed at a short distance from the
+Russian frontier river. The greatest part of the provision-waggons were
+alone behind.
+
+Sixty thousand Austrians, Prussians, and Spaniards, were preparing to
+shed their blood for the conqueror of Wagram, of Jena, and of Madrid;
+for the man who had four times beaten down the power of Austria, who had
+humbled Prussia, and invaded Spain. And yet all were faithful to him.
+When it was considered that one-third of the army of Napoleon was either
+foreign to him or hostile, one hardly knew at which most to be
+astonished,--the audacity of one party, or the resignation of the other.
+It was in this manner that Rome made her conquests contribute to her
+future means for conquering.
+
+As to us Frenchmen, he found us all full of ardour. Habit, curiosity,
+and the pleasure of exhibiting themselves in the character of masters in
+new countries, actuated the soldiers; vanity was the great stimulant of
+the younger ones, who thirsted to acquire some glory which they might
+recount, with the attractive quackery peculiar to soldiers; these
+inflated and pompous narratives of their exploits being moreover
+indispensable to their relaxation when no longer under arms. To this
+must certainly be added, the hope of plunder; for the exacting ambition
+of Napoleon had as often disgusted his soldiers, as the disorders of the
+latter tarnished his glory. A compromise was necessary: ever since 1805,
+there was a sort of mutual understanding, on his part to wink at their
+plunder--on theirs, to suffer his ambition.
+
+This plunder, however, or rather, this marauding system, was generally
+confined to provisions, which, in default of supplies, were exacted of
+the inhabitants, but often too extravagantly. The most culpable
+plunderers were the stragglers, who are always numerous in frequent
+forced marches. These disorders, indeed, were never tolerated. In order
+to repress them, Napoleon left _gendarmes_ and flying columns on the
+track of the army; and when these stragglers subsequently rejoined their
+corps, their knapsacks were examined by their officers; or, as was the
+case at Austerlitz, by their comrades; and strict justice was then
+executed among themselves.
+
+The last levies were certainly too young and too feeble; but the army
+had still a stock of brave and experienced men, used to critical
+situations, and whom nothing could intimidate. They were recognizable at
+the first glance by their martial countenances, and by their
+conversation; they had no other past nor future but war; and they could
+talk of nothing else. Their officers were worthy of them, or at least
+were becoming so; for, in order to preserve the due authority of their
+rank over such men, it was necessary for them to have wounds to show,
+and to be able to appeal to their own exploits.
+
+Such was, at that period, the life of those men; all was action within
+its sphere, even to words. They often boasted too much, but even that
+had its advantage; for as they were incessantly put to the proof, it was
+then necessary for them to be what they wished to appear. Such
+especially is the character of the Poles; they boast in the first
+instance of being more than they have been, but not more than they are
+capable of being. Poland in fact is a nation of heroes! pawning their
+words for exploits beyond the truth, but subsequently redeeming them
+with honour, in order to verify what at first was neither true nor even
+probable.
+
+As to the old generals, some of them were no longer the hardy and simple
+warriors of the republic; honours, hard service, age, and the emperor
+particularly, had contributed to soften many of them down. Napoleon
+compelled them to adopt a luxurious style of living by his example and
+his orders; according to him, it was a means of influencing the
+multitude. It might be also, that such habits prevented them from
+accumulating property, which might have made them independent; for,
+being himself the source of riches, he was glad to to keep up the
+necessity of repairing to it, and in this manner to bring them back
+within his influence. He had, therefore, pushed his generals into a
+circle from which it was difficult to escape; forcing them to pass
+incessantly from want to prodigality, and from prodigality to want,
+which he alone was able to relieve.
+
+Several had nothing but their appointments, which accustomed them to an
+ease of living with which they could no longer dispense. If he made them
+grants of land, it was out of his conquests, which were exposed to
+insecurity by war, and which war only could preserve.
+
+But in order to retain them in dependence, glory, which with some was a
+habit, with others a passion, with all a want, was the all-sufficient
+stimulant; and Napoleon, absolute master as he was of his own century,
+and even dictating to history, was the distributor of that glory. Though
+he fixed it at a high price, there was no rejecting his conditions; one
+would have felt ashamed to confess one's weakness in presence of his
+strength, and to stop short before a man whose ambition was still
+mounting, great as was the elevation which he had already attained.
+
+Besides, the renown of so great an expedition was full of charm; its
+success seemed certain; it promised to be nothing but a military march
+to Petersburgh and Moscow. With this last effort his wars would probably
+be terminated. It was a last opportunity, which one would repent to have
+let escape; one would be annoyed by the glorious narratives which others
+would give of it. The victory of to-day would make that of yesterday so
+old! And who would wish to grow old with it?
+
+And then, when war was kindled in all quarters, how was it possible to
+avoid it? The scenes of action were not indifferent; here Napoleon would
+command in person; elsewhere, though the cause might be the same, the
+contest would be carried on under a different commander. The renown
+shared with the latter would be foreign to Napoleon, on whom,
+nevertheless, depended glory, fortune, every thing; and it was well
+known, whether from preference or policy, that he was only profuse in
+his favours to those whose glory was identified with his glory; and that
+he rewarded less generously such exploits as were not his. It was
+requisite, therefore, to serve in the army which he commanded; hence the
+anxiety of young and old to fill its ranks. What chief had ever before
+so many means of power? There was no hope which he could not flatter,
+excite, or satiate.
+
+Finally, we loved him as the companion of our labours; as the chief who
+had conducted us to renown. The astonishment and admiration which he
+inspired flattered our self-love; for all these we shared in common with
+him.
+
+With respect to that youthful _élite_, which in those times of glory
+filled our camps, its enthusiasm was natural. Who is there amongst us
+who, in his early years, has not been fired by the perusal of the
+warlike exploits of the ancients and of our ancestors? Should we not
+have all desired, at that time, to be the heroes whose real or
+fictitious history we were perusing? During that state of enthusiasm, if
+those recollections had been suddenly realized before us; if our eyes,
+instead of reading, had witnessed the performance of those wonders; if
+we had felt their sphere of action within our reach, and if employments
+had been offered to us by the side of those brave paladins, whose
+adventurous lives and brilliant renown our young and vivid imaginations
+had so much envied; which of us would have hesitated? Who is there that
+would not have rushed forward, replete with joy and hope, and disdaining
+an odious and scandalous repose?
+
+Such were the rising generations of that day. At that period every one
+was free to be ambitious! a period of intoxication and prosperity,
+during which the French soldier, lord of all things by victory,
+considered himself greater than the nobleman, or even the sovereign,
+whose states he traversed! To him it appeared as if the kings of Europe
+only reigned by permission of his chief and of his arms.
+
+Thus it was that habit attracted some, disgust at camp service others;
+novelty prompted the greater part, and especially the thirst of glory:
+but all were stimulated by emulation. In fine, confidence in a chief who
+had been always fortunate, and hope of an early victory, which would
+terminate the war at a blow, and restore us to our firesides; for a war,
+to the entire army of Napoleon (as it was to some volunteers of the
+court of Louis XIV.) was often no more than a single battle, or a short
+and brilliant journey.
+
+We were now about to reach the extremity of Europe, where never European
+army had been before! We were about to erect new columns of Hercules.
+The grandeur of the enterprise; the agitation of co-operating Europe;
+the imposing spectacle of an army of 400,000 foot and 80,000 horse: so
+many warlike reports and martial clamours, kindled the minds of veterans
+themselves. It was impossible for the coldest to remain unmoved amid the
+general impulse; to escape from the universal attraction.
+
+In conclusion;--independent of all these motives for animation, the
+composition of the army was good, and every good army is desirous of
+war.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Napoleon, satisfied with his preparations, at length declared himself.
+"Soldiers," said he, "the second Polish war is commenced. The first was
+concluded at Friedland and at Tilsit. At Tilsit, Russia swore eternal
+alliance with France, and war with England. She now violates her oaths.
+She will give no explanation of her capricious conduct, until the French
+eagles have repassed the Rhine; by that means leaving our allies at her
+mercy. Russia is hurried away by fatality; her destiny must be
+accomplished. Does she then believe us to be degenerated? Are we not
+still the soldiers of Austerlitz? She places us between war and
+dishonour; the choice cannot be doubtful. Let us advance, then; let us
+pass the Niemen, and carry the war into her territory! The second Polish
+war will be as glorious for the French arms as the first; but the peace
+we shall this time conclude will carry with it its own guarantee; it
+will put an end to the fatal influence which Russia for the last fifty
+years has exercised over the affairs of Europe."
+
+This tone, which was at that time deemed prophetic, befitted an
+expedition of an almost fabulous character. It was quite necessary to
+invoke Destiny, and give credit to its empire, when the fate of so many
+human beings, and so much glory, were about to be consigned to its
+mercy.
+
+The Emperor Alexander also harangued his army, but in a very different
+manner. The difference between the two nations, the two sovereigns, and
+their reciprocal position, were remarked in these proclamations. In
+fact, the one which was defensive was unadorned and moderate; the other,
+offensive, was replete with audacity and the confidence of victory. The
+first sought support in religion, the other in fatality; the one in love
+of country, the other in love of glory; but neither of them referred to
+the liberation of Poland, which was the real cause of contention.
+
+We marched towards the east, with our left towards the north, and our
+right towards the south. On our right, Volhynia invoked us with all her
+prayers; in the centre, were Wilna, Minsk, and the whole of Lithuania,
+and Samogitia; in front of our left, Courland and Livonia awaited their
+fate in silence.
+
+The army of Alexander, composed of 300,000 men, kept those provinces in
+awe. From the banks of the Vistula, from Dresden, from Paris itself,
+Napoleon had critically surveyed it. He had ascertained that its centre,
+commanded by Barclay, extended from Wilna and Kowno to Lida and Grodno,
+resting its right on Vilia, and its left on the Niemen.
+
+That river protected the Russian front by the deviation which it makes
+from Grodno to Kowno; for it was only in the interval between these two
+cities, that the Niemen, running toward the north, intersected the line
+of our attack, and served as a frontier to Lithuania. Before reaching
+Grodno, and on quitting Kowno, it flows westward.
+
+To the south of Grodno was Bagration, with 65,000 men, in the direction
+of Wolkowisk; to the north of Kowno, at Rossiana and Keydani,
+Wittgenstein, with 26,000 men, substituted their bayonets for that
+natural frontier.
+
+At the same time, another army of 50,000 men, called the reserve, was
+assembled at Lutsk, in Volhynia, in order to keep that province in
+check, and observe Schwartzenberg; it was confided to Tormasof, till the
+treaty about to be signed at Bucharest permitted Tchitchakof, and the
+greater part of the army in Moldavia, to unite with it.
+
+Alexander, and, under him, his minister of war, Barclay de Tolly,
+directed all these forces. They were divided into three armies, called,
+the first western army, under Barclay; the second western army, under
+Bagration; and the army of reserve, under Tormasof. Two other corps were
+forming; one at Mozyr, in the environs of Bobruisk; and the other at
+Riga and Dünabourg. The reserves were at Wilna and Swentziany. In
+conclusion, a vast entrenched camp was erected before Drissa, within an
+elbow of the Düna.
+
+The French emperor's opinion was, that this position behind the Niemen
+was neither offensive nor defensive, and that the Russian army was no
+better off for the purpose of effecting a retreat; that this army, being
+so much scattered over a line of sixty leagues, might be surprised and
+dispersed, as actually happened to it; that, with still more certainty,
+the left of Barclay, and the entire army of Bagration, being stationed
+at Lida and at Wolkowisk, in front of the marshes of the Berezina, which
+they covered, instead of being covered by them, might be thrown back on
+them and taken; or, at least, that an abrupt and direct attack on Kowno
+and Wilna would cut them off from their line of operation, indicated by
+Swentziany and the entrenched camp at Drissa.
+
+In fact, Doctorof and Bagration were already separated from that line;
+for, instead of remaining in mass with Alexander, in front of the roads
+leading to the Düna, to defend them and profit by them, they were
+stationed forty leagues to the right.
+
+For this reason it was that Napoleon separated his forces into five
+armies. While Schwartzenberg, advancing from Gallicia with his 30,000
+Austrians, (whose numbers he had orders to exaggerate,) would keep
+Tormasof in check, and draw the attention of Bagration towards the
+south; while the King of Westphalia, with his 80,000 men, would employ
+that general in front, towards Grodno, without pressing him too
+vehemently at first; and while the Viceroy of Italy, in the direction of
+Pilony, would be in readiness to interpose between the same Bagration
+and Barclay; in fine, while at the extreme left, Macdonald, debouching
+from Tilsit, would invade the north of Lithuania, and fall on the right
+of Wittgenstein; Napoleon himself, with his 200,000 men, was to
+precipitate himself on Kowno, on Wilna, and on his rival, and destroy
+him at the first shock.
+
+Should the Emperor of Russia give way, he would press him hard, and
+throw him back upon Drissa, and as far as the commencement of his line
+of operations; then, all at once, propelling his detachments to the
+right, he would surround Bagration, and the whole of the corps of the
+Russian left, which, by this rapid irruption, would be separated from
+their right.
+
+I will shortly sketch a brief and rapid summary of the history of our
+two wings, being anxious to return to the centre, and to be enabled
+uninterruptedly to exhibit the great scenes which were enacted there.
+Macdonald commanded the left wing; his invasion, supported by the
+Baltic, overcame the right wing of the Russians; it threatened Revel
+first, next Riga, and even Petersburgh. He soon reached Riga. The war
+became stationary under its walls; although of little importance, it was
+conducted by Macdonald with prudence, science, and glory, even in his
+retreat, to which he was neither compelled by the winter nor by the
+enemy, but solely by Napoleon's orders.
+
+With regard to his right wing, the emperor had counted on the support of
+Turkey, which failed him. He had inferred that the Russian army of
+Volhynia would follow the general movement of Alexander's retreat; but,
+on the contrary, Tormasof advanced upon our rear. The French army was
+thus uncovered, and menaced with being turned on those vast plains.
+Nature not supplying it in that quarter with any support, as she did on
+the left wing, it was necessarily compelled to rely entirely on itself.
+Forty thousand Saxons, Austrians, and Poles, remained there in
+observation.
+
+Tormasof was beaten; but another army, rendered available by the treaty
+of Bucharest, arrived and formed a junction with the remnant of the
+first. From that moment, the war upon that point became defensive. It
+was carried on feebly, as was to be expected, notwithstanding some
+Polish troops and a French general were left with the Austrian army.
+That general had been long and strenuously cried up for ability,
+although he had met with reverses, and his reputation was not
+undeserved.
+
+No decisive advantage was gained on either side. But the position of
+this corps, almost entirely Austrian, became more and more important, as
+the grand army retreated upon it. It will be seen whether Schwartzenberg
+deceived its confidence,--whether he left us to be surrounded on the
+Berezina,--and whether it be true, that he seemed on that occasion to
+aspire to no other character than that of an armed witness to the great
+dispute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Between these two wings, the grand army marched to the Niemen, in three
+separate masses. The king of Westphalia, with 80,000 men, moved upon
+Grodno; the viceroy of Italy, with 75,000 men, upon Pilony; Napoleon,
+with 220,000 men, upon Nogaraiski, a farm situated three leagues beyond
+Kowno. The 23d of June, before daylight, the imperial column reached the
+Niemen, but without seeing it. The borders of the great Prussian forest
+of Pilwisky, and the hills which line the river, concealed the great
+army, which was about to cross it.
+
+Napoleon, who had travelled in a carriage as far as that, mounted his
+horse at two o'clock in the morning. He reconnoitred the Russian river,
+without disguising himself, as has been falsely asserted, but under
+cover of the night crossing this frontier, which five months afterwards
+he was only enabled to repass under cover of the same obscurity. When he
+came up to the bank, his horse suddenly stumbled, and threw him on the
+sand. A voice exclaimed, "This is a bad omen; a Roman would recoil!" It
+is not known whether it was himself, or one of his retinue, who
+pronounced these words.
+
+His task of reconnoitring concluded, he gave orders that, at the close
+of the following day, three bridges should be thrown over the river,
+near the village of Poniémen; he then retired to his head-quarters,
+where he passed the whole day, sometimes in his tent, sometimes in a
+Polish house, listlessly reclined, in the midst of a breathless
+atmosphere, and a suffocating heat, vainly courting repose.
+
+On the return of night, he again made his approaches to the river. The
+first who crossed it were a few sappers in a small boat. They approached
+the Russian side with some degree of apprehension, but found no obstacle
+to oppose their landing. There they found peace; the war was entirely on
+their own side; all was tranquil on that foreign soil, which had been
+described to them as so menacing. A single officer of cossacks, however,
+on patrole, presented himself to their view. He was alone, and appeared
+to consider himself in full peace, and to be ignorant that the whole of
+Europe in arms was at hand. He inquired of the strangers who they
+were?--"Frenchmen!" they replied.--"What do you want?" rejoined the
+officer; "and wherefore do you come into Russia?"--A sapper briskly
+replied, "To make war upon you; to take Wilna; to deliver Poland."--The
+cossack then withdrew; he disappeared in the woods, into which three of
+our soldiers, giving vent to their ardour, and with a view to sound the
+forest, discharged their fire-arms.
+
+Thus it was, that the feeble report of three muskets, to which there was
+no reply, apprised us of the opening of a new campaign, and the
+commencement of a great invasion.
+
+Either from a feeling of prudence, or from presentiment, this first
+signal of war threw the emperor into a state of violent irritation.
+Three hundred voltigeurs immediately passed the river, in order to cover
+the erection of the bridges.
+
+The whole of the French columns then began to issue from the valleys and
+the forest. They advanced in silence to the river, under cover of thick
+darkness. It was necessary to touch them in order to recognize their
+presence. Fires, even to sparks, were forbidden; they slept with arms in
+their hands, as if in the presence of an enemy. The crops of green rye,
+moistened with a profuse dew, served as beds to the men, and provender
+to the horses.
+
+The night, its coolness preventing sleep, its obscurity prolonging the
+hours, and augmenting wants; finally, the dangers of the following day,
+every thing combined to give solemnity to this position. But the
+expectation of a great battle supported our spirits. The proclamation of
+Napoleon had just been read; the most remarkable passages of it were
+repeated in a whisper, and the genius of conquest kindled our
+imagination.
+
+Before us was the Russian frontier. Our ardent gaze already sought to
+invade the promised land of our glory athwart the shades of night. We
+seemed to hear the joyful acclamations of the Lithuanians, at the
+approach of their deliverers. We pictured to ourselves the banks of the
+river lined with their supplicating hands. Here, we were in want of
+every thing; there, every thing would be lavished upon us! The
+Lithuanians would hasten to supply our wants; we were about to be
+encircled by love and gratitude. What signified one unpleasant night?
+The day would shortly appear, and with it its warmth and all its
+illusions. The day did appear! and it revealed to us dry and desert
+sands, and dark and gloomy forests. Our eyes then reverted sadly upon
+ourselves, and we were again inspired by pride and hope, on observing
+the imposing spectacle of our united army.
+
+[Illustration: Passage of the Niemen]
+
+Three hundred yards from the river, on the most elevated height, the
+tent of the emperor was visible. Around it the hills, their slopes, and
+the subjacent valleys, were covered with men and horses. As soon as the
+earth exhibited to the sun those moving masses, clothed with glittering
+arms, the signal was given, and instantly the multitude began to defile
+off in three columns, towards the three bridges. They were observed to
+take a winding direction, as they descended the narrow plain which
+separated them from the Niemen, to approach it, to reach the three
+passages, to compress and prolong their columns, in order to traverse
+them, and at last reach that foreign soil, which they were about to
+devastate, and which they were soon destined to cover with their own
+enormous fragments.
+
+So great was their ardour, that two divisions of the advanced guard
+disputed for the honour of being the first to pass, and were near coming
+to blows; and some exertions were necessary to quiet them. Napoleon
+hastened to plant his foot on the Russian territory. He took this first
+step towards his ruin without hesitation. At first, he stationed
+himself near the bridge, encouraging the soldiers with his looks. The
+latter all saluted him with their accustomed acclamations. They
+appeared, indeed, more animated than he was; whether it was that he felt
+oppressed by the weight of so great an aggression, or that his enfeebled
+frame could not support the effect of the excessive heat, or that he was
+already intimidated by finding nothing to conquer.
+
+At length he became impatient; all at once he dashed across the country
+into the forest which girt the sides of the river. He put his horse to
+the extremity of his speed; he appeared on fire to come singly in
+contact with the enemy. He rode more than a league in the same
+direction, surrounded throughout by the same solitude; upon which he
+found it necessary to return in the vicinity of the bridges, whence he
+re-descended the river with his guard towards Kowno.
+
+Some thought they heard the distant report of cannon. As we marched, we
+endeavoured to distinguish on which side the battle was going on. But,
+with the exception of some troops of cossacks on that, as well as the
+ensuing days, the atmosphere alone displayed itself in the character of
+an enemy. In fact, the emperor had scarcely passed the river, when a
+rumbling sound began to agitate the air. In a short time the day became
+overcast, the wind rose, and brought with it the inauspicious mutterings
+of a thunder-storm. That menacing sky and unsheltered country filled us
+with melancholy impressions. There were even some amongst us, who,
+enthusiastic as they had lately been, were terrified at what they
+conceived to be a fatal presage. To them it appeared that those
+combustible vapours were collecting over our heads, and that they would
+descend upon the territory we approached, in order to prevent us from
+entering it.
+
+It is quite certain, that the storm in question was as great as the
+enterprise in which we were engaged. During several hours, its black and
+heavy masses accumulated and hung upon the whole army: from right to
+left, over a space of fifty leagues, it was completely threatened by its
+lightnings, and overwhelmed by its torrents: the roads and fields were
+inundated; the insupportable heat of the atmosphere was suddenly changed
+to a disagreeable chillness. Ten thousand horses perished on the march,
+and more especially in the bivouacs which followed. A large quantity of
+equipages remained abandoned on the sands; and great numbers of men
+subsequently died.
+
+A convent served to shelter the emperor against the first fury of the
+tempest. From hence he shortly departed for Kowno, where the greatest
+disorder prevailed. The claps of thunder were no longer noticed; those
+menacing reports, which still murmured over our heads, appeared
+forgotten. For, though this common phenomenon of the season might have
+shaken the firmness of some few minds, with the majority the time of
+omens had passed away. A scepticism, ingenious on the part of some,
+thoughtless or coarse on the part of others, earth-born passions and
+imperious wants, have diverted the souls of men from that heaven whence
+they are derived, and to which they should return. The army, therefore,
+recognized nothing but a natural and unseasonable accident in this
+disaster; and far from interpreting it as the voice of reprobation
+against so great an aggression, for which, moreover, it was not
+responsible, found in it nothing but a motive of indignation against
+fortune or the skies, which whether by chance, or otherwise, offered it
+so terrible a presage.
+
+That very day, a particular calamity was added to this general disaster.
+At Kowno, Napoleon was exasperated, because the bridge over the Vilia
+had been thrown down by the cossacks, and opposed the passage of
+Oudinot. He affected to despise it, like every thing else that opposed
+him, and ordered a squadron of his Polish guard to swim the river. These
+fine fellows threw themselves into it without hesitation. At first, they
+proceeded in good order, and when out of their depth redoubled their
+exertions. They soon reached the middle of the river by swimming. But
+there, the increased rapidity of the current broke their order. Their
+horses then became frightened, quitted their ranks, and were carried
+away by the violence of the waves. They no longer swam, but floated
+about in scattered groups. Their riders struggled, and made vain
+efforts; their strength gave way, and they, at last, resigned themselves
+to their fate. Their destruction was certain; but it was for their
+country; it was in her presence, and for the sake of their deliverer,
+that they had devoted themselves; and even when on the point of being
+engulphed for ever, they suspended their unavailing struggles, turned
+their faces toward Napoleon, and exclaimed, "_Vive l'Empereur!_" Three
+of them were especially remarked, who, with their heads still above the
+billows, repeated this cry and perished instantly. The army was struck
+with mingled horror and admiration.
+
+As to Napoleon, he prescribed with anxiety and precision the measures
+necessary to save the greater number, but without appearing affected:
+either from the habit of subduing his feelings; from considering the
+ordinary emotions of the heart as weaknesses in times of war, of which
+it was not for him to set the example, and therefore necessary to
+suppress; or finally, that he anticipated much greater misfortunes,
+compared with which the present was a mere trifle.
+
+A bridge thrown over this river conveyed Marshal Oudinot and the second
+corps to Keydani. During that time, the rest of the army was still
+passing the Niemen. The passage took up three entire days. The army of
+Italy did not pass it till the 29th, in front of Pilony. The army of the
+king of Westphalia did not enter Grodno till the 30th.
+
+From Kowno Napoleon proceeded in two days as far as the defiles which
+defend the plain of Wilna. He waited, in order to make his appearance
+there, for news from his advanced posts. He was in hopes that Alexander
+would contest with him the possession of that capital. The report,
+indeed, of some musketry, encouraged him in that hope; when intelligence
+was brought him that the city was undefended. Thither he advanced,
+ruminating and dissatisfied. He accused his generals of the advanced
+guard of suffering the Russian army to escape. It was the most active of
+them, Montbrun, whom he reproached, and against whom his anger rose to
+the point of menace. A menace without effect, a violence without result!
+and less blameable than remarkable, in a warrior, because they
+contributed to prove all the importance which he attached to an
+immediate victory.
+
+In the midst of his anger, he displayed address in his dispositions for
+entering Wilna. He caused himself to be preceded and followed by Polish
+regiments. But more occupied by the retreat of the Russians than the
+grateful and admiring acclamations of the Lithuanians, he rapidly passed
+through the city, and hurried to the advanced posts. Several of the best
+hussars of the 8th, having ventured themselves in a wood, without proper
+support, had just perished in an action with the Russian guard;
+Segur[16], who commanded them, after a desperate defence, had fallen,
+covered with wounds.
+
+[Footnote 16: Brother of the Author.]
+
+The enemy had burnt his bridges and his magazines, and was flying by
+different roads, but all in the direction of Drissa. Napoleon ordered
+all which the fire had spared to be collected, and restored the
+communications. He sent forward Murat and his cavalry, to follow the
+track of Alexander: and after throwing Ney upon his left, in order to
+support Oudinot, who had that day driven back the lines of
+Wittgenstein, from Deweltowo as far as Wilkomir, he returned to occupy
+the place of Alexander at Wilna. There, his unfolded maps, military
+reports, and a crowd of officers requiring his orders, awaited his
+arrival. He was now on the theatre of war, and at the moment of its most
+animated operations; he had prompt and urgent decisions to make; orders
+of march to give; hospitals, magazines, and lines of operations, to
+establish.
+
+It was necessary to interrogate, to read, and then compare; and at last
+to discover and grasp the truth, which always appeared to fly and
+conceal itself in the midst of a thousand contradictory answers and
+reports.
+
+This was not all: Napoleon, at Wilna, had a new empire to organize; the
+politics of Europe, the war of Spain, and the government of France, to
+direct. His political, military, and administrative correspondence,
+which he had suffered to accumulate for some days, imperiously demanded
+his attention. Such, indeed, was his custom, on the eve of a great
+event, as that would necessarily decide the character of many of his
+replies, and impart a colouring to all. He therefore established himself
+at his quarters, and in the first instance threw himself on a bed, less
+for the sake of sleep than of quiet meditation; whence, abruptly
+starting up shortly after, he rapidly dictated the orders which he had
+conceived.
+
+Intelligence was just then brought him from Warsaw and the Austrian
+army. The discourse at the opening of the Polish diet displeased the
+emperor; and he exclaimed, as he threw it from him, "This is French! It
+ought to be Polish!" As to the Austrians, it was never dissembled to him
+that, in their whole army, there was no one on whom he could depend but
+its commander. The certainty of that seemed sufficient for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+Meantime, every thing was rekindling at the bottom of the hearts of the
+Lithuanians a patriotism which was still burning, though almost
+extinguished. On one side, the precipitate retreat of the Russians, and
+the presence of Napoleon; on the other, the cry of independence emitted
+by Warsaw, and more especially the sight of those Polish heroes, who
+returned with liberty to the soil whence they had been expelled along
+with her. The first days, therefore, were entirely devoted to joy: the
+happiness appeared general--the display of feeling universal.
+
+The same sentiments were thought to be traceable everywhere; in the
+interior of the houses, as well as at the windows, and in the public
+places. The people congratulated and embraced each other on the
+high-roads; the old men once more resumed their ancient costume,
+reviving ideas of glory and independence. They wept with joy at the
+sight of the national banners which had been just re-erected; an
+immense crowd followed them, rending the air with their acclamations.
+But this enthusiasm, unreflecting in some, and the mere effect of
+excitement in others, was but of short duration.
+
+On their side, the Poles of the grand duchy were always animated by the
+noblest enthusiasm: they were worthy of liberty, and sacrificed to it
+that property for which liberty is sacrificed by the greater part of
+mankind. Nor did they belie themselves on this occasion: the diet of
+Warsaw constituted itself into a general confederation, and declared the
+kingdom of Poland restored; it convened the dietins; invited all Poland
+to unite; summoned all the Poles in the Russian army to quit Russia;
+caused itself to be represented by a general council; maintained the
+established order; and, finally, sent a deputation to the king of
+Saxony, and an address to Napoleon.
+
+The senator Wibicki presented this address to him at Wilna. He told him
+"that the Poles had neither been subjected by peace nor by war, but by
+treason; that they were therefore free _de jure_, before God and man;
+that being so now _de facto_, that right became a duty; that they
+claimed the independence of their brethren, the Lithuanians, who were
+still slaves; that they offered themselves to the entire Polish nation
+as the centre of a general union; but that it was to him who dictated
+his history to the age, in whom resided the force of Providence, they
+looked to support the efforts which he could not but approve; that on
+that account they came to solicit Napoleon the Great to pronounce these
+few words, "_Let the kingdom of Poland exist!_" and that it then would
+exist; that all the Poles would devote themselves to the orders of the
+founder of the fourth French dynasty, to whom ages were but as a moment,
+and space no more than a point."
+
+Napoleon replied: "Gentlemen deputies of the confederation of Poland, I
+have listened with deep interest to what you have just told me. Were I a
+Pole, I should think and act like you; I should have voted with you in
+the assembly of Warsaw: the love of his country is the first duty of
+civilized man.
+
+"In my position, I have many interests to reconcile, and many duties to
+fulfil. Had I reigned during the first, second, or third partition of
+Poland, I would have armed my people in her defence. When victory
+supplied me with the means of re-establishing your ancient laws, in your
+capital, and a portion of your provinces, I did so without seeking to
+prolong the war, which might have continued to waste the blood of my
+subjects.
+
+"I love your nation! For sixteen years I have found your soldiers by my
+side on the plains of Italy and Spain. I applaud what you have done; I
+authorize your future efforts; I will do all which depends on me to
+second your resolutions. If your efforts be unanimous, you may cherish
+the hope of compelling your enemies to recognize your rights; but in
+countries so distant and extensive, it must be entirely on the exertions
+of the population which inhabits them, that you can justly ground hopes
+of success.
+
+"From the first moment of my entering Poland, I have used the same
+language to you. To this it is my duty to add, that I have guaranteed to
+the emperor of Austria the integrity of his dominions, and that I cannot
+sanction any manoeuvre, or the least movement, tending to disturb the
+peaceable possession of what remains to him of the Polish provinces.
+
+"Only provide that Lithuania, Samogitia, Witepsk, Polotsk, Mohilef,
+Volhynia, the Ukraine, Podolia, be animated by the same spirit which I
+have witnessed in the Greater Poland; and Providence will crown your
+good cause with success. I will recompense that devotion of your
+provinces which renders you so interesting, and has acquired you so many
+claims to my esteem and protection, by every means that can, under the
+circumstances, depend upon me."
+
+The Poles had imagined that they were addressing the sovereign arbiter
+of the world, whose every word was a law, and whom no political
+compromise was capable of arresting. They were unable to comprehend the
+cause of the circumspection of this reply. They began to doubt the
+intentions of Napoleon; the zeal of some was cooled; the lukewarmness of
+others confirmed; all were intimidated. Even those around him asked each
+other what could be the motives of a prudence which appeared so
+unseasonable, and with him so unusual. "What, then, was the object of
+this war? Was he afraid of Austria? Had the retreat of the Russians
+disconcerted him? Did he doubt his good fortune, or was he unwilling to
+contract, in the face of Europe, engagements which he was not sure of
+being able to fulfil?
+
+"Had the coldness of the Lithuanians infected him? or rather, did he
+dread the explosion of a patriotism which he might not be able to
+master? Was he still undecided as to the destiny he should bestow upon
+them?"
+
+Whatever were his motives, it was obviously his wish that the
+Lithuanians should appear to liberate themselves; but as, at the same
+time, he created a government for them, and gave a direction to their
+public feeling, that circumstance placed him, as well as them, in a
+false position, wherein every thing terminated in errors,
+contradictions, and half measures. There was no reciprocal understanding
+between the parties; a mutual distrust was the result. The Poles desired
+some positive guarantees in return for the many sacrifices they were
+called upon to make. But their union in a single kingdom not having been
+pronounced, the alarm which is common at the moment of great decisions
+increased, and the confidence which they had just lost in him, they also
+lost in themselves. It was then that he nominated seven Lithuanians to
+the task of composing the new government. This choice was unlucky in
+some points; it displeased the jealous pride of an aristocracy at all
+times difficult to satisfy.
+
+The four Lithuanian provinces of Wilna, Minsk, Grodno, and Bialystok,
+had each a government commission and national sub-prefects. Each commune
+was to have its municipality; but Lithuania was, in reality, governed by
+an imperial commissioner, and by four French auditors, with the title of
+intendants.
+
+In short, from these, perhaps inevitable, faults, and from the disorders
+of an army placed between the alternative of famishing, or plundering
+its allies, there resulted a universal coolness. The emperor could not
+remain blind to it; he had calculated on four millions of Lithuanians; a
+few thousands were all that joined him! Their pospolite, which he had
+estimated at more than 100,000 men, had decreed him a guard of honour;
+only three horsemen attended him! The population of Volhynia remained
+immoveable, and Napoleon again appealed from them to victory. When
+fortunate, this coolness did not disturb him sufficiently; when
+unfortunate, whether through pride or justice, he did not complain of
+it.
+
+As for us, ever confident in him and in ourselves, the disposition of
+the Lithuanians at first affected us very little; but when our forces
+diminished, we looked about us, and our attention was awakened by our
+danger. Three Lithuanian generals, distinguished by their names, their
+property, and their sentiments, followed the emperor. The French
+generals at last reproached them with the coolness of their countrymen.
+The ardour of the people of Warsaw, in 1806, was held out to them as an
+example. The warm discussion which ensued, passed, like several others
+similar, which it is necessary to record, at Napoleon's quarters, near
+the spot where he was employed; and as there was truth on both sides;
+as, in these conversations, the opposite allegations contended without
+destroying each other; and as the first and last causes of the coolness
+of the Lithuanians were therein revealed, it is impossible to omit them.
+
+These generals then replied, "That they considered they had received
+becomingly the liberty which we brought them; that, moreover, every one
+expressed regard according to his habitual character; that the
+Lithuanians were more cold in their manner than the Poles, and
+consequently less communicative; that, after all, the sentiment might be
+the same, though the expression was different.
+
+"That, besides, there was no similarity in the cases; that in 1806, it
+was after having conquered the Prussians, that the French had delivered
+Poland; that now, on the contrary, if they delivered Lithuania from the
+Russian yoke, it was before they had subjugated Russia. That, in this
+manner, it was natural for the first to receive a victorious and certain
+freedom with transport; and equally natural for the last to receive an
+uncertain and dangerous liberty with gravity; that a benefit was not
+purchased with the same air as if it were gratuitously accepted; that
+six years back, at Warsaw, there was nothing to be done but to prepare
+festivals; while at Wilna, where the whole power of Russia had just been
+exhibited, where its army was known to be untouched, and the motives of
+its retreat understood, it was for battles that preparation was to be
+made.
+
+"And with what means? Why was not that liberty offered to them in 1807?
+Lithuania was then rich and populous. Since that time the continental
+system, by sealing up the only vent for its productions, had
+impoverished it, while Russian foresight had depopulated it of recruits,
+and more recently of a multitude of nobles, peasants, waggons, and
+cattle, which the Russian army had carried away with it."
+
+To these causes they added "the famine resulting from the severity of
+the season in 1811, and the damage to which the over-rich wheats of
+those countries are subject. But why not make an appeal to the provinces
+of the south? In that quarter there were men, horses, and provisions of
+all kinds. They had nothing to do but to drive away Tormasof and his
+army from them. Schwartzenberg was, perhaps, marching in that direction;
+but was it to the Austrians, the uneasy usurpers of Gallicia, that they
+ought to confide the liberation of Volhynia? Would they station liberty
+so near slavery? Why did not they send Frenchmen and Poles there? But
+then it would be necessary to halt, to carry on a more methodical war,
+and allow time for organization; while Napoleon, doubtless urged by his
+distance from his own territory, by the daily expense of provisioning
+his immense army, depending on that alone, and hurrying after victory,
+sacrificed every thing to the hope of finishing the war at a single
+blow."
+
+Here the speakers were interrupted: these reasons, though true,
+appeared insufficient excuses. "They concealed the most powerful cause
+of the immobility of their countrymen; it was to be discovered in the
+interested attachment of their grandees to the crafty policy of Russia,
+which flattered their self-love, respected their customs, and secured
+their right over the peasants, whom the French came to set free.
+Doubtless, national independence appeared too dear a purchase at such a
+price."
+
+This reproach was well founded, and although it was not personal, the
+Lithuanian generals became irritated at it. One of them exclaimed, "You
+talk of our independence; but it must be in great peril, since you, at
+the head of 400,000 men, are afraid to commit yourselves by its
+recognition; indeed, you have not recognized it either by your words or
+actions. You have placed auditors, men quite new, at the head of an
+administration equally new, to govern our provinces. They levy heavy
+contributions, but they forget to inform us for whom it is that we make
+such sacrifices, as are only made for our country. They exhibit to us
+the emperor everywhere, but the republic hitherto nowhere. You have held
+out no object to set us in motion, and you complain of our being
+unsteady. Persons whom we do not respect as our countrymen, you set over
+us as our chiefs. Notwithstanding our entreaties, Wilna remains
+separated from Warsaw; disunited as we thus are, you require of us that
+confidence in our strength which union alone can give. The soldiers you
+expect from us are offered you; 30,000 would be now ready; but you have
+refused them arms, clothing, and the money in which we are deficient."
+
+All these imputations might still have been combated; but he added:
+"True, we do not market for liberty, but we find that in fact it is not
+disinterestedly offered. Wherever you go, the report of your disorders
+precedes your march; nor are they partial, since your army marches upon
+a line of fifty leagues in front. Even at Wilna, notwithstanding the
+multiplied orders of your emperor, the suburbs have been pillaged, and
+it is natural that a liberty which brings such licence with it should be
+mistrusted.
+
+"What then do you expect from our zeal? A happy countenance,
+acclamations of joy, accents of gratitude?--when every day each of us is
+apprised that his villages and granaries are devastated; for the little
+which the Russians did not carry away with them, your famishing columns
+have devoured. In their rapid marches, a multitude of marauders of all
+nations, against whom it is necessary to keep on the watch, detach
+themselves from their wings.
+
+"What do you require more? that our countrymen should throng your
+passage; bring you their grain and cattle; that they should offer
+themselves completely armed and ready to follow you? Alas! what have
+they to give you? Your pillagers take all; there is not even time for
+them to make you the offer. Turn your eyes round towards the entrance of
+the imperial head-quarters. Do you see that man? He is all but naked; he
+groans and extends towards you a hand of supplication. That unhappy man
+who excites your pity, is one of those very nobles whose assistance you
+look for: yesterday, he was hurrying to meet you, full of ardour, with
+his daughter, his vassals, and his wealth; he was coming to present
+himself to your emperor; but he met with some Wurtemberg pillagers on
+his way, and was robbed of every thing; he is no longer a father,--he is
+scarcely a man."
+
+Every one shuddered, and hurried to assist him; Frenchmen, Germans,
+Lithuanians, all agreed in deploring those disorders, for which no one
+could suggest a remedy. How, in fact, was it possible to restore
+discipline among such immense masses, so precipitately propelled,
+conducted by so many leaders of different manners, characters, and
+countries, and forced to resort to plunder for subsistence?
+
+In Prussia, the emperor had only caused the army to supply itself with
+provisions for twenty days. This was as much as was necessary for the
+purpose of gaining Wilna by a battle. Victory was to have done the rest,
+but that victory was postponed by the retreat of the enemy. The emperor
+might have waited for his convoys; but as by surprising the Russians he
+had separated them, he did not wish to forego his grasp and lose his
+advantage. He, therefore, pushed forward on their track 400,000 men,
+with twenty days' provisions, into a country which was incapable of
+feeding the 20,000 Swedes of Charles XII.
+
+It was not for want of foresight; for immense convoys of oxen followed
+the army, either in herds, or attached to the provision cars. Their
+drivers had been organized into battalions. It is true that the latter,
+wearied with the slow pace of these heavy animals, either slaughtered
+them, or suffered them to die of want. A great number, however, got as
+far as Wilna and Minsk; some reached Smolensk, but too late; they could
+only be of service to the recruits and reinforcements which followed us.
+
+On the other hand, Dantzic contained so much corn, that she alone might
+have fed the whole army; she also supplied Königsberg. Its provisions
+had ascended the Pregel in large barges up to Vehlau, and in lighter
+craft as far as Insterburg. The other convoys went by land-carriage from
+Königsberg to Labiau, and from thence, by means of the Niemen and the
+Vilia, to Kowno and Wilna. But the water of the Vilia having shrunk so
+much through drought as to be incapable of floating these transports, it
+became necessary to find other means of conveyance.
+
+Napoleon hated jobbers. It was his wish that the administration of the
+army should organize the Lithuanian waggons; 500 were assembled, but the
+appearance of them disgusted him. He then permitted contracts to be made
+with the Jews, who are the only traders in the country; and the
+provisions stopped at Kowno at last arrived at Wilna, but the army had
+already left it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+It was the largest column, that of the centre, which suffered most; it
+followed the road which the Russians had ruined, and of which the French
+advanced guard had just completed the spoliation. The columns which
+proceeded by lateral routes found necessaries there, but were not
+sufficiently careful in collecting and in economizing them.
+
+The responsibility of the calamities which this rapid march occasioned
+ought not, therefore, to be laid entirely on Napoleon, for order and
+discipline were maintained in the army of Davoust; it suffered less from
+dearth: it was nearly the same with that of Prince Eugene. When pillage
+was resorted to in these two corps, it was always with method, and
+nothing but necessary injury was inflicted; the soldiers were obliged to
+carry several days' provisions, and prevented from wasting them. The
+same precautions should have been taken elsewhere; but, whether it was
+owing to the habit of making war in fertile countries, or to habitual
+ardour of constitution, many of the other chiefs thought much less of
+administering than of fighting.
+
+On that account, Napoleon was frequently compelled to shut his eyes to a
+system of plunder which he vainly prohibited: too well aware, also, of
+the attraction which that mode of subsistence had for the soldier; that
+it made him love war, because it enriched him; that it pleased him, in
+consequence of the authority which it frequently gave him over classes
+superior to his own; that in his eyes it had all the charm of a war of
+the poor against the rich; finally, that the pleasure of being, and
+proving that he was the strongest, was under such circumstances
+incessantly repeated and brought home to him.
+
+Napoleon, however, grew indignant at the intelligence of these excesses.
+He issued a threatening proclamation, and he directed moveable columns
+of French and Lithuanians to see to its execution. We, who were
+irritated at the sight of the pillagers, were eager to pursue and punish
+them; but when we had stripped them of the bread, or of the cattle which
+they had been robbing, and when we saw them, slowly retiring, sometimes
+eyeing us with a look of condensed despair, sometimes bursting into
+tears; and when we heard them murmuring, that, "not content with giving
+them nothing, we wrested every thing from them, and that, consequently,
+our intention must be to let them perish of hunger;" We, then, in our
+turn, accusing ourselves of barbarity to our own people, called them
+back, and restored their prey to them. Indeed, it was imperious
+necessity which impelled to plunder. The officers themselves had no
+other means of subsistence than the share which the soldiers allowed
+them.
+
+A position of so much excess engendered fresh excesses. These rude men,
+with arms in their hands, when assailed by so many immoderate wants,
+could not remain moderate. When they arrived near any habitations, they
+were famished; at first they asked, but, either for want of being
+understood, or from the refusal or impossibility of the inhabitants to
+satisfy their demands, and of their inability to wait, altercations
+generally arose; then, as they became more and more exasperated with
+hunger, they became furious, and after tumbling either cottage or palace
+topsy-turvy, without finding the subsistence they were in quest of,
+they, in the violence of their despair, accused the inhabitants of being
+their enemies, and revenged themselves on the proprietors by destroying
+their property.
+
+There were some who actually destroyed themselves, rather than proceed
+to such extremities; others did the same after having done so: these
+were the youngest. They placed their foreheads on their muskets, and
+blew out their brains in the middle of the high-road. But many became
+hardened; one excess led them to another, as people often grow angry
+with the blows which they inflict. Among the latter, some vagabonds took
+vengeance of their distresses upon persons; in the midst of so
+inauspicious an aspect of nature, they became denaturalized; abandoned
+to themselves at so great a distance from home, they imagined that every
+thing was allowed them, and that their own sufferings authorized them in
+making others suffer.
+
+In an army so numerous, and composed of so many nations, it was natural
+also to find more malefactors than in smaller ones: the causes of so
+many evils induced fresh ones; already enfeebled by famine, it was
+necessary to make forced marches in order to escape from it, and to
+reach the enemy. At night when they halted, the soldiers thronged into
+the houses; there, worn out with fatigue and want, they threw themselves
+upon the first dirty straw they met with.
+
+The most robust had barely spirits left to knead the flour which they
+found, and to light the ovens with which all those wooden houses were
+supplied; others had scarcely strength to go a few paces in order to
+make the fires necessary to cook some food; their officers, exhausted
+like themselves, feebly gave orders to take more care, and neglected to
+see that their orders were obeyed. A piece of burnt wood, at such times
+escaping from an oven, or a spark from the fire of the bivouacs, was
+sufficient to set fire to a castle or a whole village, and to cause the
+deaths of many unfortunate soldiers who had taken refuge in them. In
+other respects, these disorders were very rare in Lithuania.
+
+The emperor was not ignorant of these details, but he had committed
+himself too far. Even at Wilna, all these disorders had taken place; the
+Duke of Treviso, among others, informed him, "that he had seen, from the
+Niemen to the Vilia, nothing but ruined habitations, and baggage and
+provision-waggons abandoned; they were found dispersed on the highways
+and in the fields, overturned, broke open, and their contents scattered
+here and there, and pillaged, as if they had been taken by the enemy: he
+should have imagined himself following a defeated army. Ten thousand
+horses had been killed by the cold rains of the great storm, and by the
+unripe rye, which had become their new and only food. Their carcases
+were lying encumbering the road: they sent forth a mephitic smell
+impossible to breathe: it was a new scourge, which some compared to
+famine, but much more terrible: several soldiers of the young guard had
+already perished of hunger."
+
+Up to that point Napoleon listened with calmness, but here he abruptly
+interrupted the speaker. Wishing to escape from distress by incredulity,
+he exclaimed, "It is impossible! where are their twenty days' provisions?
+Soldiers well commanded never die of hunger."
+
+A general, the author of this last report, was present. Napoleon turned
+towards him; appealed to him, and pressed him with questions; and that
+general, either from weakness or uncertainty, replied, "that the
+individuals referred to had not died of hunger, but of intoxication."
+
+The emperor then remained convinced that the privations of the soldiers
+had been exaggerated to him. As to the rest, he exclaimed, "The loss of
+the horses must be borne with; of some equipages, and even some
+habitations; it was a torrent that rolled away: it was the worst side of
+the picture of war; an evil exchanged for a good; to misery her share
+must be given; his treasures, his benefits would repair the loss: one
+great result would make amends for all; he only required a single
+victory; if sufficient means remained for accomplishing that, he should
+be satisfied."
+
+The duke remarked, that a victory might be overtaken by a more
+methodical march, followed by the magazines; but he was not listened to.
+Those to whom this marshal (who had just returned from Spain,)
+complained, replied to him, "That, in fact the emperor grew angry at the
+account of evils, which he considered irremediable, his policy imposing
+on him the necessity of a prompt and decisive victory."
+
+They added, "that they saw too clearly that the health of their leader
+was impaired; and that being compelled, notwithstanding, to throw
+himself into positions more and more critical, he could not survey,
+without ill temper, the difficulties which he passed by, and suffered to
+accumulate behind him; difficulties which he then affected to treat with
+contempt, in order to disguise their importance, and preserve the energy
+of mind which he himself required to surmount them. This was the reason
+that, being already disturbed and fatigued by the new and critical
+situation into which he had thrown himself, and impatient to escape from
+it, he kept marching on, always pushing his army forward, in order to
+bring matters sooner to a termination."
+
+Thus it was that Napoleon was constrained to shut his eyes to facts. It
+is well known that the greater part of his ministers were not
+flatterers. Both facts and men spoke sufficiently; but what could they
+teach him? Of what was he ignorant? Had not all his preparations been
+dictated by the most clear-sighted foresight? What could be said to him,
+which he had not himself said and written a hundred times? It was after
+having anticipated the minutest details; having prepared for every
+inconvenience, having provided every thing for a slow and methodical
+war, that he divested himself of all these precautions, that he
+abandoned all these preparations, and suffered himself to be hurried
+away by habit, by the necessity of short wars, of rapid victories, and
+sudden treaties of peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+It was in the midst of these grave circumstances that Balachoff, a
+minister of the Russian emperor, presented himself with a flag of truce
+at the French advanced posts. He was received, and the army, now become
+less ardent, indulged anticipations of peace.
+
+He brought this message from Alexander to Napoleon, "That it was not yet
+too late to negotiate; a war which the soil, the climate, and the
+character of Russia, rendered interminable, was begun; but all
+reconciliation was not become impossible, and from one bank of the
+Niemen to the other they might yet come to an understanding." He,
+moreover, added, "that his master declared, in the face of Europe, that
+he was not the aggressor; that his ambassador at Paris, in demanding his
+passports, did not consider himself as having broken the peace; that
+thus, the French had entered Russia without a declaration of war." There
+were, however, no fresh overtures, either verbal or written, presented
+by Balachoff.
+
+The choice of this flag of truce had been remarked; he was the minister
+of the Russian police; that office required an observant spirit, and it
+was thought that he was sent to exercise it amongst us. What rendered us
+more mistrustful of the character of the negotiator was, that the
+negotiation appeared to have no character, unless it were that of great
+moderation, which, under the actual circumstances, was taken for
+weakness.
+
+Napoleon did not hesitate. He would not stop at Paris; how could he then
+retreat at Wilna? What would Europe think? What result could he exhibit
+to the French and allied armies as a motive for so many fatigues; for
+such vast movements; for such enormous individual and national
+expenditure: it would be confessing himself vanquished. Besides, his
+language before so many princes, since his departure from Paris, had
+pledged him as much as his actions; so that, in fact, he found himself
+as much compromised on the score of his allies as of his enemies. Even
+then, it is said, the warmth of conversation with Balachoff hurried him
+away. "What had brought him to Wilna? What did the Emperor of Russia
+want with him? Did he pretend to resist him? He was only a parade
+general. As to himself, his head was his counsellor; from that every
+thing proceeded. But as to Alexander,--who was there to counsel him?
+Whom had he to oppose to him? He had only three generals,--Kutusof, whom
+he did not like, because he was a Russian; Beningsen, superannuated six
+years ago, and now in his second childhood; and Barclay: the last could
+certainly manoeuvre; he was brave; he understood war; but he was a
+general only good for a retreat." And he added, "You all believe
+yourselves to understand the art of war, because you have read Jomini;
+but if his book could have taught it you, do you think that I should
+have allowed it to be published?" In this conversation, of which the
+above is the Russian version, it is certain that he added, "that,
+however, the Emperor Alexander had friends even in the imperial
+head-quarters." Then, pointing out Caulaincourt to the Russian minister,
+"There," said he, "is a knight of your emperor; he is a Russian in the
+French camp."
+
+Probably Caulaincourt did not sufficiently comprehend, that by that
+expression Napoleon only wished to point him out as a negotiator who
+would be agreeable to Alexander; for as soon as Balachoff was gone, he
+advanced towards the emperor, and in an angry tone, asked him why he had
+insulted him? exclaiming, "that he was a Frenchman! a true Frenchman!
+that he had proved it already; and would prove it again by repeating,
+that this war was impolitic and dangerous; that it would destroy his
+army, France, and himself. That, as to the rest, as he had just insulted
+him, he should quit him; that all that he asked of him was a division in
+Spain, where nobody wished to serve, and the furthest from his presence
+possible." The emperor attempted to appease him; but not being able to
+obtain a hearing, he withdrew, Caulaincourt still pursuing him with his
+reproaches. Berthier, who was present at this scene, interposed without
+effect. Bessičres, more in the back-ground, had vainly tried to detain
+Caulaincourt by holding him by the coat.
+
+The next day, Napoleon was unable to bring his grand equerry into his
+presence, without formal and repeated orders. At length he appeased him
+by caresses, and by the expression of an esteem and attachment which
+Caulaincourt well deserved. But he dismissed Balachoff with verbal and
+inadmissible proposals.
+
+Alexander made no reply to them; the full importance of the step he had
+just taken was not at the time properly comprehended. It was his
+determination neither to address nor even answer Napoleon any more. It
+was a last word before an irreparable breach; and that circumstance
+rendered it remarkable.
+
+Meantime, Murat pursued the flying steps of that victory which was so
+much coveted; he commanded the cavalry of the advanced guard; he at last
+reached the enemy on the road to Swentziani, and drove him in the
+direction of Druďa. Every morning, the Russian rear-guard appeared to
+have escaped him; every evening he overtook it again, and attacked it,
+but always in a strong position, after a long march, too late, and
+before his men had taken any refreshment; there were, consequently,
+every day fresh combats, producing no important results.
+
+Other chiefs, by other routes, followed the same direction. Oudinot had
+passed the Vilia beyond Kowno, and already in Samogitia, to the north of
+Wilna, at Deweltowo, and at Vilkomir, had fallen in with the enemy, whom
+he drove before him towards Dünabourg. In this manner he marched on, to
+the left of Ney and the King of Naples, whose right was flanked by
+Nansouty. From the 15th of July, the river Düna, from Disna to
+Dünabourg, had been approached by Murat, Montbrun, Sebastiani, and
+Nansouty, by Oudinot and Ney, and by three divisions of the 1st corps,
+placed under the orders of the Count de Lobau.
+
+It was Oudinot who presented himself before Dünabourg: he made an
+attempt on that town, which the Russians had vainly attempted to
+fortify. This too eccentric march of Oudinot displeased Napoleon. The
+river separated the two armies. Oudinot re-ascended it in order to put
+himself in communication with Murat; and Wittgenstein, in order to form
+a junction with Barclay. Dünabourg remained without assailants and
+without defenders.
+
+On his march, Wittgenstein had a view, from the right bank, of Druďa,
+and a vanguard of French cavalry, which occupied that town with too
+negligent a security. Encouraged by the approach of night, he made one
+of his corps pass the river, and on the 15th, in the morning, the
+advanced posts of one of our brigades were surprised, sabred, and
+carried off. After this, Wittgenstein recalled his people to the right
+bank, and pursued his way with his prisoners, among whom was a French
+general. This _coup-de-main_ gave Napoleon reason to hope for a battle:
+believing that Barclay was resuming the offensive, he suspended, for a
+short time, his march upon Witepsk, in order to concentrate his troops
+and direct them according to circumstances. This hope, however, was of
+short duration.
+
+During these events, Davoust, at Osmiana, to the south of Wilna, had got
+sight of some scouts of Bagration, who was already anxiously seeking an
+outlet towards the north. Up to that time, short of a victory, the plan
+of the campaign adopted at Paris had completely succeeded. Aware that
+the enemy was extended over too long a defensive line, Napoleon had
+broken it by briskly attacking it in one direction, and by so doing had
+thrown it back and pursued its largest mass upon the Düna; while
+Bagration, whom he had not brought into contact till five days later,
+was still upon the Niemen. During an interval of several days, and over
+a front of eighty leagues, the manoeuvre was the same as that which
+Frederic the Second had often employed upon a line of two leagues, and
+during an interval of some few hours.
+
+Already Doctorof, and several scattered divisions of each of these two
+separated masses had only escaped by favour of the extent of the
+country, of chance, and of the usual causes of that ignorance, which
+always exists during war, as to what passes close at hand in the ranks
+of an enemy.
+
+Several persons have pretended that there was too much circumspection or
+too much negligence in the first operations of the invasion; that from
+the Vistula, the assailing army had received orders to march with all
+the precaution of one attacked; that the aggression once commenced, and
+Alexander having fled, the advanced guard of Napoleon ought to have
+re-ascended the two banks of the Vilia with more celerity and more in
+advance, and that the army of Italy should have followed this movement
+more closely. Perhaps Doctorof, who commanded the left wing of Barclay,
+being forced to cross our line of attack, in order to fly from Lida
+toward Swentziany, might then have been made prisoner. Pajol repulsed
+him at Osmiana; but he escaped by Smorgony. Nothing but his baggage was
+taken; and Napoleon laid the blame of his escape on Prince Eugene,
+although he had himself prescribed to him every one of his movements.
+
+But the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, the 1st corps and the guard,
+very soon occupied and surrounded Wilna. There it was that, stretched
+out over his maps (which he was obliged to examine in that manner, on
+account of his short sight, which he shared with Alexander the Great and
+Frederic the Second), Napoleon followed the course of the Russian army;
+it was divided into two unequal masses: one with its emperor towards
+Drissa, the other with Bagration, who was still in the direction of Myr.
+
+Eighty leagues in front of Wilna, the Düna and the Boristhenes separate
+Lithuania from old Russia. At first, these two rivers run parallel to
+each other from east to west, leaving between them an interval of about
+twenty-five leagues of an unequal, woody, and marshy soil. They arrive
+in that manner from the interior of Russia, on its frontiers; at this
+point, at the same time, and as if in concert, they turn off; the one
+abruptly at Orcha towards the south; the other, near Witepsk, towards
+the north-west. It is in that new direction that their course traces the
+frontiers of Lithuania and old Russia.
+
+The narrow space which these two rivers leave between them before taking
+this opposite direction seems to constitute the entrance, and as it were
+the gates of Muscovy. It is the focus of the roads which lead to the two
+capitals of that empire.
+
+Napoleon's whole attention was directed to that point. By the retreat of
+Alexander upon Drissa, he foresaw that which Bagration would attempt to
+make from Grodno towards Witepsk, through Osmiana, Minsk, and
+Docktzitzy, or by Borizof; he determined to prevent it, and instantly
+pushed forward Davoust towards Minsk, between these two hostile bodies,
+with two divisions of infantry, the cuirassiers of Valence, and several
+brigades of light cavalry.
+
+On his right, the king of Westphalia was to drive Bagration on Davoust,
+who would cut off his communication with Alexander, make him surrender,
+and get possession of the course of the Boristhenes; on his left, Murat,
+Oudinot, and Ney, already before Drissa, were directed to keep Barclay
+and his emperor in their front; he himself with the _élite_ of his army,
+the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, and three divisions detached from
+Davoust, was to march upon Witepsk between Davoust and Murat, ready to
+join one or the other of them; in this manner penetrating and
+interposing between the two hostile armies, forcing himself between them
+and beyond them; finally, keeping them separate, not only by that
+central position, but by the uncertainty which it would create in
+Alexander as to which of his two capitals it would be requisite for him
+to defend. Circumstances would decide the rest.
+
+Such was Napoleon's plan on the 10th of July at Wilna; it was written in
+this form on that very day under his dictation, and corrected by his own
+hand, for one of his chiefs, the individual who was most concerned in
+its execution. Immediately, the movement, which was already begun,
+became general.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+The king of Westphalia then went along the Niemen at Grodno, with a view
+to repass it at Bielitza, to overpower the right of Bagration, put it to
+the rout, and pursue it.
+
+This Saxon, Westphalian, and Polish army had in front of it a general
+and a country both difficult to conquer. It fell to its lot to invade
+the elevated plain of Lithuania: there are the sources of the rivers
+which empty their waters into the Black and Baltic seas. But the soil
+there is slow in determining their inclination and their current, so
+that the waters stagnate and overflow the country to a great extent.
+Some narrow causeways had been thrown over those woody and marshy
+plains; they formed there long defiles, which Bagration was easily
+enabled to defend against the king of Westphalia. The latter attacked
+him carelessly; his advanced guard only three times encountered the
+enemy, at Nowogrodeck, at Myr, and at Romanof. The first rencontre was
+entirely to the advantage of the Russians; in the two others,
+Latour-Maubourg remained master of a sanguinary and contested field of
+battle.
+
+At the same time, Davoust, proceeding from Osmiana, extended his force
+towards Minsk and Ygumen, behind the Russian general, and made himself
+master of the outlet of the defiles, in which the king of Westphalia was
+compelling Bagration to engage himself.
+
+Between this general and his retreat was a river which takes its source
+in an infectious marsh; its uncertain, slow, and languid current, across
+a rotten soil, does not belie its origin; its muddy waters flow towards
+the south-east; its name possesses a fatal celebrity, for which it is
+indebted to our misfortunes.
+
+The wooden bridges, and long causeways, which, in order to approach it,
+had been thrown over the adjacent marshes, abut upon a town named
+Borizof, situated on its left bank, on the Russian side. This bank is
+generally higher than the right; a remark applicable to all the rivers
+which in this country run in the direction of one pole to the other,
+their eastern bank commanding their western bank, as Asia does Europe.
+
+This passage was important; Davoust anticipated Bagration there by
+taking possession of Minsk on the 8th of July, as well as the entire
+country from the Vilia to the Berezina; accordingly when the Russian
+prince and his army, summoned by Alexander, to the north, pushed forward
+their piquets, in the first instance upon Lida, and afterwards
+successively upon Olzania, Vieznowo, Troki, Bolzoď, and Sobsnicki, they
+came in contact with Davoust, and were forced to fall back upon their
+main body. They then bent their course a little more in the rear and to
+the right, and made a new attempt on Minsk, but there again they found
+Davoust. A scanty platoon of that marshal's vanguard was entering by one
+gate, when the advanced guard of Bagration presented itself at another;
+on which, the Russian retreated once more into his marshes, towards the
+south.
+
+At this intelligence, observing Bagration and 40,000 Russians cut off
+from the army of Alexander, and enveloped by two rivers and two armies,
+Napoleon exclaimed, "I have them!" In fact, it only required three
+marches more to have hemmed in Bagration completely. But Napoleon, who
+since accused Davoust of suffering the escape of the left wing of the
+Russians by remaining four days in Minsk, and afterwards, with more
+justice, the king of Westphalia, had just then placed that monarch under
+the orders of the marshal. It was this change, which was made too late,
+and in the midst of an operation, which destroyed the unity of it.
+
+This order arrived at the very moment when Bagration, repulsed from
+Minsk, had no other retreat open to him than a long and narrow causeway.
+It occurs on the marshes of Nieswig, Shlutz, Glusck, and Bobruisk.
+Davoust wrote to the king to push the Russians briskly into this defile,
+the outlet of which at Glusck he was about to occupy. Bagration would
+never have been able to get out of it. But the king, already irritated
+by the reproaches which the uncertainty and dilatoriness of his first
+operations had brought upon him, could not suffer a subject to be his
+commander; he quitted his army, without leaving any one to replace him,
+or without even communicating, if we are to credit Davoust, to any of
+his generals, the order which he had just received. He was permitted to
+retire into Westphalia without his guard; which he accordingly did.
+
+Meanwhile Davoust vainly waited for Bagration at Glusck. That general,
+not being sufficiently pressed by the Westphalian army, had the option
+of making a new _detour_ towards the south, to get to Bobruisk, and
+there cross the Berezina, and reach the Boristhenes near Bickof. There
+again, if the Westphalian army had had a commander, if that commander
+had pressed the Russian leader more closely, if he had replaced him at
+Bickof, when he came in collision with Davoust at Mohilef, it is certain
+that in that case Bagration, enclosed between the Westphalians, Davoust,
+the Boristhenes, and the Berezina, would have been compelled to conquer
+or to surrender We have seen that the Russian prince could not pass the
+Berezina but at Bobruisk, nor reach the Boristhenes, except in the
+direction of Novoď-Bikof, forty leagues to the south of Orcha, and sixty
+leagues from Witepsk, which it was his object to reach.
+
+Finding himself driven so far out of his track, he hastened to regain it
+by reascending the Boristhenes, to Mohilef. But there again he found
+Davoust, who had anticipated him at Lida by passing the Berezina at the
+very point at which Charles XII. had formerly done so.
+
+This marshal, however, had not expected to find the Russian prince on
+the road to Mohilef. He believed him to be already on the left bank of
+the Boristhenes. Their mutual surprise turned in the first instance to
+the advantage of Bagration, who cut off a whole regiment of his light
+cavalry. At that time Bagration had with him 35,000 men, Davoust 12,000.
+On the 23d of July, the latter chose an elevated ground, defended by a
+ravine, and flanked by two woods. The Russians had no means of extending
+themselves on this field of battle; they, nevertheless, accepted the
+challenge. Their numbers were there useless; they attacked like men sure
+of victory; they did not even think of profiting by the woods, in order
+to turn Davoust's right.
+
+The Muscovites say that, in the middle of the contest they were seized
+with a panic at the idea of finding themselves in the presence of
+Napoleon; for each of the enemy's generals imagined him to be opposed
+to them, Bagration at Mohilef; and Barclay at Drissa. He was believed to
+be in all places at once: so greatly does renown magnify the man of
+genius! so strangely does it fill the world with its fame! and convert
+him into an omnipresent and supernatural being!
+
+The attack was violent and obstinate on the part of the Russians, but
+without scientific combination. Bagration was roughly repulsed, and
+again compelled to retrace his steps. He finally crossed the Boristhenes
+at Novoď-Bikof, where he re-entered the Russian interior, in order
+finally to unite with Barclay, beyond Smolensk.
+
+Napoleon disdained to attribute this disappointment to the ability of
+the enemy's general; he referred it to the incapacity of his own. He
+already discovered that his presence was necessary every where, which
+rendered it every where impossible. The circle of his operations was so
+much enlarged, that, being compelled to remain in the centre, his
+presence was wanting on the whole of the circumference. His generals,
+exhausted like himself, too independent of each other, too much
+separated, and at the same time too dependent upon him, ventured to do
+less of themselves, and frequently waited for his orders. His influence
+was weakened over so great an extent. It required too great a soul for
+so great a body; his, vast as it was, was not sufficient for the
+purpose.
+
+But at length, on the 16th of July, the whole army was in motion. While
+all were hurrying and exerting themselves in this manner, he was still
+at Wilna, which he caused to be fortified. He there ordered a levy of
+eleven Lithuanian regiments. He established the duke of Bassano as
+governor of Lithuania, and as the centre of administrative, political,
+and even military communication between him, Europe, and the generals
+commanding the _corps de armée_ which were not to follow him to Moscow.
+
+This ostensible inactivity of Napoleon at Wilna lasted twenty days. Some
+thought that, finding himself in the centre of his operations with a
+strong reserve, he awaited the event, in readiness to direct his motions
+either towards Davoust, Murat, or Macdonald; others thought that the
+organization of Lithuania, and the politics of Europe, to which he was
+more proximate at Wilna, retained him in that city; or that he did not
+anticipate any obstacles worthy of him till he reached the Düna; a
+circumstance in which he was not deceived, but by which he was too much
+flattered. The precipitate evacuation of Lithuania by the Russians
+seemed to dazzle his judgment; of this Europe will be the best judge;
+his bulletins repeated his words.
+
+"Here then is that Russian empire, so formidable at a distance! It is a
+desert, for which its scattered population is wholly insufficient. They
+will be vanquished by its very extent, which ought to defend them. They
+are barbarians. They are scarcely possessed of arms. They have no
+recruits in readiness. Alexander will require more time to collect them
+than he will take to reach Moscow. It is true that, from the moment of
+the passage of the Niemen, the atmosphere has been incessantly deluging
+or drying up the unsheltered soil; but this calamity is less an obstacle
+to the rapidity of our advance, than an impediment to the flight of the
+Russians. They are conquered without a combat by their weakness alone;
+by the memory of our victories; by the remorse which dictates the
+restitution of that Lithuania, which they have acquired neither by peace
+nor war, but solely by treachery."
+
+To these motives of the stay, perhaps too protracted, which Napoleon
+made at Wilna, those who were nearest to his person have added another.
+They remarked to each other, "that a genius so vast as his, and always
+increasing in activity and audacity, was not now seconded as it had been
+formerly by a vigorous constitution. They were alarmed at finding their
+chief no longer insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they
+remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to
+corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished; the sure sign of a
+premature debility of system."
+
+Some of them attributed this to his frequent use of the bath. They were
+ignorant, that, far from being a habit of luxury, this had become to him
+an indispensable relief from a bodily ailment of a serious and alarming
+character[17], which his policy carefully concealed, in order not to
+excite cruel expectations in his adversaries.
+
+[Footnote 17: The _dysuria_, or retention of urine.]
+
+Such is the inevitable and unhappy influence of the most trivial causes
+over the destiny of nations. It will be shortly seen, when the
+profoundest combinations, which ought to have secured the success of the
+boldest, and perhaps the most useful enterprise in a European point of
+view, come to be developed;--how, at the decisive moment, on the plains
+of the Moskwa, nature paralysed the genius, and the man was wanting to
+the hero. The numerous battalions of Russia could not have defended her;
+a stormy day, a sudden attack of fever, were her salvation.
+
+It will be only just and proper to revert to this observation, when, in
+examining the picture which I shall be forced to trace of the battle of
+the Moskwa, I shall be found repeating all the complaints, and even the
+reproaches, which an unusual inactivity and languor extorted from the
+most devoted friends and constant admirers of this great man. Most of
+them, as well as those who have subsequently given an account of the
+battle, were unaware of the bodily sufferings of a chief, who, in the
+midst of his depression, exerted himself to conceal their cause. That
+which was eminently a misfortune, these narrators have designated as a
+fault.
+
+Besides, at 800 leagues' distance from one's home, after so many
+fatigues and sacrifices, at the instant when they saw the victory escape
+from their grasp, and a frightful prospect revealed itself, it was
+natural for them to be severe; and they had suffered too much, to be
+quite impartial.
+
+As for myself, I shall not conceal what I witnessed, in the persuasion
+that truth is of all tributes that which is alone worthy of a great
+man; of that illustrious captain, who had so often contrived to extract
+prodigious advantages from every occurrence, not excepting his reverses;
+of that man who raised himself to so great an eminence, that posterity
+will scarcely be enabled to distinguish the clouds scattered over a
+glory so brilliant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Meantime, he was apprised that his orders were fulfilled, his army
+united, and that a battle claimed his presence. He at length departed
+from Wilna on the 16th of July, at half-past eleven at night; he stopped
+at Swentziani, while the heat of the 17th was most oppressive; on the
+18th he was at Klubokoe: taking up his residence at a monastery, whence
+he observed that the village which it commanded bore more resemblance to
+an assemblage of savage huts than to European habitations.
+
+An address of the Russians to the French soldiers had just been
+dispersed throughout his army. He found in it some idle abuse, coupled
+with a nugatory and unskilful invitation to desert. His anger was
+excited at its perusal; in his first agitation, he dictated a reply,
+which he tore; then a second, which experienced the same fate; at length
+a third, with which he expressed himself satisfied. It was that which
+was, at the time, read in the journals, under the signature of a French
+grenadier. In this manner he dictated even the most trivial letters,
+which issued from his cabinet or from his staff; he perpetually reduced
+his ministers and Berthier to the condition of being mere secretaries;
+his mind still retained its activity, notwithstanding his sinking frame;
+their union, however, began to fail; and this was one cause of our
+misfortunes.
+
+In the midst of this occupation, he learned that Barclay had, on the
+18th, abandoned his camp at Drissa, and that he was marching towards
+Witepsk. This movement opened his eyes. Detained by the check which
+Sebastiani had received near Druďa, and more especially by the rains and
+bad state of the roads, he found (though perhaps too late) that the
+occupation of Witepsk was urgent and decisive; that that city alone was
+eminently aggressive, inasmuch as it separated the two hostile rivers
+and armies. From that position, he would be enabled to turn the broken
+army of his rival, cut him off from his southern provinces, and crush
+his weakness with superior force. He concluded that, if Barclay had
+anticipated him in reaching that capital, he would doubtless defend it:
+and there, perhaps, he was to expect that so-much-coveted victory which
+had escaped him on the Vilia. He, therefore, instantly directed all his
+corps on Beszenkowiczi; thither he summoned Murat and Ney, who were then
+near Polotsk, where he left Oudinot. For himself, he proceeded from
+Klubokoe (where he was surrounded by his guard, the Italian army, and
+three divisions detached from Davoust), to Kamen, always in a carriage,
+except during the night, either from necessity, or, perhaps, with a view
+to keep his soldiers in ignorance of the inability of their chief to
+share their fatigues.
+
+Till that time, the greater part of the army had proceeded with
+astonishment, at finding no enemy; they had now become habituated to the
+circumstance. By day the novelty of the places, and impatience to get to
+their journey's end, occupied their attention; at night the necessity of
+choosing or making for themselves a place of shelter; of finding food,
+and dressing it. The soldiers were so much engaged by so many cares,
+that they considered themselves less employed in making war than a
+troublesome journey; but if the war and the enemy were to fall back
+always thus, how much farther should they have to go in search of them?
+At length, on the 25th, the report of cannon was heard, and the army, as
+well as the emperor, indulged their hopes of a victory and peace.
+
+This was in the direction of Beszenkowiczi, Prince Eugene had there
+encountered Doctorof, who commanded Barclay's rear-guard. In following
+his leader from Polotsk to Witepsk, he cleared his way on the left bank
+of the Düna to Beszenkowiczi, the bridge of which he burnt as he
+retired. The viceroy, on capturing this town, came in sight of the Düna,
+and re-established the passage; the few Russian troops left in
+observation on the other side feebly opposed the operation. When
+Napoleon contemplated, for the first time, this river, his new
+conquest, he censured sharply, and not unjustly, the defective
+construction of the bridge which made him master of the two banks.
+
+It was no puerile vanity which induced him then to cross that river, but
+anxiety to see with his own eyes how far the Russian army had proceeded
+on its march from Drissa to Witepsk, and whether he might not attack it
+on its passage, or anticipate its arrival at the latter city. But the
+direction taken by the enemy's rear-guard, and the information obtained
+from some prisoners, convinced him that Barclay had been beforehand with
+him; that he had left Wittgenstein in front of Oudinot, and that the
+Russian general-in-chief was in Witepsk. He was, indeed, already
+prepared to dispute the possession of the defiles which cover that
+capital with Napoleon.
+
+Napoleon having observed on the right bank of the river nothing but the
+remains of a rear-guard, returned to Beszenkowiczi. His various
+divisions arrived there at the same time by the northern and western
+roads. His orders of march had been executed with so much precision,
+that all the corps which had left the Niemen, at different epochs, and
+by different routes, notwithstanding obstacles of every description,
+after a month of separation, and at a hundred leagues' distance from the
+point of their departure, found themselves all reunited at
+Beszenkowiczi, where they arrived on the same day, and nearly at the
+same hour.
+
+Great disorder was naturally the result; numerous columns of cavalry,
+infantry, and artillery presented themselves on all sides; contests
+took place for precedence; and each corps, exasperated with fatigue and
+hunger, was impatient to get to its destination. Meanwhile, the streets
+were blocked up with a crowd of orderlies, staff-officers, valets,
+saddle-horses, and baggage. They ran through the city in tumultuous
+groups; some looking for provisions, others for forage, and a few for
+lodgings; there was a constant crossing and jostling; and as the influx
+augmented every instant, chaos in a short time reigned throughout.
+
+In one quarter, _aides-de-camp_, the bearers of urgent orders, vainly
+sought to force a passage; the soldiers were deaf to their
+remonstrances, and even to their orders: hence arose quarrels and
+outcries; the noise of which, united with the beating of drums, the
+oaths of the waggoners, the rumbling of the baggage-carts and cannon,
+the commands of the officers, and, finally, with the tumult of the
+regular contests which took place in the houses, the entrances of which,
+while one party attempted to force, others, already established there,
+prepared to defend.
+
+At length, towards midnight, all these masses, which were nearly
+confounded together, got disentangled; the accumulation of troops
+gradually moved off in the direction of Ostrowno, or were distributed in
+Beszenkowiczi; and the most profound silence succeeded the most
+frightful tumult.
+
+This great concentration, the multiplied orders which came from all
+parts, the rapidity with which the various corps were pushed forward,
+even during the night--all announced the expectation of a battle on the
+following day. In fact, Napoleon not having been able to anticipate the
+Russians in the possession of Witepsk, was determined to force them from
+that position; but the latter, after having entered by the right bank of
+the Düna, had passed through that city, and were now come to meet him,
+in order to defend the long defiles which protect it.
+
+On the 25th of July, Murat proceeded towards Ostrowno with his cavalry.
+At the distance of two leagues from that village, Domon, Du Coëtlosquet,
+Carignan, and the 8th hussars, were advancing in column upon a broad
+road, lined by a double row of large birch trees. These hussars were
+near reaching the summit of a hill, on which they could only get a
+glimpse of the weakest portion of a corps, composed of three regiments
+of cavalry of the Russian guard, and six pieces of cannon. There was not
+a single rifleman to cover their line.
+
+The colonels of the 8th imagined themselves preceded by two regiments of
+their division, which had marched across the fields on the right and
+left of the road, and from the view of which they were precluded by the
+bordering trees. But these corps had halted; and the 8th, already
+considerably in advance of them, still kept marching on, persuaded that
+what it perceived through the trees, at 150 paces' distance, in its
+front, were these two regiments, of which, without being aware of it, it
+had got the start.
+
+The immobility of the Russians completed the error into which the
+chiefs of the 8th had fallen. The order to charge seemed to them to be a
+mistake; they sent an officer to reconnoitre the troop which was before
+them, and still marched on without any distrust. Suddenly they beheld
+their officer sabred, knocked down, made prisoner, and the enemy's
+cannon bringing down their hussars. They now hesitated no longer, and
+without losing time to extend their line under the enemy's fire, they
+dashed through the trees, and rushed forward to extinguish it. At the
+first onset they seized the cannon, dispersed the regiment that was in
+the centre of the enemy's line, and destroyed it. During the disorder of
+this first success, they observed the Russian regiment on the right,
+which they had passed, remaining motionless with astonishment; upon this
+they returned, and attacking it in the rear dispersed it. In the midst
+of this second victory, they perceived the third regiment on the enemy's
+left, which was giving way in confusion, and seeking to retreat; towards
+this third enemy they briskly returned, with all the men they could
+muster, and attacked and dispersed it in the midst of its retreat.
+
+Animated by this success, Murat drove the enemy into the wood of
+Ostrowno, where he seemed to conceal himself. That monarch endeavoured
+to penetrate the wood, but a strong resistance obstructed the attempt.
+
+The position of Ostrowno was well chosen and commanding; those posted
+there could see without being seen; it intersected the main road; it had
+the Düna on the right, a ravine in front, and thick woods on its
+surface and on the left. It was, moreover, in communication with
+magazines; it covered them, as well as Witepsk, the capital of these
+regions, which Ostermann had hurried to defend.
+
+On his side, Murat, always as prodigal of his life, which was now that
+of a victorious king, as he had formerly been when only an obscure
+soldier, persisted in attacks upon these woods, notwithstanding the
+heavy fire which proceeded from them. But he was soon made sensible that
+a furious onset was fruitless here. The ground carried by the hussars of
+the 8th was disputed with him, and his advance-column, composed of the
+divisions Bruyčres and Saint Germain, and of the 8th corps of infantry,
+was compelled to maintain itself there against an army.
+
+They defended themselves as victors always do, by attacking. Each
+hostile corps, as it presented itself to assail our flanks, was in turn
+assaulted. Their cavalry were driven back into the woods, and their
+infantry broken at the point of the sabre. Our troops, nevertheless,
+were getting fatigued with victory, when the division Delzons arrived;
+the king promptly pushed it forward on the right, toward the line of the
+enemy's retreat, who now became uneasy, and no longer disputed the
+victory.
+
+These defiles are several leagues in length. The same evening the
+viceroy rejoined Murat, and the next day they found the Russians in a
+new position. Pahlen and Konownitzin had united with Ostermann. After
+having repulsed the Russian left, the two French princes were pointing
+out to the troops of their right wing the position which was to serve
+them as a _point d'appui_, from which they were to make the attack, when
+suddenly a great clamour arose on their left: their eyes were instantly
+turned that way; the cavalry and infantry of that wing had twice
+attacked the enemy, and been twice repulsed; the Russians, emboldened by
+this success, were issuing in multitudes, and with frightful cries, from
+their woods. The audacity and fervour of attack had passed over to them,
+while the French exhibited the uncertainty and timidity of defence.
+
+A battalion of Croats, and the 84th regiment, vainly attempted to make a
+stand; their line gradually decreased; the ground in front of them was
+strewed with their dead; behind them, the plain was covered with their
+wounded, who had retired from the battle, with those who carried them,
+and with many others, who, under the plea of supporting the wounded, or
+being wounded themselves, successively abandoned their ranks. A rout
+accordingly began. Already the artillery corps, who are always picked
+men, perceiving themselves no longer supported, began retiring with
+their pieces; a few minutes longer, and the troops of all arms, in their
+flight towards the same defile, would have there met each other; thence
+would have resulted a confusion, in which the voices and the efforts of
+their officers would have been lost, where all the elements of
+resistance would have been confounded and rendered useless.
+
+It is said that Murat, on seeing this, darted forward in front of a
+regiment of Polish lancers; and that the latter, excited by the presence
+of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage
+at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only
+wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no
+intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in
+which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish
+lances were ready couched and condensed behind him; they covered the
+whole width of the ground; and they pushed him before them with all the
+rapidity of their steeds; he could neither detach himself from them nor
+stop; he had no resource but to charge in front of the regiment, just
+where he had stationed himself in order to harangue it; a resource to
+which, like a true soldier, he submitted with the best possible grace.
+
+At the same time, general Anthouard ran to his artillerymen, and general
+Girardin to the 106th regiment, which he halted, rallied, and led back
+against the Russian right wing, whose position he carried, as well as
+two pieces of cannon and the victory; on his side, general Piré
+encountered and turned the left of the enemy. Fortune having again
+changed sides, the Russians withdrew into their forests.
+
+Meanwhile, they persevered on the left in defending a thick wood, the
+advanced position of which broke our line. The 92d regiment,
+intimidated by the heavy fire which issued from it, and bewildered by a
+shower of balls, remained immoveable, neither daring to advance nor
+retreat, restrained by two opposite fears--the dread of danger and the
+dread of shame--and escaping neither; but general Belliard hastened to
+reanimate them by his words, and general Roussel by his example; and the
+wood was carried.
+
+By this success, a strong column which had advanced on our right, in
+order to turn it, was itself turned; Murat perceived this, and instantly
+drawing his sword, exclaimed, "Let the bravest follow me!" But this
+territory is intersected with ravines which protected the retreat of the
+Russians, who all plunged into a forest of two leagues in depth, which
+was the last natural curtain which concealed Witepsk from our view.
+
+After so warm a contest, the king of Naples and the viceroy were
+hesitating about committing themselves to so covered a country, when the
+emperor came up: both hastened to his presence, in order to show him
+what had been done, and what still remained to be done. Napoleon
+immediately ascended the highest rising ground, which was nearest to the
+enemy. From thence his genius, soaring over every obstacle, soon
+penetrated the mystery of the forests, and the depths of the mountains
+before him; he gave his orders without hesitation; and the same woods
+which had arrested the audacity of the two princes, were traversed from
+end to end. In short, that very evening, Witepsk might have discerned
+from the summit of her double eminence our light troops emerging into
+the plain by which she is surrounded.
+
+Here, every thing contributed to stop the emperor; the night, the
+multitude of hostile fires which covered the plain, an unknown country,
+which it was necessary to reconnoitre, in order to direct his divisions
+across it, and especially the time requisite to enable the crowd of
+soldiers to disengage themselves from the long and narrow defile through
+which they had to pass. A halt was therefore ordered, for the purpose of
+taking breath, reconnoitring, rallying, refreshing, and getting their
+arms ready for the next day. Napoleon slept in his tent, on an eminence
+to the left of the main road, and behind the village of Kukowiaczi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+On the 27th, the emperor appeared at the advanced posts before daylight;
+its first rays exhibited to him at last the Russian army encamped on an
+elevated plain, which commands all the avenues of Witepsk. The river
+Luczissa, which has worn itself a deep channel, marked the foot of this
+position. In advance of it 10,000 horse and some infantry made a show of
+defending its approaches; the infantry was in the centre, on the main
+road; its left in woody uplands; all the cavalry to the right in double
+lines, supported by the Düna.
+
+The front of the Russians was no longer opposite to our column, but upon
+our left; it had changed its direction with that of the river, which a
+winding had removed from us. The French column, after having crossed, by
+means of a narrow bridge, the ravine which divided it from the new field
+of battle, was obliged to deploy by a change of front to the left, with
+the right wing foremost, in order to preserve the support of the river
+on that side, and so confront the enemy: on the banks of this ravine,
+near the bridge, and to the left of the main-road, there was an isolated
+hillock which had already attracted the notice of the emperor. From that
+point he could see both armies, being stationed on the flank of the
+field of battle, like the second in a duel.
+
+Two hundred Parisian _voltigeurs_ of the 9th regiment of the line were
+the first to debouch; they were immediately pushed forward to the left,
+in front of the whole Russian cavalry, like them supporting themselves
+by the Düna, and marking the left of the new line; the 16th horse
+chasseurs followed, and then some light pieces. The Russians coolly
+allowed us to defile before them, and mature our attack.
+
+Their inactivity was favourable to us; but the king of Naples, whose
+brain was intoxicated by the general notice he attracted, yielding to
+his usual impetuosity, urged the chasseurs of the 16th on the whole body
+of the Russian cavalry. All eyes beheld with terror that feeble French
+line, broken on its march by the deep ravines which intersected the
+ground, advance to attack the enemy's masses. These unfortunate men,
+feeling themselves sacrificed, proceeded with hesitating steps to
+certain destruction. In consequence, at the first movement made by the
+lancers of the Russian guard, they took to flight; but the ravine, which
+it was necessary to pass, obstructed their flight; they were overtaken,
+and precipitated into these shoals, where many of them perished.
+
+At sight of this, Murat, grieved beyond measure, precipitated himself,
+sabre in hand, in the midst of this medley, with the sixty officers and
+horsemen surrounding him. His audacity so astonished the Russian
+lancers, that they halted. While this prince was engaged, and the
+_piqueur_ who followed him saved his life by striking down an enemy
+whose arm was raised over his head, the remains of the 16th rallied, and
+went to seek shelter close to the 53d regiment, which protected them.
+
+This successful charge of the lancers of the Russian guard had carried
+them as far as the foot of the hillock from which Napoleon was directing
+the different corps. Some chasseurs of the French guard had just
+dismounted from their horses, according to custom, in order to form a
+circle around him; a few discharges from their carabines drove off the
+assailant lancers. The latter, being thus repulsed, encountered on their
+return the two hundred Parisian _voltigeurs_, whom the flight of the
+16th horse chasseurs had left alone between the two armies. These they
+attacked, and all eyes were instantly fixed on the engagement.
+
+Both armies concluded these foot soldiers to be lost; but though
+single-handed, they did not despair of themselves. In the first
+instance, their captains, by dint of hard fighting, obtained possession
+of a ground intersected by cavities and thickets which bordered on the
+Düna; there the whole party instantly united, urged by their warlike
+habits, by the desire of mutual support, and by the danger which stared
+them in the face. In this emergency, as always happens in imminent
+dangers, each looked to his neighbour; the young to their elders, and
+all of them to their chiefs, in order to read in their countenances what
+they had to hope, to fear, or to perform; each aspect was replete with
+confidence, and all, relying on their comrades, relied at the same time
+more upon themselves.
+
+The ground was skilfully turned to account. The Russian lancers,
+entangled in the bushes, and obstructed by the crevices, couched their
+long lances in vain; they were struck by our people's balls while they
+were endeavouring to penetrate their ranks, and fell, wounded, to the
+earth; their bodies, and those of their horses, added to the
+difficulties of the ground. At length they became discouraged, and took
+to flight. The joyful shouts of our army, the crosses of honour, which
+the emperor instantly sent to the bravest of the group, his words,
+afterwards perused by all Europe,--all taught these valiant soldiers the
+extent of a glory, which they had not yet estimated; noble actions
+generally appearing quite ordinary to those who perform them. They
+imagined themselves on the point of being killed or taken; and found
+themselves almost at the same instant victorious and rewarded.
+
+Meanwhile, the army of Italy and the cavalry of Murat, followed by three
+divisions of the first corps, which had been confided, since they left
+Wilna, to count Lobau, attacked the main-road and the woods which formed
+the support of the enemy's left. The engagement was, in the first
+instance, very animated; but it terminated abruptly. The Russian
+vanguard retreated precipitately behind the ravine of the Luczissa, to
+escape being thrown into it. The enemy's army was then entirely
+collected on the opposite bank, and presented a united body of 80,000
+men.
+
+Their determined countenance, in a strong position, and in front of a
+capital, deceived Napoleon; he conceived that they would regard it as a
+point of honour to maintain their ground. It was only eleven o'clock; he
+ordered the attack to cease, in order to have an opportunity of
+exploring the whole front of the line, and preparing for a decisive
+battle on the following day. In the first instance, he proceeded to post
+himself on a rising ground among the light troops, in the midst of whom
+he breakfasted. Thence he observed the enemy's army, a ball from which
+wounded an officer very near him. The subsequent hours he spent in
+reconnoitring the ground, and in waiting for the arrival of the other
+corps.
+
+Napoleon announced a battle for the following day. His parting words to
+Murat were these:--"To-morrow at five o'clock, the sun of Austerlitz!"
+They explain the cause of that suspension of hostilities in the middle
+of the day, in the midst of a success which filled the army with
+enthusiasm. They were astonished at this inactivity at the moment of
+overtaking an army, the pursuit of which had completely exhausted them.
+Murat, who had been daily deluded by a similar expectation, remarked to
+the emperor that Barclay only made a demonstration of boldness at that
+hour, in order to be enabled more tranquilly to effect his retreat
+during the night. Finding himself unable to convince his chief, he
+rashly proceeded to pitch his tent on the banks of the Luczissa, almost
+in the midst of the enemy. It was a position which gratified his desire
+of hearing the first symptoms of their retreat, his hope of disturbing
+it, and his adventurous character.
+
+Murat was deceived, and yet he appeared to have been most clear-sighted;
+Napoleon was in the right, and yet, the event placed him in the wrong;
+such are the freaks of fortune! The emperor of the French had correctly
+appreciated the designs of Barclay. The Russian general, believing
+Bagration to be still near Orcha, had resolved upon fighting, in order
+to give him time to rejoin him. It was the intelligence which he
+received that very evening, of the retreat of Bagration by Novoď-Bikof
+towards Smolensk, which suddenly changed his determination.
+
+In fact, by daybreak on the 28th, Murat sent word to the emperor that he
+was about to pursue the Russians, who had already disappeared. Napoleon
+still persisted in his opinion, obstinately affirming that the whole
+enemy's army was in front of him, and that it was necessary to advance
+with circumspection; this occasioned a considerable delay. At length he
+mounted his horse; every step he took destroyed his illusion; and he
+soon found himself in the midst of the camp which Barclay had just
+deserted.
+
+Every thing about it exhibited the science of war; its advantageous
+site; the symmetry of all its parts; the exact and exclusive nicety in
+the use to which each of them had been destined; the order and neatness
+which thence resulted; in fine, nothing left behind, not one weapon, nor
+a single valuable; no trace, nothing in short, in this sudden nocturnal
+march, which could demonstrate, beyond the bounds of the camp, the route
+which the Russians had taken; there appeared more order in their defeat,
+than in our victory! Though conquered, their flight left us lessons by
+which conquerors never profit; whether it be that good fortune is
+contemptuous, or that it waits for misfortune to correct it.
+
+A Russian soldier, who was surprised asleep under a bush, was the
+solitary result of that day, which was expected to be so decisive. We
+entered Witepsk, which was found equally deserted with the camp of the
+Russians. Some filthy Jews, and some Jesuits, were all that remained;
+they were interrogated, but without effect. All the roads were
+abortively reconnoitred. Were the Russians gone to Smolensk? Had they
+re-ascended the Düna? At length, a band of irregular cossacks attracted
+us in the latter direction, while Ney explored the former. We marched
+six leagues over a deep sand, through a thick dust, and a suffocating
+heat. Night arrested our march in the neighbourhood of Aghaponovcht-china.
+
+While parched, fevered, and exhausted by fatigue and hunger, the army
+met with nothing there but muddy water. Napoleon, the King of Naples,
+the Viceroy, and the Prince of Neufchatel, held a council in the
+imperial tents, which were pitched in the court-yard of a castle,
+situated upon an eminence to the left of the main road.
+
+"That victory which was so fervently desired, so rapidly pursued, and
+rendered more necessary by the lapse of every succeeding day, had, it
+seemed, just escaped from our grasp, as it had at Wilna. True, we had
+come up with the Russian rear-guard; but was it that of their army? Was
+it not more likely that Barclay had fled towards Smolensk by way of
+Rudnia? Whither, then, must we pursue the Russians, in order to compel
+them to fight? Did not the necessity of organizing reconquered
+Lithuania, of establishing magazines and hospitals, of fixing a new
+centre of repose, of defence, and departure for a line of operations
+which prolonged itself in so alarming a manner;--did not every thing,
+in short, decidedly prove the necessity of halting on the borders of old
+Russia?"
+
+An affray had just happened, not far from that, respecting which Murat
+was silent. Our vanguard had been repulsed; some of the cavalry had been
+obliged to dismount, in order to effect their retreat; others had been
+unable to bring off their extenuated horses, otherwise than by dragging
+them by the bridle. The emperor having interrogated Belliard on the
+subject, that general frankly declared, that the regiments were already
+very much weakened, that they were harassed to death, and stood in
+absolute need of rest; and that if they continued to march for six days
+longer, there would be no cavalry remaining, and that it was high time
+to halt.
+
+To these motives were added, the effects of a consuming sun reflected
+from burning sands. Exhausted as he was, the emperor now decided; the
+course of the Düna and of the Boristhenes marked out the French line.
+The army was thus quartered on the banks of these two rivers, and in the
+interval between them; Poniatowski and his Poles at Mohilef; Davoust and
+the first corps at Orcha, Dubrowna, and Luibowiczi; Murat, Ney, the army
+of Italy and the guard, from Orcha and Dubrowna to Witepsk and Suraij.
+The advanced posts at Lyadi, Vinkowo, and Velij, opposite to those of
+Barclay and Bagration; for these two hostile armies, the one flying from
+Napoleon, across the Düna, by Drissa and Witepsk, the other, escaping
+Davoust across the Berezina and the Boristhenes, by way of Bobruisk,
+Bickof, and Smolensk, succeeded in forming a junction in the interval
+bounded by these two rivers.
+
+The great divisions of the army detached from the central body were then
+stationed as follows: To the right, Dombrowski, in front of Bobruisk and
+opposed to the corps of 12,000 men commanded by the Russian general
+Hoertel.
+
+To the left, the Duke of Reggio, and St. Cyr, at Polotsk and at Bieloé,
+on the Petersburgh road, which was defended by Wittgenstein and 30,000
+men.
+
+At the extreme left were Macdonald and 38,000 Prussians and Poles,
+before Riga. They extended their line towards the right upon the Aa, and
+in the direction of Dünabourg.
+
+At the same time, Schwartzenberg and Regnier, at the head of the Saxon
+and Austrian corps, occupied, towards Slonim, the interval between the
+Niemen and the Bug, covering Warsaw and the rear of the grand army,
+which was menaced by Tormasof. The Duke of Belluno was on the Vistula
+with a reserve of 40,000 men; while Augereau assembled an eleventh army
+at Stettin.
+
+As to Wilna, the Duke of Bassano remained there, surrounded by the
+envoys of several courts. That minister governed Lithuania, communicated
+with all the chiefs, sent them the instructions which he received from
+Napoleon, and forwarded the provisions, recruits, and stragglers, as
+fast as they arrived.
+
+As soon as the emperor had made up his mind, he returned to Witepsk
+with his guard: there, on the 28th of July, in entering the imperial
+head-quarters, he laid down his sword, and abruptly depositing it on his
+maps, with which his tables were covered, he exclaimed; "Here I stop!
+here I must look round me; rally; refresh my army, and organize Poland.
+The campaign of 1812 is finished; that of 1813 will do the rest."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+With the conquest of Lithuania, the object of the war was attained, and,
+yet, the war appeared scarcely to have commenced; for places only had
+been vanquished, and not men. The Russian army was unbroken; its two
+wings, which had been separated by the vivacity of the first onset, had
+now united. We were in the finest season of the year. It was in this
+situation that Napoleon believed himself irrevocably decided to halt on
+the banks of the Boristhenes and the Düna. At that time, he could much
+more easily deceive others as to his intentions, as he actually deceived
+himself.
+
+His line of defence was already traced upon his maps; the siege-equipage
+was proceeding towards Riga; the left of the army would rest on that
+strong place; hence, proceeding to Dünabourg and Polotsk, it would
+maintain a menacing defensive. Witepsk, so easy to fortify, and its
+woody heights, would serve as an entrenched camp for the centre. Thence,
+towards the south, the Berezina and its marshes, covered by the
+Boristhenes, supply no other passage but a few defiles; a very few
+troops would be sufficient to guard them. Further on, Bobruisk marked
+out the right of this great line, and orders were given to obtain
+possession of that fortress. In addition, an insurrection of the
+populous provinces of the south was calculated on; they would assist
+Schwartzenberg in expelling Tormasof, and the army would be increased by
+their numerous cossacks. One of the greatest proprietors of these
+provinces, a nobleman in whom every thing was distinguished, even to his
+external appearance, hastened to join the liberators of his country. He
+it was whom the emperor intended for the leader of this insurrection.
+
+In this position nothing would be wanting. Courland would support
+Macdonald; Samogitia, Oudinot; the fertile plains of Klubokoe, the
+emperor; the southern provinces would effect the rest. In addition, the
+grand magazine of the army was at Dantzic; its intermediate ones at
+Wilna and Minsk. In this manner the army would be connected with the
+country which it had just set free; and all things appertaining to that
+country--its rivers, marshes, productions, and inhabitants, would be
+united with us: all things would be agreed for the purposes of defence.
+
+Such was Napoleon's plan. He was at that time seen exploring Witepsk and
+its environs, as if to reconnoitre places where he was likely to make a
+long residence. Establishments of all kinds were formed there.
+Thirty-six ovens, capable of baking at once 29,000 pounds of bread, were
+constructed. Neither was utility alone attended to; embellishment was
+also considered. Some stone houses spoiled the appearance of the square
+of the palace; the emperor ordered his guard to pull them down, and to
+clear away the rubbish. Indeed, he was already anticipating the
+pleasures of winter; Parisian actors must come to Witepsk; and as that
+city was abandoned, fair spectators must be attracted from Warsaw and
+Wilna.
+
+His star at that time enlightened his path: happy had it been for him,
+if he had not afterwards mistaken the movements of his impatience for
+the inspirations of genius. But, whatever may be said, it was by himself
+alone that he suffered himself to be hurried on; for in him every thing
+proceeded from himself; and it was a vain attempt to seduce his
+prudence. In vain did one of his marshals then promise him an
+insurrection of the Russians, in consequence of the proclamations which
+the officers of his advanced guard had been instructed to disseminate.
+Some Poles had intoxicated that general with inconsiderate promises,
+dictated by the delusive hope common to all exiles, with which they
+flatter the ambition of the leaders who rely upon them.
+
+But Murat was the individual whose incitements were most frequent and
+animated. Tired of repose, and insatiable of glory, that monarch, who
+considered the enemy to be within his grasp, was unable to repress his
+emotions. He quitted the advanced guard, went to Witepsk, and in a
+private interview with the emperor, gave way to his impetuosity. "He
+accused the Russian army of cowardice; according to him it had failed
+in the _rendezvous_ before Witepsk, as if it had been an affair of a
+duel. It was a panic-struck army, which his light cavalry alone was
+sufficient to put to flight." This ebullition extorted a smile from
+Napoleon; but in order to moderate his fervour, he said to him, "Murat!
+the first campaign in Russia is finished; let us here plant our eagles.
+Two great rivers mark out our position; let us raise block-houses on
+that line; let our fires cross each other on all sides; let us form in
+square battalion; cannons at the angles and the exterior; let the
+interior contain our quarters and our magazines: 1813 will see us at
+Moscow--1814 at Petersburgh. The Russian war is a war of three years!"
+
+It was thus that his genius conceived every thing in masses, and his eye
+expatiated over an army of 400,000 men as if it were a regiment.
+
+That very day he loudly addressed an administrator in the following
+words: "As for you, sir, you must take care to provide subsistence for
+us in these quarters; for," added he, in a loud voice, and addressing
+himself to some of his officers, "we shall not repeat the folly of
+Charles the Twelfth." But his actions in a short time belied his words;
+and there was a general astonishment at his indifference to giving the
+necessary orders for so great an establishment. To the left no
+instructions were sent to Macdonald, nor was he supplied with the means
+of obtaining possession of Riga. To the right, it was Bobruisk which it
+was necessary to capture; this fortress stands in the midst of an
+extensive and deep marsh; and it was to a body of cavalry that the task
+of besieging it was committed.
+
+Napoleon, in former times, scarcely ever gave orders without the
+possibility of being obeyed; but the prodigies of the war of Prussia had
+since occurred, and from that time the idea of impossibility was not
+admitted. His orders were always, that every thing must be attempted,
+because up to that time every thing had succeeded. This at first gave
+birth to great exertions, all of which, however, were not equally
+fortunate. Persons got discouraged; but their chief persevered; he had
+become accustomed to command every thing; those whom he commanded got
+accustomed not to execute every thing.
+
+Meantime Dombrowski was left before that fortress with his Polish
+division, which Napoleon stated at 8000 men, although he knew very well
+that it did not at that time amount to more than 1200; but such was his
+custom; either because he calculated on his words being repeated, and
+that they would deceive the enemy; or that he wished, by this
+exaggerated estimate, to make his generals feel all that he expected
+from them.
+
+Witepsk remained for survey. From the windows of its houses the eye
+looked down perpendicularly into the Düna, or to the very bottom of the
+precipices by which its walls are surrounded. In these countries the
+snow remains long upon the ground; it filters through its least solid
+parts, which it penetrates to a great depth, and which it dilutes and
+breaks down. Hence those deep and unexpected ravines, which no
+declination of the soil gives reason to foresee, which are imperceptible
+at some paces from their edge, and which on those vast plains surprised
+and suddenly arrested the charges of cavalry.
+
+The French would not have required more than a month to render that city
+sufficiently strong as even to stand a regular siege: the natural
+strength of the place was such as to require little assistance from art,
+but that little was denied it. At the same time a few millions, which
+were indispensable to effect the levy of the Lithuanian troops, were
+refused to them. Prince Sangutsko was to have gone and commanded the
+insurrection in the South, but he was retained in the imperial
+head-quarters.
+
+But the moderation of the first discourses of Napoleon had not deceived
+the members of his household. They recollected that, at the first view
+of the deserted camp of Barclay, and of Witepsk abandoned, when he heard
+them congratulating each other on this conquest, he turned sharply round
+to them and exclaimed, "Do you think then that I have come so far to
+conquer these huts?" They also knew perfectly, that when he had a great
+object in view, he never devised any other than a vague plan, preferring
+to take counsel of opportunity; a system more conformable to the
+promptitude of his genius.
+
+In other respects, the whole army was loaded with the favours of its
+commander. If he happened to meet with convoys of wounded, he stopped
+them, informed himself of their condition, of their sufferings, of the
+actions in which they had been wounded, and never quitted them without
+consoling them by his words, or making them partakers of his bounty.
+
+He bestowed particular attention on his guard; he himself daily reviewed
+some part of them, lavishing commendation, and sometimes blame; but the
+latter seldom fell on any but the administrators; which pleased the
+soldiers, and diverted their complaints.
+
+Every day he went and visited the ovens, tasted the bread, and satisfied
+himself of the regularity of all the distributions. He frequently sent
+wine from his table to the sentinel who was nearest to him. One day he
+assembled the _élite_ of his guards for the purpose of giving them a new
+leader; he made them a speech, and with his own hand and sword
+introduced him to them; afterwards he embraced him in their presence. So
+many attentions were ascribed by some, to his gratitude for the past; by
+others, to his exigency for the future.
+
+The latter saw clearly that Napoleon had at first flattered himself with
+the hope of receiving fresh overtures of peace from Alexander, and that
+the misery and debility of his army had occupied his attention. It was
+requisite to allow the long train of stragglers and sick sufficient
+time, the one for joining their corps, and the latter for reaching the
+hospitals. Finally, to establish these hospitals, to collect provisions,
+recruit the horses, and wait for the hospital-waggons, the artillery,
+and the pontoons, which were still laboriously dragging after us across
+the Lithuanian sands. His correspondence with Europe must also have
+been a source of occupation to him. To conclude, a destructive
+atmosphere stopped his progress! Such, in fact, is that climate; the
+atmosphere is always in the extreme--always excessive; it either parches
+or inundates, burns up or freezes, the soil and its inhabitants, for
+whose protection it appears expressly framed; a perfidious climate, the
+heat of which debilitated our bodies, in order to render them more
+accessible to the frosts by which they were shortly to be pierced.
+
+The emperor was not the least sensible of its effects; but when he found
+himself somewhat refreshed by repose, when no envoy from Alexander made
+his appearance, and his first dispositions were completed, he was seized
+with impatience. He was observed to grow restless; whether it was that
+inactivity annoyed him, as it does all men of active habits, and that he
+preferred danger to the weariness of expectation, or that he was
+agitated by that desire of acquisition, which, with the greater part of
+mankind, has stronger efficacy than the pleasure of preserving, or the
+fear of losing.
+
+It was then especially that the image of captive Moscow besieged him; it
+was the boundary of his fears, the object of his hopes: possessed of
+that, he would possess every thing. From that time it was foreseen that
+an ardent and restless genius, like his, and accustomed to short cuts,
+would not wait eight months, when he felt his object within his reach,
+and when twenty days were sufficient to attain it.
+
+We must not, however, be too hasty in judging this extraordinary man by
+the weaknesses common to all men. We shall presently hear from
+himself;--we shall see how much his political position tended to
+complicate his military position. At a later period, we shall be less
+tempted to blame the resolution he was now about to take, when it is
+seen that the fate of Russia depended upon only one more day's health,
+which failed Napoleon, even on the very field of the Moskwa.
+
+Meantime, he at first appeared hardly bold enough to confess to himself
+a project of such great temerity. But by degrees, he assumed courage to
+look it in the face. He then began to deliberate, and the state of great
+irresolution which tormented his mind affected his whole frame. He was
+observed to wander about his apartments, as if pursued by some dangerous
+temptation. Nothing could rivet his attention; he every moment began,
+quitted, and resumed his labour; he walked about without any object;
+inquired the hour, and looked at his watch; completely absorbed, he
+stopped, hummed a tune with an absent air, and again began walking
+about.
+
+In the midst of his perplexity, he occasionally addressed the persons
+whom he met with such half sentences as "Well! what shall we do? Shall
+we stay where we are, or advance? How is it possible to stop short in
+the midst of so glorious a career?" He did not wait for their reply; but
+still kept wandering about, as if he was looking for something or
+somebody to terminate his indecision.
+
+At length, quite overwhelmed with the weight of such an important
+consideration, and oppressed with so great an uncertainty, he would
+throw himself on one of the beds which he had caused to be laid on the
+floor of his apartments. His frame, exhausted by the heat, and the
+struggles of his mind, could only bear a covering of the slightest
+texture; it was in that state that he passed a portion of his days at
+Witepsk.
+
+But when his body was at rest, his spirit was only the more active. "How
+many motives urged him towards Moscow! How support at Witepsk the
+_ennui_ of seven winter months?--he, who till then had always been the
+assailant, was about to be reduced to a defensive position; a part
+unworthy of him, of which he had no experience, and adverse to his
+genius.
+
+"Moreover, at Witepsk, nothing had been decided, and yet, at what a
+distance was he already from France! Europe, then, would at length
+behold him stopped, whom nothing had been able to stop. Would not the
+duration of the enterprise augment its danger? Ought he to allow Russia
+time to arm herself entirely? How long could he protract this uncertain
+condition without impairing the charm of his infallibility, (which the
+resistance of Spain had already enfeebled) and without engendering
+dangerous hopes in Europe? What would be thought, if it were known that
+a third of his army, dispersed or sick, were no longer in the ranks? It
+was indispensable, therefore, to dazzle the world speedily by the éclat
+of a great victory, and hide so many sacrifices under a heap of
+laurels."
+
+Then, if he remained at Witepsk, he considered that he should have the
+_ennui_, the whole expense, all the inconveniences and anxieties of a
+defensive position to bear; while at Moscow there would be peace,
+abundance, a reimbursement of the expenses of the war, and immortal
+glory. He persuaded himself that audacity for him was henceforth the
+greatest prudence; that it is the same with all hazardous undertakings,
+as with faults, in which there is always risk at the beginning, but
+frequently gain at the conclusion; that the more inexcusable they are,
+the more they require to be successful. That it was indispensable,
+therefore, to consummate this undertaking, to push it to the utmost,
+astonish the universe, beat down Alexander by his audacity, and carry
+off a prize which should be a compensation for so many losses.
+
+Thus it was, that the same danger which perhaps ought to have recalled
+him to the Niemen, or kept him stationary on the Düna, urged him towards
+Moscow! Such is the nature of false positions; every thing in them is
+perilous; temerity is prudence; there is no choice left but of errors;
+there is no hope but in the errors of the enemy, and in chance.
+
+Having at last determined, he hastily arose, as if not to allow time to
+his own reflections to renew so painful a state of uncertainty; and
+already quite full of the plan which was to secure his conquest, he
+hastened to his maps; they presented to his view the cities of Smolensk
+and Moscow; "the great Moscow, the holy city;" names which he repeated
+with complacency, and which served to add new fuel to his ambitious
+flame. Fired with this prospect, his spirit, replete with the energy of
+his mighty conception, appears possessed by the genius of war. His voice
+deepens; his eye flashes fire; and his countenance darkens; his
+attendants retreat from his presence, struck with mingled awe and
+respect; but at length his plan is fixed; his determination taken; his
+order of march traced out. Instantly, the internal struggle by which he
+had been agitated subsided; and no sooner was he delivered of his
+terrible conception, than his countenance resumed its usual mild and
+tranquil character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+His resolution once taken, he was anxious that it should satisfy his
+friends; he conceived that by persuading them, they would be actuated by
+greater zeal, than by commanding their obedience. It was, moreover, by
+their sentiments that he was enabled to judge of those of the rest of
+his army; in short, like all other men, the silent discontent of his
+household disturbed him. Surrounded by disapproving countenances, and
+opinions contrary to his own, he felt himself uncomfortable. And,
+besides, to obtain their assent to his plan, was in some degree to make
+them share the responsibility which possibly weighed upon his mind.
+
+But all the officers of his household opposed his plan, each in the way
+that marked his peculiar character; Berthier, by a melancholy
+countenance, by lamentations, and even tears; Lobau and Caulaincourt, by
+a frankness, which in the first was stamped by a cold and haughty
+roughness, excusable in so brave a warrior; and which in the second was
+persevering even to obstinacy, and impetuous even to violence. The
+emperor repelled their observations with some ill-humour; he exclaimed,
+addressing himself more especially to his aid-de-camp, as well as to
+Berthier, "that he had enriched his generals too much; that all they now
+aspired to was to follow the pleasures of the chase, and to display
+their brilliant equipages in Paris: and that, doubtless, they had become
+disgusted with war." When their honour was thus attacked, there was no
+longer any reply to be made; they merely bowed and remained silent.
+During one of his impatient fits, he told one of the generals of his
+guard, "you were born in a _bivouac_, and in a _bivouac_ you will die."
+
+As to Duroc, he first signified his disapprobation by a chilling
+silence, and afterwards by terse replies, reference to accurate reports,
+and brief remarks. To him the emperor replied, "that he saw clearly
+enough that the Russians wanted to draw him on; but that, nevertheless,
+he must proceed as far as Smolensk; that there he would establish his
+head-quarters; and that in the spring of 1813, if Russia did not
+previously make peace, she would be ruined; that Smolensk was the key
+of the two roads to Petersburgh and Moscow; that he must get possession
+of it; and that he would then be able to march on both those capitals at
+the same time, in order to destroy every thing in the one, and preserve
+every thing in the other."
+
+Here the grand marshal observed to him, that he was not more likely to
+make peace at Smolensk, or even at Moscow, than he was at Witepsk; and
+that in removing to such a distance from France, the Prussians
+constituted an intermediate body, on whom little reliance could be
+placed. But the emperor replied, that on that supposition, as the
+Russian war no longer offered him any advantageous result, he ought to
+renounce it; and if so, he must turn his arms against Prussia, and
+compel her to pay the expenses of the war.
+
+It was now Daru's turn. This minister is straightforward even to
+stiffness, and possesses immoveable firmness. The great question of the
+march upon Moscow produced a discussion which lasted during eight
+successive hours, and at which only Berthier was present. The emperor
+having desired his minister's opinion of the war, "It is not a national
+war," replied Daru; "the introduction of some English merchandize into
+Russia, and even the restoration of the kingdom of Poland, are not
+sufficient reasons for engaging in so distant a war; neither your troops
+nor ourselves understand its necessity or its objects, and to say the
+least, all things recommend the policy of stopping where we now are."
+
+The emperor rejoined, "Did they take him for a madman? Did they imagine
+he made war from inclination? Had they not heard him say that the wars
+of Spain and Russia were two ulcers which ate into the vitals of France,
+and that she could not bear them both at once?
+
+"He was anxious for peace; but in order to negotiate, two persons were
+necessary, and he was only one. Had a single letter from Alexander yet
+reached him?
+
+"What, then, should he wait for at Witepsk? Two rivers, it was true,
+traced out the line of position; but, during the winter, there were no
+longer any rivers in this country. It was, therefore, a visionary line
+which they traced out; it was rather a line of demarcation than of
+separation. It was requisite, therefore, to constitute an artificial
+line; to construct towns and fortresses capable of defying the elements,
+and every species of scourge; to create every thing, land and
+atmosphere; for every thing was deficient, even provisions, unless,
+indeed, he chose to drain Lithuania, and render her hostile, or ruin
+ourselves; that if they were at Moscow, they might take what they
+pleased; here it was necessary to purchase every thing. Consequently,"
+continued he, "you cannot enable me to live at Witepsk, nor shall I be
+able to defend you here: both of us, therefore, are here out of our
+proper element.
+
+"That if he returned to Wilna, he might there indeed, be more easily
+supplied, but that he should not be in a better condition to defend
+himself; that in that case it would be necessary for him to fall back to
+the Vistula, and lose Lithuania. Whereas at Smolensk, he would be sure
+to gain either a decisive battle, or at least, a fortress and a position
+on the Dnieper.
+
+"That he perceived clearly that their thoughts were dwelling on Charles
+the Twelfth; but that if the expedition to Moscow wanted a fortunate
+precedent, it was because it was deficient in a man capable of making it
+succeed; that in war, fortune went for one-half in every thing; that if
+people always waited for a complete assemblage of favourable
+circumstances, nothing would ever be undertaken; that we must begin, in
+order to finish; that there was no enterprise in which every thing
+concurred, and that, in all human projects, chance had its share; that,
+in short, it was not the rule which created the success, but the success
+the rule; and that, if he succeeded by new means, that success would
+create new principles.
+
+"Blood has not yet been spilled," he added, "and Russia is too great to
+yield without fighting. Alexander can only negotiate after a great
+battle. If it is necessary, I will even proceed to the holy city in
+search of that battle, and I will gain it. Peace waits for me at the
+gates of Moscow. But with his honour thus saved, if Alexander still
+persists, I will negotiate with the Boyards, or even with the population
+of that capital; it is numerous, united, and consequently enlightened.
+It will understand its own interests, and comprehend the value of
+liberty." He concluded by saying, that "Moscow hated Petersburgh; that
+he would take advantage of their rivalry; that the results of such a
+jealousy were incalculable."
+
+It was in this manner that the emperor, when animated by conversation
+and the banquet, revealed the nature of his hopes. Daru replied, "That
+war was a game which he played well, in which he was always the winner,
+and that it was natural to infer, that he took a pleasure in playing it.
+But that, in this case, it was not so much men as nature which it was
+necessary to conquer; that already the army was diminished one-third by
+desertion, sickness, or famine.
+
+"If provisions failed at Witepsk, what would be the case farther on? The
+officers whom he had sent to procure them, either never re-appeared, or
+returned with empty hands. That the small quantity of flour, or the few
+cattle which they had succeeded in collecting, were immediately consumed
+by the imperial guard; that the other divisions of the army were heard
+to murmur, that it exacted and absorbed every thing, that it
+constituted, as it were, a privileged class. The hospital and
+provision-waggons, as well as the droves of cattle, were not able to
+come up. The hospitals were insufficient for the sick; provisions, room,
+and medicines, were all wanting in them.
+
+"All things consequently admonished them to halt, and with so much the
+more effect, as they could not calculate on the favourable disposition
+of the inhabitants beyond Witepsk. In conformity with his secret orders,
+they had been sounded, but without effect. How could men be roused to
+insurrection, for the sake of a liberty whose very name they did not
+understand? What influence could be obtained over a people almost
+savages, without property, and without wants? What could be taken from
+them? With what could they be tempted? Their only property was their
+life, which they carried with them into regions of almost infinite
+space."
+
+Berthier added, "That if we were to proceed forward, the Russians would
+have in their favour our too-much elongated flanks, famine, and
+especially their formidable winter; while in staying where he was, the
+emperor would enlist the latter on his side, and render himself master
+of the war; that he would fix it within his reach, instead of following
+its deceitful, wandering, and undecided flight."
+
+Such were the replies of Berthier and Daru. The emperor mildly listened
+to their observations, but oftener interrupted them by subtile
+arguments; begging the question, according to his wishes, or shifting
+it, when it became too pressing. But however disagreeable might be the
+truths which he was obliged to hear, he listened to them patiently, and
+replied with equal patience. Throughout this discussion, his
+conversation and whole deportment were remarkable for affability,
+simplicity, and good-humour, which, indeed, he almost always preserved
+in his own family; a circumstance which sufficiently explains why,
+notwithstanding so many misfortunes, he was so much beloved by those who
+lived on terms of intimacy with him.
+
+Still dissatisfied, the emperor summoned successively several of the
+generals of his army; but his questions were such as indicated their
+answers; and many of these chiefs, born in the capacity of soldiers, and
+accustomed to obey his voice, were as submissive in these conversations
+as upon the field of battle.
+
+Others waited the issue, in order to give their opinion; concealing
+their dread of a reverse, in the presence of a man who had always been
+fortunate, as well as their opinion, lest success might on some future
+day reproach them for it.
+
+The greater part signified their approbation, being perfectly convinced
+that were they even to incur his displeasure by recommending him to
+stop, he would not be the less certain to advance. As it was necessary
+to incur fresh dangers, they preferred meeting them with an appearance
+of good-will. They found it more convenient to be wrong with him, than
+right against him.
+
+But there was one individual, who, not content with approving his
+design, encouraged it. Prompted by a culpable ambition, he increased
+Napoleon's confidence, by exaggerating the force of his division. For
+after incurring so many fatigues, unaccompanied by danger, it was a
+great merit in those chiefs who preserved the greatest number of men
+around their eagles. The emperor was thus gratified on his weak side,
+and the time for rewards was approaching. In order to make himself more
+agreeable, the individual in question boldly took upon himself to vouch
+for the ardour of his soldiers, whose emaciated countenances but ill
+accorded with the flattery of their leader. The emperor gave credit to
+this ardour, because it pleased him, and because he only saw the
+soldiers at reviews; occasions when his presence, the military pomp, the
+mutual excitation produced by great assemblages, imparted fervor to the
+mind; when, in short, all things, even to the secret orders of the
+chiefs, dictated an appearance of enthusiasm.
+
+But in fact it was only with his guard that he thus occupied his
+attention. In the army, the soldiers complained of his non-appearance.
+"They no longer saw him," they said, "except in days of battle, when
+they had to die for him, but never to supply them with the means of
+existence. They were all there to serve him, but he seemed no longer
+there to serve them."
+
+In this manner did they suffer and complain, but without sufficiently
+considering that what they complained of was one of the inseparable
+evils of the campaign. The dispersion of the various corps d'armée being
+indispensable for the sake of procuring subsistence in these deserts,
+that necessity kept Napoleon at a distance from his soldiers. His guard
+could hardly find subsistence and shelter in his immediate
+neighbourhood; the rest were out of his sight. It is true that many
+imprudent acts had recently been committed; several convoys of
+provisions belonging to other corps were on their passage daringly
+retained at the imperial head-quarters, for the use of the guard, by
+whose order is not known. This violence, added to the jealousy which
+such bodies of men always inspire, created discontent in the army.
+
+The emperor was ignorant of these complaints; but another cause of
+anxiety had occurred to torment him. He knew that at Witepsk alone,
+there were 3000 of his soldiers attacked by the dysentery, which was
+extending its ravages over his whole army. The rye which they were
+eating in soup was its principal cause. Their stomachs, accustomed to
+bread, rejected this cold and indigestible food, and the emperor was
+urging his physicians to find a remedy for its effects. One day he
+appeared less anxious. "Davoust," said he, "has found out what the
+medical men could not discover; he has just sent to inform me of it; all
+that is required is to roast the rye before preparing it;" and his eyes
+sparkled with hope as he questioned his physician, who declined giving
+any opinion until the experiment was tried. The emperor instantly called
+two grenadiers of his guard; he seated them at table, close to him, and
+made them begin the trial of this nourishment so prepared. It did not
+succeed with them, although he added to it some of his own wine, which
+he himself poured out for them.
+
+Respect, however, for the conqueror of Europe, and the necessity of
+circumstances, supported them in the midst of their numerous privations.
+They saw that they were too deeply embarked; that a victory was
+necessary for their speedy deliverance; and that he alone could give it
+them. Misfortune, moreover, had purified the army; all that remained of
+it could not fail to be its _élite_ both in mind and body. In order to
+have got so far as they had done, what trials had they not withstood!
+Suspense, and disgust with miserable cantonments, were sufficient to
+agitate such men. To remain, appeared to them insupportable; to retreat,
+impossible; it was, therefore, imperative to advance.
+
+The great names of Smolensk and Moscow inspired no alarm. In ordinary
+times, and with ordinary men, that unknown region, that unvisited
+people, and the distance which magnifies all things, would have been
+sufficient to discourage. But these were the very circumstances which,
+in this case, were most attractive. The soldiers' chief pleasure was in
+hazardous situations, which were rendered more interesting by the
+greater proportion of danger they involved, and on which new dangers
+conferred a more striking air of singularity; emotions full of charm for
+active spirits, which had exhausted their taste for old things, and
+which, therefore, required new.
+
+Ambition was, at that time, completely unshackled; every thing inspired
+the passion for glory; they had been launched into a boundless career.
+How was it possible to measure the ascendancy, which a powerful emperor
+must have acquired, or the strong impulse which he had given them?--an
+emperor, capable of telling his soldiers after the victory of
+Austerlitz, "I will allow you to name your children after me; and if
+among them there should prove one worthy of us, I will leave him every
+thing I possess, and name him my successor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+The junction of the two wings of the Russian army, in the direction of
+Smolensk, had compelled Napoleon also to approximate his various
+divisions. No signal of attack had yet been given, but the war involved
+him on all sides; it seemed to tempt his genius by success, and to
+stimulate it by reverses. On his left, Wittgenstein, equally in dread of
+Oudinot and Macdonald, remained between the two roads from Polotsk and
+Dünabourg, which meet at Sebez. The Duke of Reggio's orders had been to
+keep on the defensive. But neither at Polotsk nor at Witepsk was there
+any thing found in the country, which disclosed the position of the
+Russians. Tired of feeling nothing of them on any side, the marshal
+determined to go in quest of them himself. On the 1st of August,
+therefore, he left general Merle and his division on the Drissa, to
+protect his baggage, his great park of artillery, and his retreat; he
+pushed Verdier towards Sebez, and made him take a position on the
+high-road, in order to mask the movement which he was meditating. He
+himself, turning to the left with Legrand's infantry, Castex's cavalry,
+and Aubrey's light artillery, advanced as far as Yakoubowo, on the road
+to Osweďa.
+
+As chance would have it, Wittgenstein, at the same moment, was marching
+from Osweďa to Yakoubowo; the hostile armies unexpectedly met each
+other in front of that village. It was late in the day; the shock was
+violent, but of short duration: night put an end to the combat, and
+postponed its decision.
+
+The marshal found himself engaged, with a single division, in a deep and
+narrow pass, surrounded with woods and hills, all the declivities of
+which were opposed to us. He was hesitating, however, whether he should
+quit that contracted position, on which all the enemy's fire was about
+to be concentrated, when a young Russian staff-officer, scarcely emerged
+from boyhood, came dashing heedlessly into our posts, and allowed
+himself to be taken, with the despatches of which he was the bearer. We
+learned from them, that Wittgenstein was marching with all his forces to
+attack and destroy our bridges over the Düna. Oudinot felt it necessary
+to retreat, in order to rally and concentrate his forces in a less
+unfavourable position; in consequence, as frequently happens in
+retrograde marches, some stragglers and baggage fell into the hands of
+the Russians.
+
+Wittgenstein, elated by this easy success, pushed it beyond all bounds.
+In the first transport of what he regarded as a victory, he ordered
+Koulnief, and 12,000 men, to pass the Drissa, in order to pursue
+d'Albert and Legrand. The latter had made a halt; Albert hastened to
+inform the marshal. They covered their detachment by a rising ground,
+watched all the movements of the Russian general, and observing him
+rashly venturing himself into a defile between them and the river, they
+rushed suddenly upon him, overthrew and killed him; taking from him also
+eight pieces of cannon, and 2000 men.
+
+Koulnief, it was said, died like a hero; a cannon ball broke both his
+legs, and threw him prostrate on his own cannon; where, observing the
+French approaching, he tore off his decorations, and, in a transport of
+anger at his own temerity, condemned himself to die on the very spot
+where his error was committed, commanding his soldiers to leave him to
+his fate. The whole Russian army regretted him; it imputed this
+misfortune to one of those individuals whom the caprice of Paul had made
+into generals, at the period when that emperor was quite new to power,
+and conceived the idea of entering his peaceable inheritance in the
+character of a triumphant conqueror.
+
+Rashness passed over with the victory from the Russian to the French
+camp; this unexpected success elated Casa-Bianca and his Corsican
+battalions; they forgot the error to which they were indebted for it,
+they neglected the recommendation of their general, and without
+reflecting that they were imitating the imprudence by which they had
+just profited, they precipitated themselves upon the flying footsteps of
+the Russians. They proceeded, headlong, in this manner for two leagues,
+and were only reminded of their temerity by finding themselves alone in
+presence of the Russian army. Verdier, forced to engage in order to
+support them, was already compromising the rest of his division, when
+the Duke of Reggio hurried up, relieved his troops from this peril, led
+them back behind the Drissa, and on the following day resumed his first
+position under the walls of Polotsk. There he found Saint-Cyr and the
+Bavarians, who increased the force of his corps to 35,000 men. As to
+Wittgenstein, he tranquilly took up his first position at Osweďa. The
+result of these four days was very unsatisfactory to the emperor.
+
+Nearly about the same time intelligence was brought to Witepsk that the
+advanced guard of the viceroy had gained some advantages near Suraij;
+but that, in the centre, near the Dnieper, at Inkowo, Sebastiani had
+been surprised by superior numbers, and defeated.
+
+Napoleon was then writing to the Duke of Bassano 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 passages 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 mass 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 Eckmühl, 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 assembling 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 assembled 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 Düna 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 mass, 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 Düna from the Boristhenes; it was in front of Rassasna 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 Rassasna; 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 passed them
+in all possible haste and in disorder.
+
+The streams were crossed by fords which were soon spoiled; the regiments
+which came afterwards passed 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'armée_ 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 passed 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 pronunciation, their
+voluble and hasty way of speaking, the vivacity of their motions, and
+their complexion, animated by the base passion 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-worship, while the Muscovites carry their adoration of images to
+idolatry. Finally, whether from superstition 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 Krasnoë, 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 Krasnoë 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 passage
+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 harassed 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 mass.
+
+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
+anticipate 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 chasseurs 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 mass, 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 assistance 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 attitude
+was dictated by honour; the multitude 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 circumstances, 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
+nobles, 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.
+
+Barclay alone was against fighting. His plan, erroneously attributed
+to England, had been formed in his mind so far back as the year 1807;
+but he had to combat his own army as well as ours; and though
+commander-in-chief and minister, he was neither Russian enough, nor
+victorious enough, to win the confidence of the Russians. He possessed
+that of Alexander alone.
+
+Bagration and his officers hesitated to obey him. The point was to
+defend their native land, to devote themselves for the salvation of all:
+it was the affair of each, and all imagined that they had a right to
+examine. Thus their ill fortune distrusted the prudence of their
+general; whilst, with the exception of a few chiefs, our good fortune
+trusted implicitly to the boldness, hitherto always prosperous of ours;
+for in success to command is easy; no one inquires whether it is
+prudence or fortune that guides. Such is the situation of military
+chiefs; when successful, they are blindly obeyed by all; when
+unfortunate, they are criticized by all.
+
+Hurried away notwithstanding, by the general impulse, Barclay had just
+yielded to it for a moment, collected his forces near Rudnia, and
+attempted to surprise the French army, dispersed as it was. But the
+feeble blow which his advanced guard had just struck at Inkowo had
+alarmed him. He trembled, paused, and imagining every moment that he saw
+Napoleon approaching in front of him, on his right and every where
+excepting on his left, which was covered as he thought by the Dnieper,
+he lost several days in marches and counter-marches. He was thus
+hesitating, when all at once Newerowskoi's cries of distress resounded
+in his camp. To attack was now entirely out of the question: his troops
+ran to arms, and hurried towards Smolensk for the purpose of defending
+it.
+
+Murat and Ney were already attacking that city: the former with his
+cavalry, at the place where the Boristhenes enters its walls; the
+latter, with his infantry, where it issues from them, and on woody
+ground intersected by deep ravines. The marshal's left was supported by
+the river, and his right by Murat, whom Poniatowski, coming direct from
+Mohilef, arrived to reinforce.
+
+In this place two steep hills contract the channel of the Boristhenes;
+on these hills Smolensk is built. That city has the appearance of two
+towns, separated by the river and connected by two bridges. That on the
+right bank, the most modern, is wholly occupied by traders; it is open,
+but overlooks the other, of which it is nevertheless but a dependency.
+
+The old town, occupying the plateau and slopes of the left bank, is
+surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high, eighteen thick, three
+thousand fathoms in length, and defended by twenty-nine massive towers,
+a miserable earthen citadel of five bastions, which commands the Orcha
+road, and a wide ditch, which serves as a covered way. Some outworks and
+the suburbs intercept the view of the approaches to the Mohilef and
+Dnieper gates; they are defended by a ravine, which, after encompassing
+a great part of the town, becomes deeper and steeper as it approaches
+the Dnieper, on the side next to the citadel.
+
+The deluded inhabitants were quitting the temples, where they had been
+praising God for the victories of their troops, when they saw them
+hastening up, bloody, vanquished, and flying before the victorious
+French army. Their disaster was unexpected, and their consternation so
+much the greater.
+
+Meanwhile, the sight of Smolensk inflamed the impatient ardour of
+Marshal Ney: we know not whether he unseasonably called to mind the
+wonders of the Prussian war, when citadels fell before the sabres of our
+cavalry, or whether he at first designed only to reconnoitre this first
+Russian fortress: at any rate he approached too near; a ball struck him
+on the neck; incensed, he despatched a battalion against the citadel,
+through a shower of balls, which swept away two-thirds of his men; the
+remainder proceeded; nothing could stop them but the Russian walls; a
+few only returned. Little notice was taken of the heroic attempt which
+they had made, because it was a fault of their general's, and useless
+into the bargain.
+
+Cooled by this check, Marshal Ney retired to a sandy and wooded height
+bordering the river. He was surveying the city and its environs, when he
+imagined that he could discern troops in motion on the other side of the
+river: he ran to fetch the emperor, and conducted him through coppices
+and dingles to avoid the fire of the place.
+
+Napoleon, on reaching the height, beheld a cloud of dust enveloping long
+black columns, glistening with a multitude of arms: these masses
+approached so rapidly that they seemed to run. It was Barclay,
+Bagration, nearly 120,000 men: in short, the whole Russian army.
+
+Transported with joy at this sight, Napoleon clapped his hands,
+exclaiming, "At last I have them!" There could be no doubt of it; this
+surprised army was hastening up to throw itself into Smolensk, to pass
+through it, to deploy under its walls, and at length to offer us that
+battle which was so ardently desired. The moment that was to decide the
+fate of Russia had at last arrived.
+
+The emperor immediately went through the whole line, and allotted to
+each his place. Davoust, and next to him Count Lobau, were to deploy on
+the right of Ney: the guard in the centre, as a reserve, and farther
+off the army of Italy. The place of Junot and the Westphalians was
+indicated; but a false movement had carried them out of the way. Murat
+and Poniatowski formed the right of the army; those two chiefs already
+threatened the city: he made them draw back to the margin of a coppice,
+and leave vacant before them a spacious plain, extending from this wood
+as far as the Dnieper. It was a field of battle which he offered to the
+enemy. The French army, thus posted, had defiles and precipices at its
+back; but Napoleon concerned himself little about retreat; he thought
+only of victory.
+
+Bagration and Barclay were meanwhile returning at full speed towards
+Smolensk; the first to save it by a battle, the other to cover the
+flight of its inhabitants and the evacuation of its magazines: he was
+determined to leave us nothing but its ashes. The two Russian generals
+arrived panting on the heights on the right bank; nor did they again
+take breath till they saw that they were still masters of the bridges
+which connect the two towns.
+
+Napoleon then caused the enemy to be harassed by a host of riflemen, for
+the purpose of drawing him to the left bank of the river, and ensuring a
+battle for the following day. It is asserted that Bagration would have
+fallen in with his views, but that Barclay did not expose him to the
+temptation. He despatched him to Elnia, and took upon himself the
+defence of Smolensk.
+
+Barclay had imagined that the greatest part of our army was marching
+upon Elnia, to get between Moscow and the Russian army. He deceived
+himself by the disposition, so common in war, of imputing to one's enemy
+designs contrary to those which he demonstrates. For the defensive,
+being uneasy in its nature, frequently magnifies the offensive, and
+fear, heating the imagination, causes it to attribute to the enemy a
+thousand projects of which he never dreamt. It is possible too that
+Barclay, having to cope with a colossal foe, felt authorized to expect
+from him gigantic movements.
+
+The Russians themselves have since reproached Napoleon with not having
+adopted that manoeuvre; but have they considered, that to proceed thus
+to place himself beyond a river, a fortified town and a hostile army, to
+cut off the Russians from the road to their capital, would have been
+cutting off himself from all communication with his reinforcements, his
+other armies, and Europe? Those are not capable of appreciating the
+difficulties of such a movement who are astonished that it was not made,
+without preparation, in two days, across a river and a country both
+unknown, with such masses, and amidst another combination the execution
+of which was not yet completed.
+
+Be that as it may, in the evening of the 16th, Bagration commenced his
+march for Elnia. Napoleon had just had his tent pitched in the middle of
+his first line, almost within reach of the guns of Smolensk, and on the
+brink of the ravine which encircles the city. He called Murat and
+Davoust: the former had just observed among the Russians movements
+indicative of a retreat. Every day since the passage of the Niemen, he
+had been accustomed to see them thus escape him; he did not therefore
+believe that there would be any battle the following day. Davoust was of
+a contrary opinion. As for the emperor, he had no hesitation in
+believing what he wished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+On the 17th, by daybreak, the hope of seeing the Russian army drawn up
+before him awoke Napoleon; but the field which he had prepared for it
+remained empty: he persisted, nevertheless, in his illusion, in which
+Davoust participated; it was to his side that he proceeded. Dalton, one
+of the generals of that marshal, had seen some hostile battalions quit
+the city and range themselves in order of battle. The emperor seized
+this hope, which Ney, jointly with Murat, combated in vain.
+
+But while he was still full of hopes and expectations, Belliard, tired
+of this uncertainty, ordered a few horse to follow him; he drove a band
+of Cossacks into the Dnieper, above the town, and saw on the opposite
+bank the road from Smolensk to Moscow covered with artillery, and troops
+on the march. There was no longer any doubt that the Russians were in
+full retreat. The emperor was apprised that he must renounce all hopes
+of a battle, but that his cannon might, from the opposite bank, annoy
+the retrograde march of the enemy.
+
+Belliard even proposed to send part of the army across the river, to cut
+off the retreat of the Russian rear-guard, which was entrusted with the
+defence of Smolensk; but the party of cavalry sent to discover a ford
+went two leagues without finding one, and drowned several horses. There
+was nevertheless a wide and commodious crossing about a league above the
+city. Napoleon himself, in his agitation, turned his horse that way. He
+proceeded several wersts in that direction, tired himself, and returned.
+
+From that moment he seemed to consider Smolensk as a mere place of
+passage, of which it was absolutely necessary to gain possession by main
+force, and without loss of time. But Murat, prudent when not heated by
+the presence of the enemy, and who, with his cavalry, had nothing to do
+in an assault, disapproved of this resolution.
+
+To him so violent an effort appeared useless, when the Russians were
+retiring of their own accord; and in regard to the plan of overtaking
+them, he observed that, "since they would not fight, we had followed
+them far enough, and it was high time to stop."
+
+The emperor replied: but the rest of their conversation was not
+overheard. As, however, the king afterwards declared that "he had thrown
+himself at the knees of his brother, and conjured him to stop, but that
+Napoleon saw nothing but Moscow; that honour, glory, rest, every thing
+for him was there; that this Moscow would be our ruin!"--it was obvious
+what had been the cause of their disagreement.
+
+So much is certain, that when Murat quitted his brother-in-law, his face
+wore the expression of deep chagrin; his motions were abrupt; a gloomy
+and concentrated vehemence agitated him; and the name of Moscow several
+times escaped his lips.
+
+Not far off, on the left bank of the Dnieper, a formidable battery had
+been placed, at the spot whence Belliard had perceived the retreat of
+the enemy. The Russians had opposed to us two still more formidable.
+Every moment our guns were shattered, and our ammunition-waggons blown
+up. It was into the midst of this volcano that the king urged his horse:
+there he stopped, alighted, and remained motionless. Belliard warned him
+that he was sacrificing his life to no purpose, and without glory. The
+king answered only by pushing on still farther. Those around him no
+longer doubted, that despairing of the issue of the war, and foreseeing
+future disasters, he was seeking death in order to escape them.
+Belliard, however, insisted, and observed to him, that his temerity
+would be the destruction of those about him. "Well then," replied Murat,
+"do you retire, and leave me here by myself." All refused to leave him;
+when the king angrily turning about, tore himself from this scene of
+carnage, like a man who is suffering violence.
+
+Meanwhile a general assault had been ordered. Ney had to attack the
+citadel, and Davoust and Lobau the suburbs, which cover the walls of
+the city. Poniatowski, already on the banks of the Dnieper, with sixty
+pieces of cannon, was again to descend that river to the suburb which
+borders it, to destroy the enemy's bridges, and to intercept the retreat
+of the garrison. Napoleon gave orders, that, at the same time, the
+artillery of the guard should batter the great wall with its
+twelve-pounders, which were ineffective against so thick a mass. It
+disobeyed, and directed its fire into the covered way, which it cleared.
+
+Every manoeuvre succeeded at once, excepting Ney's attack, the only
+one which ought to have been decisive, but which was neglected. The
+enemy was driven back precipitately within his walls; all who had not
+time to regain them perished; but, in mounting to the assault, our
+attacking columns left a long and wide track of blood, of wounded and
+dead.
+
+It was remarked, that one battalion, which presented itself in flank to
+the Russian batteries, lost a whole rank of one of its platoons by a
+single bullet; twenty-two men were felled by the same blow.
+
+Meanwhile the army, from an amphitheatre of heights, contemplated with
+silent anxiety the conduct of its brave comrades; but when it saw them
+darting through a shower of balls and grape shot, and persisting with an
+ardour, a firmness, and a regularity, quite admirable; then it was that
+the soldiers, warmed with enthusiasm, began clapping their hands. The
+noise of this glorious applause was such as even to reach the attacking
+columns. It rewarded the devotion of those warriors; and although in
+Dalton's single brigade, and in the artillery of Reindre, five chiefs of
+battalion, 1500 men, and the general himself fell, the survivors still
+say, that the enthusiastic homage which they excited, was a sufficient
+compensation to them for all their sufferings.
+
+On reaching the walls of the place, they screened themselves from its
+fire, by means of the outworks and buildings, of which they had gained
+possession. The fire of musketry continued; and from the report,
+redoubled by the echo of the walls, it seemed to become more and more
+brisk. The emperor grew tired of this; he would have withdrawn his
+troops. Thus, the same blunder which Ney had made a battalion commit the
+preceding day, was repeated by the whole army; the one had cost 300 or
+400 men, the other 5000 or 6000; but Davoust persuaded the emperor to
+persevere in his attack.
+
+Night came on. Napoleon retired to his tent, which had been placed more
+prudently than the day before; and the Count Lobau, who had made himself
+master of the ditch, but could no longer maintain his ground there,
+ordered shells to be thrown into the city to dislodge the enemy. Thick
+black columns of smoke were presently seen rising from several points;
+these were soon lighted at intervals by flickering flashes, then by
+sparks, and at last, long spires of flame burst from all parts. It was
+like a great number of distinct fires. It was not long before they
+united and formed but one vast blaze, which whirling about as it rose,
+covered Smolensk, and entirely consumed it, with a dismal roaring.
+
+Count Lobau was dismayed by so great a disaster, which he believed to be
+his own work. The emperor, seated in front of his tent, contemplated in
+silence this awful spectacle. It was as yet impossible to ascertain
+either the cause or the result, and the night was passed under arms.
+
+About three in the morning, one of Davoust's subalterns ventured to the
+foot of the wall, which he scaled without noise. Emboldened by the
+silence which reigned around him, he penetrated into the city; all at
+once several voices and the Sclavonian accent were heard, and the
+Frenchman, surprised and surrounded, thought that he had nothing to do
+but to sell his life dearly, or surrender. The first rays of the dawn,
+however, showed him, in those whom he mistook for enemies, some of
+Poniatowski's Poles. They had been the first to enter the city, which
+Barclay had just evacuated.
+
+After Smolensk had been reconnoitred and its approaches cleared, the
+army entered the walls: it traversed the reeking and blood-stained ruins
+with its accustomed order, pomp, and martial music, triumphing over the
+deserted wreck, and having no other witness of its glory but itself. A
+show without spectators, an almost fruitless victory, a sanguinary
+glory, of which the smoke that surrounded us, and seemed to be our only
+conquest, was but too faithful an emblem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+When the emperor knew that Smolensk was entirely occupied, and its fires
+almost extinguished, and when day and the different reports had
+sufficiently instructed him; when, in short, he saw that there, as at
+the Niemen, at Wilna, at Witepsk, the phantom of victory, which allured
+him forward, and which he always imagined himself to be on the point of
+seizing, had once more eluded his grasp, he proceeded slowly towards his
+barren conquest. He inspected the field of battle, according to his
+custom, in order to appreciate the value of the attack, the merit of the
+resistance, and the loss on both sides.
+
+He found it strewed with a great number of Russian dead, and very few of
+ours. Most of them, especially the French, had been stripped; they might
+be known by the whiteness of their skin, and by their forms less bony
+and muscular than those of the Russians. Melancholy review of the dead
+and dying! dismal account to make up and to render! The pain felt by the
+emperor might be inferred from the contraction of his features and his
+irritation; but in him policy was a second nature, which soon imposed
+silence on the first.
+
+For the rest, this calculation of the dead the day after an engagement
+was as delusive as it was disagreeable; for most of ours had been
+previously removed, but those of the enemy left in sight; an expedient
+adopted with a view to prevent unpleasant impressions being made on our
+own troops, as well as from that natural impulse, which causes us to
+collect and assist our own dying, and to pay the last duties to our own
+dead, before we think of those belonging to the enemy.
+
+The emperor, nevertheless, asserted in his bulletin, that his loss on
+the preceding day was much smaller than that of the Muscovites; that the
+conquest of Smolensk made him master of the Russian salt works, and that
+his minister of finance might reckon upon twenty-four additional
+millions. It is neither probable nor true, that he suffered himself to
+be the dupe of such illusions: yet it was believed, that he was then
+turning against himself that faculty of imposing upon others, of which
+he knew how to make so important a use.
+
+Continuing his reconnoissance, he came to one of the gates of the
+citadel, near the Boristhenes, facing the suburb on the right bank,
+which was still occupied by the Russians. There, surrounded by Marshals
+Ney, Davoust, Mortier, the Grand-marshal Duroc, Count Lobau, and another
+general, he sat down on some mats before a hut, not so much to observe
+the enemy, as to relieve his heart from the load which oppressed it, and
+to seek, in the flattery or in the ardour of his generals, encouragement
+against facts and against his own reflections.
+
+He talked long, vehemently, and without interruption. "What a disgrace
+for Barclay, to have given up, without fighting, the key of old Russia!
+and yet what a field of honour he had offered to him! how advantageous
+it was for him! a fortified town to support and take part in his efforts!
+the same town and a river to receive and cover the wreck of his
+army, if defeated!
+
+"And what would he have had to fight? an army, numerous indeed, but
+straitened for want of room, and having nothing but precipices for its
+retreat. It had given itself up, in a manner, to his blows. Barclay had
+wanted nothing but resolution. It was therefore, all over with Russia.
+She had no army but to witness the fall of her cities, and not to defend
+them. For, in fact, on what more favourable ground could Barclay make a
+stand? what position would he determine to dispute? he, who had forsaken
+that Smolensk, called by him Smolensk the holy, Smolensk the strong, the
+key of Moscow, the Bulwark of Russia, which, as it had been given out,
+was to prove the grave of the French! We should presently see the effect
+of this loss on the Russians; we should see their Lithuanian soldiers,
+nay even those of Smolensk, deserting their ranks, indignant at the
+surrender of their capital without a struggle."
+
+Napoleon added, that "authentic reports had made him acquainted with the
+weakness of the Russian divisions; that most of them were already much
+reduced; that they suffered themselves to be destroyed in detail, and
+that Alexander would soon cease to have an army. The rabble of peasants
+armed with pikes, whom we had just seen in the train of their battalions,
+sufficiently demonstrated to what shifts their generals were reduced."
+
+While the emperor was thus talking, the balls of the Russian riflemen
+were whizzing about his ears; but he was worked up by his subject. He
+launched out against the enemy's general and army, as if he could have
+destroyed it by his reasoning, because he could not by victory. No one
+answered him; it was evident that he was not asking advice, but that he
+had been talking all this time to himself; that he was contending
+against his own reflections, and that, by this torrent of conjectures,
+he was seeking to impose upon himself, and endeavouring to make others
+participators in the same illusions.
+
+Indeed, he did not give any one time to interrupt him. As to the
+weakness and disorganization of the Russian army, nobody believed it;
+but what could be urged in reply? He appealed to positive documents,
+those which had been sent to him by Lauriston; they had been altered,
+under the idea of correcting them: for the estimate of the Russian
+forces by Lauriston, the French minister in Russia, was correct; but,
+according to accounts less deserving of credit, though more flattering,
+this estimate had been diminished one-third.
+
+After talking to himself for an hour, the emperor, looking at the
+heights on the right bank, which were nearly abandoned by the enemy,
+concluded with exclaiming, that "the Russians were women, and that they
+acknowledged themselves vanquished!" He strove to persuade himself that
+these people had, from their contact with Europe, lost their rude and
+savage valour. But their preceding wars had instructed them, and they
+had arrived at that point, at which nations still possess all their
+primitive virtues, in addition to those they have acquired.
+
+At length, he again mounted his horse. It was then the Grand-marshal
+observed to one of us, that "if Barclay had committed so very great a
+blunder in refusing battle, the emperor would not have been so extremely
+anxious to convince us of it." A few paces farther, an officer, sent not
+long before to Prince Schwartzenberg, presented himself: he reported
+that Tormasof and his army had appeared in the north, between Minsk and
+Warsaw, and that they had marched upon our line of operation. A Saxon
+brigade taken at Kobrynn, the grand-duchy overrun, and Warsaw alarmed,
+had been the first results of this aggression; but Regnier had summoned
+Schwartzenberg to his aid. Tormasof had then retreated to Gorodeczna,
+where he halted on the 12th of August, between two defiles, in a plain
+surrounded by woods and marshes, but accessible in the rear of his left
+flank.
+
+Regnier, skilful before an action, and an excellent judge of ground,
+knew how to prepare battles; but when the field became animated, when it
+was covered with men and horses, he lost his self-possession, and rapid
+movements seemed to dazzle him. At first, therefore, that general
+perceived at a glance the weak side of the Russians; he bore down upon
+it, but instead of breaking into it by masses and with impetuosity, he
+merely made successive attacks.
+
+Tormasof, forewarned by these, had time to oppose, at first, regiments
+to regiments, then brigades to brigades, and lastly divisions to
+divisions. By favour of this prolonged contest, he gained the night, and
+withdrew his army from the field of battle, where a rapid and
+simultaneous effort might have destroyed it. Still, he lost some pieces
+of cannon, a great quantity of baggage, and four thousand men, and
+retired behind the Styr, where he was joined by Tchitchakof, who was
+hastening with the army of the Danube to his succour.
+
+This battle, though far from decisive, preserved the grand-duchy: it
+confined the Russians, in this quarter, to the defensive, and gave the
+emperor time to win a battle.
+
+During this recital, the tenacious genius of Napoleon was less struck
+with these advantages in themselves, than with the support they gave to
+the illusion which he had just been holding forth to us: accordingly,
+still adhering to his original idea, and without questioning the
+aid-de-camp, he turned round to his auditory, and, as if continuing his
+former conversation, he exclaimed: "There you see, the poltroons! they
+allow themselves to be beaten even by Austrians!" Then, casting around
+him a look of apprehension, "I hope," added he, "that none but Frenchmen
+hear me." He then asked if he might rely on the good faith of Prince
+Schwartzenberg, for which the aid-de-camp pledged himself; nor was he
+mistaken, though the event seemed to belie his confidence.
+
+Every word which the emperor had uttered merely proved his
+disappointment, and that a great hesitation had again taken possession
+of his mind; for in him success was less communicative, and decision
+less verbose. At length he entered Smolensk. In the passage through its
+massive walls, Count Lobau exclaimed, "What a fine head for
+cantonments!" This was the same thing as advising him to stop there; but
+the emperor returned no other answer to this counsel than a stern look.
+
+This look, however, soon changed its expression, when it had nothing to
+rest upon but ruins, among which our wounded were crawling, and heaps of
+smoking ashes, where lay human skeletons, dried and blackened by the
+fire. This great destruction confounded him. What a harvest of victory!
+That city where his troops were at length to find shelter, provisions, a
+rich booty, the promised reward for so many hardships, was but a ruin on
+which he should be obliged to bivouac! No doubt his influence over his
+men was great, but could it extend beyond nature? What would they think?
+
+Here, it is right to observe, that the sufferings of the army did not
+want for an interpreter. He knew that his soldiers asked one another
+"for what purpose they had been marched eight hundred leagues, to find
+nothing but muddy water, famine, and bivouacs on heaps of ashes: for
+such were all their conquests; they possessed nothing but what they had
+brought with them. If it was necessary to drag every thing along with
+them, to transport France into Russia, wherefore had they been required
+to quit France?"
+
+Several of the generals themselves began to tire: some stopped on
+account of illness, others murmured: "What better were they for his
+having enriched them, if they could not enjoy their wealth? for his
+having given them wives, if he made them widowers by a continual
+absence? for his having bestowed on them palaces, if he forced them to
+lie abroad incessantly on the bare ground, amidst frost and snow?--for
+every year the hardships of war increased; fresh conquests compelling
+them to go farther in quest of fresh enemies. Europe would soon be
+insufficient: he would want Asia too."
+
+Several, especially of our allies, ventured to think, that we should
+lose less by a defeat than by a victory: a reverse would perhaps disgust
+the emperor with the war; at least it would place him more upon a level
+with us.
+
+The generals who were nearest to Napoleon were astonished at his
+confidence. "Had he not already in some measure quitted Europe? and if
+Europe were to rise against him, he would have no subjects but his
+soldiers, no empire but his camp: even then, one-third of them, being
+foreigners, would become his enemies." Such was the language of Murat
+and Berthier. Napoleon, irritated at finding in his two chief
+lieutenants, and at the very moment of action, the same uneasiness with
+which he was himself struggling, vented his ill-humour against them: he
+overwhelmed them with it, as frequently happens in the household of
+princes, who are least sparing of those of whose attachment they are
+most sure; an inconvenience attending favour, which counterbalances its
+advantages.
+
+After his spleen had vented itself in a torrent of words, he summoned
+them back; but this time, dissatisfied with such treatment, they kept
+aloof. The emperor then made amends for his hastiness by caresses,
+calling Berthier "his wife," and his fits of passion, "domestic
+bickerings."
+
+Murat and Ney left him with minds full of sinister presentiments
+relative to this war, which at the first sight of the Russians they were
+themselves for carrying on with fury. For in them, whose character was
+entirely made up of action, inspiration, and first movements, there was
+no consistency: every thing was unexpected; the occasion hurried them
+away; impetuous, they varied in language, plans, and dispositions, at
+every step, just as the ground is incessantly varying in appearance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+About the same time, Rapp and Lauriston presented themselves: the latter
+came from Petersburgh. Napoleon did not ask a single question of this
+officer on his arrival from the capital of his enemy. Aware, no doubt,
+of the frankness of his former aid-de-camp, and of his opinion
+respecting this war, he was apprehensive of receiving from him
+unsatisfactory intelligence.
+
+But Rapp, who had followed our track, could not keep silence. "The army
+had advanced but a hundred leagues from the Niemen, and already it was
+completely altered. The officers who travelled post from the interior of
+France to join it, arrived dismayed. They could not conceive how it
+happened that a victorious army, without fighting, should leave behind
+it more wrecks than a defeated one.
+
+"They had met with all who were marching to join the masses, and all who
+had separated from them; lastly, all who were not excited either by the
+presence of the chiefs, or by example, or by the war. The appearance of
+each troop, according to its distance from home, excited hope, anxiety,
+or pity.
+
+"In Germany, as far as the Oder, where a thousand objects were
+incessantly reminding them of France, these recruits imagined themselves
+not wholly cut off from it; they were ardent and jovial; but beyond the
+Oder, in Poland, where the soil, productions, inhabitants, costumes,
+manners, in short every thing, to the very habitations, wore a foreign
+aspect; where nothing, in short, resembled a country which they
+regretted; they began to be dismayed at the distance they had traversed,
+and their faces already bore the stamp of fatigue and lassitude.
+
+"By what an extraordinary distance must they then be separated from
+France, since they had already reached unknown regions, where every
+thing presented to them an aspect of such gloomy novelty! how many steps
+they had taken, and how many more they had yet to take! The very idea of
+return was disheartening; and yet they were obliged to march on, to keep
+constantly marching! and they complained that ever since they left
+France, their fatigues had been gradually increasing, and the means of
+supporting them continually diminishing."
+
+The truth is, that wine first failed them, then beer, even spirits; and,
+lastly, they were reduced to water, which in its turn was frequently
+wanting. The same was the case with dry provisions, and also with every
+necessary of life; and in this gradual destitution, depression of mind
+kept pace with the successive debilitation of the body. Agitated by a
+vague inquietude, they marched on amid the dull uniformity of the vast
+and silent forests of dark pines. They crept along these large trees,
+bare and stripped to their very tops, and were affrighted at their
+weakness amid this immensity. They then conceived gloomy and absurd
+notions respecting the geography of these unknown regions; and, overcome
+by a secret horror, they hesitated to penetrate farther into such vast
+deserts.
+
+From these sufferings, physical and moral, from these privations, from
+these continual bivouacs, as dangerous near the pole as under the
+equator, and from the infection of the air by the putrified carcases of
+men and horses that strewed the roads, sprang two dreadful
+epidemics--the dysentery and the typhus fever. The Germans first felt
+their ravages; they are less nervous and less sober than the French; and
+they were less interested in a cause which they regarded as foreign to
+them. Out of 22,000 Bavarians who had crossed the Oder, 11,000 only
+reached the Düna; and yet they had never been in action. This military
+march cost the French one-fourth, and the allies half of their army.
+
+Every morning the regiments started in order from their bivouacs; but
+scarcely had they proceeded a few steps, before their widening ranks
+became lengthened out into small and broken files; the weakest, being
+unable to follow, dropped behind: these unfortunate wretches beheld
+their comrades and their eagles getting farther and farther from them:
+they still strove to overtake, but at length lost sight of them, and
+then sank disheartened. The roads and the margins of the woods were
+studded with them: some were seen plucking the ears of rye to devour the
+grain; and they would then attempt, frequently in vain, to reach the
+hospital, or the nearest village. Great numbers thus perished.
+
+But it was not the sick only that separated from the army: many
+soldiers, disgusted and dispirited on the one hand, and impelled by a
+love of independence and plunder on the other, voluntarily deserted
+their colours; and these were not the least resolute: their numbers soon
+increased, as evil begets evil by example. They formed bands, and fixed
+their quarters in the mansions and villages adjacent to the military
+road. There they lived in abundance. Among them there were fewer French
+than Germans; but it was remarked, that the leader of each of these
+little independent bodies, composed of men of several nations, was
+invariably a Frenchman.
+
+Rapp had witnessed all these disorders: on his arrival, his blunt
+honesty kept back none of these details from his chief; but the emperor
+merely replied, "I am going to strike a great blow, and all the
+stragglers will then rally."
+
+With Sebastiani he was more explicit. The latter reminded him of his own
+words, when he had declared to him, at Wilna, that "he would not cross
+the Düna, for to proceed farther this year, would be hurrying to
+infallible destruction."
+
+Sebastiani, like the others, laid great stress on the state of the army.
+"It is dreadful, I know," replied the emperor: "from Wilna, half of it
+consisted of stragglers; now they form two-thirds; there is, therefore,
+no time to be lost: we must extort peace; it is at Moscow. Besides, this
+army cannot now stop: with its composition, and in its disorganization,
+motion alone keeps it together. One may advance at the head of it, but
+not stop or go back. It is an army of attack, not of defence; an army of
+operation, not of position."
+
+It was thus that he spoke to those immediately about him; but to the
+generals commanding his divisions, he held a different language. Before
+the former, he manifested the motives which urged him forward, from the
+latter he carefully concealed them, and seemed to agree with them as to
+the necessity of stopping. This may serve to explain the contradictions
+which were remarked in his own language.
+
+Thus, the very same day, in the streets of Smolensk, surrounded by
+Davoust and his generals, whose corps had suffered most in the assault
+of the preceding day, he said, that in the capture of Smolensk he was
+indebted to them for an important success, and that he considered that
+city as an excellent head of cantonments.
+
+"Now," continued he, "my line is well covered; we will stop here: behind
+this rampart, I can rally my troops, let them rest, receive
+reinforcements, and our supplies from Dantzic. Thus the whole of Poland
+is conquered and defended; this is a sufficient result; it is gathering,
+in two months, the fruit that might be expected only from two years of
+war: it is therefore sufficient. Betwixt this and the spring, we must
+organize Lithuania, and recompose an invincible army; then, if peace
+should not come to seek us in our winter quarters, we will go and
+conquer it at Moscow."
+
+He then told the marshal in confidence, that his motive for ordering him
+to proceed beyond Smolensk, was only to drive off the Russians to the
+distance of a few marches; but he strictly forbade him to involve
+himself in any serious affair. At the same time, it is true, he
+committed the vanguard to Murat and to Ney, the two rashest of his
+officers; and, unknown to Davoust, he placed that prudent and
+methodical marshal under the command of the impetuous king of Naples.
+Thus his mind seemed to be wavering between two great resolutions, and
+the contradictions in his words were communicated to his actions. In
+this internal conflict, however, it was remarked, what an ascendence his
+enterprising genius had over his prudence, and how the former so
+disposed matters as to give birth to circumstances which must
+necessarily hurry him away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Meanwhile the Russians still defended the suburb on the right bank of
+the Dnieper. On our side, the 18th, and the night of the 19th, were
+employed in rebuilding the bridges. On the 19th of August, before day,
+Ney crossed the river by the light of the suburb, which was on fire. At
+first, he saw there no enemies but the flames, and he began to climb the
+long and rugged declivity on which it stands. His troops proceeded
+slowly and with caution, making a thousand circuits to avoid the fire.
+The Russians had managed it with skill: it met our men at every point,
+and obstructed the principal avenues.
+
+Ney, and the foremost of his soldiers, advanced in silence into this
+labyrinth of flames, with anxious eye and attentive ear, not knowing but
+that the Russians might be waiting on the summit of the steep, to pour
+suddenly upon them, to overthrow and drive them back into the flames and
+the river. But they breathed more freely, relieved from the weight of a
+great apprehension, when they perceived on the crest of the ravine, at
+the branching-off of the roads to Petersburgh and Moscow, nothing but a
+band of cossacks, who immediately fled by those two roads. Having
+neither prisoners nor inhabitants, nor spies, the ground was, as at
+Witepsk, the only thing they could interrogate. But the enemy had left
+as many traces in one direction as in the other, so that the marshal
+paused in uncertainty between the two until mid-day.
+
+During this interval, a passage had been effected across the Boristhenes
+at several points; the roads to the two hostile capitals were
+reconnoitred to the distance of a league, and the Russian infantry was
+discovered in that leading to Moscow. Ney would soon have overtaken it;
+but as that road skirted the Dnieper, he had to cross the streams which
+fall into it. Each of them having scooped out its own bed, marked the
+bottom of a valley, the opposite side of which was a position where the
+enemy posted himself, and which it was necessary to carry: the first,
+that of the Stubna, did not detain him long; but the hill of Valoutina,
+at the foot of which runs the Kolowdnia, became the scene of an
+obstinate conflict.
+
+The cause of this resistance has been attributed to an ancient tradition
+of national glory, which represented this field of battle as ground
+consecrated by victory. But this superstition, worthy even still of the
+Russian soldier, is far from the more enlightened patriotism of their
+generals. It was necessity that here compelled them to fight: we have
+seen that the Moscow road, on leaving Smolensk, skirted the Dnieper, and
+that the French artillery, on the other bank, traversed it with its
+fire. Barclay durst not take this road at night, for fear of risking his
+artillery, baggage, and the waggons with the wounded, the rolling of
+which would have betrayed his retreat.
+
+The Petersburgh road quitted the river more abruptly: two marshy
+cross-roads branched off from it on the right, one at the distance of
+two leagues from Smolensk, the other at four; they ran through woods,
+and rejoined the high-road to Moscow, after a long circuit; the one at
+Bredichino, two leagues beyond Valoutina, the other farther off at
+Slobpnewa.
+
+Into these defiles Barclay was bold enough to commit himself with so
+many horses and vehicles; so that this long and heavy column had thus to
+traverse two large arcs of a circle, of which the high-road from
+Smolensk to Moscow, which Ney soon attacked, was the chord. Every
+moment, as always happens in such cases, the overturning of a carriage,
+the sticking fast of a wheel, or of a single horse, in the mud, or the
+breaking of a trace, stopped the whole. The sound of the French cannon,
+meanwhile, drew nearer, and seemed to have already got before the
+Russian column, and to be on the point of reaching and closing the
+outlet which it was striving to gain.
+
+At length, after an arduous march, the head of the enemy's convoy came
+in sight of the high-road at the moment when the French had only to
+force the height of Valoutina and the passage of Kolowdnia, in order to
+reach that outlet. Ney had furiously carried that of the Stubna; but
+Korf, driven back upon Valoutina, had summoned to his aid the column
+which preceded him. It is asserted that the latter, without order, and
+badly officered, hesitated to comply; but that Woronzof, aware of the
+importance of that position, prevailed upon its commander to turn back.
+
+The Russians defended themselves to defend every thing, cannon, wounded,
+baggage: the French attacked in order to take every thing. Napoleon had
+halted a league and a half behind Ney. Conceiving that it was but an
+affair between his advanced guard and the rear of the enemy, he sent
+Gudin to the assistance of the marshal, rallied the other divisions, and
+returned to Smolensk. But this fight became a serious battle; 30,000 men
+were successively engaged in it on both sides: soldiers, officers,
+generals, encountered each other; the action was long, the struggle
+terrible; even night did not suspend it. At length, in possession of the
+plateau, exhausted by the loss of strength and blood, Ney finding
+himself surrounded only by dead, dying, and obscurity, became fatigued;
+he ordered his troops to cease firing, to keep silence, and present
+bayonets. The Russians hearing nothing more, were silent also, and
+availed themselves of the darkness to effect their retreat.
+
+There was almost as much glory in their defeat as in our victory: the
+two chiefs carried their point, the one in conquering, the other in not
+being conquered till he had saved the Russian artillery, baggage, and
+wounded. One of the enemy's generals, the only one left unhurt on this
+field of carnage, endeavoured to escape from among our soldiers, by
+repeating the French word of command; he was recognized by the flashes
+of their fire-arms, and secured. Other Russian generals had perished,
+but the grand army sustained a still greater loss.
+
+At the passage of the bridge over the Kolowdnia, which had been badly
+repaired, General Gudin, whose well-regulated valour loved to confront
+none but useful dangers, and who besides was not a bold rider, had
+alighted from his horse to cross the stream, when, at that moment, a
+cannon-ball skimming the surface of the ground, broke both his legs.
+When the tidings of this misfortune reached the emperor, they put a stop
+to every thing--to discussion and action. Every one was thunderstruck;
+the victory of Valoutina seemed no longer to be a success.
+
+Gudin was conveyed to Smolensk, and there received the unavailing
+attentions of the emperor; but he soon expired. His remains were
+interred in the citadel of the city, which they honour: a worthy tomb
+for a soldier, who was a good citizen, a good husband, a good father, an
+intrepid general, just and mild, a man both of principle and talent; a
+rare assemblage of qualities in an age when virtuous men are too
+frequently devoid of abilities, and men of abilities without virtue. It
+was a fortunate chance that he was worthily replaced; Gérard, the oldest
+general of brigade of the division, took the command of it, and the
+enemy, who knew nothing of our loss, gained nothing by the dreadful blow
+he had dealt us.
+
+The Russians, astonished at having been attacked only in front,
+conceived that all the military combinations of Murat were confined to
+following them on the high-road. They therefore styled him in derision,
+"_the general of the high roads_," characterizing him thus from the
+event, which tends more commonly to deceive than to enlighten.
+
+In fact, while Ney was attacking, Murat scoured his flanks with his
+cavalry, without being able to bring it into action; woods on the left,
+and morasses on the right, obstructed his movements. But while they were
+fighting in front, both were anticipating the effect of a flanking march
+of the Westphalians, commanded by Junot.
+
+From the Stubna, the high-road, in order to avoid the marshes formed by
+the various tributary streams of the Dnieper, turned off to the left,
+ascended the heights, and went farther from the basin of the river, to
+which it afterwards returned in a more favourable situation. It had been
+remarked that a by-road, bolder and shorter, as they all are, ran
+straight across these low marshy grounds, between the Dnieper and the
+high-road, which it rejoined behind the plateau of Valoutina.
+
+It was this cross-road which Junot pursued after crossing the river at
+Prudiszy. It soon led him into the rear of the left of the Russians,
+upon the flank of the columns which were returning to the assistance of
+their rear-guard. His attack was all that was wanted to render the
+victory decisive. Those who were engaged in front with Marshal Ney would
+have been daunted at hearing an attack in their rear; while the
+uncertainty and disorder into which, in the midst of an action, it would
+have thrown the multitude of men, horses, and carriages, crowded
+together in one road, would have been irreparable; but Junot, though
+personally brave, was irresolute as a general. His responsibility
+alarmed him.
+
+Meanwhile Murat, judging that he must have come up, was astonished at
+not hearing his attack. The firmness of the Russians opposed to Ney led
+him to suspect the truth. He left his cavalry, and crossing the woods
+and marshes almost alone, he hastened to Junot, and upbraided him with
+his inaction. Junot alleged in excuse, that "He had no orders to attack;
+his Wurtemberg cavalry was shy, its efforts feigned, and it would never
+be brought to charge the enemy's battalions."
+
+These words Murat answered by actions. He rushed on at the head of that
+cavalry, which, with a different leader, were quite different troops; he
+urged them on, launched them against the Russians, overthrew their
+tirailleurs, returned to Junot and said to him, "Now finish the
+business: your glory and your marshal's staff are still before you!" He
+then left him to rejoin his own troops, and Junot, confounded, remained
+motionless. Too long about Napoleon, whose active genius directed every
+thing, both the plan and the details, he had learned only to obey: he
+wanted experience in command; besides, fatigue and wounds had made him
+an old man before his time.
+
+That such a general should have been selected for so important a
+movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor
+was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp)
+and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed
+up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he
+disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it
+flattered his vanity, to see men who were his pupils commanding his
+armies; and it was moreover natural that he should have a firmer
+alliance on their attachment, than on that of any others.
+
+When, however, on the following day he inspected the places themselves,
+and, at the sight of the bridge where Gudin fell, made the remark, that
+it was not there he ought to have debouched; when afterwards gazing,
+with an angry look, on the position which Junot had occupied, he
+exclaimed: "It was there, no doubt, that the Westphalians should have
+attacked! all the battle was there! what was Junot about?" his
+irritation became so violent, that nothing could at first allay it. He
+called Rapp, and told him to take the command from the Duke of
+Abrantes:--he would dismiss him from the army! he had lost his
+marshal's staff without retrieve! this blunder would probably block the
+road to Moscow against them; that to him, Rapp, he should intrust the
+Westphalians; that he would speak to them in their own language, and he
+would know how to make them fight. But Rapp refused the place of his
+old companion in arms; he appeased the emperor, whose anger always
+subsided quickly, as soon as it had vented itself in words.
+
+But it was not merely on his left that the enemy had a narrow escape
+from being conquered; on his right he had run a still greater risk.
+Morand, one of Davoust's generals, had been despatched from that side
+through the forests; he marched along woody heights, and was, from the
+commencement of the action, on the flank of the Russians. A few paces
+more, and he would have debouched in the rear of their right. His sudden
+appearance would have infallibly decided the victory, and rendered it
+complete; but Napoleon, unacquainted with the localities, ordered him to
+be recalled to the spot where Davoust and himself had stopped.
+
+In the army, we could not help asking ourselves, why the emperor, in
+making three officers, independent of one another, combine for the same
+object, had not made a point of being on the spot, to give their
+movements the unity indispensable, and without him impossible. He, on
+the contrary, had returned to Smolensk, either from fatigue, or chiefly
+from not expecting so serious an affair; or finally, because, from the
+necessity of attending to every thing at once, he could not be in time,
+or completely any where. In fact, the business of his empire and of
+Europe, having been suspended by the preceding days of activity, had
+accumulated. It was necessary to clear out his portfolios, and to give
+circulation to both civil and political affairs, which began to clog; it
+was, besides, urgent and glorious to date from Smolensk.
+
+When, therefore, Borelli, second in command of Murat's staff, came to
+inform him of the battle of Valoutina, he hesitated about receiving him;
+and so deeply was he engaged in the business before him, that a minister
+had to interfere to procure that officer admittance. The report of this
+officer agitated Napoleon. "What say you?" he exclaimed: "what! you are
+not enough! the enemy shows 60,000 men! Then it is a battle!" and he
+began storming at the disobedience and inactivity of Junot. When Borelli
+informed him of Gudin's mortal wound, Napoleon's grief was violent; he
+gave vent to it in repeated questions and expressions of regret; then
+with that strength of mind which was peculiar to him, he subdued his
+uneasiness, postponed his anger, suspended his chagrin, and giving
+himself up wholly to his occupation, he deferred until the morrow the
+charge of battles, for night had come on; but afterwards the hopes of a
+battle roused him, and he appeared next morning with the day on the
+fields of Valoutina.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+Ney's troops, and those of Gudin's division, deprived of their general,
+had drawn up there on the corses of their companions and of the
+Russians, amidst the stumps of broken trees, on ground trampled by the
+feet of the combatants, furrowed with balls, strewed with the fragments
+of weapons, tattered garments, military utensils, carriages overthrown,
+and scattered limbs; for such are the trophies of war, such the beauties
+of a field of victory!
+
+Gudin's battalions appeared to be melted down to platoons; the more they
+were reduced, the prouder they seemed to be: close to them, one still
+breathed the smell of burnt cartridges and gunpowder, with which the
+ground and their apparel were impregnated, and their faces yet quite
+begrimed. The emperor could not pass along their front without having to
+avoid, to step over, or to tread upon carcases, and bayonets twisted by
+the violence of the shock. But over all these horrors he threw a veil of
+glory. His gratitude transformed this field of death into a field of
+triumph, where, for some hours, satisfied honour and ambition held
+exclusive sway.
+
+He was sensible that it was high time to encourage his soldiers by
+commendations and rewards. Never, therefore, were his looks more kind;
+and as to his language, "this battle was the most glorious achievement
+in our military history; the soldiers who heard him were men with whom
+one might conquer the world; the slain, warriors who had died an
+immortal death." He spoke thus, well aware that it is more especially
+amid such destruction that men think of immortality.
+
+He was profuse in his rewards; on the 12th, 21st, 127th of the line, and
+the 17th light, he conferred eighty-seven decorations and promotions;
+these were Gudin's regiments. The 127th had, before this, marched
+without an eagle; for at that time it was necessary for a regiment to
+earn its colours in a field of battle, to prove, that in the sequel it
+would know how to preserve them there.
+
+The emperor delivered the eagle to it with his own hands; he also
+satisfied Ney's corps. His favours were as great in themselves as they
+were in their form. The value of the gift was enhanced by the manner in
+which he bestowed it. He was successively surrounded by each regiment as
+by a family. There he appealed in a loud voice to the officers,
+subalterns, and privates, inquiring who were the bravest of all those
+brave men, or the most successful, and recompensing them on the spot.
+The officers named, the soldiers confirmed, the emperor approved: thus,
+as he himself observed, the elections were made instantaneously, in a
+circle, in his presence, and confirmed with acclamations by the troops.
+
+These paternal manners, which made the private soldier the military
+comrade of the ruler of Europe; these forms, which revived the
+still-regretted usages of the republic, delighted the troops. He was a
+monarch, but the monarch of the Revolution; and they could not but love
+a fortunate sovereign who led them on to fortune; in him there was every
+thing to excite, and nothing to reproach them.
+
+Never did field of victory exhibit a spectacle more capable of exalting;
+the presentation of that eagle so richly merited, the pomp of these
+promotions, the shouts of joy, the glory of those warriors, recompensed
+on the very spot where it had just been acquired; their valour
+proclaimed by a voice, every accent of which rung throughout attentive
+Europe; by that great captain whose bulletins would carry their names
+over the whole world, and more especially among their countrymen, and
+into the bosoms of their families, which they would at once cheer and
+make proud: how many favours at once! they were absolutely intoxicated
+with them: he himself seemed at first to allow himself to share their
+transports.
+
+But when he was out of sight of his troops, the attitude of Ney and
+Murat, and the words of Poniatowski, who was as frank and judicious in
+council as he was intrepid in the field, tranquillized him; and when the
+close heat of the day began to overpower him, and he learned from the
+reports that his men had proceeded eight leagues without overtaking the
+enemy, the spell was entirely dissolved. On his return to Smolensk, the
+jolting of his carriage over the relics of the fight, the stoppages
+caused on the road by the long file of the wounded who were crawling or
+being carried back, and in Smolensk itself by the tumbrels of amputated
+limbs about to be thrown away at a distance; in a word, all that is
+horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed him.
+Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which issued
+from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised on the
+fields of Valoutina.
+
+The reports of the surgeons were frightful: in that country a spirit
+distilled from grain is used instead of wine and brandy made from
+grapes. Narcotic plants are mixed with it. Our young soldiers, exhausted
+with hunger and fatigue, conceived that this liquor would cheer them;
+but its perfidious heat caused them to throw out at once all the fire
+that was yet left in them, after which they sank exhausted, and became
+the victims of disease.
+
+Others, less sober, or more debilitated, were seized with dizziness,
+stupefaction, and torpor; they squatted into the ditches and on the
+roads. Their half-open, watery, and lack-lustre eyes seemed to watch,
+with insensibility, death gradually seizing their whole frame; they
+expired sullenly and without a groan.
+
+At Wilna, it had not been possible to establish hospitals for more than
+six thousand sick: convents, churches, synagogues, and barns, served to
+receive the suffering multitude. In these dismal places, which were
+sometimes unhealthy, but still too few, and too crowded, the sick were
+frequently without food, without beds, without covering, and without
+even straw and medicines. The surgeons were inadequate to the duty, so
+that every thing, even to the very hospitals, contributed to create
+disease, and nothing to cure.
+
+At Witepsk, 400 wounded Russians were left on the field of battle: 300
+more were abandoned in the town by their army; and as the inhabitants
+had been taken away, these unfortunate wretches remained three days
+before they were discovered, without assistance, huddled together
+pell-mell, dead and dying, amidst the most horrible filth and infection:
+they were at length collected together and mixed with our own wounded,
+who, like those of the Russians, amounted to 700. Our surgeons tore up
+their very shirts, and those of these poor creatures, to dress them; for
+there already began to be a scarcity of linen.
+
+When at length the wounds of these unfortunate men were healed, and they
+required nothing but wholesome food to complete their cure, they
+perished for want of sustenance: few either of the French or Russians
+escaped. Those who were prevented from going in quest of food by the
+loss of a limb, or by debility, were the first to sink. These disasters
+occurred wherever the emperor was not in person; his presence bringing,
+and his departure carrying, every thing along with it; and his orders,
+in fact, not being scrupulously obeyed but within the circle of his own
+observation.
+
+At Smolensk, there was no want of hospitals; fifteen spacious brick
+buildings were rescued from the flames: there were even found some wine,
+brandy, and a few medical stores; and our reserve waggons for the
+wounded at length rejoined us: but every thing ran short. The surgeons
+were at work night and day, but the very second night, all the materials
+for dressing the wounded were exhausted: there was no more linen, and
+they were forced to use paper, found in the archives, in its stead.
+Parchment served for splinters, and coarse cloth for compresses; and
+they had no other substitute for lint than tow and birch down (_coton du
+bouleau_).
+
+Our surgeons were overwhelmed with dismay: for three days an hospital of
+a hundred wounded had been forgotten; an accident led to its discovery:
+Rapp penetrated into that abode of despair. I will spare my reader the
+horror of a description. Wherefore communicate those terrible
+impressions which harrow up the soul? Rapp did not spare them to
+Napoleon, who instantly caused his own wine, and a sum of money, to be
+distributed among such of those unfortunate men as a tenacious life
+still animated, or whom a disgusting food had supported.
+
+But to the vehement emotion which these reports excited in the bosom of
+the emperor, was superadded an alarming consideration. The conflagration
+of Smolensk was no longer, he saw, the effect of a fatal and unforeseen
+accident of war, nor even the result of an act of despair: it was the
+result of cool determination. The Russians had studied the time and
+means, and taken as great pains to destroy, as are usually taken to
+preserve.
+
+The same day the courageous answers of one of their popes (the only one
+found in Smolensk,) enlightened him still more in regard to the blind
+fury which had been excited in the whole Russian nation. His
+interpreter, alarmed by this animosity, conducted the pope to the
+emperor. The venerable priest first reproached him, with firmness, for
+his alleged sacrilegious acts: he knew not that it was the Russian
+general himself who had caused the storehouses and churches to be set on
+fire, and who had accused us of these outrages, in order that the
+mercantile class and the peasantry might not separate their cause from
+that of the nobility.
+
+The emperor listened attentively. "But," said he to him at last, "has
+your church been burned?"--"No, sire," replied the pope; "God will be
+more powerful than you; he will protect it, for I have opened it to all
+the unfortunate people whom the destruction of the city has deprived of
+a home!"--"You are right," rejoined Napoleon, with emotion, "yes, God
+will watch over the innocent victims of war; he will reward you for your
+courage. Go, worthy priest, return to your post. Had all your popes
+followed your example, they had not basely betrayed the mission of peace
+which they received from heaven; if they had not abandoned the temples
+which their presence alone renders sacred, my soldiers would have spared
+your holy edifices; for we are all Christians, and your God is our God."
+
+With these words, Napoleon sent back the priest to his temple with an
+escort and some succours. A heart-rending shriek arose at the sight of
+the soldiers penetrating into this asylum. A crowd of terrified women
+and children thronged about the altar; but the pope, raising his voice,
+cried; "be of good cheer: I have seen Napoleon; I have spoken to him.
+Oh! how have we been deceived, my children! the emperor of France is not
+the man that he has been represented to you. Learn that he and his
+soldiers worship the same God as we do. The war which he wages is not
+religious, it is a political quarrel with our emperor. His soldiers
+fight only our soldiers. They do not slaughter, as we have been assured,
+old men, women, and children. Cheer up, then, and let us thank God for
+being relieved from the painful duty of hating them as heathen, impious
+wretches, and incendiaries!" The pope then commenced a hymn of thanks,
+in which they all joined with tearful eyes.
+
+But these very words demonstrated how much the nation had been deceived.
+The rest of the inhabitants had fled. Henceforward, then, it was not
+their army alone, it was the population, it was all Russia, that fled
+before us. The emperor felt that, with this population, one of his most
+powerful engines of conquest was escaping from his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+Ever since our arrival at Witepsk, Napoleon had in fact employed two of
+his officers to sound the sentiments of these people. The object was,
+to instil into them notions of liberty, and to compromise them in our
+cause by an insurrection more or less general. But there had been
+nothing to work upon excepting a few straggling savage boors, whom the
+Russians had perhaps left as spies amongst us. This attempt had only
+served to betray his plan, and to put the Russians on their guard
+against it.
+
+This expedient, moreover, was repugnant to Napoleon, whose nature
+inclined him much more to the cause of kings than to that of nations. He
+employed it but carelessly. Subsequently, at Moscow, he received several
+addresses from different heads of families. They complained that they
+were treated by the nobility like herds of cattle, which they might sell
+or barter away at pleasure. They solicited Napoleon to proclaim the
+abolition of slavery, and in the event of his doing so, they offered to
+head partial insurrections, which they promised speedily to render
+general.
+
+These offers were rejected. We should have seen, among a barbarous
+people, a barbarous liberty, an ungovernable, a horrible licentiousness:
+a few partial revolts had formerly furnished the standard of them. The
+Russian nobles, like the planters of St. Domingo, would have been
+ruined. The fear of this prevailed in the mind of Napoleon, and was
+confessed by him; it induced him to give up, for a time, all attempts to
+excite a movement which he could not have regulated.
+
+Besides, these masters had conceived a distrust of their slaves. Amidst
+so many dangers, they distinguished this as the most urgent. They first
+wrought upon the minds of their unfortunate serfs, debased by all sorts
+of servitude. Their priests, whom they are accustomed to believe,
+imposed upon them by delusive language; they persuaded these peasants
+that we were legions of devils, commanded by Antichrist, infernal
+spirits, whose very look would excite horror, and whose touch would
+contaminate. Such of our prisoners as fell into their hands, remarked
+that these poor creatures would not again make use of the vessels which
+they had used, and that they reserved them for the most filthy animals.
+
+As we advanced, however, our presence would have refuted all these
+clumsy fables. But behold! these nobles fell back with their serfs into
+the interior of the country, as at the approach of a dire contagion.
+Property, habitations, all that could detain them, and be serviceable to
+us, were sacrificed. They interposed famine, fire, and the desert,
+between them and us; for it was as much against their serfs as against
+Napoleon that this mighty resolution was executed. It was no longer,
+therefore, a war of kings that was to be prosecuted, but a war of class,
+a war of party, a war of religion, a national war, a combination of all
+sorts of war.
+
+The emperor then first perceived the enormous magnitude of his
+enterprise; the farther he advanced, the more it became magnified. So
+long as he only encountered kings, to him, who was greater than all of
+them, their defeats were but sport; but the kings being conquered, he
+had now to do with people; and it was another Spain, but remote, barren,
+infinite, that he had found at the opposite extremity of Europe. He was
+daunted, hesitated, and paused.
+
+At Witepsk, whatever resolution he might have taken, he wanted Smolensk,
+and till he should be at Smolensk, he seemed to have deferred coming to
+any determination. For this reason he was again seized with the same
+perplexity: it was now more embarrassing, as the flames, the prevalent
+epidemic, and the victims which surrounded him, had aggravated every
+thing; a fever of hesitation attacked him; his eyes turned towards Kief,
+Petersburgh, and Moscow.
+
+At Kief he should envelop Tchitchakof and his army; he should rid the
+right flank and the rear of the grand army, of annoyance; he should
+cover the Polish provinces most productive of men, provisions, and
+horses; while fortified cantonments at Mohilef, Smolensk, Witepsk,
+Polotsk, Dünabourg, and Riga, would defend the rest. Behind this line,
+and during the winter, he might raise and organize all ancient Poland,
+and hurl it in the spring upon Russia, oppose nation to nation, and
+render the war equal.
+
+At Smolensk, however, he was at the point where the Petersburgh and
+Moscow roads meet, 29 marches from the first of these capitals, and 15
+from the other. In Petersburgh, the centre of the government, the knot
+to which all the threads of the administration were united, the brain of
+Russia, were her military and naval arsenals; in short, it was the only
+point of communication between Russia and England, of which he should
+possess himself. The victory of Polotsk, of which he had just received
+intelligence, seemed to urge him in that direction. By marching in
+concert with Saint-Cyr upon Petersburgh, he should envelop Wittgenstein,
+and cause Riga to fall before Macdonald.
+
+On the other hand, in Moscow, it was the nobility, as well as the
+nation, that he should attack in its property, in its ancient honour;
+the road to that capital was shorter; it presented fewer obstacles and
+more resources; the Russian main army, which he could not neglect, and
+which he must destroy, was there, together with the chances of a battle,
+and the hope of giving a shock to the nation, by striking at its heart
+in this national war.
+
+Of these three plans the latter appeared to him the only one
+practicable, in spite of the advancing season. The history of Charles
+XII. was, nevertheless, before his eyes; not that of Voltaire, which he
+had just thrown aside with impatience, judging it to be romantic and
+inaccurate, but the journal of Adlerfield, which he read, but which did
+not stop him. On comparing that expedition with his own, he found a
+thousand differences between them, on which he laid great stress; for
+who can be a judge in his own cause? and of what use is the example of
+the past, in a world where there never were two men, two things, or two
+situations exactly alike?
+
+At any rate, about this period the name of Charles XII. was frequently
+heard to drop from his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+But the news which arrived from all quarters excited his ardour quite as
+much as it had been at Witepsk. His lieutenants seemed to have done more
+than himself: the actions of Mohilef, Molodeczna, and Valoutina, were
+regular battles, in which Davoust, Schwartzenberg, and Ney, were
+conquerors; on his right, his line of operation seemed to be covered;
+the enemy's army was flying before him; on his left, the Duke of Reggio,
+after drawing Wittgenstein upon Polotsk, was attacked at Slowna, on the
+17th of August. The attack of Wittgenstein was furious and obstinate; it
+failed; but he retained his offensive position, and Marshal Oudinot had
+been wounded. Saint-Cyr succeeded him in the command of that army,
+composed of about 30,000 French, Swiss, and Bavarians. The very next day
+this general, who disliked any command unless when he exercised it alone
+and in chief, availed himself of it, to give his measure to his own
+troops and to the enemy; but coolly, according to his character, and
+combining every thing.
+
+From daybreak till five in the evening, he contrived to amuse the enemy
+by the proposal of an agreement to withdraw the wounded, and more
+especially by demonstrations of retreat. At the same time he silently
+rallied all his combatants, drew them up into three columns of attack,
+and concealed them behind the village of Spas and rising grounds.
+
+At five o'clock, all being ready, and Wittgenstein's vigilance asleep,
+Saint-Cyr gave the signal: his artillery immediately began firing, and
+his columns rushed forward. The Russians, being taken by surprise,
+resisted in vain; their right was first broken, and their centre soon
+fled in disorder: they abandoned 1000 prisoners, 20 pieces of cannon, a
+field of battle covered with slain, and the offensive, which Saint-Cyr,
+being too weak, could only affect to resume, for the purpose of better
+defending himself.
+
+In this short but severe and sanguinary conflict, the right wing of the
+Russians, which was supported by the Düna, made an obstinate resistance.
+It was necessary to charge it with the bayonet, amidst a thick fire of
+grape-shot; every thing succeeded, but when it was supposed that there
+was no more to do but to pursue, all was nearly lost; some Russian
+dragoons, according to some, and horse-guards, according to others,
+risked a charge on a battery of Saint-Cyr's; a French brigade placed to
+support it advanced, then suddenly turned its back and fled through the
+midst of our cannon, which it prevented from being fired. The Russians
+reached them pell-mell with our men; they sabred the gunners, upset the
+pieces, and pursued our horse so closely, that the latter, more and more
+terrified, ran in disorder upon their commander-in-chief and his staff,
+whom they overthrew. General Saint-Cyr was obliged to fly on foot. He
+threw himself into the bottom of a ravine, which sheltered him from the
+squall. The Russian dragoons were already close to Polotsk, when a
+prompt and skilful manoeuvre of Berkheim and the 4th French
+cuirassiers put an end to this warm affair. The Russians betook
+themselves to the woods.
+
+The following day Saint-Cyr sent a body of men in pursuit of them, but
+merely to observe their retreat, to mark the victory, and to reap some
+more of its fruits. During the two succeeding months, up to the 18th of
+October, Wittgenstein kept at a respectful distance. The French general,
+on his part, confined his attention to observing the enemy, keeping up
+his communications with Macdonald, with Witepsk, and Smolensk,
+fortifying himself in his position of Polotsk, and, above all, finding
+there means of subsistence.
+
+In this action of the 18th, four generals, four colonels, and many
+officers, were wounded. Among them the army remarked the Bavarian
+Generals Deroy and Liben. They expired on the 22d of August. These
+generals were of the same age; they had belonged to the same regiment,
+had made the same campaigns, proceeded at nearly an equal pace in their
+perilous career, which was gloriously terminated by the same death, and
+in the same battle. It was thought right not to separate in the tomb
+these warriors, whom neither life nor death had been able to part; one
+grave received the remains of both.
+
+On the news of this victory, the emperor sent to General Saint-Cyr the
+staff of Marshal of the empire. He placed a great number of crosses at
+his disposal, and subsequently approved most of the promotions which
+were applied for.
+
+Notwithstanding this success, the determination to proceed beyond
+Smolensk was too perilous for Napoleon to decide on it alone: it was
+requisite that he should contrive to be drawn into it. Beyond Valoutina,
+Ney's corps, which was fatigued, had been replaced by that of Davoust.
+Murat as king, as brother-in-law to the emperor, and agreeably to his
+order, was to command it. Ney had submitted to this, less from
+condescension than from conformity of disposition. They agreed in their
+ardour.
+
+But Davoust, whose methodical and tenacious genius was a complete
+contrast to the fiery impetuosity of Murat, and who was rendered proud
+by the remembrance of, and the titles derived from two great victories,
+was piqued at being placed in this dependence. These haughty chiefs, who
+were about the same age, had been companions in war, and had mutually
+witnessed each other's elevation; they were both spoiled by the habit of
+having obeyed only a great man, and were by no means fit to command one
+another; Murat, in particular, who was too often unable to command
+himself.
+
+Davoust nevertheless obeyed, but with an ill grace, and imperfectly, as
+wounded pride generally does. He affected immediately to break off all
+direct correspondence with the emperor. The latter, surprised at this,
+ordered him to renew it, alleging his distrust of the reports of Murat.
+Davoust made a handle of this avowal, and again asserted his
+independence. Henceforward the vanguard had two leaders. Thus the
+emperor, fatigued, distressed, overloaded with business of every kind,
+and forced to show indulgence to his lieutenants, divided his power as
+well as his armies, in spite of his precepts and his former examples.
+Circumstances, which he had so often controlled, became stronger than
+him, and controlled him in their turn.
+
+Meanwhile Barclay, having fallen back without resistance nearly as far
+as Dorogobouje, Murat had no need of Davoust, and no occasion presented
+itself for misunderstanding; but about eleven in the forenoon of the 23d
+of August, a thick wood, a few wersts from that town, which the king
+wished to reconnoitre, was warmly disputed with him: he was obliged to
+carry it twice.
+
+Murat, surprised at such a resistance at that early hour, pushed on, and
+piercing through this curtain, beheld the whole Russian army drawn up in
+order of battle. The narrow ravine of the Luja separated him from it: it
+was noon; the extent of the Russian lines, especially towards our right,
+the preparations, the hour, the place, which was that where Barclay had
+just rejoined Bagration; the choice of the ground, well suited for a
+general engagement; all gave him reason to anticipate a battle; and he
+sent a dispatch to the emperor to apprise him of it.
+
+At the same time he ordered Montbrun to pass the ravine on his right
+with his cavalry, in order to reconnoitre and get upon the left of the
+enemy. Davoust, and his five divisions of infantry, extended themselves
+on that side; he protected Montbrun: the king recalled them to his left,
+on the high-road, designing, it is said, to support Montbrun's flank
+movement by some demonstrations in front.
+
+Davoust replied, that "This would be sacrificing our right wing, through
+which the enemy would get behind us on the high-road, our only means of
+retreat; that thus he would force us to a battle, which he, Davoust, had
+orders to avoid, and which he would avoid, his force being insufficient,
+the position bad, and he being moreover under the command of a leader in
+whom he had but little confidence." He then wrote immediately to
+Napoleon, urging him to come up without loss of time, if he would not
+have Murat engage without him.
+
+On this intelligence, which he received in the night of the 24th of
+August, Napoleon joyfully threw aside his indecision, which to this
+enterprising and decisive genius was absolute torture: he hurried
+forward with his guard, and proceeded twelve leagues without halting;
+but on the evening of the preceding day, the enemy's army had again
+disappeared.
+
+On our side, his retreat was attributed to the movement of Montbrun; on
+the part of the Russians to Barclay, and to a bad position chosen by the
+chief of his staff, who had taken up ground in his own disfavour,
+instead of making it serve to his advantage. Bagration was the first who
+perceived it; his rage knew no bounds, and he proclaimed it treason.
+
+Discord reigned in the Russian camp as well as in our advanced guard.
+Confidence in their commander, that strength of armies, was wanting; his
+every step seemed a blunder; each resolution that was taken the very
+worst. The loss of Smolensk had soured all; the junction of the two
+_corps d'armée_ increased the evil; the stronger the Russian force felt
+itself, the weaker did its general seem to it. The outcry became
+general; another leader was loudly called for. A few prudent men,
+however, interposed: Kutusof was announced, and the humbled pride of the
+Russians awaited him in order to fight.
+
+The emperor, on his part, already at Dorogobouje, no longer hesitated;
+he knew that he carried every where with him the fate of Europe; that
+wherever he might be, that would always be the place where the destiny
+of nations would be decided; that he might therefore advance, fearless
+of the threatening consequences of the defection of the Swedes and
+Turks. Thus he neglected the hostile armies of Essen at Riga, of
+Wittgenstein before Polotsk, of Ertell before Bobruisk, and of
+Tchitchakof in Volhynia. They consisted of 120,000 men, whose number
+could not but keep gradually augmenting; he passed them, and suffered
+himself to be surrounded by them with indifference, assured that all
+these vain obstacles of war and policy would be swept away by the very
+first thunderbolt which he should launch.
+
+And yet, his column of attack, which was 185,000 strong at his departure
+from Witepsk, was already reduced to 157,000; it was diminished by
+28,000 men, half of whom occupied Witepsk, Orcha, Mohilef, and Smolensk.
+The rest had been killed or wounded, or were straggling, and plundering
+in his rear our allies and the French themselves.
+
+But 157,000 men were sufficient to destroy the Russian army by a
+complete victory, and to take Moscow. As to his base of operation,
+notwithstanding the 120,000 Russians by whom it was threatened, it
+appeared to be secure. Lithuania, the Düna, the Dnieper, and lastly
+Smolensk, were or would soon be covered towards Riga and Dünabourg by
+Macdonald and 32,000 men; towards Polotsk, by Saint-Cyr, with 30,000; at
+Witepsk, Smolensk, and Mohilef, by Victor and 40,000; before Bobruisk,
+by Dombrowski and 12,000; and on the Bug by Schwartzenberg and Regnier,
+at the head of 45,000 men. Napoleon reckoned besides on the divisions of
+Loison and Durutte, 22,000 strong, which were already approaching
+Königsberg and Warsaw; and on reinforcements to the amount of 80,000,
+all of which would enter Russia before the middle of November.
+
+He should thus have 280,000 men, including the Lithuanian and Polish
+levies, to support him, while, with 155,000 more, he made an incursion
+of 93 leagues; for such was the distance between Smolensk and Moscow.
+
+But these 280,000 men were commanded by six different leaders, all
+independent of each other, and the most elevated of them, he who
+occupied the centre, and who seemed to be appointed to act as an
+intermediate link, to give some unity to the operations of the other
+five, was a minister of peace, and not of war.
+
+Besides, the same causes which had already diminished, by one-third, the
+French forces which first entered Russia, could not fail to disperse or
+to destroy a still greater proportion of all these reinforcements. Most
+of them were coming by detachments, formed provisionally into marching
+battalions under officers new to them, whom they were to leave the first
+day, without the incentive of discipline, _esprit de corps_, or glory,
+and traversing an exhausted country, which the season and the climate
+would be rendering daily more bare and more rude.
+
+Meanwhile Napoleon beheld Dorogobouje in ashes, like Smolensk,
+especially the quarter of the merchants, those who had most to lose,
+whom their riches might have detained or brought back amongst us, and
+who, from their situation, formed a kind of intermediate class, a
+commencement of the third estate, which liberty was likely to seduce.
+
+He was perfectly aware that he was quitting Smolensk, as he had come
+thither, with the hope of a battle, which the indecision and discord of
+the Russian generals had as yet deferred; but his resolution was taken;
+he would hear of nothing but what was calculated to support him in it.
+He persisted in pursuing the track of the enemy; his hardihood increased
+with their prudence; their circumspection he called pusillanimity, their
+retreat flight; he despised, that he might hope.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The emperor had proceeded with such expedition to Dorogobouje, that he
+was obliged to halt there, in order to wait for his army, and to leave
+Murat to pursue the enemy. He set out again on the 26th of August; the
+army marched in three columns abreast; the Emperor, Murat, Davoust, and
+Ney in the centre, on the high-road to Moscow; Poniatowski on the right;
+and the army of Italy on the left.
+
+The principal column, that of the centre, found nothing on a road where
+its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the
+Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in
+so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed
+every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to
+have set out later every day, halted earlier, and then extended itself
+more on its flanks during the night; which could be done without
+imprudence when the enemy was so near at hand.
+
+At Smolensk orders had been issued, as at Witepsk, to take, at starting,
+provisions for several days. The emperor was aware of the difficulty of
+collecting them, but he reckoned upon the diligence of the officers and
+the troops; they had warning,--that was sufficient; they would contrive
+to provide themselves with necessaries. They had acquired the habit of
+doing so; and it was really a curious sight to observe the voluntary and
+continual efforts of so many men to follow a single individual to such
+great distances. The existence of the army was a prodigy that was daily
+renewed, by the active, industrious, and intelligent spirit of the
+French and Polish troops, by their habit of surmounting all
+difficulties, and by their fondness for the hazards and irregularities
+of this dreadful game of an adventurous life.
+
+In the train of each regiment there were a multitude of those diminutive
+horses with which Poland swarms, a great number of carts of the country,
+which required to be incessantly replaced with fresh ones, and a drove
+of cattle. The baggage-waggons were driven by soldiers, for they turned
+their hands to every trade. They were missed in the ranks, it is true;
+but here the want of provisions, the necessity for transporting every
+thing with them, excused this prodigious train: it required a second
+army, as it were, to carry or draw what was indispensable for the first.
+
+In this prompt organization, adopted while marching, the army had
+accommodated itself to all the local customs and difficulties; the
+genius of the soldiers had admirably made the most of the scanty
+resources of the country. As to the officers, as the general orders
+always took for granted regular distributions which were never made,
+each of them, according to the degree of his zeal, intelligence, and
+firmness, appropriated to himself more or less of this spoil, and had
+converted individual pillage into regular contributions.
+
+For it was only by excursions on the flanks and into an unknown country
+that any provisions could be procured. Every evening, when the army
+halted, and the bivouacs were established, detachments, rarely commanded
+by divisions, sometimes by brigades, and most commonly by regiments,
+went in quest of necessaries, and penetrated into the country; a few
+wersts from the road they found all the villages inhabited, and were not
+very hostilely received; but as they could not make themselves
+understood, and besides wanted every thing, and that instantaneously,
+the peasants were soon seized with a panic and fled into the woods,
+whence they issued again as no very formidable partizans.
+
+The detachments meanwhile plentifully regaled themselves, and rejoined
+their corps next day or some days afterwards, laden with all that they
+had collected; and it frequently happened that they were plundered in
+their turn by their comrades belonging to the other corps whom they
+chanced to fall in with. Hence animosities, which would have infallibly
+led to most sanguinary intestine conflicts, had not all been
+subsequently overtaken by the same misfortune, and involved in the
+horrors of a common disaster.
+
+Till the return of their detachments, the soldiers who remained with
+their eagles lived on what they could find on the military route; in
+general it consisted of new rye, which they bruised and boiled. Owing to
+the cattle which followed, there was less want of meat than of bread;
+but the length, and especially the rapidity of the marches, occasioned
+the loss of many of these animals: they were suffocated by the heat and
+dust; when, therefore, they came to water, they ran into it with such
+fury, that many of them were drowned, while others drank so
+immoderately, as to swell themselves out till they were unable to walk.
+
+It was remarked, as before we reached Smolensk, that the divisions of
+the first corps continued to be the most numerous; their detachments,
+better disciplined, brought back more, and did less injury to the
+inhabitants. Those who remained with their colours lived on the contents
+of their knapsacks, the regular appearance of which relieved the eye,
+fatigued with a disorder that was nearly universal.
+
+Each of these knapsacks, reduced to what was strictly necessary in point
+of apparel, contained two shirts, two pair of shoes with nails, and a
+pair of extra soles, a pair of pantaloons and half-gaiters of cloth; a
+few articles requisite to cleanliness, a bandage, and a quantity of
+lint, and sixty cartridges.
+
+In the two sides were placed four biscuits of sixteen ounces each; under
+these, and at the bottom, was a long, narrow, linen bag, filled with ten
+pounds of flour. The whole knapsack and its contents, together with the
+straps and the hood, rolled up and fastened at top, weighed
+thirty-three pounds twelve ounces.
+
+Each soldier carried also a linen bag, slung in form of a shoulder-belt,
+containing two loaves of three pounds each. Thus with his sabre, his
+loaded knapsack, three flints, his turn-screw, his belt and musket, he
+had to carry fifty-eight pounds weight, and was provided with bread for
+four days, biscuit for four, flour for seven, and sixty rounds of
+ammunition.
+
+Behind it were carriages laden with provisions for six more days; but it
+was impossible to reckon with confidence on these vehicles, picked up on
+the spot, which would have been so convenient in any other country with
+a smaller army, and in a more regular war.
+
+When the flour-bag was emptied, it was filled with any corn that could
+be found, and which was ground at the first mill, if any chanced to be
+met with; if not, by the hand-mills which followed the regiments, or
+which were found in the villages, for the Russians are scarcely
+acquainted with any others. It took sixteen men twelve hours to grind in
+one of them the corn necessary for one hundred and thirty men for one
+day.
+
+As every house in this country has an oven, little want was felt on that
+score; bakers abounded; for the regiments of the first corps contained
+men of all trades, so that articles of food and clothing were all made
+or repaired by them during the march. They were colonies uniting the
+character of civilized and nomadic. The emperor had first conceived the
+idea, which the genius of the prince of Eckmühl had appropriated; he had
+every thing he wanted, time, place, and men to carry it into execution;
+but these three elements of success were less at the disposal of the
+other chiefs. Besides, their characters being more impetuous and less
+methodical, would scarcely have derived the same advantages from it;
+with a less organizing genius, they would therefore have had more
+obstacles to surmount; the emperor had not paid sufficient attention to
+these differences, which were productive of baneful effects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+It was from Slawkowo, a few leagues beyond Dorogobouje, that Napoleon
+sent orders, on the 27th of August, to marshal Victor, who was then on
+the Niemen, to advance to Smolensk. This marshal's left was to occupy
+Witepsk, his right Mohilef, and his centre Smolensk. There he would
+succour Saint-Cyr, in case of need, serve for a point of support to the
+army of Moscow, and keep up his communications with Lithuania.
+
+It was also from the same imperial head-quarters that he published the
+details of his review at Valoutina, with the intention of proclaiming to
+the present and future ages the names even of the private soldiers who
+had there distinguished themselves. But he added, that at Smolensk "the
+conduct of the Poles had astonished the Russians, who had been
+accustomed to despise them." These words drew from the Poles an outcry
+of indignation, and the emperor smiled at an anger which he had
+foreseen, and the effects of which were designed to fall exclusively on
+the Russians.
+
+On this march he took delight in dating from the heart of Old Russia a
+number of decrees, which would be circulated in the meanest hamlets of
+France; from the desire of appearing to be present every where at once,
+and filling the earth more and more with his power: the offspring of
+that inconceiveable and expanding greatness of soul, whose ambition was
+at first a mere plaything, but finally coveted the empire of the world.
+
+It is true that at the same time there was so little order about him at
+Slawkowo, that his guard burned, during the night, to warm themselves,
+the bridge which they were ordered to guard, and the only one by which
+he could, the next day, leave his imperial quarters. This disorder,
+however, like many others, proceeded not from insubordination, but from
+thoughtlessness; it was corrected as soon as it was perceived.
+
+The very same day Murat drove the enemy beyond the Osma, a narrow river,
+but enclosed with high banks, and of great depth, like most of the
+rivers of this country, the effect of the snow, and which, at the period
+of its general melting, prevents inundations. The Russian rear-guard,
+covered by this obstacle, faced about and established itself on the
+heights of the opposite bank. Murat ordered the ravine to be examined,
+and a ford was discovered. It was through this narrow and insecure
+defile that he dared to march against the Russians, to venture between
+the river and their position; thus cutting off from himself all retreat,
+and turning a skirmish into a desperate action. In fact, the enemy
+descended in force from their height, and drove him back to the very
+brink of the ravine, into which they had well-nigh precipitated him. But
+Murat persisted in his error; he braved it out, and converted it into a
+success. The 4th lancers carried the position, and the Russians went to
+pass the night not far off; content with having made us purchase at a
+dear rate a quarter of a league of ground, which they would have given
+up to us for nothing during the night.
+
+At the moment of the most imminent danger, a battery of the prince of
+Eckmühl twice refused to fire. Its commanding officer pleaded his
+instructions, which forbade him, upon pain of being broke, to fight
+without orders from Davoust. These orders arrived, in time, according to
+some, but too late according to others. I relate this incident, because,
+on the following day, it was the occasion of a violent quarrel between
+Murat and Davoust, in presence of the emperor, at Semlewo.
+
+The king reproached the prince with his tardy circumspection, and more
+especially with an enmity which dated from the expedition to Egypt. In
+the vehemence of his passion he told him, that if there was any quarrel
+between them they ought to settle it by themselves, but that the army
+ought not to be made the sufferers for it.
+
+Davoust, irritated in his turn, accused the king of temerity; according
+to him "his thoughtless ardour was incessantly compromising his troops,
+and wasting to no purpose, their lives, their strength, and their
+stores. It was right that the emperor should at last know what was daily
+occurring in his advanced guard. Every morning the enemy had disappeared
+before it; but this experience led to no alteration whatever in the
+march: the troops, therefore, set out late, all keeping the high-road,
+and forming a single column, and in this manner they advanced in the
+void till about noon.
+
+"The enemy's rear-guard, ready to fight, was then discovered behind some
+marshy ravine, the bridges over which had been broken down, and which
+was commanded from the opposite bank. The light troops were instantly
+brought into action, then the first regiments of cavalry that were at
+hand, and then the artillery; but in general out of reach, or against
+straggling cossacks, who were not worth the trouble. At length, after
+vain and sanguinary attempts made in front, the king took it into his
+head to reconnoitre the force and position of the enemy more accurately,
+and to manoeuvre; and he sent for the infantry.
+
+"Then after having long waited in this endless column, the ravine was
+crossed on the left or on the right of the Russians, who retired under a
+fire of their small arms to a new position; where the same resistance,
+and the same mode of march and attack, exposed us to the same losses and
+the same delays.
+
+"In this manner the king went on from position to position, till he came
+to one which was stronger or better defended. It was usually about five
+in the evening, sometimes later, rarely earlier; but in this case the
+tenacity of the Russians, and the hour, plainly indicated that their
+whole army was there, and was determined to pass the night on the spot.
+
+"For it could not be denied that this retreat of the Russians was
+conducted with admirable order. The ground alone dictated it to them and
+not Murat. Their positions were so well chosen, taken so seasonably, and
+each defended so exactly in proportion to its strength, and the time
+which their general wished to gain, that in truth their movements seemed
+to form part of a plan which had been long determined on, carefully
+traced, and executed with scrupulous exactness.
+
+"They never abandoned a post till the moment before they were likely to
+be driven from it.
+
+"In the evening they established themselves early in a good position,
+leaving under arms no more troops than were absolutely necessary to
+defend it, while the remainder rested and refreshed themselves."
+
+Davoust added that, "so far from profiting by this example, the king
+paid no regard either to the hour, the strength of the situation, or the
+resistance; that he dashed on among his tirailleurs, dancing about in
+front of the enemy's line, feeling it in every part; putting himself in
+a passion, giving his orders with loud shouts, and making himself hoarse
+with repeating them; exhausting every thing, cartouch-boxes,
+ammunition-waggons, men and horses, combatants and non-combatants, and
+keeping all the troops under arms till night had set in.
+
+"Then, indeed, it was found necessary to desist, and to take up their
+quarters where they were; but they no longer knew where to find
+necessaries. It was really pitiful to hear the soldiers wandering in the
+dark, groping about, as it were, for forage, water, wood, straw, and
+provisions, and then, unable to find their bivouacs again, calling out
+to one another lest they should lose themselves, during the whole night.
+Scarcely had they time, not to sleep, but to prepare their food.
+Overwhelmed with fatigue, they cursed the hardships they had to endure,
+till daylight and the enemy came to rouse them again.
+
+"It was not the advanced guard alone that suffered in this manner, but
+the whole of the cavalry. Every evening Murat had left behind him 20,000
+men on horseback and under arms, on the high-road. This long column had
+remained all day without eating or drinking, amidst a cloud of dust,
+under a burning sky; ignorant of what was passing before it, advancing a
+few paces from one quarter of an hour to another, then halting to deploy
+among fields of rye, but without daring to take off the bridles and to
+allow their famished horses to feed, because the king kept them
+incessantly on the alert. It was to advance five or six leagues that
+they thus passed sixteen tedious hours--particularly arduous for the
+cuirassier horses, which had more to carry than the others, though
+weaker, as the largest horses in general are, and which required more
+food; hence their great carcasses were worn down to skeletons, their
+flanks collapsed, they crawled rather than walked, and every moment one
+was seen staggering, and another falling under his rider, who left him
+to his fate."
+
+Davoust concluded with saying, that "in this manner the whole of the
+cavalry would perish; Murat, however, might dispose of that as he
+pleased, but as for the infantry of the first corps, so long as he had
+the command of it, he would not suffer it to be thrown away in that
+manner."
+
+The king was not backward in replying. While the emperor was listening
+to them, he was at the same time playing with a Russian ball, which he
+kicked about with his foot. It seemed as if there was something in the
+misunderstanding between these chiefs which did not displease him. He
+attributed their animosity entirely to their ardour, well aware that of
+all passions glory is the most jealous.
+
+The impatient ardour of Murat gratified his own. As the troops had
+nothing to live upon but what they found, every thing was consumed at
+the moment; for this reason it was necessary to make short work with the
+enemy, and to proceed rapidly. Besides, the general crisis in Europe was
+too strong, his situation too critical to remain there, and himself too
+impatient; he wished to bring matters to a close at any rate, in order
+to extricate himself.
+
+The impetuosity of the king, therefore, seemed to suit his anxiety
+better than the methodical prudence of the Prince of Eckmühl.
+Accordingly, when he dismissed them, he said mildly to Davoust, that
+"one person could not possess every species of merit; that he knew
+better how to fight a battle than to push a rear-guard; and that if
+Murat had pursued Bagration in Lithuania, he would probably not have
+allowed him to escape." It is even asserted that he reproached the
+marshal with a restless disposition, an anxiety to appropriate to
+himself all the commands; less, indeed, from ambition than zeal, and
+that all might go on better; but yet this zeal had its inconveniences.
+He then sent them away with an injunction to agree better in future.
+
+The two chiefs returned to their commands, and to their animosity. As
+the war was confined to the head of the column, that also was the scene
+of their disputes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+On the 28th of August, the army crossed the vast plains of the
+government of Wiazma: it marched in all haste, the whole together,
+through fields, and several regiments abreast, each forming a short,
+close column. The high-road was left for the artillery, its waggons, and
+those carrying the sick and wounded. The emperor, on horseback, was seen
+every where: Murat's letters, and the approach to Wiazma, deceived him
+once more with the hope of a battle: he was heard calculating on the
+march the thousands of cannon-balls which he would require to crush the
+hostile army.
+
+Napoleon had assigned its place to the baggage: he published an order
+for burning all vehicles which should be seen among the troops, not
+excepting carts loaded with provisions, for they might embarrass the
+movements of the columns, and compromise their safety in case of attack.
+Having met in his way with the carriage of General Narbonne, his
+aid-de-camp, he himself caused it to be set on fire, before the face of
+that general, and that instantaneously, without suffering it to be
+emptied; an order which was only severe, although it appeared harsh,
+because he himself began by enforcing its execution, which, however, was
+not followed up.
+
+The baggage of all the corps was therefore assembled in the rear of the
+army: there was, from Dorogobouje, a long train of bat-horses and
+kibitks, harnessed with ropes; these vehicles were laden with booty,
+provisions, military effects, men appointed to take care of them;
+lastly, sick soldiers, and the arms of both, which were rusting in them.
+In this column were seen many of the tall dismounted cuirassiers,
+bestriding horses no bigger than our asses, because they could not
+follow on foot for want of practice and of boots. On this confused and
+disorderly multitude, as well as on most of the marauders on our flanks,
+the cossacks might have made successful _coups de main_. They would
+thereby have harassed the army, and retarded its march, but Barclay
+seemed fearful of discouraging us: he put out his strength only against
+our advanced guard, and that but just sufficiently to slacken without
+stopping our progress.
+
+This determination of Barclay's, the declining strength of the army, the
+quarrels between its chiefs, the approach of the decisive moment, gave
+uneasiness to Napoleon. At Dresden, at Witepsk, and even at Smolensk, he
+had hoped in vain for a communication from Alexander. At Ribky, on the
+28th of August, he appeared to solicit one: a letter from Berthier to
+Barclay, in no other respect worthy of notice, concluded with these
+words: "The emperor directs me to request you to present his compliments
+to the emperor Alexander; tell him that neither the vicissitudes of war,
+nor any other circumstance, can diminish the friendship which he feels
+for him."
+
+The same day, the 28th of August, the advanced-guard drove back the
+Russians as far as Wiazma; the army, thirsty from the march, the heat
+and the dust, was in want of water; the troops disputed the possession
+of a few muddy pools, and fought near the springs, which were soon
+rendered turbid and exhausted; the emperor himself was forced to put up
+with this muddy beverage.
+
+During the night, the enemy destroyed the bridges over the Wiazma,
+plundered that town, and set it on fire. Murat and Davoust precipitately
+advanced to extinguish the flames. The enemy defended his conflagration,
+but the Wiazma was fordable near the ruins of the bridges: one part of
+the advanced-guard then attacked the incendiaries, and the other the
+fire, which they speedily subdued.
+
+On this occasion some chosen men were sent to the advanced-guard, with
+orders to watch the enemy closely at Wiazma, and ascertain whether they,
+or our soldiers, were the real incendiaries. Their report entirely
+dissipated the doubts which the emperor might still have entertained as
+to the fatal resolution of the Russians. They found in this town some
+resources, which pillage would soon have wasted. In passing through the
+city, the emperor observed this disorder: he was exceedingly incensed,
+rode into the midst of the groups of soldiers, caused a suttler to be
+seized, and ordered him to be instantly tried and shot. But the meaning
+of the phrase from his lips was well known; it was known, also that the
+more vehement his paroxysms of anger, the sooner they were followed by
+indulgence. A moment afterwards, they, therefore, merely placed in his
+way the unfortunate man on his knees, with a woman and several children
+beside him, whom they passed off for his family. The emperor, who had
+already cooled, inquired what they wanted, and caused the man to be set
+at liberty.
+
+He was still on horseback, when he saw Belliard, for fifteen years the
+companion in war of Murat, and then the chief of his staff, coming
+towards him. Surprised at seeing him, the emperor fancied some
+misfortune had happened. Belliard first relieved his apprehensions, and
+then added, that "Beyond the Wiazma, behind a ravine, on an advantageous
+position, the enemy had shown himself in force and ready for battle;
+that the cavalry on both sides immediately engaged, and as the infantry
+became necessary, the king in person put himself at the head of one of
+Davoust's divisions, and drew it out to lead it against the enemy; but
+that the marshal hastened up, calling to his men to halt, loudly
+censuring that manoeuvre, harshly reproaching the king for it, and
+forbidding his generals to obey him: that Murat then appealed to his
+dignity, to his military rank, to the exigency of the occasion, but in
+vain; that, finally, he had sent to declare to the emperor his disgust
+for a command so contested, and to tell him that he must choose between
+him and Davoust."
+
+This intelligence threw Napoleon into a passion: he exclaimed, that
+"Davoust was unmindful of all subordination; that he forgot the respect
+due to his brother-in-law, to him whom he had appointed his lieutenant;"
+and he sent Berthier with orders that Compans's division, the same which
+had been the subject of the altercation, should be thenceforward under
+the command of the king. Davoust did not defend the manner, but merely
+the motive of his act, either from prejudice against the habitual
+temerity of the king, from spleen, or that he was a better judge of the
+ground, and the manoeuvre adapted to it, which is very possible.
+
+Meanwhile the combat had finished, and Murat, whose attention was no
+longer diverted by the enemy, was wholly occupied with the thoughts of
+his quarrel. Shut up with Belliard, and hiding himself in a manner in
+his tent, as his memory recalled the expressions of the marshal, his
+blood became more and more inflamed with shame and rage. "He had been
+set at defiance, and publicly insulted, and Davoust still lived! What
+did he care for the anger of the emperor, and for his decision? it was
+for him to revenge his own wrong! What signified his rank? it was his
+sword alone that had made him a king, and it was to that alone he should
+appeal!" He was already snatching up his arms to go and attack Davoust,
+when Belliard stopped him, by urging existing circumstances, the example
+he ought to set to the army, the enemy to be pursued, and that it would
+be wrong to distress his friends and delight the foe by so desperate a
+proceeding.
+
+The general says, that he then saw the king curse his crown, and strive
+to swallow the affront; but that tears of spite rolled down his cheeks
+and fell upon his clothes. Whilst he was thus tormenting himself,
+Davoust, obstinately persisting in his opinion, said that the emperor
+was misinformed, and remained quietly in his head-quarters.
+
+Napoleon returned to Wiazma, where he was obliged to stop to ascertain
+the advantages that he might derive from his new conquest. The accounts
+which he received from the interior of Russia, represented the hostile
+government as appropriating to itself our successes, and inculcating the
+belief that the loss of so many provinces was the effect of a general
+plan of retreat, adopted beforehand. Papers seized at Wiazma stated that
+_Te Deum_ had been sung at Petersburgh for pretended victories at
+Witepsk or Smolensk. "What!" he exclaimed in astonishment, "_Te Deum!_
+Dare they then lie to God as well as to men?"
+
+For the rest, most of the intercepted Russian letters expressed the same
+astonishment. "While our villages are blazing," said they, "we hear
+nothing here but the ringing of bells, hymns of thanksgiving, and
+triumphant reports. It seems as if they would make us thank God for the
+victories of the French. Thus there is lying in the air, lying on earth,
+lying in words and in writing, lying to Heaven and earth, lying in every
+thing. Our great men treat Russia like a child, but there is no small
+degree of credulity in believing us to be so credulous."
+
+Very just reflections, if means so gross had been employed to deceive
+those who were capable of writing such letters. At any rate, though
+these political falsehoods are generally resorted to, it was plain that
+when carried to such excess, they were a satire either on the governors
+or the governed, and, perhaps, on both.
+
+During this time the advanced-guard pushed the Russians as far as Gjatz,
+exchanging a few balls with them,--an exchange which was almost always
+to the disadvantage of the French, the Russians taking care to employ
+only their long pieces, which would carry much farther than ours.
+Another remark which we made was, that from Smolensk the Russians had
+neglected to burn the villages and the mansions. As they are of a
+character which aims at effect, this obscure evil probably appeared to
+them to be a useless one. They were satisfied with the more signal
+conflagrations of their cities.
+
+This defect, if that negligence proceeded from it, turned, as is
+frequently the case with all other defects, to the advantage of their
+enemies. In these villages, the French army found forage, corn, ovens
+for baking, and shelter. Others observed on this point, that all these
+devastations were allotted to cossacks, to barbarians; and that these
+hordes, either from hatred or contempt of civilization, seemed to take a
+savage and particular pleasure in the destruction of the towns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+On the 1st of September, about noon, there was only a copse of fir-trees
+between Murat and Gjatz. The appearance of cossacks obliged him to
+deploy his first regiments, but in his impatience he soon sent for some
+horse, and having himself driven the Russians from the wood which they
+occupied, he crossed it and found himself at the gates of Gjatz. This
+sight animated the French, and they instantly made themselves masters of
+the town as far as the river which parts it into two, and the bridges of
+which had been already set on fire.
+
+There, as at Smolensk and Wiazma, whether by chance, or from the relic
+of a Tartar custom, the bazaar was on the Asiatic side, on the bank
+opposite to us. The Russian rear-guard, secured by the river, had time,
+therefore, to burn that whole quarter. Nothing but the promptitude of
+Murat saved the rest.
+
+The troops crossed the Gjatz as they could, on planks, in a few boats,
+and by fording. The Russians disappeared behind the flames, whither our
+foremost riflemen followed them,--when they saw an inhabitant come
+forth, approach them, and cry out that he was a Frenchman. His joy and
+his accent confirmed his assertion. They conducted him to Davoust, who
+interrogated him.
+
+According to the account of this man, there had been a great change in
+the Russian army. A violent clamour had been raised from its ranks
+against Barclay. It had been re-echoed by the nobility, by the
+merchants, by all Moscow. "That general, that minister, was a traitor;
+he caused all their divisions to be destroyed piece-meal; he was
+dishonouring the army by an interminable flight; yet, at the same time,
+they were labouring under the disgrace of an invasion, and their towns
+were in flames. If it was necessary to determine upon this ruin, they
+might as well sacrifice themselves at once; then, there would be at
+least some honour, whereas, to suffer themselves to be sacrificed by a
+stranger, was losing every thing, the honour of the sacrifice not
+excepted.
+
+"But why employ this stranger? Was not the contemporary, the comrade,
+the rival of Suwarrow yet living? A Russian was wanted to save Russia!"
+And they all called for, all were anxious for Kutusof and a battle. The
+Frenchman added, that Alexander had yielded; that the insubordination of
+Bagration, and the universal outcry, had obtained from him that general
+and a battle; and that, moreover, after drawing the invading army so
+far, the Russian emperor had himself judged a general engagement
+unavoidable.
+
+Finally, he related, that the arrival of Kutusof on the 29th of August
+at Tzarewo-zaimizcze, between Wiazma and Gjatz, and the announcement of
+a speedy battle, had intoxicated the enemy with two-fold joy; that all
+had immediately marched towards Borodino,--not to continue their flight,
+but to fix themselves on this frontier of the government of Moscow, to
+root themselves to the soil, and defend it; in short, to conquer there
+or die.
+
+An incident, otherwise not worthy of notice, seemed to confirm this
+intelligence; this was the arrival of a Russian officer with a flag of
+truce. He had so little to say, that it was evident from the first that
+he came only to observe. His manner was particularly displeasing to
+Davoust, who read in it something more than assurance. A French general
+having inconsiderately asked this stranger what we should find between
+Wiazma and Moscow, the Russian proudly replied, "Pultowa." This answer
+bespoke a battle; it pleased the French, who are fond of a smart
+repartee, and delight to meet with enemies worthy of themselves.
+
+This officer was conducted back without precaution, as he had been
+brought. He saw that there was no obstacle to prevent access to our very
+head-quarters; he traversed our advanced posts without meeting with a
+single vidette; every where the same negligence was perceptible, and the
+temerity so natural to Frenchmen and to conquerors. Every one was
+asleep; there was no watchword, no patroles; our soldiers seemed to
+despise these details, as too trivial. Wherefore so many precautions?
+They attacked--they were victorious: it was for the Russians to defend
+themselves! This officer has since said, that he was tempted to take
+advantage that very night of our imprudence, but that he did not find
+any Russian corps within his reach.
+
+The enemy, in his haste to burn the bridges over the Gjatz, left behind
+some of his cossacks; they were taken and conducted to the emperor, who
+was approaching on horseback. Napoleon wished to question them himself.
+He sent for his interpreter, and caused two of these Scythians, whose
+strange dress and wild look were remarkable, to be placed by his side.
+In this manner he entered Gjatz, and passed through that town. The
+answers of these barbarians corresponded with the account of the
+Frenchman; and during the night of the 1st of September, all the reports
+from the advanced posts confirmed their accuracy.
+
+Thus Barclay had, singly against all, supported till the very last
+moment that plan of retreat, which in 1807 he had vaunted to one of our
+generals as the only expedient for saving Russia. Among us, he was
+commended for having persisted in this prudent defensive system, in
+spite of the clamours of a proud nation irritated by misfortune, and
+before so aggressive an enemy.
+
+He had, no doubt, failed in suffering himself to be surprised at Wilna,
+and for not considering the marshy course of the Berezina as the proper
+frontier of Lithuania; but it was remarked that, subsequently, at Witepsk
+and Smolensk, he had forestalled Napoleon; that on the Loutcheza, on the
+Dnieper, and at Valoutina, his resistance had been proportionate to time
+and place; that this petty warfare, and the losses occasioned by it, had
+been but too much in his favour; every retrograde step of his drawing us
+to a greater distance from our reinforcements, and carrying him nearer to
+his: in short, all that he had done, he had done judiciously, whether he
+had hazarded, defended, or abandoned.
+
+And yet he had drawn upon himself general animadversion! But this was,
+in our opinion, his highest panegyric. We thought the better of him for
+despising public opinion, when it had gone astray; for having contented
+himself with watching our motions in order to profit by them, and for
+having proved that, most frequently, nations are saved in spite of
+themselves.
+
+Barclay showed himself still greater during the rest of the campaign.
+This commander in chief, and minister at war, who had been deprived of
+the command, that it might be given to Kutusof, voluntarily served under
+him, and was seen to obey with as much zeal as he had commanded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The Russian army at length halted. Miloradowitch, with sixteen thousand
+recruits, and a host of peasants, bearing the cross and shouting, "_'Tis
+the will of God!_" hastened to join its ranks. We were informed that the
+enemy were turning up the whole plain of Borodino, and covering it with
+entrenchments, apparently with the determination of rooting themselves
+there, and not falling back any further.
+
+Napoleon announced a battle to his army; he allowed it two days to rest,
+to prepare its arms, and to collect subsistence. He merely warned the
+detachments sent out in quest of provisions, that "if they did not
+return the following day, they would deprive themselves of the honour of
+fighting."
+
+The emperor then endeavoured to obtain some information concerning his
+new adversary. Kutusof was described to him as an old man, the
+groundwork of whose reputation had been formerly laid by a singular
+wound. He had since skilfully profited by circumstances. The very defeat
+of Austerlitz, which he had foreseen, added to his renown, which was
+further increased by his late campaigns against the Turks. His valour
+was incontestable, but he was charged with regulating its vehemence
+according to his private interest; for he calculated every thing. His
+genius was slow, vindictive, and, above all, crafty--the true Tartar
+character!--knowing the art of preparing an implacable war with a
+fawning, supple, and patient policy.
+
+In other respects, he was more an adroit courtier than an able general:
+but formidable by his renown, by his address in augmenting it, and in
+making others concur in this object. He had contrived to flatter the
+whole nation, and every individual of it, from the general to the
+private soldier.
+
+It was added, that there was in his person, in his language, nay, even
+in his very dress, his superstitious practices and his age, a remnant of
+Suwarrow,--the stamp of an ancient Muscovite, an air of nationality,
+which rendered him dear to the Russians: at Moscow the joy at his
+appointment had been carried to intoxication; people embraced one
+another in the streets, and considered themselves as saved.
+
+When Napoleon had learned these particulars, and given his orders, he
+awaited the event with that tranquillity of mind peculiar to
+extraordinary men. He quietly employed himself in exploring the environs
+of his head-quarters. He remarked the progress of agriculture; but at
+the sight of the Gjatz, which pours its waters into the Wolga, he who
+had conquered so many rivers, felt anew the first emotions of his glory:
+he was heard to boast of being the master of those waves destined to
+visit Asia,--as if they were proceeding to announce his approach, and to
+open for him the way to that quarter of the globe.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of Murat, King of Naples]
+
+On the 4th of September, the army, still divided into three columns, set
+out from Gjatz and its environs. Murat had gone on a few leagues before.
+Ever since the arrival of Kutusof, troops of cossacks had been
+incessantly hovering about the heads of our columns. Murat was
+exasperated at seeing his cavalry forced to deploy against so feeble an
+obstacle. We are assured that on that day, from one of those first
+impulses worthy of the ages of chivalry, he dashed suddenly and alone
+towards their line, stopped short a few paces from them, and there,
+sword in hand, made a sign for them to retire, with an air and gesture
+so commanding, that these barbarians obeyed, and fell back in amazement.
+
+This circumstance, which was related to us immediately, was received
+without incredulity. The martial air of that monarch, the brilliancy of
+his chivalrous dress, his reputation, and the novelty of such an action,
+caused this momentary ascendancy to appear true, in spite of its
+improbability; for such was Murat, a theatrical monarch by the splendor
+of his dress, and truly a king by his extraordinary valour and his
+inexhaustible activity; bold as the attack, and always armed with that
+air of superiority, that threatening audacity, which is the most
+dangerous of offensive weapons.
+
+He had not marched long, however, before he was forced to halt. At
+Griednewa, between Gjatz and Borodino, the high-road suddenly descends
+into a deep ravine, whence it again rises as suddenly to a spacious
+height, which Kutusof had ordered Konownitzin to defend. That general at
+first made a vigorous resistance against the foremost troops of Murat;
+but as the army closely followed the latter, every moment gave increased
+energy to the attack, and diminished that of the defence; presently the
+advanced-guard of the viceroy engaged on the right of the Russians,
+where a charge by the Italian chasseurs was withstood for a moment by
+the cossacks, which excited astonishment; they became intermixed.
+
+Platof himself admitted that in this affair an officer was wounded near
+him, at which he was by no means surprised; but that he nevertheless
+caused the sorcerer who accompanied him to be flogged before all his
+cossacks, loudly charging him with laziness for neglecting to turn aside
+the balls by his conjurations, as he had been expressly directed to do.
+
+Konownitzin was vanquished and retired; on the 5th his bloody track was
+followed to the vast convent of Kolotskoi,--fortified as habitations
+were of old in those too highly vaunted Gothic ages, when civil wars
+were so frequent; when every place, not excepting even these sacred
+abodes of peace, was transformed into a military post.
+
+Konownitzin, threatened on the right and left, made no other stand
+either at Kolotskoi or at Golowino; but when the advanced-guard
+debouched from that village, it beheld the whole plain and the woods
+infested with cossacks, the rye crops spoiled, the villages sacked; in
+short, a general destruction. By these signs it recognized the field of
+battle, which Kutusof was preparing for the grand army. Behind these
+clouds of Scythians were perceived three villages; they presented a line
+of a league. The intervals between them, intersected by ravines and
+wood, were covered with the enemy's riflemen. In the first moment of
+ardour, some French horse ventured into the midst of these Russians, and
+were cut off.
+
+Napoleon then appeared on a height, from which he surveyed the whole
+country, with that eye of a conqueror which sees every thing at once and
+without confusion; which penetrates through obstacles, sets aside
+accessaries, discovers the capital point, and fixes it with the look of
+an eagle, like prey on which he is about to dart with all his might and
+all his impetuosity.
+
+He knew that, a league before him, at Borodino, the Kologha, a river
+running in a ravine, along the margin of which he proceeded a few
+wersts, turned abruptly to the left, and discharged itself into the
+Moskwa. He guessed that a chain of considerable heights alone could
+have opposed its course, and so suddenly changed its direction. These
+were, no doubt, occupied by the enemy's army, and on this side it could
+not be easily attacked. But the Kologha, both banks of which he
+followed, while it covered the right of the position, left their left
+exposed.
+
+The maps of the country were insufficient; at any rate, as the ground
+necessarily sloped towards the principal stream, which was the most
+considerable merely from being the lowest, it followed, that the ravines
+which ran into it must rise, become shallower, and be at length lost, as
+they receded from the Kologha. Besides, the old road to Smolensk, which
+ran on its right, sufficiently marked their commencement; why should it
+have been formerly carried to a distance from the principal stream of
+water, and consequently from the most habitable places, if not to avoid
+the ravines and the hills which bordered them?
+
+The demonstrations of the enemy agreed with these inductions of his
+experience,--no precautions, no resistance in front of their right and
+their centre; but before their left a great number of troops, a marked
+solicitude to profit by the slightest accidents of the ground, in order
+to dispute it, and finally, a formidable redoubt; this was, of course,
+their weak side, since they covered it with such care. Nay, more; it was
+on the flank of the high-road, and on that of the grand army, that this
+redoubt was situated; it was therefore of the utmost importance to
+carry it, if he would advance: Napoleon gave orders to that effect.
+
+How much the historian is at a loss for words to express the _coup
+d'oeil_ of a man of genius!
+
+The villages and the woods were immediately occupied; on the left and in
+the centre were the army of Italy, Compans's division, and Murat; on the
+right, Poniatowski. The attack was general; for the army of Italy and
+the Polish army appeared at once on the two wings of the grand imperial
+column. These three masses drove back the Russian rear-guards upon
+Borodino, and the whole war was concentrated on a single point.
+
+This curtain being withdrawn, the first Russian redoubt was discovered;
+too much detached in advance of their position, which it defended
+without being defended by it. The nature of the ground had compelled the
+choice of this insulated situation.
+
+Compans skilfully availed himself of the undulations of the ground; its
+elevations served as platforms to his guns for battering the redoubt,
+and screened his infantry while drawing up into columns of attack. The
+61st marched foremost; the redoubt was taken by a single effort, and
+with the bayonet; but Bagration sent reinforcements, by which it was
+retaken. Three times did the 61st recover it from the Russians, and
+three times was it driven out again; but at length it maintained itself
+in it, covered with blood and half destroyed.
+
+Next day, when the emperor reviewed that regiment, he inquired where
+was its third battalion? "In the redoubt," was the reply of the colonel.
+But the affair did not stop there; a neighbouring wood still swarmed
+with Russian light troops, who sallied every moment from this retreat to
+renew their attacks, which were supported by three divisions: at length
+the attack of Schewardino by Morand, and of the woods of Elnia by
+Poniatowski, completely disheartened the troops of Bagration, and
+Murat's cavalry cleared the plain. It was chiefly the firmness of a
+Spanish regiment that foiled the enemy; they at last gave way, and that
+redoubt, which had been their advanced post, became ours.
+
+At the same time the emperor assigned its place to each corps; the rest
+of the army formed in line, and a general discharge of musketry,
+accompanied at intervals with that of a few cannon, ensued. It continued
+till each party had fixed its limit, and darkness had rendered their
+fire uncertain.
+
+One of Davoust's regiments then sought to take its rank in the first
+line. Owing to the darkness, it passed beyond it, and got into the midst
+of the Russian cuirassiers, who attacked it, threw it into disorder,
+took from it three pieces of cannon, and killed or took three hundred
+men. The rest immediately fell into platoons, forming a shapeless mass,
+but making so formidable a resistance, that the enemy could not again
+break it; and this regiment, with diminished numbers, finally regained
+its place in the line of battle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The emperor encamped behind the army of Italy, on the left of the
+high-road; the old guard formed in square around his tents. As soon as
+the fire of small arms had ceased, the fires were kindled. Those of the
+Russians burned brightly, in an immense semicircle; ours gave a pale,
+unequal, and irregular light,--the troops arriving late and in haste, on
+an unknown ground, where nothing was prepared for them, and where there
+was a want of wood, especially in the centre and on the left.
+
+The emperor slept little. On General Caulaincourt's return from the
+conquered redoubt, as no prisoners had fallen into our hands, Napoleon
+surprised, kept asking him repeatedly, "Had not his cavalry then charged
+apropos? Were the Russians determined to conquer or die?"--The answer
+was, that "being fanaticised by their leaders, and accustomed to fight
+with the Turks, who gave no quarter, they would be killed sooner than
+surrender." The emperor then fell into a deep meditation; and judging
+that a battle of artillery would be the most certain, he multiplied his
+orders to bring up, with all speed, the parks which had not yet joined
+him.
+
+That very same night, a cold mizzling rain began to fall, and the autumn
+set in with a violent wind. This was an additional enemy, which it was
+necessary to take into account; for this period of the year
+corresponded with the age on which Napoleon was entering, and every one
+knows the influence of the seasons of the year on the like seasons of
+life.
+
+During that night how many different agitations! The soldiers and the
+officers had to prepare their arms, to repair their clothing, and to
+combat cold and hunger; for their life was a continual combat. The
+generals, and the emperor himself, were uneasy, lest their defeat of the
+preceding day should have disheartened the Russians, and they should
+escape us in the dark. Murat had anticipated this; we imagined several
+times that we saw their fires burn more faintly, and that we heard the
+noise of their departure; but day alone eclipsed the light of the
+enemy's bivouacs.
+
+This time there was no need to go far in quest of them. The sun of the
+6th found the two armies again, and displayed them to each other, on the
+same ground where it had left them the evening before. There was a
+general feeling of exultation.
+
+The emperor took advantage of the first rays of dawn, to advance between
+the two lines, and to go from height to height along the whole front of
+the hostile army. He saw the Russians crowning all the eminences, in a
+vast semicircle, two leagues in extent, from the Moskwa to the old
+Moscow road. Their right bordered the Kologha, from its influx into the
+Moskwa to Borodino; their centre, from Gorcka to Semenowska, was the
+saliant part of their line. Their right and left receded. The Kologha
+rendered their right inaccessible.
+
+The emperor perceived this immediately, and as, from its distance, this
+wing was not more threatening than vulnerable, he took no account of it.
+For him then the Russian army commenced at Gorcka, a village situated on
+the high-road, and at the point of an elevated plain which overlooks
+Borodino and the Kologha. This sharp projection is surrounded by the
+Kologha, and by a deep and marshy ravine; its lofty crest, to which the
+high-road ascends on leaving Borodino, was strongly entrenched, and
+formed a separate work on the right of the Russian centre, of which it
+was the extremity.
+
+On its left, and within reach of its fire, rose a detached hill,
+commanding the whole plain; it was crowned by a formidable redoubt,
+provided with twenty-one pieces of cannon. In front and on its right it
+was encompassed by the Kologha and by ravines; its left inclined to and
+supported itself upon a long and wide plateau, the foot of which
+descended to a muddy ravine, a branch of the Kologha. The crest of this
+plateau, which was lined by the Russians, declined and receded as it ran
+towards the left, in front of the grand army; it then kept rising as far
+as the yet smoking ruins of the village of Semenowska. This saliant
+point terminated Barclay's command and the centre of the enemy: it was
+armed with a strong battery, covered by an entrenchment.
+
+Here began the left wing of the Russians under Bagration. The less
+elevated crest which it occupied undulated as it gradually receded to
+Utitza, a village on the old Moscow road, where the field of battle
+ended. Two hills, armed with redoubts, and bearing diagonally upon the
+entrenchment of Semenowska, which flanked them, marked the front of
+Bagration.
+
+From Semenowska to the wood of Utitza there was an interval of about
+twelve hundred paces. It was the nature of the ground which had decided
+Kutusof thus to refuse this wing; for here the ravine, which was under
+the plateau in the centre, just commenced. It was scarcely an obstacle;
+the slopes of its banks were very gentle, and the summits suitable for
+artillery were at some distance from its margin. This side was evidently
+the most accessible, since the redoubt of the 61st, which that regiment
+had taken the preceding day, no longer defended the approach: this was
+even favoured by a wood of large pines, extending from the redoubt just
+mentioned to that which appeared to terminate the line of the Russians.
+
+But their left wing did not end there. The emperor knew that behind this
+wood was the old Moscow road; that it turned round the left wing of the
+Russians, and passing behind their army, ran again into the new Moscow
+road in front of Mojaisk. He judged that it must be occupied; and, in
+fact, Tutchkof, with his _corps d'armée_, had placed himself across it
+at the entrance of a wood; he had covered himself by two heights, on
+which he had planted artillery.
+
+But this was of little consequence, because, between this detached corps
+and the last Russian redoubt, there was a space of five or six hundred
+fathoms and a covered ground. If we did not begin with overwhelming
+Tutchkof, we might therefore occupy it, pass between him and the last of
+Bagration's redoubts, and take the left wing of the enemy in flank; but
+the emperor could not satisfy himself on this point, as the Russian
+advanced posts and the woods forbade his farther advance, and
+intercepted his view.
+
+Having finished his reconnoissance, he formed his plan. "Eugene shall be
+the pivot!" he exclaimed: "it is the right that must commence. As soon
+as, under cover of the wood, it has taken the redoubt opposite to it, it
+must make a movement to the left, and march on the Russian flank,
+sweeping and driving back their whole army upon their right and into the
+Kologha."
+
+The general plan thus conceived, he applied himself to the details.
+During the night, three batteries, of sixty guns each, must be opposed
+to the Russian redoubts; two facing their left, the third before their
+centre. At daybreak, Poniatowski and his army, reduced to five thousand
+men, must advance on the old Smolensk road, turning the wood on which
+the French right wing and the Russian left were supported. He would
+flank the one and annoy the other; the army would wait for the report of
+his first shots.
+
+Instantly, the whole of the artillery should commence upon the left of
+the Russians, its fire would open their ranks and redoubts, and Davoust
+and Ney should rush upon them; they should be supported by Junot and his
+Westphalians, by Murat and his cavalry, and lastly, by the emperor
+himself, with 20,000 guards. It was against these two redoubts that the
+first efforts should be made; it was by them that he would penetrate
+into the hostile army, thenceforth mutilated, and whose centre and right
+would then be uncovered, and almost enveloped.
+
+Meanwhile, as the Russians showed themselves in redoubled masses on
+their centre and their right, threatening the Moscow road, the only line
+of operation of the grand army; as in throwing his chief force and
+himself on their left, Napoleon was about to place the Kologha between
+him and that road, his only retreat, he resolved to strengthen the army
+of Italy which occupied it, and joined with it two of Davoust's
+divisions and Grouchy's cavalry. As to his left, he judged that one
+Italian division, the Bavarian cavalry, and that of Ornano, about 10,000
+men, would suffice to cover it. Such were the plans of Napoleon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+He was on the heights of Borodino, taking a last survey of the whole
+field of battle, and confirming himself in his plan, when Davoust
+hastened up. This marshal had just examined the left of the Russians
+with so much the more care, as it was the ground on which he was to
+act, and he mistrusted his own eyes.
+
+He begged the emperor "to place at his disposal his five divisions,
+35,000 strong, and to unite with them Poniatowski, whose force was too
+weak to turn the enemy by itself. Next day he would set this force in
+motion; he would cover its march with the last shades of night, and with
+the wood on which the Russian left wing was supported, and beyond which
+he would pass by following the old road from Smolensk to Moscow; then,
+all at once, by a precipitate manoeuvre, he would deploy 40,000 French
+and Poles on the flank and in the rear of that wing. There, while the
+emperor would occupy the front of the Muscovites by a general attack, he
+would march impetuously from redoubt to redoubt, from reserve to
+reserve, driving every thing from left to right on the high-road of
+Mojaisk, where they should put an end at once to the Russian army, the
+battle, and the war."
+
+The emperor listened attentively to the marshal; but after meditating in
+silence for some minutes, he replied, "No! it is too great a movement;
+it would remove me too far from my object, and make me lose too much
+time."
+
+The Prince of Eckmühl, however, from conviction, persisted in his point;
+he undertook to accomplish his manoeuvre before six in the morning; he
+protested that in another hour the greatest part of its effect would be
+produced. Napoleon, impatient of contradiction, sharply replied with
+this exclamation, "Ah! you are always for turning the enemy; it is too
+dangerous a manoeuvre!" The marshal, after this rebuff, said no more:
+he then returned to his post, murmuring against a prudence which he
+thought unseasonable, and to which he was not accustomed; and he knew
+not to what cause to attribute it, unless the looks of so many allies,
+who were not to be relied on, an army so reduced, a position so remote,
+and age, had rendered Napoleon less enterprising than he was.
+
+The emperor, having decided, had returned to his camp, when Murat, whom
+the Russians had so often deceived, persuaded him that they were going
+to run away once more without fighting. In vain did Rapp, who was sent
+to observe their attitude, return and say, that he had seen them
+entrenching themselves more and more; that they were numerous,
+judiciously disposed, and appeared determined much rather to attack, if
+they were not anticipated, than to retreat: Murat persisted in his
+opinion, and the emperor, uneasy, returned to the heights of Borodino.
+
+He there perceived long black columns of troops covering the high-road,
+and spreading over the plain; then large convoys of waggons, provisions,
+and ammunition, in short all the dispositions indicative of a stay and a
+battle. At that very moment, though he had taken with him but few
+attendants, that he might not attract the notice and the fire of the
+enemy, he was recognized by the Russian batteries, and a cannon-shot
+suddenly interrupted the silence of that day.
+
+For, as it frequently happens, nothing was so calm as the day preceding
+that great battle. It was like a thing mutually agreed upon! Wherefore
+do each other useless injury? was not the next day to decide every
+thing? Besides, each had to prepare itself; the different corps, their
+arms, their force, their ammunition; they had to resume all their unity,
+which on a march is always more or less deranged. The generals had to
+observe their reciprocal dispositions of attack, defence, and retreat,
+in order to adapt them to each other and the ground, and to leave as
+little as possible to chance.
+
+Thus these two colossal foes, on the point of commencing their terrible
+contest, watched each other attentively, measured one another with their
+eyes, and silently prepared for a tremendous conflict.
+
+The emperor, who could no longer entertain doubts of a battle, returned
+to his tent to dictate the order of it. There he meditated on his awful
+situation. He had seen that the two armies were equal; about 120,000
+men, and 600 pieces of cannon on either side. The Russians had the
+advantage of ground, of speaking but one language, of one uniform, of
+being a single nation, fighting for the same cause, but a great number
+of irregular troops and recruits. The French had as many men, but more
+soldiers; for the state of his corps had just been submitted to him: he
+had before his eyes an account of the strength of his divisions, and as
+it was neither a review, nor a distribution, but a battle that was in
+prospect, this time the statements were not exaggerated. His army was
+reduced indeed, but sound, supple, nervous,--like those manly bodies,
+which, having just lost the plumpness of youth, display forms more
+masculine and strongly marked.
+
+Still, during the last few days that he had marched in the midst of it,
+he had found it silent, from that silence which is imposed by great
+expectation or great astonishment; like nature, the moment before a
+violent tempest, or crowds at the instant of an extraordinary danger.
+
+He felt that it wanted rest of some kind or other, but that there was no
+rest for it but in death or victory; for he had brought it into such a
+necessity of conquering, that it must triumph at any rate. The temerity
+of the situation into which he had urged it was evident, but he knew
+that of all faults that was the one which the French most willingly
+forgave; that in short they doubted neither of themselves nor of him,
+nor of the general result, whatever might be their individual hardships.
+
+He reckoned, moreover, on their habit and thirst of glory, and even on
+their curiosity; no doubt they wished to see Moscow, to be able to say
+that they had been there, to receive there the promised reward, perhaps
+to plunder, and, above all, there to find repose. He did not observe in
+them enthusiasm, but something more firm: an entire confidence in his
+star, in his genius, the consciousness of their superiority, and the
+proud assurance of conquerors, in the presence of the vanquished.
+
+Full of these sentiments, he dictated a proclamation, simple, grave,
+and frank, as befitted such circumstances, and men who were not just
+commencing their career, and whom, after so many sufferings, it would
+have been idle to pretend to exalt.
+
+Accordingly he addressed himself solely to the reason of all, or what is
+the same thing, to the real interest of each; he finished with glory,
+the only passion to which he could appeal in these deserts, the last of
+the noble motives by which it was possible to act upon soldiers always
+victorious, enlightened by an advanced civilization and long experience;
+in short, of all the generous illusions, the only one that could have
+carried them so far. This harangue will some day be deemed admirable: it
+was worthy of the commander and of the army; it did honour to both.
+
+"Soldiers!" said he, "here is the battle which you have so ardently
+desired. Victory will now depend upon yourselves; it is necessary for
+us; it will give us abundance, good winter-quarters, and a speedy return
+home! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, and at
+Smolensk, and afford to remotest posterity occasion to cite your conduct
+on that day: let it be said of you, 'He was in that great battle under
+the walls of Moscow.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+About the middle of the day, Napoleon remarked an extraordinary movement
+in the enemy's camp; in fact, the whole Russian army was drawn up and
+under arms, and Kutusof, surrounded with every species of religious and
+military pomp, took his station in the middle of it. He had made his
+popes and his archimandrites dress themselves in those splendid and
+majestic insignia, which they have inherited from the Greeks. They
+marched before him, carrying the venerated symbols of their religion,
+and particularly that divine image, formerly the protectress of
+Smolensk, which, by their account, had been miraculously saved from the
+profanation of the sacrilegious French.
+
+When the Russian saw that his soldiers were sufficiently excited by this
+extraordinary spectacle, he raised his voice, and began by putting them
+in mind of heaven, the only country which remains to the slave. In the
+name of the religion of equality, he endeavoured to animate these serfs
+to defend the property of their masters; but it was principally by
+exhibiting to them that holy image which had taken refuge in their
+ranks, that he appealed to their courage, and raised their indignation.
+
+Napoleon, in his mouth, "was a universal despot! the tyrannical
+disturber of the world! a poor worm! an arch-rebel, who had overturned
+their altars, and polluted them with blood; who had exposed the true
+ark of the Lord, represented by the holy image, to the profanation of
+men, and the inclemency of the seasons." He then told them of their
+cities reduced to ashes; reminded them that they were about to fight for
+their wives and children; added a few words respecting the emperor, and
+concluded by appealing to their piety and their patriotism. These were
+the virtues of instinct with this rude and simple people, who had not
+yet advanced beyond sensations, but who, for that very reason, were so
+much more formidable as soldiers; less diverted from obedience by
+reasoning; confined by slavery to a narrow circle, in which they are
+reduced to a small number of sensations, which are the only sources of
+their wants, wishes, and ideas.
+
+As to other characteristics, proud for want of comparison, and credulous
+as they are proud, from ignorance--worshippers of images, idolaters as
+much as Christians can be; for they had converted that religion of the
+soul, which is wholly intellectual and moral, into one entirely physical
+and material, to bring it to the level of their brute and short
+capacity.
+
+This solemn spectacle, however, their general's address, the
+exhortations of their officers, and the benedictions of their priests,
+served to give a thorough tincture of fanaticism to their courage. All,
+even to the meanest soldier, fancied themselves devoted by God himself
+to the defence of Heaven and their consecrated soil.
+
+With the French there was no solemnity, either religious or military,
+no review, no means of excitation: even the address of the emperor was
+not distributed till very late, and read the next morning so near the
+time of action, that several corps were actually engaged before they
+could hear it. The Russians, however, whom so many powerful motives
+should have inflamed, added to their invocations the sword of St.
+Michael, thus seeking to borrow aid from all the powers of heaven; while
+the French sought for it only within themselves, persuaded that real
+strength exists only in the heart, and that _there_ is to be found the
+"celestial host."
+
+Chance so ordered it, that on that very day the emperor received from
+Paris the portrait of the King of Rome, that infant whose birth had been
+hailed by the empire with the same transports of joy and hope as it had
+been by the emperor. Every day since that happy event, the emperor, in
+the interior of his palace, had given loose when near his child, to the
+expression of the most tender feelings; when, therefore, in the midst of
+these distant fields, and all these menacing preparations, he saw once
+more that sweet countenance, how his warlike soul melted! With his own
+hand he exhibited this picture outside his tent; he then called his
+officers, and even some of the soldiers of his old guard, desirous of
+sharing his pleasure with these veteran grenadiers, of showing his
+private family to his military family, and making it shine as a symbol
+of hope in the midst of imminent peril.
+
+In the evening, an aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had been despatched from
+the field of battle near Salamanca, arrived at that of the Moskwa. This
+was the same Fabvier, who has since made such a figure in our civil
+dissensions. The emperor received graciously the aid-de-camp of the
+vanquished general. On the eve of a battle, the fate of which was so
+uncertain, he felt disposed to be indulgent to a defeat; he listened to
+all that was said to him respecting the scattered state of his forces in
+Spain, and the number of commanders-in-chief, and admitted the justice
+of it all; but he explained his reasons, which it enters not into our
+province to mention here.
+
+With the return of night also returned the apprehension, that under
+cover of its shades, the Russian army might escape from the field of
+battle. Napoleon's anxiety was so great as to prevent him from sleeping.
+He kept calling incessantly to know the hour, inquiring if any noise was
+heard, and sending persons to ascertain if the enemy was still before
+him. His doubts on this subject were so strong, that he had given orders
+that his proclamation should not be read to his troops until the next
+morning, and then only in case of the certainty of a battle.
+
+Tranquillized for a few moments, anxiety of an opposite description
+again seized him. He became frightened at the destitute state of the
+soldiers. Weak and famished as they were, how could they support a long
+and terrible shock? In this danger he looked upon his guard as his sole
+resource; it seemed to be his security for both armies. He sent for
+Bessičres, that one of his marshals in whom he had the greatest
+confidence for commanding it; he wished to know if this chosen reserve
+wanted nothing;--he called him back several times, and repeated his
+pressing questions. He desired that these old soldiers should have three
+days' biscuit and rice distributed among them from their waggons of
+reserve; finally, dreading that his orders had not been obeyed, he got
+up once more, and questioned the grenadiers on guard at the entrance of
+his tent, if they had received these provisions. Satisfied by their
+answer, he went in, and soon fell into a doze.
+
+Shortly after, he called once more. His aid-de-camp found him now
+supporting his head with both hands; he seemed, by what was heard, to be
+meditating on the vanities of glory. "What is war? A trade of
+barbarians, the whole art of which consists in being the strongest on a
+given point!" He then complained of the fickleness of fortune, which he
+said, he began to experience. Seeming to revert to more encouraging
+ideas, he recollected what had been told him of the tardiness and
+carelessness of Kutusof, and expressed his surprise that Beningsen had
+not been preferred to him. He thought of the critical situation into
+which he had brought himself, and added, "that a great day was at hand,
+that there would be a terrible battle." He asked Rapp if he thought we
+should gain the victory? "No doubt;" was the reply, "but it will be
+sanguinary." "I know it," resumed Napoleon, "but I have 80,000 men; I
+shall lose 20,000, I shall enter Moscow with 60,000; the stragglers
+will there rejoin us, and afterwards the battalions on the march, and we
+shall be stronger than we were before the battle." In this estimate he
+seemed to include neither his guard nor the cavalry.
+
+Again assailed by his first anxiety, he sent once more to examine the
+attitude of the Russians; he was informed that their fires burned with
+equal brightness, and that by the number of these, and the moving
+shadows surrounding them, it was supposed that it was not merely a
+rear-guard, but a whole army that kept feeding them. The certainty of
+their presence at last quieted the emperor, and he tried to take some
+rest.
+
+But the marches which he had just made with the array, the fatigues of
+the preceding days and nights, so many cares, and his intense and
+anxious expectation, had worn him out; the chillness of the atmosphere
+had struck to him; an irritating fever, a dry cough, and excessive
+thirst consumed him. During the remainder of the night, he made vain
+attempts to quench the burning thirst which consumed him. This fresh
+disorder was complicated with an old complaint; he had been struggling
+since the day before with a painful attack of that cruel disorder[18],
+which had been long threatening him.
+
+[Footnote 18: A retention of urine.]
+
+At last, just at five o'clock, one of Ney's officers came to inform him
+that the marshal was still in sight of the Russians, and wished to begin
+the attack. This news seemed to restore the strength of which the fever
+had deprived him. He arose, called his officers, and sallied out,
+exclaiming, "We have them at last! Forward! Let us go and open the gates
+of Moscow!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+It was half-past five in the morning, when Napoleon arrived near the
+redoubt which had been conquered on the 5th of September. There he
+waited for the first dawn of day, and for the first fire of
+Poniatowski's infantry. The sun rose. The emperor, showing it to his
+officers, exclaimed, "Behold the sun of Austerlitz!" But it was opposite
+to us. It rose on the Russian side, made us conspicuous to their fire,
+and dazzled us. We then first perceived, that owing to the darkness, our
+batteries had been placed out of reach of the enemy, and it was
+necessary to push them more forward. The enemy allowed this to be done:
+he seemed to hesitate in being the first to break the awful silence.
+
+The emperor's attention was then directed towards his right, when, all
+at once, near seven o'clock, the battle began upon his left. Shortly
+after, he was informed, that one of the regiments of Prince Eugene, the
+106th, had got possession of the village of Borodino, and its bridge,
+which it should have destroyed; but that being carried away by the
+ardour of success, it had crossed that passage, in spite of the cries of
+its general, in order to attack the heights of Gorcka, where it was
+overwhelmed by the front and flank fires of the Russians. It was added,
+that the general who commanded that brigade had been already killed, and
+that the 106th regiment would have been entirely destroyed had it not
+been for the 92d, which voluntarily ran up to its assistance, and
+collected and brought back its survivors.
+
+It was Napoleon himself who had just ordered his left wing to make a
+violent attack. Probably, he had only reckoned on a partial execution of
+his orders, and wished to keep the enemy's attention directed to that
+side. But he multiplied his orders, used the most violent excitations,
+and engaged a battle in front, the plan of which he had conceived in an
+oblique order.
+
+During this action, the emperor judging that Poniatowski was closing
+with the enemy on the old Moscow road, gave him the signal to attack.
+Suddenly, from that peaceful plain, and the silent hills, volumes of
+fire and smoke were seen spouting out, followed by a multitude of
+explosions, and the whistling of bullets, tearing the air in every
+direction. In the midst of this noise, Davoust, with the divisions
+Compans and Dessaix, and thirty pieces of cannon in front, advanced
+rapidly to the first Russian redoubt.
+
+The enemy's musketry began, and was answered only by the French cannon.
+The French infantry marched without firing: it was hurrying on to get
+within reach of and extinguish that of the enemy, when Compans, the
+general of that column, and his bravest soldiers, were wounded and fell:
+the rest, disconcerted, halted under the shower of balls, in order to
+return it, when Rapp, rushing to replace Compans, again led his soldiers
+on, with fixed bayonets, and at a running pace against the enemy's
+redoubt.
+
+He was himself just on the point of reaching it, when he was, in his
+turn, hit; it was his twenty-second wound. A third general, who
+succeeded him, also fell. Davoust himself was wounded. Rapp was carried
+to the emperor, who said to him, "What, Rapp, always hit! What are they
+doing above, then?" The aid-de-camp answered, that it would require the
+guard to finish. "No!" replied Napoleon, "I shall take good care of
+that; I have no wish to see it destroyed; I shall gain the battle
+without it."
+
+Ney, then, with his three divisions, reduced to 10,000 men, hastened
+into the plain to the assistance of Davoust. The enemy divided his fire.
+Ney rushed forward. The 57th regiment of Compans's division, finding
+itself supported, took fresh courage; by a last effort it succeeded in
+reaching the enemy's entrenchments, scaled them, mingled with the
+Russians, put them to the bayonet, overthrew and killed the most
+obstinate of them. The rest fled, and the 57th maintained itself in its
+conquest. At the same time Ney made so furious an attack on the two
+other redoubts, that he wrested them from the enemy.
+
+It was now mid-day; the left Russian line being thus forced, and the
+plain cleared, the emperor ordered Murat to proceed with his cavalry,
+and complete the victory. An instant was sufficient for that prince to
+show himself on the heights and in the midst of the enemy, who again
+made his appearance there; for the second Russian line and the
+reinforcements, led on by Bagawout and sent by Tutchkof, had come to the
+assistance of the first line. They all rushed forward, resting upon
+Semenowska, in order to retake their redoubts. The French, who were
+still in the disorder of victory, were astonished and fell back.
+
+The Westphalians, whom Napoleon had just sent to the assistance of
+Poniatowski, were then crossing the wood which separated that prince
+from the rest of the army; through the dust and smoke they got a glimpse
+of our troops, who were retreating. By the direction of their march,
+they guessed them to be enemies, and fired upon them. They persisted in
+their mistake, and thereby increased the disorder.
+
+The enemy's cavalry vigorously followed up their advantage; they
+surrounded Murat, who forgot himself in his endeavours to rally his
+troops; they were already stretching out their arms to lay hold of him,
+when he threw himself into the redoubt, and escaped from them. But there
+he found only some unsteady soldiers whose courage had forsaken them,
+and running round the parapet in a state of the greatest panic. They
+only wanted an outlet to run away.
+
+The presence of the king and his cries first restored confidence to a
+few. He himself seized a musket; with one hand he fought, with the other
+he elevated and waved his plume, calling to his men, and restoring them
+to their first valour by that authority which example gives. At the same
+time Ney had again formed his divisions. Their fire stopped the enemy's
+cuirassiers, and threw their ranks into disorder. They let go their
+hold, Murat was at last disengaged, and the heights were reconquered.
+
+Scarcely had the king escaped this peril, when he ran into another; with
+the cavalry of Bruyčre and Nansouty, he rushed upon the enemy, and by
+obstinate and repeated charges overthrew the Russian lines, pushed and
+drove them back on their centre, and, within an hour, completed the
+total defeat of their left wing.
+
+But the heights of the ruined village of Semenowska, where the left of
+the enemy's centre commenced, were still untouched; the reinforcements
+which Kutusof incessantly drew from his right, supported it. Their
+commanding fire was poured down upon Ney and Murat's troops, and stopped
+their victory; it was indispensable to acquire that position. Maubourg
+with his cavalry first cleared the front; Friand, one of Davoust's
+generals, followed him with his infantry. Dufour and the 15th light were
+the first to climb the steep; they dislodged the Russians from the
+village, the ruins of which were badly entrenched. Friand, although
+wounded, followed up and secured this advantage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+This vigorous action opened up to us the road to victory; it was
+necessary to rush into it; but Murat and Ney were exhausted: they
+halted, and while they were rallying their troops, they sent to Napoleon
+to ask for reinforcements. Napoleon was then seized with a hesitation
+which he never before displayed; he deliberated long with himself, and
+at last, after repeated orders and counter-orders to his young guard, he
+expressed his belief that the appearance of Friand and Maubourg's troops
+on the heights would be sufficient, the decisive moment not appearing to
+him to be yet arrived.
+
+But Kutusof took advantage of the respite which he had no reason to
+expect; he summoned the whole of his reserve, even to the Russian
+guards, to the support of his uncovered left wing. Bagration, with all
+these reinforcements, re-formed his line, his right resting on the great
+battery which Prince Eugene was attacking, his left on the wood which
+bounded the field of battle towards Psarewo. His fire cut our ranks to
+pieces; his attack was violent, impetuous, and simultaneous; infantry,
+artillery, and cavalry, all made a grand effort. Ney and Murat stood
+firm against this tempest; the question with them was no longer about
+following up the victory, but about retaining it.
+
+The soldiers of Friand, drawn up in front of Semenowska, repelled the
+first charges, but when they were assailed with a shower of balls and
+grape shot, they began to give way; one of their leaders got tired, and
+gave orders to retreat. At that critical moment, Murat ran up to him,
+and seizing him by the collar, exclaimed, "What are you about?" The
+colonel, pointing to the ground, covered with half his troops, answered,
+"You see well enough that it is impossible to stand here."--"Very well,
+I will remain!" exclaimed the king. These words stopped the officer: he
+looked Murat steadily in the face, and turning round, coolly said, "You
+are right! Soldiers, face to the enemy! Let us go and be killed!"
+
+Meanwhile, Murat had just sent back Borelli to the emperor to ask for
+assistance; that officer pointed to the clouds of dust which the charges
+of the cavalry were raising upon the heights, which had hitherto
+remained tranquil since they had been taken. Some cannon-balls also for
+the first time fell close to where Napoleon was stationed; the enemy
+seemed to be approaching; Borelli insisted, and the emperor promised his
+young guard. But, scarcely had it advanced a few paces, when he himself
+called out to it to halt. The Count de Lobau, however, made it advance
+by degrees, under pretence of dressing the line. Napoleon perceiving
+it, repeated his order.
+
+Fortunately, the artillery of the reserve advanced at that moment, to
+take a position on the conquered heights; Lauriston had obtained the
+emperor's consent to that manoeuvre, but it was rather a permission
+than an order. Shortly after, however, he thought it so important, that
+he urged its execution with the only movement of impatience he exhibited
+during the whole of that day.
+
+It is not known whether his doubts as to the results of Prince
+Poniatowski and Prince Eugene's engagement on his right and left kept
+him in uncertainty; what is certain is, that he seemed to be
+apprehensive lest the extreme left of the Russians should escape from
+the Poles, and return to take possession of the field of battle in the
+rear of Ney and Murat. This at least was one of the causes of his
+retaining his guard in observation upon that point. To such as pressed
+him, his answer was, "that he wished to have a better view; that his
+battle was not yet begun; that it would be a long one; that they must
+learn to wait; that time entered into every thing; that it was the
+element of which all things are composed; that nothing was yet
+sufficiently clear." He then inquired the hour, and added, "that the
+hour of his battle was not yet come; that it would begin in two hours."
+
+But it never began: the whole of that day he was sitting down, or
+walking about leisurely, in front, and a little to the left of the
+redoubt which had been conquered on the 5th, on the borders of a
+ravine, at a great distance from the battle, of which he could scarcely
+see any thing after it got beyond the heights; not at all uneasy when he
+saw it return nearer to him, nor impatient with his own troops, or the
+enemy. He merely made some gestures of melancholy resignation, on every
+occasion, when they came to inform him of the loss of his best generals.
+He rose several times to take a few turns, but immediately sat down
+again.
+
+Every one around him looked at him with astonishment. Hitherto, during
+these great shocks, he had displayed an active coolness; but here it was
+a dead calm, a nerveless and sluggish inactivity. Some fancied they
+traced in it that dejection which is generally the follower of violent
+sensations: others, that he had already become indifferent to every
+thing, even to the emotion of battles. Several remarked, that the calm
+constancy and _sang-froid_ which great men display on these great
+occasions, turn, in the course of time, to phlegm and heaviness, when
+age has worn out their springs. Those who were most devoted to him,
+accounted for his immobility by the necessity of not changing his place
+too much, when he was commanding over such an extent, in order that the
+bearers of intelligence might know where to find him. Finally, there
+were others who, on much better grounds, attributed it to the shock
+which his health had sustained, to a secret malady, and to the
+commencement of a violent indisposition.
+
+The generals of artillery, who were surprised at their stagnation,
+quickly availed themselves of the permission to fight which was just
+given them. They very soon crowned the heights. Eighty pieces of cannon
+were discharged at once. The Russian cavalry was first broken by that
+brazen line, and obliged to take refuge behind its infantry.
+
+The latter advanced in dense masses, in which our balls at first made
+wide and deep holes; they still, however, continued to advance, when the
+French batteries crushed them by a second discharge of grape-shot. Whole
+platoons fell at once; their soldiers were seen trying to keep together
+under this terrible fire. Every instant, separated by death, they closed
+together over her, treading her under foot.
+
+At last they halted, not daring to advance farther, and yet unwilling to
+retreat; either because they were struck, and, as it were, petrified
+with horror, in the midst of this great destruction, or that Bagration
+was wounded at that moment; or, perhaps, because their generals, after
+the failure of their first disposition, knew not how to change it, from
+not possessing, like Napoleon, the great art of putting such great
+bodies into motion at once, in unison, and without confusion. In short,
+these listless masses allowed themselves to be mowed down for two hours,
+making no other movement than their fall. It was a most horrible
+massacre; and our brave and intelligent artillerymen could not help
+admiring the motionless, blind, and resigned courage of their enemies.
+
+The victors were the first to be tired out. They became impatient at
+the tardiness of this battle of artillery. Their ammunition being
+entirely exhausted, they came to a decision, in consequence of which Ney
+moved forward, extending his right, which he made to advance rapidly,
+and again turn the left of the new front opposed to him. Davoust and
+Murat seconded him, and the remnants of Ney's corps became the
+conquerors over the remains of Bagration's.
+
+The battle then ceased in the plain, and became concentrated on the rest
+of the enemy's heights, and near the great redoubt, which Barclay with
+the centre and the right, continued to defend obstinately against
+Eugene.
+
+In this manner, about mid-day, the whole of the French right wing, Ney,
+Davoust, and Murat, after annihilating Bagration and the half of the
+Russian line, presented itself on the half-opened flank of the remainder
+of the hostile army, of which they could see the whole interior, the
+reserves, the abandoned rears, and even the commencement of the retreat.
+
+But as they felt themselves too weak to throw themselves into that gap,
+behind a line still formidable, they called aloud for the guard: "The
+young guard! only let it follow them at a distance! Let it show itself,
+and take their place upon the heights! They themselves will then be
+sufficient to finish!"
+
+General Belliard was sent by them to the emperor. He declared, "that
+from their position, the eye could penetrate, without impediment, a far
+as the road to Mojaisk, in the rear of the Russian army; that they could
+see there a confused crowd of flying and wounded soldiers, and carriages
+retreating; that it was true there was still a ravine and a thin copse
+between them, but that the Russian generals were so confounded, that
+they had no thought of turning these to any advantage; that in short,
+only a single effort was required to arrive in the middle of that
+disorder, to seal the enemy's discomfiture, and terminate the war!"
+
+The emperor, however, still hesitated, and ordered that general to go
+and look again, and to return and bring him word. Belliard, surprised,
+went and returned with all speed; he reported, "that the enemy began to
+think better of it; that the copse was already lined with his marksmen:
+that the opportunity was about to escape; that there was not a moment to
+be lost, otherwise it would require a second battle to terminate the
+first!"
+
+But Bessičres, who had just returned from the heights, to which Napoleon
+had sent him to examine the attitude of the Russians, asserted, that,
+"far from being in disorder, they had retreated to a second position,
+where they seemed to be preparing for a fresh attack." The emperor then
+said to Belliard, "That nothing was yet sufficiently unravelled: that to
+make him give his reserves, he wanted to see more clearly upon his
+chess-board." This was his expression; which he repeated several times,
+at the same time pointing on one side to the old Moscow road, of which
+Poniatowski had not yet made himself master; on the other, to an attack
+of the enemy's cavalry in the rear of our left wing; and, finally, to
+the great redoubt, against which the efforts of prince Eugene had been
+ineffectual.
+
+Belliard, in consternation, returned to the king of Naples, and informed
+him of the impossibility of obtaining the reserve from the emperor; he
+said, "he had found him still seated in the same place, with a suffering
+and dejected air, his features sunk, and a dull look; giving his orders
+languishingly, in the midst of these dreadful warlike noises, to which
+he seemed completely a stranger!" At this account, Ney, furious and
+hurried away by his ardent and unmeasured character, exclaimed, "Are we
+then come so far, to be satisfied with a field of battle? What business
+has the emperor in the rear of the army? There, he is only within reach
+of reverses, and not of victory. Since he will no longer make war
+himself, since he is no longer the general, as he wishes to be the
+emperor every where, let him return to the Tuilleries, and leave us to
+be generals for him!"
+
+Murat was more calm; he recollected having seen the emperor the day
+before, as he was riding along, observing that part of the enemy's line,
+halt several times, dismount, and with his head resting upon the cannon,
+remain there some time in the attitude of suffering. He knew what a
+restless night he had passed, and that a violent and incessant cough cut
+short his breathing. The king guessed that fatigue, and the first
+attacks of the equinox, had shaken his weakened frame, and that in
+short, at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a manner
+chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of
+fatigue, of fever, and of a malady which, probably, more than any other,
+prostrates the moral and physical strength of its victims.
+
+Still, farther incitements were not wanting; for shortly after Belliard,
+Daru, urged by Dumas, and particularly by Berthier, said in a low voice
+to the emperor, "that from all sides it was the cry that the moment for
+sending the guard was now come." To which Napoleon replied, "And if
+there should be another battle to-morrow, where is my army?" The
+minister urged no farther, surprised to see, for the first time, the
+emperor putting off till the morrow, and adjourning his victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Barclay, however, with the right, kept up a most obstinate struggle with
+Prince Eugene. The latter, immediately after the capture of Borodino,
+passed the Kologha in the face of the enemy's great redoubt. There,
+particularly, the Russians had calculated upon their steep heights,
+encompassed by deep and muddy ravines, upon our exhaustion, upon their
+entrenchments, defended by heavy artillery, and upon 80 pieces of
+cannon, planted on the borders of these banks, bristling with fire and
+flames! But all these elements, art, and nature, every thing failed
+them at once: assailed by a first burst of that _French fury_, which has
+been so celebrated, they saw Morand's soldiers appear suddenly in the
+midst of them, and fled in disorder.
+
+Eighteen hundred men of the 30th regiment, with general Bonnamy at their
+head, had just made that great effort.
+
+It was there that Fabvier, the aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had arrived
+but the day before from the heart of Spain, made himself conspicuous; he
+went as a volunteer, and on foot, at the head of the most advanced
+sharp-shooters, as if he had come there to represent the army of Spain,
+in the midst of the grand army; and, inspired with that rivalry of glory
+which makes heroes, wished to exhibit it at the head, and the first in
+every danger.
+
+He fell wounded in that too famous redoubt; for the triumph was
+short-lived; the attack wanted concert, either from precipitation in the
+first assailant, or too great slowness in those who followed. They had
+to pass a ravine, whose depth protected them from the enemy's fire. It
+is affirmed that many of our troops halted there. Morand, therefore, was
+left alone in the face of several Russian lines. It was yet only ten
+o'clock. Friand, who was on his right, had not yet commenced the attack
+of Semenowska; and, on his left, the divisions Gérard, Broussier, and
+the Italian guard, were not yet in line.
+
+This attack, besides, should not have been made so precipitately: the
+intention had been only to keep Barclay in check, and occupied on that
+side, the battle having been arranged to begin by the right wing, and
+pivot on the left. This was the emperor's plan, and we know not why he
+himself altered it at the moment of its execution; for it was he who, on
+the first discharge of the artillery, sent different officers in
+succession to Prince Eugene, to urge his attack.
+
+The Russians, recovering from their first surprise, rushed forward in
+all directions. Kutaisof and Yermoloff advanced at their head with a
+resolution worthy of so great an occasion. The 30th regiment, single
+against a whole army, ventured to attack it with the bayonet; it was
+enveloped, crushed, and driven out of the redoubt, where it left a third
+of its men, and its intrepid general pierced through with twenty wounds.
+Encouraged by their success, the Russians were no longer satisfied with
+defending themselves, but attacked in their turn. Then were seen united,
+on that single point, all the skill, strength, and fury, which war can
+bring forth. The French stood firm for four hours on the declivity of
+that volcano, under the shower of iron and lead which it vomited forth.
+But to do this required all the skill and determination of Prince
+Eugene; and the idea so insupportable to long-victorious soldiers, of
+confessing themselves vanquished.
+
+Each division changed its general several times. The viceroy went from
+one to the other, mingling entreaties and reproaches, and, above all,
+reminding them of their former victories. He sent to apprise the
+emperor of his critical situation; but Napoleon replied, "That he could
+not assist him; that he must conquer; that he had only to make a greater
+effort; that the heat of the battle was there." The prince was rallying
+all his forces to make a general assault, when suddenly his attention
+was diverted by furious cries proceeding from his left.
+
+Ouwarof, with two regiments of cavalry, and some thousand cossacks, had
+attacked his reserve, and thrown it into disorder. He ran thither
+instantly, and, seconded by Generals Delzons and Ornano, soon drove away
+that troop, which was more noisy than formidable; after which he
+returned to put himself at the head of a decisive attack.
+
+It was about that time that Murat, forced to remain inactive on the
+plain where he commanded, had sent, for the fourth time, to his
+brother-in-law, to complain of the losses which his cavalry were
+sustaining from the Russian troops, protected by the redoubts which were
+opposed to Prince Eugene. "He only requested the cavalry of the guard,
+with whose assistance he could turn the entrenched heights, and destroy
+them along with the army which defended them."
+
+The emperor seemed to give his consent, and sent in search of Bessičres,
+who commanded these horse-guards. Unfortunately they could not find the
+marshal, who, by his orders, had gone to look at the battle somewhat
+nearer. The emperor waited nearly an hour without the least impatience,
+or repeating his order; and when the marshal returned, he received him
+with a pleasant look, heard his report quietly, and allowed him to
+advance as far as he might judge it desirable.
+
+But it was too late; he could no longer think of making the whole
+Russian army prisoners, or perhaps of taking entire possession of
+Russia; the field of battle was all he was likely to gain. He had
+allowed Kutusof leisure to reconnoitre his positions; that general had
+fortified all the points of difficult approach which remained to him,
+and his cavalry covered the plain.
+
+The Russians had thus, for the third time, renewed their left wing, in
+the face of Ney and Murat. The latter summoned the cavalry of Montbrun,
+who had been killed. General Caulaincourt succeeded him; he found the
+aides-de-camp of the unfortunate Montbrun in tears for the loss of their
+commander. "Follow me," said he to them, "weep not for him, but come and
+avenge his death!"
+
+The king pointed out to him the enemy's fresh wing; he must break
+through it, and push on as far as the breast of their great battery;
+when there, during the time that the light cavalry is following up his
+advantage, he, Caulaincourt, must turn suddenly, on the left with his
+cuirassiers, in order to take in the rear that terrible redoubt whose
+front fire is still mowing the ranks of the viceroy.
+
+Caulaincourt's reply was, "You shall see me there presently, alive or
+dead." He immediately set off, overthrew all before him, and turning
+suddenly round on the left with his cuirassiers, was the first to enter
+the bloody redoubt, when he was struck dead by a musket-ball. His
+conquest was his tomb.
+
+They ran immediately to acquaint the emperor with this victory, and the
+loss which it had occasioned. The grand-equerry, brother of the
+unfortunate general, listened, and was at first petrified; but he soon
+summoned courage against this misfortune, and, but for the tears which
+silently coursed down his cheeks, you might have thought that he felt
+nothing. The emperor, uttering an exclamation of sorrow, said to him,
+"You have heard the news, do you wish to retire?" But as at that moment
+we were advancing against the enemy, the grand-equerry made no reply; he
+did not retire; he only half uncovered himself to thank the emperor, and
+to refuse.
+
+While this determined charge of cavalry was executing, the viceroy, with
+his infantry, was on the point of reaching the mouth of this volcano,
+when suddenly he saw its fires extinguished, its smoke disappear, and
+its summit glittering with the moveable and resplendent armour of our
+cuirassiers. These heights, hitherto Russian, had at last become French;
+he hastened forward to share and terminate the victory, and to
+strengthen himself in that position.
+
+But the Russians had not yet abandoned it; they returned with greater
+obstinacy and fury to the attack; successively as they were beat back by
+our troops, they were again rallied by their generals, and finally the
+greater part perished at the foot of these works, which they had
+themselves raised.
+
+Fortunately, their last attacking column presented itself towards
+Semenowska and the great redoubt, without its artillery, the progress of
+which had, no doubt, been retarded by the ravines. Belliard had barely
+time to collect thirty cannon against this infantry. They came almost
+close to the mouths of our pieces, which overwhelmed them so apropos,
+that they wheeled round and retreated without being even able to deploy.
+Murat and Belliard then said, that if they could have had at that moment
+ten thousand infantry of the reserve, their victory would have been
+decisive; but that, being reduced to their cavalry, they considered
+themselves fortunate to keep possession of the field of battle.
+
+On his side, Grouchy, by sanguinary and repeated charges on the left of
+the great redoubt, secured the victory, and scoured the plain. But it
+was impossible to pursue the fugitive Russians; fresh ravines, with
+armed redoubts behind them, protected their retreat. There they defended
+themselves with fury until the approach of night, covering in this
+manner the great road to Moscow, their holy city, their magazine, their
+depôt, their place of refuge.
+
+From this second range of heights, their artillery overwhelmed the first
+which they had abandoned to us. The viceroy was obliged to conceal his
+panting, exhausted, and thinned lines in the hollows of the ground, and
+behind the half-destroyed entrenchments. The soldiers were obliged to
+get upon their knees, and crouch themselves up behind these shapeless
+parapets. In that painful posture they remained for several hours, kept
+in check by the enemy, who stood in check of them.
+
+It was about half-past three o'clock when this last victory was
+achieved; there had been several such during the day; each corps
+successively beat that which was opposed to it, without being able to
+take advantage of its success to decide the battle; as, not being
+supported in proper time by the reserve, each halted exhausted. But at
+last all the first obstacles were overcome; the firing gradually
+slackened, and got to a greater distance from the emperor. Officers were
+coming in to him from all parts. Poniatowski and Sebastiani, after an
+obstinate contest, were also victorious. The enemy halted, and
+entrenched himself in a new position. It was getting late, our
+ammunition was exhausted, and the battle ended.
+
+Belliard then returned for the third time to the emperor, whose
+sufferings appeared to have increased. He mounted his horse with
+difficulty, and rode slowly along the heights of Semenowska. He found a
+field of battle imperfectly gained, as the enemy's bullets, and even
+their musket-balls, still disputed the possession of it with us.
+
+In the midst of these warlike noises, and the still burning ardour of
+Ney and Murat, he continued always in the same state, his gait
+desponding, and his voice languid. The sight of the Russians, however,
+and the noise of their continued firing, seemed again to inspire him;
+he went to take a nearer view of their last position, and even wished to
+drive them from it. But Murat, pointing to the scanty remains of our own
+troops, declared that it would require the guard to finish; on which,
+Bessičres continuing to insist, as he always did, on the importance of
+this _corps d'élite_, objected "the distance the emperor was from his
+reinforcements; that Europe was between him and France; that it was
+indispensable to preserve, at least, that handful of soldiers, which was
+all that remained to answer for his safety." And as it was then nearly
+five o'clock, Berthier added, "that it was too late; that the enemy was
+strengthening himself in his last position; and that it would require a
+sacrifice of several more thousands, without any adequate results."
+Napoleon then thought of nothing but to recommend the victors to be
+prudent. Afterwards he returned, still at the same slow pace, to his
+tent, that had been erected behind that battery which was carried two
+days before, and in front of which he had remained ever since the
+morning, an almost motionless spectator of all the vicissitudes of that
+terrible day.
+
+As he was thus returning, he called Mortier to him, and ordered him "to
+make the young guard now advance, but on no account to pass the new
+ravine which separated us from the enemy." He added, "that he gave him
+in charge to guard the field of battle; that that was all he required of
+him; that he was at liberty to do whatever he thought necessary for that
+purpose, and nothing more." He recalled him shortly after to ask "if he
+had properly understood him; recommended him to make no attack; but
+merely to guard the field of battle." An hour afterwards he sent to him
+to reiterate the order, "neither to advance nor retreat, whatever might
+happen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+After he had retired to his tent, great mental anguish was added to his
+previous physical dejection. He had seen the field of battle; places had
+spoken much more loudly than men; the victory which he had so eagerly
+pursued, and so dearly bought, was incomplete. Was this he who had
+always pushed his successes to the farthest possible limits, whom
+Fortune had just found cold and inactive, at a time when she was
+offering him her last favours?
+
+The losses were certainly immense, and out of all proportion to the
+advantages gained. Every one around him had to lament the loss of a
+friend, a relation, or a brother; for the fate of battles had fallen on
+the most distinguished. Forty-three generals had been killed or wounded.
+What a mourning for Paris! what a triumph for his enemies! what a
+dangerous subject for the reflections of Germany! In his army, even in
+his very tent, his victory was silent, gloomy, isolated, even without
+flatterers!
+
+The persons whom he had summoned, Dumas and Daru, listened to him, and
+said nothing; but their attitude, their downcast eyes, and their
+silence, spoke more eloquently than words.
+
+It was now ten o'clock. Murat, whom twelve hours' fighting had not
+exhausted, again came to ask him for the cavalry of his guard. "The
+enemy's army," said he, "is passing the Moskwa in haste and disorder; I
+wish to surprise and extinguish it." The emperor repelled this sally of
+immoderate ardour; afterwards he dictated the bulletin of the day.
+
+He seemed pleased at announcing to Europe, that neither he nor his guard
+had been at all exposed. By some this care was regarded as a refinement
+of self-love; but those who were better informed thought very
+differently. They had never seen him display any vain or gratuitous
+passion, and their idea was, that at that distance, and at the head of
+an army of foreigners, who had no other bond of union but victory, he
+had judged it indispensable to preserve a select and devoted body.
+
+His enemies, in fact, would have no longer any thing to hope from fields
+of battle; neither his death, as he had no need to expose his person in
+order to insure success, nor a victory, as his genius was sufficient at
+a distance, even without bringing forward his reserve. As long,
+therefore, as this guard remained untouched, his real power and that
+which he derived from opinion would remain entire. It seemed to be a
+sort of security to him, against his allies, as well as against his
+enemies: on that account he took so much pains to inform Europe of the
+preservation of that formidable reserve; and yet it scarcely amounted to
+20,000 men, of whom more than a third were new recruits.
+
+These were powerful motives, but they did not at all satisfy men who
+knew that excellent reasons may be found for committing the greatest
+faults. They all agreed, "that they had seen the battle which had been
+won in the morning on the right, halt where it was favourable to us, and
+continue successively in front, a contest of mere strength, as in the
+infancy of the art! it was a battle without any plan, a mere victory of
+soldiers, rather than of a general! Why so much precipitation to
+overtake the enemy, with an army panting, exhausted, and weakened? and
+when we had come up with him, why neglect to complete his discomfiture,
+and remain bleeding and mutilated, in the midst of an enraged nation, in
+immense deserts, and at 800 leagues' distance from our resources?"
+
+Murat then exclaimed, "That in this great day he had not recognized the
+genius of Napoleon!" The viceroy confessed "that he had no conception
+what could be the reason of the indecision which his adopted father had
+shown." Ney, when he was called on for his opinion, was singularly
+obstinate in advising him to retreat.
+
+Those alone who had never quitted his person, observed, that the
+conqueror of so many nations had been overcome by a burning fever, and
+above all by a fatal return of that painful malady which every violent
+movement, and all long and strong emotions excited in him. They then
+quoted the words which he himself had written in Italy fifteen years
+before: "Health is indispensable in war, and nothing can replace it;"
+and the exclamation, unfortunately prophetic, which he had uttered on
+the plains of Austerlitz: "Ordener is worn out. One is not always fit
+for war; I shall be good for six years longer, after which I must lie
+by."
+
+During the night, the Russians made us sensible of their vicinity, by
+their unseasonable clamours. Next morning there was an alert, close to
+the emperor's tent. The old guard was actually obliged to run to arms; a
+circumstance which, after a victory, seemed insulting. The army remained
+motionless until noon, or rather it might be said that there was no
+longer an army, but a single vanguard. The rest of the troops were
+dispersed over the field of battle to carry off the wounded, of whom
+there were 20,000. They were taken to the great abbey of Kolotskoi, two
+leagues in the rear.
+
+Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, had just taken assistants from all the
+regiments; the _ambulances_ had rejoined, but all was insufficient. He
+has since complained, in a printed narrative, that no troop had been
+left him to procure the most necessary articles in the surrounding
+villages.
+
+The emperor then rode over the field of battle; never did one present so
+horrible an appearance. Every thing concurred to make it so; a gloomy
+sky, a cold rain, a violent wind, houses burnt to ashes, a plain turned
+topsy-turvy, covered with ruins and rubbish, in the distance the sad and
+sombre verdure of the trees of the North; soldiers roaming about in all
+directions, and hunting for provisions, even in the haversacks of their
+dead companions; horrible wounds, for the Russian musket-balls are
+larger than ours; silent bivouacs, no singing or story-telling--a gloomy
+taciturnity.
+
+Round the eagles were seen the remaining officers and subalterns, and a
+few soldiers, scarcely enough to protect the colours. Their clothes had
+been torn in the fury of the combat, were blackened with powder, and
+spotted with blood; and yet, in the midst of their rags, their misery,
+and disasters, they had a proud look, and at the sight of the emperor,
+uttered some shouts of triumph, but they were rare and excited; for in
+this army, capable at once of analysis and enthusiasm, every one was
+sensible of the position of all.
+
+French soldiers are not easily deceived; they were astonished to find so
+many of the enemy killed, so great a number wounded, and so few
+prisoners, there being not 800 of the latter. By the number of these,
+the extent of a victory had been formerly calculated. The dead bodies
+were rather a proof of the courage of the vanquished, than the evidence
+of a victory. If the rest retreated in such good order, proud, and so
+little discouraged, what signified the gain of a field of battle? In
+such extensive countries, would there ever be any want of ground for the
+Russians to fight on?
+
+As for us, we had already too much, and a great deal more than we were
+able to retain. Could that be called conquering it? The long and
+straight furrow which we had traced with so much difficulty from Kowno,
+across sands and ashes, would it not close behind us, like that of a
+vessel on an immense ocean! A few peasants, badly armed, might easily
+efface all traces of it.
+
+In fact they were about to carry off, in the rear of the army, our
+wounded and our marauders. Five hundred stragglers soon fell into their
+hands. It is true that some French soldiers, arrested in this manner,
+affected to join these cossacks; they assisted them in making fresh
+captures, until finding themselves sufficiently numerous, with their new
+prisoners, they collected together suddenly and rid themselves of their
+unsuspecting enemies.
+
+The emperor could not value his victory otherwise than by the dead. The
+ground was strewed to such a degree with Frenchmen, extended prostrate
+on the redoubts, that they appeared to belong more to them than to those
+who remained standing. There seemed to be more victors killed there,
+than there were still living.
+
+Amidst the crowd of corses which we were obliged to march over in
+following Napoleon, the foot of a horse encountered a wounded man, and
+extorted from him a last sign of life or of suffering. The emperor,
+hitherto equally silent with his victory, and whose heart felt
+oppressed by the sight of so many victims, gave an exclamation; he felt
+relieved by uttering cries of indignation, and lavishing the attentions
+of humanity on this unfortunate creature. To pacify him, somebody
+remarked that it was only a Russian, but he retorted warmly, "that after
+victory there are no enemies, but only men!" He then dispersed the
+officers of his suite, in order to succour the wounded, who were heard
+groaning in every direction.
+
+Great numbers were found at the bottom of the ravines, into which the
+greater part of our men had been precipitated, and where many had
+dragged themselves, in order to be better protected from the enemy, and
+the violence of the storm. Some groaningly pronounced the name of their
+country or their mother; these were the youngest: the elder ones waited
+the approach of death, some with a tranquil, and others with a sardonic
+air, without deigning to implore for mercy or to complain; others
+besought us to kill them outright: these unfortunate men were quickly
+passed by, having neither the useless pity to assist them, nor the cruel
+pity to put an end to their sufferings.
+
+One of these, the most mutilated (one arm and his trunk being all that
+remained to him) appeared so animated, so full of hope, and even of
+gaiety, that an attempt was made to save him. In bearing him along, it
+was remarked that he complained of suffering in the limbs, which he no
+longer possessed; this is a common case with mutilated persons, and
+seems to afford additional evidence that the soul remains entire, and
+that feeling belongs to it alone, and not to the body, which can no more
+feel than it can think.
+
+The Russians were seen dragging themselves along to places where dead
+bodies were heaped together, and offered them a horrible retreat. It has
+been affirmed by several persons, that one of these poor fellows lived
+for several days in the carcase of a horse, which had been gutted by a
+shell, and the inside of which he gnawed. Some were seen straightening
+their broken leg by tying a branch of a tree tightly against it, then
+supporting themselves with another branch, and walking in this manner to
+the next village. Not one of them uttered a groan.
+
+Perhaps, when far from their own homes, they looked less for compassion.
+But certainly they appeared to support pain with greater fortitude than
+the French; not that they suffered more courageously, but that they
+suffered less; for they have less feeling in body and mind, which arises
+from their being less civilized, and from their organs being hardened by
+the climate.
+
+During this melancholy review, the emperor in vain sought to console
+himself with a cheering illusion, by having a second enumeration made of
+the few prisoners who remained, and collecting together some dismounted
+cannon: from seven to eight hundred prisoners, and twenty broken cannon,
+were all the trophies of this imperfect victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIII.
+
+
+At the same time, Murat kept pushing the Russian rear-guard as far as
+Mojaisk: the road which it uncovered on its retreat was perfectly clear,
+and without a single fragment of men, carriages, or dress. All their
+dead had been buried, for they have a religious respect for the dead.
+
+At the sight of Mojaisk, Murat fancied himself already in possession of
+it, and sent to inform the emperor that he might sleep there. But the
+Russian rear-guard had taken a position outside the walls of the town,
+and the remains of their army were placed on a height behind it. In this
+way they covered the Moscow and the Kalouga roads.
+
+Perhaps Kutusof hesitated which of these two roads to take, or was
+desirous of leaving us in uncertainty as to the one he had taken, which
+was the case. Besides, the Russians felt it a point of honour to bivouac
+at only four leagues from the scene of our victory. That also allowed
+them time to disencumber the road behind them and clear away their
+fragments.
+
+Their attitude was equally firm and imposing as before the battle, which
+we could not help admiring; but something of this was also attributable
+to the length of time we had taken to quit the field of Borodino, and to
+a deep ravine which was between them and our cavalry. Murat did not
+perceive this obstacle, but General Dery, one of his officers, guessed
+it. He went and reconnoitred the ground, close to the gates of the town,
+under the Russian bayonets.
+
+But the king of Naples, quite as fiery as at the beginning of the
+campaign, or of his military life, made nothing of the obstacle; he
+summoned his cavalry, called to them furiously to advance, to charge and
+break through these battalions, gates, and walls! In vain his
+aid-de-camp urged the impossibility of effecting his orders; he pointed
+out to him the army on the opposite heights, which commanded Mojaisk,
+and the ravine where the remains of our cavalry were about to be
+swallowed up. Murat, in greater fury than ever, insisted "that they must
+march, and if there was any obstacle, they would see it." He then made
+use of insulting phrases to urge them on, and his orders were about to
+be carried,--with some delay, nevertheless, for there was generally an
+understanding to retard their execution, in order to give him time to
+reflect, and to allow time for a counter-order, which had been
+anticipated to arrive before any misfortune happened, which was not
+always the case, but was so this time. Murat was satisfied with wasting
+his cannon and powder on some drunken and straggling cossacks by whom he
+was almost surrounded, and who attacked him with frightful howls.
+
+This skirmish, however, was sufficiently serious to add to the losses of
+the preceding day, as general Belliard was wounded in it. This officer,
+who was a great loss to Murat, was employed in reconnoitring the left of
+the enemy's position. As it was approachable, the attack should have
+been made on that side, but Murat never thought of any thing but
+striking what was immediately before him.
+
+The emperor only arrived on the field of battle at nightfall, escorted
+by a very feeble detachment. He advanced towards Mojaisk, at a still
+slower pace than the day before, and so completely absent, that he
+neither seemed to hear the noise of the engagement, nor that of the
+bullets which were whistling around him.
+
+Some one stopped him, and pointed out to him the enemy's rear-guard
+between him and the town; and on the heights behind, the fires of an
+army of 50,000 men. This sight was a proof of the incompleteness of his
+victory, and how little the enemy were discouraged; but he seemed quite
+insensible of it; he listened to the reports with a dejected and
+listless air, and returned to sleep at a village some little distance
+off, which was within reach of the enemy's fire.
+
+The Russian autumn had triumphed over him: had it not been for that,
+perhaps the whole of Russia would have yielded to our arms on the plains
+of the Moskwa: its premature inclemency was a most seasonable assistance
+to their empire. It was on the 6th of September, the very day before the
+great battle! that a hurricane announced its fatal commencement. It
+struck Napoleon. Ever since the night of that day, it has been seen that
+a wearying fever had dried up his blood, and oppressed his spirits, and
+that he was quite overcome by it during the battle; the suffering he
+endured from this, added to another still more severe, for the five
+following days arrested his march, and bound up his genius. This it was
+which preserved Kutusof from total ruin at Borodino, and allowed him
+time to rally the remainder of his army, and withdraw it from our
+pursuit.
+
+On the 9th of September we found Mojaisk uncovered, and still standing:
+but beyond it the enemy's rear-guard on the heights which command it,
+and which their army had occupied the day before. Some of our troops
+entered the town for the purpose of passing through it in pursuit of the
+enemy, and others to plunder and find lodgings for themselves. They
+found neither inhabitants nor provisions, but merely dead bodies, which
+they were obliged to throw out of the windows, in order to get
+themselves under cover, and a number of dying soldiers, who were all
+collected into one spot. These last were so numerous, and had been so
+scattered about, that the Russians had not dared to set fire to the
+habitations; but their humanity, which was not always so scrupulous, had
+given way to the desire of firing on the first French they saw enter,
+which they did with shells: the consequence was, that this wooden town
+was soon set fire to, and a part of the unfortunate wounded whom they
+had abandoned were consumed in the flames.
+
+While we were making attempts to save them, fifty voltigeurs of the 33d
+climbed the heights, of which the enemy's cavalry and artillery still
+occupied the summit. The French army, which had halted under the walls
+of Mojaisk, was surprised at seeing this handful of men, scattered about
+on this uncovered declivity, teasing with their fire thousands of the
+enemy's cavalry. All at once what had been foreseen happened; several of
+the enemy's squadrons put themselves in motion, and in an instant
+surrounded these bold fellows, who immediately formed, and kept facing
+and firing at them in all directions; but they were so few in the midst
+of a large plain, and the number of cavalry about them was so great,
+that they soon disappeared from our eyes. A general exclamation of
+sorrow burst from the whole of our lines. Every one of the soldiers with
+his neck stretched, and his eye fixed, followed the enemy's movements,
+and endeavoured to distinguish the fate of his companions in arms. Some
+were lamenting the distance they were at, and wishing to march; others
+mechanically loaded their muskets or crossed their bayonets with a
+threatening air, as if they had been near enough to assist them. Their
+looks were sometimes as animated as if they were fighting, and at other
+times as much distressed as if they had been beat. Others advised and
+encouraged them, forgetting that they were out of reach of hearing.
+
+Several volleys of smoke, ascending from amidst the black mass of
+horses, prolonged the uncertainty. Some cried out, that it was our men
+firing, and still defending themselves, and that they were not yet beat.
+In fact, a Russian commanding officer had just been killed by the
+officer commanding these _tirailleurs_. This was the way in which he
+replied to the summons to surrender. Our anxiety lasted some minutes
+longer, when all at once the army set up a cry of joy and admiration at
+seeing the Russian cavalry, intimidated at this bold resistance,
+separate in order to escape their well-directed fire, disperse, and at
+last allow us to see once more this handful of brave fellows master of
+this extensive field of battle, of which it only occupied a few feet.
+
+When the Russians saw that we were manoeuvring seriously to attack
+them, they disappeared without leaving us any traces to follow them.
+This was the same they had done at Witepsk and Smolensk, and what was
+still more remarkable, the second day after their great disaster. At
+first there was some uncertainty whether to follow the road to Moscow or
+that to Kalouga, after which Murat and Mortier proceeded, at all
+hazards, towards Moscow.
+
+They marched for two days, with no other food than horse-flesh and
+bruised wheat, without finding a single person or thing by which to
+discover the Russian army. That army, although its infantry only formed
+one confused mass, did not leave behind it a single fragment; such was
+the national spirit and habit of obedience in it, collectively and
+singly, and so thoroughly unprovided were we with every kind of
+information, as well as resources, in this deserted and thoroughly
+hostile country.
+
+The army of Italy was advancing at some leagues' distance on the left of
+the great road, and surprised some of the armed peasantry, who were not
+accustomed to fighting; but their master, with a dagger in his hand,
+rushed upon our soldiers like a madman: he exclaimed that he had no
+longer a religion, empire, or country to defend, and that life was
+odious to him; they were willing, however, to leave him that, but as he
+attempted to kill the soldiers who surrounded him, pity yielded to
+anger, and his wish was gratified.
+
+Near Krymskoié, on the 11th of September, the hostile army again made
+its appearance, firmly established in a strong position. It had returned
+to its plan of looking more to the ground, in its retreat, than to the
+enemy. The duke of Treviso at first satisfied Murat of the impossibility
+of attacking it; but the smell of powder soon intoxicated that monarch.
+He committed himself, and obliged Dufour, Mortier, and their infantry,
+to advance to his support. This consisted of the remains of Friand's
+division, and the young guard. There were lost, without the least
+utility, 2000 men of that reserve which had been so unseasonably spared
+on the day of battle; and Mortier was so enraged, that he wrote to the
+emperor, that he would no longer obey Murat's orders. For it was by
+letter that the generals of the vanguard communicated with Napoleon. He
+had remained for three days at Mojaisk, confined to his apartment, still
+consumed by a burning fever, overwhelmed with business, and worn out
+with anxiety. A violent cold had deprived him of the use of his voice.
+Compelled to dictate to seven persons at once, and unable to make
+himself heard, he wrote on different papers the heads of his despatches.
+When any difficulty arose, he explained himself by signs.
+
+There was a moment when Bessičres enumerated to him all the generals who
+were wounded on the day of the battle. This fatal list affected him so
+poignantly, that by a violent effort he recovered his voice, and
+interrupted the marshal by the sudden exclamation, "Eight days at
+Moscow, and there will be an end of it!"
+
+Meantime, although he had hitherto placed all his futurity in that
+capital, a victory so sanguinary and so little decisive lowered his
+hopes. His instructions to Berthier of the 11th of September for marshal
+Victor exhibited his distress: "The enemy, attacked at the heart, no
+longer trifles with us at the extremities. Write to the duke of Belluno
+to direct all, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and isolated soldiers to
+Smolensk, in order to be forwarded from thence to Moscow."
+
+In the midst of these bodily and mental sufferings, which he carefully
+concealed from his army, Davoust obtained access to him; his object was
+to offer himself again, notwithstanding his wound, to take the command
+of the vanguard, promising that he would contrive to march night and
+day, reach the enemy, and compel him to fight, without squandering, as
+Murat did, the strength and lives of the soldiers. Napoleon only
+answered him by extolling in high terms the audacious and inexhaustible
+ardour of his brother-in-law.
+
+He had just before heard, that the enemy's army had again been found;
+that it had not retired upon his right flank, towards Kalouga, as he had
+feared it would; that it was still retreating, and that his vanguard was
+already within two days' march of Moscow. That great name, and the great
+hopes which he attached to it, revived his strength, and on the 12th of
+September, he was sufficiently recovered to set out in a carriage, in
+order to join his vanguard.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF THE
+
+EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,
+
+UNDERTAKEN BY THE
+
+EMPEROR NAPOLEON,
+
+IN THE YEAR 1812.
+
+
+
+
+BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.
+
+
+
+  Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,
+  Incipiam--.
+
+VIRGIL.
+
+
+_SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED._
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES,
+
+WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+LONDON:
+
+TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, JUN. AND RICHTER, 30,
+SOHO-SQUARE.
+
+1825.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of the Emperor Alexander]
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF
+
+NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION
+
+TO
+
+RUSSIA.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+We have seen how the Emperor Alexander, surprised at Wilna amidst his
+preparations for defence, retreated with his disunited army, and was
+unable to rally it till it was at the distance of a hundred leagues from
+that city, between Witepsk and Smolensk. That Prince, hurried along in
+the precipitate retreat of Barclay, sought refuge at Drissa, in a camp
+injudiciously chosen and entrenched at great expense; a mere point in
+the space, on so extensive a frontier, and which served only to indicate
+to the enemy the object of his manoeuvres.
+
+Alexander, however, encouraged by the sight of this camp, and of the
+Düna, took breath behind that river. It was there that he first
+consented to receive an English agent, so important did he deem it to
+appear till that moment faithful to his engagements with France. Whether
+he acted with real good faith, or merely made a show of doing so, we
+know not: so much is certain, that at Paris, after his success, he
+affirmed, on his honour, to Count Daru, that, "notwithstanding the
+accusations of Napoleon, this was his first infraction of the treaty of
+Tilsit."
+
+At the same time he caused Barclay to issue addresses, designed to
+corrupt the French and their allies, similar to those which had so
+irritated Napoleon at Klubokoe;--attempts which the French regarded as
+contemptible, and the Germans as unseasonable.
+
+In other respects, the Emperor had given his enemies but a mean opinion
+of his military talents: this opinion was founded on his having
+neglected the Berezina, the only natural line of defence of Lithuania;
+on his eccentric retreat towards the north, when the rest of his army
+was fleeing southward; and lastly, on his ukase relative to recruiting,
+dated Drissa, which assigned to the recruits, for their places of
+rendezvous, several towns that were almost immediately occupied by the
+French. His departure from the army, as soon as it began to fight, was
+also a subject of remark.
+
+As to his political measures in his new and in his old provinces, and
+his proclamations from Polotsk to his army, to Moscow, to his great
+nation, it was admitted that they were singularly adapted to persons and
+places. It appears, in fact, that in the political means which he
+employed there was a very striking gradation of energy.
+
+In the recently acquired portion of Lithuania, houses, inhabitants,
+crops, in short every thing had been spared, either from hurry or
+designedly. The most powerful of the nobles had alone been carried off:
+their defection might have set too dangerous an example, and had they
+still further committed themselves, their return in the sequel would
+have been more difficult; besides, they were hostages.
+
+In the provinces of Lithuania which had been of old incorporated with
+the empire, where a mild administration, favours judiciously bestowed,
+and a longer habit of subjection, had extinguished the recollection of
+independence, the inhabitants were hurried away with all they could
+carry with them. Still it was not deemed expedient to require of
+subjects professing a different religion, and a nascent patriotism, the
+destruction of property: a levy of five men only out of every five
+hundred males was ordered.
+
+But in Russia Proper, where religion, superstition, ignorance,
+patriotism, all went hand in hand with the government, not only had the
+inhabitants been obliged to retreat with the army, but every thing that
+could not be removed had been destroyed. Those who were not destined to
+recruit the regulars, joined the militia or the cossacks.
+
+The interior of the empire being then threatened, it was for Moscow to
+set an example. That capital, justly denominated by its poets, "_Moscow
+with the golden cupolas_," was a vast and motley assemblage of two
+hundred and ninety-five churches, and fifteen hundred mansions, with
+their gardens and dependencies. These palaces of brick, and their parks,
+intermixed with neat houses of wood, and even thatched cottages, were
+spread over several square leagues of irregular ground: they were
+grouped round a lofty triangular fortress; the vast double inclosure of
+which, half a league in circuit, contained, the one, several palaces,
+some churches, and rocky and uncultivated spots; the other, a prodigious
+bazaar, the town of the merchants and shopkeepers, where was displayed
+the collected wealth of the four quarters of the globe.
+
+These edifices, these palaces, nay, the very shops themselves, were all
+covered with polished and painted iron: the churches, each surmounted by
+a terrace and several steeples, terminating in golden balls, then the
+crescent, and lastly the cross, reminded the spectator of the history of
+this nation: it was Asia and its religion, at first victorious,
+subsequently vanquished, and finally the crescent of Mahomet surmounted
+by the cross of Christ.
+
+A single ray of sun-shine caused this splendid city to glisten with a
+thousand varied colours. At sight of it the traveller paused, delighted
+and astonished. It reminded him of the prodigies with which the oriental
+poets had amused his childhood. On entering it, a nearer view served but
+to heighten his astonishment: he recognized the nobles by the manners,
+the habits, and the different languages of modern Europe; and by the
+rich and light elegance of their dress. He beheld, with surprise, the
+luxury and the Asiatic form of those of the merchants; the Grecian
+costumes of the common people, and their long beards. He was struck by
+the same variety in the edifices: and yet all this was tinged with a
+local and sometimes harsh colour, such as befits the country of which
+Moscow was the ancient capital.
+
+When, lastly, he observed the grandeur and magnificence of so many
+palaces, the wealth which they displayed, the luxury of the equipages,
+the multitude of slaves and servants, the splendour of those gorgeous
+spectacles, the noise of those sumptuous festivities, entertainments,
+and rejoicings, which incessantly resounded within its walls, he fancied
+himself transported into a city of kings, into an assemblage of
+sovereigns, who had brought with them their manners, customs, and
+attendants from all parts of the world.
+
+They were, nevertheless, only subjects; but opulent and powerful
+subjects; grandees, vain of their ancient nobility, strong in their
+collected numbers, and in the general ties of consanguinity contracted
+during the seven centuries which this capital had existed. They were
+landed proprietors, proud of their existence amidst their vast
+possessions; for almost the whole territory of the government of Moscow
+belongs to them, and they there reign over a million of serfs. Finally,
+they were nobles, resting, with a patriotic and religious pride, upon
+"the cradle and the tomb of their nobility"--for such is the appellation
+which they give to Moscow.
+
+It seems right, in fact, that here the nobles of the most illustrious
+families should be born and educated; that hence they should launch into
+the career of honours and glory; and lastly, that hither, when
+satisfied, discontented, or undeceived, they should bring their disgust,
+or their resentment to pour it forth; their reputation, in order to
+enjoy it, to exercise its influence on the young nobility; and to
+recruit, at a distance from power, of which they have nothing farther to
+expect, their pride, which has been too long bowed down near the throne.
+
+Here their ambition, either satiated or disappointed, has assumed,
+amidst their own dependents, and as it were beyond the reach of the
+court, a greater freedom of speech: it is a sort of privilege which time
+has sanctioned, of which they are tenacious, and which their sovereign
+respects. They become worse courtiers, but better citizens. Hence the
+dislike of their princes to visit this vast repository of glory and of
+commerce, this city of nobles whom they have disgraced or disgusted,
+whose age or reputation places them beyond their power, and to whom they
+are obliged to show indulgence.
+
+To this city necessity brought Alexander: he repaired thither from
+Polotsk, preceded by his proclamations, and looked for by the nobility
+and the mercantile class. His first appearance was amidst the assembled
+nobility. There every thing was great--the circumstance, the assembly,
+the speaker, and the resolutions which he inspired. His voice betrayed
+emotion. No sooner had he ceased, than one general simultaneous,
+unanimous cry burst from all hearts:--"Ask what you please, sire! we
+offer you every thing! take our all!"
+
+One of the nobles then proposed the levy of a militia; and in order to
+its formation, the gift of one peasant in twenty-five: but a hundred
+voices interrupted him, crying, that "the country required a greater
+sacrifice; that it was necessary to grant one serf in ten, ready armed,
+equipped, and supplied with provisions for three months." This was
+offering, for the single government of Moscow, eighty thousand men, and
+a great quantity of stores.
+
+This sacrifice was immediately voted without deliberation--some say with
+enthusiasm, and that it was executed in like manner, so long as the
+danger was at hand. Others have attributed the concurrence of this
+assembly to so urgent a proposition, to submission alone--a sentiment
+indeed, which, in the presence of absolute power, absorbs every other.
+
+They add, that, on the breaking up of the meeting, the principal nobles
+were heard to murmur among themselves against the extravagance of such a
+measure. "Was the danger then so pressing? Was there not the Russian
+army, which, as they were told, still numbered four hundred thousand
+men, to defend them? Why then deprive them of so many peasants! The
+service of these men would be, it was said, only temporary; but who
+could ever wish for their return? It was, on the contrary, an event to
+be dreaded. Would these serfs, habituated to the irregularities of war,
+bring back their former submission? Undoubtedly not: they would return
+full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the
+villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would
+give infinite trouble to the master by spoiling the slave."
+
+Be this as it may, the resolution of that meeting was generous, and
+worthy of so great a nation. The details are of little consequence. We
+well know that it is the same everywhere; that every thing in the world
+loses by being seen too near; and lastly, that nations ought to be
+judged by the general mass and by results.
+
+Alexander then addressed the merchants, but more briefly: he ordered
+that proclamation to be read to them, in which Napoleon was represented
+as "a perfidious wretch; a Moloch, who, with treachery in his heart and
+loyalty on his lips, was striving to sweep Russia from the face of the
+earth."
+
+It is said that, at these words, the masculine and highly coloured faces
+of the auditors, to which long beards imparted a look at once antique,
+majestic and wild, were inflamed with rage. Their eyes flashed fire;
+they were seized with a convulsive fury: their stiffened arms, their
+clenched fists, the gnashing of their teeth, and subdued execrations,
+expressed its vehemence. The effect was correspondent. Their chief, whom
+they elect themselves, proved himself worthy of his station: he put down
+his name the first for fifty thousand rubles. It was two-thirds of his
+fortune, and he paid it the next day.
+
+These merchants are divided into three classes: it was proposed to fix
+the contribution for each; but one of the assembly, who was included in
+the lowest class, declared that his patriotism would not brook any
+limit, and he immediately subscribed a sum far surpassing the proposed
+standard: the others followed his example more or less closely.
+Advantage was taken of their first emotions. Every thing was at hand
+that was requisite to bind them irrevocably while they were yet
+together, excited by one another, and by the words of their sovereign.
+
+This patriotic donation amounted, it is said, to two millions of rubles.
+The other governments repeated, like so many echoes, the national cry of
+Moscow. The Emperor accepted all; but all could not be given
+immediately: and when, in order to complete his work, he claimed the
+rest of the promised succours, he was obliged to have recourse to
+constraint; the danger which had alarmed some and inflamed others,
+having by that time ceased to exist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Meanwhile Smolensk was soon reduced; Napoleon at Wiazma, and
+consternation in Moscow. The great battle was not yet lost, and already
+people began to abandon that capital.
+
+The governor-general, Count Rostopchin, told the women, in his
+proclamations, that "he should not detain _them_, as the less fear the
+less danger there would be; but that their brothers and husbands must
+stay, or they would cover themselves with infamy." He then added
+encouraging particulars concerning the hostile force, which consisted,
+according to his statement, of "one hundred and fifty thousand men, who
+were reduced to the necessity of feeding on horse-flesh. The Emperor
+Alexander was about to return to his faithful capital; eighty-three
+thousand Russians, both recruits and militia, with eighty pieces of
+cannon, were marching towards Borodino, to join Kutusoff."
+
+He thus concluded: "If these forces are not sufficient, I will say to
+you, 'Come, my friends, and inhabitants of Moscow, let us march also! we
+will assemble one hundred thousand men: we will take the image of the
+Blessed Virgin, and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and put an
+end to the business at once!'"
+
+It has been remarked as a purely local singularity, that most of these
+proclamations were in the scriptural style and in poetic prose.
+
+At the same time a prodigious balloon was constructed, by command of
+Alexander, not far from Moscow, under the direction of a German
+artificer. The destination of this winged machine was to hover over the
+French army, to single out its chief, and destroy him by a shower of
+balls and fire. Several attempts were made to raise it, but without
+success, the springs by which the wings were to be worked having always
+broken.
+
+Rostopchin, nevertheless, affecting to persevere, is said to have caused
+a great quantity of rockets and other combustibles to be prepared.
+Moscow itself was designed to be the great infernal machine, the sudden
+nocturnal explosion of which was to consume the Emperor and his army.
+Should the enemy escape this danger, he would at least no longer have an
+asylum or resources; and the horror of so tremendous a calamity, which
+would be charged to his account, as had been done in regard to the
+disasters of Smolensk, Dorogobouje, Wiazma, and Gjatz, would not fail to
+rouse the whole of Russia.
+
+Such was the terrible plan of this noble descendant of one of the
+greatest Asiatic conquerors. It was conceived without effort, matured
+with care, and executed without hesitation. This Russian nobleman has
+since visited Paris. He is a steady man, a good husband, an excellent
+father: he has a superior and cultivated mind, and in society his
+manners are mild and pleasing: but, like some of his countrymen, he
+combines an antique energy with the civilization of modern times.
+
+His name henceforth belongs to history: still he had only the largest
+share in the honour of this great sacrifice. It had been previously
+commenced at Smolensk, and it was he who completed it. This resolution,
+like every thing great and entire, was admirable; the motive sufficient
+and justified by success; the devotedness unparalleled, and so
+extraordinary, that the historian is obliged to pause in order to
+fathom, to comprehend, and to contemplate it.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: A Count Rostopchin, we know, has written that he had no
+hand in that great event: but we cannot help following the opinion of
+the Russians and French, who were witnesses of and actors in this grand
+drama. All, without exception, persist in attributing to that nobleman
+the entire honour of that generous resolution. Several even seem to
+think, that if Count Rostopchin, who is yet animated by the same noble
+spirit, which will render his name imperishable, still refuses the
+immortality of so great an action, it is that he may leave all the glory
+of it to the patriotism of the nation, of which he is become one of the
+most remarkable characters.]
+
+One single individual, amidst a vast empire nearly overthrown, surveys
+its danger with steady eye: he measures, he appreciates it, and
+ventures, perhaps uncommissioned, to devote all the public and private
+interests a sacrifice to it. Though but a subject, he decides the lot of
+the state, without the countenance of his sovereign; a noble, he decrees
+the destruction of the palaces of all the nobles, without their consent;
+the protector, from the post which he occupies, of a numerous
+population, of a multitude of opulent merchants and traders, of one of
+the largest capitals in Europe, he sacrifices their fortunes, their
+establishments, nay, the whole city: he himself consigns to the flames
+the finest and the richest of his palaces, and proud and satisfied, he
+quietly remains among the resentful sufferers who have been injured or
+utterly ruined by the measure.
+
+What motive then could be so just and so powerful as to inspire him with
+such astonishing confidence? In deciding upon the destruction of Moscow,
+his principal aim was not to famish the enemy, since he had contrived to
+clear that great city of provisions; nor to deprive the French army of
+shelter, since it was impossible to suppose that out of eight thousand
+houses and churches, dispersed over so vast a space, there should not be
+left buildings enough to serve as barracks for one hundred and fifty
+thousand men.
+
+He was no doubt aware also that by such a step he would counteract that
+very important point of what was supposed to be the plan of campaign
+formed by Alexander, whose object was thought to be to entice forward
+and to detain Napoleon, till winter should come upon him, seize him, and
+deliver him up defenceless to the whole incensed nation. For it was
+natural to presume that these flames would enlighten that conqueror;
+they would take from his invasion its end and aim. They would of course
+compel him to renounce it while it was yet time, and decide him to
+return to Lithuania, for the purpose of taking up winter quarters in
+that country--a determination which was likely to prepare for Russia a
+second campaign more dangerous than the first.
+
+But in this important crisis Rostopchin perceived two great dangers; the
+one, which threatened the national honour, was that of a disgraceful
+peace dictated at Moscow, and forced upon his sovereign; the other was a
+political rather than a military danger, in which he feared the
+seductions of the enemy more than his arms, and a revolution more than a
+conquest.
+
+Averse, therefore, to any treaty, this governor foresaw that in the
+populous capital, which the Russians themselves style the oracle, the
+example of the whole empire, Napoleon would have recourse to the weapon
+of revolution, the only one that would be left him to accomplish his
+purpose. For this reason he resolved to raise a barrier of fire between
+that great captain and all weaknesses, from whatever quarter they might
+proceed, whether from the throne or from his countrymen, either nobles
+or senators; and more especially between a population of serfs and the
+soldiers of a free nation; in short, between the latter and that mass of
+artisans and tradesmen, who form in Moscow the commencement of an
+intermediate class--a class for which the French Revolution was
+specially adapted.
+
+All the preparations were made in silence, without the knowledge either
+of the people, the proprietors of all classes, or perhaps of their
+Emperor. The nation was ignorant that it was sacrificing itself. This is
+so strictly true, that, when the moment for execution arrived, we heard
+the inhabitants who had fled to the churches, execrating this
+destruction. Those who beheld it from a distance, the most opulent of
+the nobles, mistaken like their peasants, charged us with it; and in
+short, those by whom it was ordered threw the odium of it upon us,
+having engaged in the work of destruction in order to render us objects
+of detestation, and caring but little about the maledictions of so many
+unfortunate creatures, provided they could throw the weight of them upon
+us.
+
+The silence of Alexander leaves room to doubt whether he approved this
+grand determination or not. What part he took in this catastrophe is
+still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the
+subject, or they make a secret of the matter:--the effect of despotism,
+which enjoins ignorance or silence.
+
+Some think that no individual in the whole empire excepting the
+sovereign, would have dared to take on himself so heavy a
+responsibility. His subsequent conduct has disavowed without
+disapproving. Others are of opinion that this was one of the causes of
+his absence from the army, and that, not wishing to appear either to
+order or to defend, he would not stay to be a witness of the
+catastrophe.
+
+As to the general abandonment of the houses, all the way from Smolensk,
+it was compulsory, the Russian army defending them till they were
+carried sword in hand, and describing us every where as destructive
+monsters. The country suffered but little from this emigration. The
+peasants residing near the high road escaped through by-ways to other
+villages belonging to their lords, where they found accommodation.
+
+The forsaking of their huts made of trunks of trees laid one upon
+another, which a hatchet suffices for building, and of which a bench, a
+table, and an image, constitute the whole furniture, was scarcely any
+sacrifice for serfs, who had nothing of their own, whose persons did not
+even belong to themselves, and whose masters were obliged to provide for
+them, since they were their property, and the source of all their
+income.
+
+These peasants, moreover, in removing their carts, their implements, and
+their cattle, carried every thing with them, most of them being able to
+supply themselves with habitation, clothing, and all other necessaries:
+for these people are still in but the first stage of civilization, and
+far from that division of labour which denotes the extension and high
+improvement of commerce and society.
+
+But in the towns, and especially in the great capital, how could they be
+expected to quit so many establishments, to resign so many conveniencies
+and enjoyments, so much wealth, moveable and immoveable? and yet it cost
+little or no more to obtain the total abandonment of Moscow than that of
+the meanest village. There, as at Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, the
+principal nobles hesitated not to retire on our approach: for with them
+to remain would seem to be the same as to betray. But here, tradesmen,
+artisans, day-labourers, all thought it their duty to flee like the most
+powerful of the grandees. There was no occasion to command: these people
+have not yet ideas sufficient to judge for themselves, to distinguish
+and to discover differences; the example of the nobles was sufficient.
+The few foreigners who remained at Moscow might have enlightened them;
+some of these were exiled, and terror drove away the rest.
+
+It was, besides, an easy task to excite apprehensions of profanation,
+pillage, and devastation in the minds of people so cut off from other
+nations, and in the inhabitants of a city which had been so often
+plundered and burnt by the Tartars. With these examples before their
+eyes, they could not await an impious and ferocious enemy but for the
+purpose of fighting him: the rest must necessarily shun his approach
+with horror, if they would save themselves in this life and in the next:
+obedience, honour, religion, fear, every thing in short enjoined them to
+flee, with all that they could carry off.
+
+A fortnight before our arrival, the departure of the archives, the
+public chests and treasure, and that of the nobles and the principal
+merchants, together with their most valuable effects, indicated to the
+rest of the inhabitants what course to pursue. The governor, already
+impatient to see the city evacuated, appointed superintendants to
+expedite the emigration.
+
+On the 3d of September, a Frenchwoman, at the risk of being torn in
+pieces by the furious Muscovites, ventured to leave her hiding-place.
+She wandered a long time through extensive quarters, the solitude of
+which astonished her, when a distant and doleful sound thrilled her with
+terror. It was like the funeral dirge of this vast city; fixed in
+motionless suspense, she beheld an immense multitude of persons of both
+sexes in deep affliction, carrying their effects and their sacred
+images, and leading their children along with them. Their priests, laden
+with the sacred symbols of religion, headed the procession. They were
+invoking heaven in hymns of lamentation, in which all of them joined
+with tears.
+
+On reaching the gates of the city, this crowd of unfortunate creatures
+passed through them with painful hesitation: turned their eyes once more
+towards Moscow, they seemed to be bidding a last farewell to their holy
+city: but by degrees their sobs and the doleful tones of their hymns
+died away in the vast plains by which it is surrounded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+Thus was this population dispersed in detail or in masses. The roads to
+Cazan, Wladimir, and Yaroslaf were covered to the distance of forty
+leagues by fugitives on foot, and several unbroken files of vehicles of
+every kind. At the same time the measures of Rostopchin to prevent
+dejection and to preserve order, detained many of these unfortunate
+people till the very last moment.
+
+To this must be added the appointment of Kutusoff, which had revived
+their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and for
+the less affluent, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning
+the only home which they possessed; lastly, the inadequacy of the means
+of transport, notwithstanding the quantity of vehicles, which is
+peculiarly great in Russia; either because heavy requisitions for the
+exigencies of the army had reduced their number; or because they were
+too small, as it is customary to make them very light, on account of the
+sandy soil and the roads, which may be said to be rather marked out than
+constructed.
+
+It was just then that Kutusoff, though defeated at Borodino, sent
+letters to all quarters announcing that he was victorious. He deceived
+Moscow, Petersburg, and even the commanders of the other Russian armies.
+Alexander communicated this false intelligence to his allies. In the
+first transports of his joy he hastened to the altars, loaded the army
+and the family of his general with honours and money, gave directions
+for rejoicings, returned thanks to heaven, and appointed Kutusoff
+field-marshal for this defeat.
+
+Most of the Russians affirm that their emperor was grossly imposed upon
+by this report. They are still unacquainted with the motives of such a
+deception, which at first procured Kutusoff unbounded favours, that were
+not withdrawn from him, and afterwards, it is said, dreadful menaces,
+that were not put in execution.
+
+If we may credit several of his countrymen, who were perhaps his
+enemies, it would appear that he had two motives. In the first place, he
+wished not to shake, by disastrous intelligence, the little firmness
+which, in Russia, Alexander was generally, but erroneously thought to
+possess. In the second, as he was anxious that his despatch should
+arrive on the very name-day of his Sovereign, it is added that his
+object was to obtain the rewards for which this kind of anniversaries
+furnishes occasion.
+
+But at Moscow the erroneous impression was of short continuance. The
+rumour of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately
+propagated in that city, from the singular commotion of extraordinary
+events, which has been known to spread almost instantaneously to
+prodigious distances. Still, however, the language of the chiefs, the
+only persons who durst speak, continued haughty and threatening: many of
+the inhabitants, trusting to it, remained; but they were every day more
+and more tormented by a painful anxiety. Nearly at one and the same
+moment, they were transported with rage, elevated with hope, and
+overwhelmed with fear.
+
+At one of those moments when, either prostrate before the altars, or in
+their own houses before the images of their saints, they had no hope but
+in heaven, shouts of joy suddenly resounded: the people instantly
+thronged the streets and public places to learn the cause. Intoxicated
+with joy, their eyes were fixed on the cross of the principal church. A
+vulture had entangled himself in the chains which supported it and was
+held suspended by them. This was a certain presage to minds whose
+natural superstition was heightened by extraordinary anxiety; it was
+thus that their God would seize and deliver Napoleon into their power.
+
+Rostopchin took advantage of all these movements, which he excited or
+checked according as they were favourable to him or otherwise. He caused
+the most diminutive to be selected from the prisoners taken from the
+enemy, and exhibited to the people, that the latter might derive courage
+from the sight of their weakness: and yet he emptied Moscow of every
+kind of supplies, in order to feed the vanquished, and to famish the
+conquerors. This measure was easily carried into effect, as Moscow was
+provisioned in spring and autumn by water only, and in winter by
+sledges.
+
+He was still preserving with a remnant of hope the order that was
+necessary, especially in such a flight, when the effects of the disaster
+at Borodino appeared. The long train of wounded, their groans, their
+garments and linen dyed with gore; their most powerful nobles struck and
+overthrown like the others--all this was a novel and alarming sight to a
+city which had for such a length of time been exempt from the horrors of
+war. The police redoubled its activity; but the terror which it excited
+could not long make head against a still greater terror.
+
+Rostopchin once more addressed the people. He declared that "he would
+defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the tribunals were already
+closed, but that was of no consequence; that there was no occasion for
+tribunals to try the guilty." He added, that "in two days he would give
+the signal." He recommended to the people to "arm themselves with
+hatchets, and especially with three-pronged forks, as the French were
+not heavier than a sheaf of corn." As for the wounded, he said he should
+cause "masses to be said and the water to be blessed in order to their
+speedy recovery. Next day," he added, "he should repair to Kutusoff, to
+take final measures for exterminating the enemy. And then," said he, "we
+will send these guests to the devil; we will despatch the perfidious
+wretches, and fall to work to reduce them to powder."
+
+Kutusoff had in fact never despaired of the salvation of the country.
+After employing the militia during the battle of Borodino to carry
+ammunition and to assist the wounded, he had just formed with them the
+third rank of his army. At Mojaisk, the good face which he had kept up
+had enabled him to gain sufficient time to make an orderly retreat, to
+pick his wounded, to abandon such as were incurable, and to embarrass
+the enemy's army with them. Subsequently at Zelkowo, a check had stopped
+the impetuous advance of Murat. At length, on the 13th of September,
+Moscow beheld the fires of the Russian bivouacs.
+
+There the national pride, an advantageous position, and the works with
+which it was strengthened, all induced a belief that the general had
+determined to save the capital or to perish with it. He hesitated,
+however, and whether from policy or prudence, he at length abandoned the
+governor of Moscow to his full responsibility.
+
+The Russian army in this position of Fili, in front of Moscow, numbered
+ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were cossacks, sixty-five
+thousand veteran troops, (the relics of one hundred and twenty-one
+thousand engaged at the Moskwa,) and twenty thousand recruits, armed
+half with muskets and half with pikes.
+
+The French army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong the day before
+the great battle, had lost about forty thousand men at Borodino, and
+still consisted of ninety thousand. Some regiments on the march and the
+divisions of Laborde and Pino had just rejoined it: so that on its
+arrival before Moscow it still amounted to nearly one hundred thousand
+men. Its march was retarded by six hundred and seven pieces of cannon,
+two thousand five hundred artillery carriages, and five thousand baggage
+waggons; it had no more ammunition than would suffice for one
+engagement. Kutusoff perhaps calculated the disproportion between his
+effective force and ours. On this point, however, nothing but conjecture
+can be advanced, or he assigned purely military motives for his retreat.
+
+So much is certain, that the old general deceived the governor to the
+very last moment. He even swore to him "by his grey hair that he would
+perish with him before Moscow," when all at once the governor was
+informed, that in a council of war held at night in the camp, it had
+been determined to abandon the capital without a battle.
+
+Rostopchin was incensed, but not daunted by this intelligence. There was
+now no time to be lost, no farther pains were taken to conceal from
+Moscow the fate that was destined for it; indeed it was not worth while
+to dissemble for the sake of the few inhabitants who were left; and
+besides it was necessary to induce them to seek their safety in flight.
+
+At night, therefore, emissaries went round, knocking at every door and
+announcing the conflagration. Fusees were introduced at every favourable
+aperture, and especially into the shops covered with iron of the
+tradesmen's quarter. The fire engines were carried off: the desolation
+attained its highest pitch, and each individual, according to his
+disposition, was either overwhelmed with distress or urged to a
+decision. Most of those who were left formed groups in the public
+places; they crowded together, questioned each other, and reciprocally
+asked advice: many wandered about at random, some depressed with terror,
+others in a frightful state of exasperation. At length the army, the
+last hope of the people, deserted them: the troops began to traverse the
+city, and in their retreat they hurried along with them the still
+considerable remnant of its population.
+
+They departed by the gate of Kolomna, surrounded by a multitude of
+women, children, and aged persons in deep affliction. The fields were
+covered with them. They fled in all directions, by every path across the
+country, without provisions, and laden with such of their effects as in
+their agitation they had first laid their hands on. Some, for want of
+horses, had harnessed themselves to carts, and thus dragged along their
+infant children, a sick wife, or an infirm father, in short, whatever
+they held most dear. The woods afforded them shelter, and they subsisted
+on the charity of their countrymen.
+
+On that day, a terrific scene terminated this melancholy drama. This,
+the last day of Moscow, having arrived, Rostopchin collected together
+all whom he had been able to retain and arm. The prisons were thrown
+open. A squalid and disgusting crew tumultuously issued from them. These
+wretches rushed into the streets with a ferocious joy. Two men, a
+Russian and a Frenchman, the one accused of treason, the other of
+political indiscretion, were selected from among this horde, and dragged
+before Rostopchin, who reproached the Russian with his crime. The latter
+was the son of a tradesman: he had been apprehended while exciting the
+people to insurrection. A circumstance which occasioned alarm was the
+discovery that he belonged to a sect of German illuminati, called
+Martinists, a society of superstitious independents. His audacity had
+never failed him in prison. It was imagined for a moment that the spirit
+of equality had penetrated into Russia. At any rate he did not impeach
+any accomplices.
+
+At this crisis his father arrived. It was expected that he would
+intercede for his son: on the contrary, he insisted on his death. The
+governor granted him a few moments, that he might once more speak to and
+bless him. "What, I! I bless a traitor:" exclaimed the enraged
+Russian, and turning to his son, he, with a horrid voice and gesture,
+pronounced a curse upon him.
+
+This was the signal for his execution. The poor wretch was struck down
+by an ill-directed blow of a sabre. He fell, but wounded only, and
+perhaps the arrival of the French might have saved him, had not the
+people perceived that he was yet alive. They forced the barriers, fell
+upon him, and tore him to pieces.
+
+The Frenchman during this scene was petrified with terror. "As for
+thee," said Rostopchin, turning towards him, "being a Frenchman, thou
+canst not but wish for the arrival of the French army: be free, then,
+but go and tell thy countrymen, that Russia had but a single traitor,
+and that he is punished." Then addressing himself to the wretches who
+surrounded him, he called them sons of Russia, and exhorted them to make
+atonement for their crimes by serving their country. He was the last to
+quit that unfortunate city, and he then rejoined the Russian army.
+
+From that moment the mighty Moscow belonged neither to the Russians nor
+to the French, but to that guilty horde, whose fury was directed by a
+few officers and soldiers of the police. They were organized, and each
+had his post allotted to him, in order that pillage, fire, and
+devastation might commence every where at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+That very day (September the 14th), Napoleon, being at length persuaded
+that Kutusoff had not thrown himself on his right flank, rejoined his
+advanced guard. He mounted his horse a few leagues from Moscow. He
+marched slowly and cautiously, sending scouts before him to examine the
+woods and the ravines, and to ascend all the eminences to look out for
+the enemy's army. A battle was expected: the ground favoured the
+opinion: works were begun, but had all been abandoned, and we
+experienced not the slightest resistance.
+
+At length the last eminence only remained to be passed: it is contiguous
+to Moscow, which it commands. It is called _the Hill of Salvation_,
+because, on its summit, the inhabitants, at sight of their holy city,
+cross and prostrate themselves. Our scouts had soon gained the top of
+this hill. It was two o'clock: the sun caused this great city to glisten
+with a thousand colours. Struck with astonishment at the sight, they
+paused, exclaiming, "Moscow! Moscow!" Every one quickened his pace; the
+troops hurried on in disorder; and the whole army, clapping their hands,
+repeated with transport, "Moscow! Moscow!" just as sailors shout "Land!
+land!" at the conclusion of a long and toilsome voyage.
+
+At the sight of this gilded city, of this brilliant knot uniting Asia
+and Europe, of this magnificent emporium of the luxury, the manners, and
+the arts of the two fairest divisions of the globe, we stood still in
+proud contemplation. What a glorious day had now arrived! It would
+furnish the grandest, the most brilliant recollection of our whole
+lives. We felt that at this moment all our actions would engage the
+attention of the astonished universe; and that every one of our
+movements, however trivial, would be recorded by history.
+
+On this immense and imposing theatre we marched, accompanied, as it
+were, by the acclamations of all nations: proud of exalting our grateful
+age above all other ages, we already beheld it great from our greatness,
+and completely irradiated by our glory.
+
+At our return, already so ardently wished for, with what almost
+respectful consideration, with what enthusiasm should we be received by
+our wives, our countrymen, and even by our parents! We should form,
+during the rest of our lives, a particular class of beings, at whom they
+would not look but with astonishment, to whom they would not listen but
+with mingled curiosity and admiration! Crowds would throng about us
+wherever we passed; they would catch up our most unmeaning words. This
+miraculous conquest would surround us with a halo of glory: henceforward
+people would fancy that they breathed about us an air of prodigy and
+wonder.
+
+When these proud thoughts gave place to more moderate sentiments, we
+said to ourselves, that this was the promised term of our labours; that
+at length we should pause, since we could no longer be surpassed by
+ourselves, after a noble expedition, the worthy parallel to that of
+Egypt, and the successful rival of all the great and glorious wars of
+antiquity.
+
+At that moment, dangers, sufferings were all forgotten. Was it possible
+to purchase too dearly the proud felicity of being able to say, during
+the rest of life, "I belonged to the army of Moscow!"
+
+Well, comrades, even now, amidst our abasement, and though it dates from
+that fatal city, is not this reflexion of a noble exultation
+sufficiently powerful to console us, and to make us proudly hold up our
+heads, bowed down by misfortune?
+
+Napoleon himself hastened up. He paused in transport: an exclamation of
+joy escaped his lips. Ever since the great battle, the discontented
+marshals had shunned him: but at the sight of captive Moscow, at the
+intelligence of the arrival of a flag of truce, struck with so important
+a result, and intoxicated with all the enthusiasm of glory, they forgot
+their grievances. They pressed around the emperor, paying homage to his
+good fortune, and already tempted to attribute to his genius the little
+pains he had taken on the 7th to complete his victory.
+
+But in Napoleon first emotions were of short duration. He had too much
+to think of, to indulge his sensations for any length of time. His first
+exclamation was: "There, at last, is that famous city!" and the second:
+"It was high time!"
+
+His eyes, fixed on that capital, already expressed nothing but
+impatience: in it he beheld in imagination the whole Russian empire. Its
+walls enclosed all his hopes,--peace, the expenses of the war, immortal
+glory: his eager looks therefore intently watched all its outlets. When
+will its gates at length open? When shall he see that deputation come
+forth, which will place its wealth, its population, its senate, and the
+principal of the Russian nobility at our disposal? Henceforth that
+enterprise in which he had so rashly engaged, brought to a successful
+termination by dint of boldness, will pass for the result of a high
+combination; his imprudence for greatness: henceforth his victory at the
+Moskwa, incomplete as it was, will be deemed his greatest achievement.
+Thus all that might have turned to his ruin will contribute to his
+glory: that day would begin to decide whether he was the greatest man in
+the world, or the most rash; in short, whether he had raised himself an
+altar, or dug himself a grave.
+
+Anxiety, however, soon began to take possession of his mind. On his left
+and right he already beheld Prince Eugene and Poniatowski approaching
+the hostile city; Murat, with his scouts, had already reached the
+entrance of the suburbs, and yet no deputation appeared: an officer,
+sent by Miloradowitch, merely came to declare that his general would set
+fire to the city, if his rear was not allowed time to evacuate it.
+
+Napoleon granted every demand. The first troops of the two armies were,
+for a short time, intermingled. Murat was recognized by the Cossacks,
+who, familiar as the nomadic tribes, and expressive as the people of the
+south, thronged around him: then, by their gestures and exclamations,
+they extolled his valour and intoxicated him with their admiration. The
+king took the watches of his officers, and distributed them among these
+barbarous warriors. One of them called him his _hettman_.
+
+Murat was for a moment tempted to believe that in these officers he
+should find a new Mazeppa, or that he himself should become one: he
+imagined that he had gained them over. This momentary armistice, under
+the actual circumstances, sustained the hopes of Napoleon, such need had
+he to delude himself. He was thus amused for two hours.
+
+Meanwhile the day was declining, and Moscow continued dull, silent, and
+as it were inanimate. The anxiety of the emperor increased; the
+impatience of the soldiers became more difficult to be repressed. Some
+officers ventured within the walls of the city. "Moscow is deserted!"
+
+At this intelligence, which he angrily refused to credit, Napoleon
+descended the Hill of Salvation, and approached the Moskwa and the
+Dorogomilow gate. He paused once more, but in vain, at the entry of that
+barrier. Murat urged him. "Well!" replied he, "enter then, since they
+wish it!" He recommended the strictest discipline; he still indulged
+hopes. "Perhaps these inhabitants do not even know how to surrender: for
+here every thing is new; they to us, and we to them."
+
+Reports now began to succeed each other: they all agreed. Some
+Frenchmen, inhabitants of Moscow, ventured to quit the hiding-place
+which for some days had concealed them from the fury of the populace,
+and confirmed the fatal tidings. The emperor called Daru. "Moscow
+deserted!" exclaimed he: "what an improbable story! We must know the
+truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars." He imagined that those men,
+stiff with pride, or paralysed with terror, were fixed motionless in
+their houses: and he, who had hitherto been always met by the submission
+of the vanquished, provoked their confidence, and anticipated their
+prayers.
+
+How, indeed, was it possible for him to persuade himself, that so many
+magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile
+establishments, were forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets
+through which he had recently passed. Daru's mission however was
+fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not the least smoke rose from
+a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this immense and
+populous city; its three hundred thousand inhabitants seemed to be
+struck dumb and motionless by enchantment: it was the silence of the
+desert!
+
+But such was the incredulity of Napoleon, that he was not yet convinced,
+and waited for farther information. At length, an officer, determined to
+gratify him, or persuaded that whatever the Emperor willed must
+necessarily be accomplished, entered the city, seized five or six
+vagabonds, drove them before his horse to the Emperor, and imagined that
+he had brought him a deputation. From the first words they uttered,
+Napoleon discovered that the persons before him were only indigent
+labourers.
+
+It was not till then that he ceased to doubt the entire evacuation of
+Moscow, and lost all the hopes that he had built upon it. He shrugged
+his shoulders, and with that contemptuous look with which he met every
+thing that crossed his wishes, he exclaimed, "Ah! the Russians know not
+yet the effect which the taking of their capital will produce upon
+them!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+It was now an hour since Murat, and the long and close column of his
+cavalry, had entered Moscow; they penetrated into that gigantic body, as
+yet untouched, but inanimate. Struck with profound astonishment at the
+sight of this complete solitude, they replied to the taciturnity of this
+modern Thebes, by a silence equally solemn. These warriors listened,
+with a secret shuddering, to the steps of their horses resounding alone,
+amid these deserted palaces. They were astonished to hear nothing but
+themselves amid such numerous habitations. No-one thought of stopping or
+of plundering, either from prudence, or because great civilized nations
+respect themselves in enemies' capitals, in the presence of those great
+centers of civilization.
+
+Meanwhile they were silently observing that mighty city, which would
+have been truly remarkable had they met with it in a flourishing and
+populous country, but which was still more astonishing in these deserts.
+It was like a rich and brilliant oasis. They had at first been struck by
+the sudden view of so many magnificent palaces; but they now perceived
+that they were intermingled with mean cottages; a circumstance which
+indicated the want of gradation between the classes, and that luxury was
+not generated there, as in other countries, by industry, but preceded
+it; whereas, in the natural order, it ought to be its more or less
+necessary consequence.
+
+Here more especially prevailed inequality--that bane of all human
+society, which produces pride in some, debasement in others, corruption
+in all. And yet such a generous abandonment of every thing demonstrated
+that this excessive luxury, as yet however entirely borrowed, had not
+rendered these nobles effeminate.
+
+They thus advanced, sometimes agitated by surprise, at others by pity,
+and more frequently by a noble enthusiasm. Several cited events of the
+great conquests which history has handed down to us; but it was for the
+purpose of indulging their pride, not to draw lessons from them; for
+they thought themselves too lofty and beyond all comparison: they had
+left behind them all the conquerors of antiquity. They were exalted by
+that which is second to virtue only, by glory. Then succeeded
+melancholy; either from the exhaustion consequent on so many sensations,
+or the effect of the operation produced by such an immeasurable
+elevation, and of the seclusion in which we were wandering on that
+height, whence we beheld immensity, infinity, in which our weakness was
+lost: for the higher we ascend, the more the horizon expands, and the
+more conscious we become of our own insignificance.
+
+Amid these reflexions, which were favoured by a slow pace, the report of
+fire-arms was all at once heard: the column halted. Its last horses
+still covered the fields; its centre was in one of the longest streets
+of the city; its head had reached the Kremlin. The gates of that citadel
+appeared to be closed. Ferocious cries issued from within it: men and
+women, of savage and disgusting aspect, appeared fully armed on its
+walls. In a state of filthy inebriety, they uttered the most horrible
+imprecations. Murat sent them an amicable message, but to no purpose. It
+was found necessary to employ cannon to break open the gate.
+
+We penetrated partly without opposition, partly by force, among these
+wretches. One of them rushed close to the king, and endeavoured to kill
+one of his officers. It was thought sufficient to disarm him, but he
+again fell upon his victim, rolled him on the ground, and attempted to
+suffocate him; and even after his arms were seized and held, he still
+strove to tear him with his teeth. These were the only Muscovites who
+had waited our coming, and who seemed to have been left behind as a
+savage and barbarous token of the national hatred.
+
+It was easy to perceive, however, that there was no unison in this
+patriotic fury. Five hundred recruits, who had been forgotten in the
+Kremlin, beheld this scene without stirring. At the first summons they
+dispersed. Farther on, we overtook a convoy of provisions, the escort of
+which immediately threw down its arms. Several thousand stragglers and
+deserters from the enemy, voluntarily remained in the power of our
+advanced guard. The latter left to the corps which followed the task of
+picking them up; and these to others, and so on: hence they remained at
+liberty in the midst of us, till the conflagration and pillage of the
+city having reminded them of their duty, and rallied them all in one
+general feeling of antipathy, they went and rejoined Kutusoff.
+
+Murat, who had been stopped but a few moments by the Kremlin, dispersed
+this crew which he despised. Ardent and indefatigable as in Italy and
+Egypt, after a march of nine hundred leagues, and sixty battles fought
+to reach Moscow, he traversed that proud city without deigning to halt
+in it, and pursuing the Russian rear-guard, he boldly, and without
+hesitation, took the road for Wladimir and Asia.
+
+Several thousand Cossacks, with four pieces of cannon, were retreating
+in that direction. The armistice was at an end. Murat, tired of this
+peace of half a day, immediately ordered it to be broken by a discharge
+of carbines. But our cavalry considered the war as finished; Moscow
+appeared to them to be the term of it, and the advanced posts of the two
+empires were unwilling to renew hostilities. A fresh order arrived, and
+the same hesitation prevailed. At length Murat, irritated at this
+disobedience, gave his orders in person; and the firing, with which he
+seemed to threaten Asia, but which was not destined to cease till we
+reached the banks of the Seine, was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+Napoleon did not enter Moscow till after dark. He stopped in one of the
+first houses of the Dorogomilow suburb. There he appointed Marshal
+Mortimer governor of that capital. "Above all," said he to him, "no
+pillage? For this you shall be answerable to me with your life. Defend
+Moscow against all, whether friend or foe."
+
+That night was a gloomy one: sinister reports followed one upon the
+heels of another. Some Frenchmen, resident in the country, and even a
+Russian officer of police, came to denounce the conflagration. He gave
+all the particulars of the preparations for it. The Emperor, alarmed by
+these accounts, strove in vain to take some rest. He called every
+moment, and had the fatal tidings repeated to him. He nevertheless
+entrenched himself in his incredulity, till about two in the morning,
+when he was informed that the fire had actually broken out.
+
+It was at the exchange, in the centre of the city, in its richest
+quarter. He instantly issued orders upon orders. As soon as it was
+light, he himself hastened to the spot, and threatened the young guard
+and Mortimer. The Marshal pointed out to him some houses covered with
+iron; they were closely shut up, still untouched and uninjured without,
+and yet a black smoke was already issuing from them. Napoleon pensively
+entered the Kremlin.
+
+At the sight of this half Gothic and half modern palace of the Ruriks
+and the Romanofs, of their throne still standing, of the cross of the
+great Ivan, and of the finest part of the city, which is overlooked by
+the Kremlin, and which the flames, as yet confined to the bazaar, seemed
+disposed to spare, his former hopes revived. His ambition was flattered
+by this conquest. "At length then," he exclaimed, "I am in Moscow, in
+the ancient palace of the Czars, in the Kremlin!" He examined every part
+of it with pride, curiosity, and gratification.
+
+He required a statement of the resources afforded by the city; and in
+this brief moment given to hope, he sent proposals of peace to the
+Emperor Alexander. A superior officer of the enemy's had just been found
+in the great hospital; he was charged with the delivery of this letter.
+It was by the baleful light of the flames of the bazaar that Napoleon
+finished it, and the Russian departed. He was to be the bearer of the
+news of this disaster to his sovereign, whose only answer was this
+conflagration.
+
+Daylight favoured the efforts of the Duke of Treviso, to subdue the
+fire. The incendiaries kept themselves concealed. Doubts were
+entertained of their existence. At length, strict injunctions being
+issued, order restored, and alarm suspended, each took possession of a
+commodious house, or sumptuous palace, under the idea of there finding
+comforts that had been dearly purchased by long and excessive
+privations.
+
+Two officers had taken up their quarters in one of the buildings of the
+Kremlin. The view hence embraced the north and west of the city. About
+midnight they were awakened by an extraordinary light. They looked and
+beheld palaces filled with flames, which at first merely illuminated,
+but presently consumed these elegant and noble structures. They observed
+that the north wind drove these flames directly towards the Kremlin, and
+became alarmed for the safety of that fortress in which the flower of
+their army and its commander reposed. They were apprehensive also for
+the surrounding houses, where our soldiers, attendants and horses, weary
+and exhausted, were doubtless buried in profound sleep. Sparks and
+burning fragments were already flying over the roofs of the Kremlin,
+when the wind, shifting from north to west, blew them in another
+direction.
+
+One of these officers, relieved from apprehension respecting his corps,
+then composed himself again to sleep, exclaiming, "Let others look to it
+now; 'tis no affair of ours." For such was the unconcern produced by the
+multiplicity of events and misfortunes, and such the selfishness arising
+from excessive suffering and fatigue, that they left to each only just
+strength and feeling sufficient for his personal service and
+preservation.
+
+It was not long before fresh and vivid lights again awoke them. They
+beheld other flames rising precisely in the new direction which the wind
+had taken towards the Kremlin, and they cursed French imprudence and
+want of discipline, to which they imputed this disaster. But three times
+did the wind thus change from north to west, and three times did these
+hostile fires, as if obstinately bent on the destruction of the imperial
+quarters, appear eager to follow this new direction.
+
+At this sight a strong suspicion seized their minds. Can the Muscovites,
+aware of our rash and thoughtless negligence, have conceived the hope of
+burning with Moscow our soldiers, heavy with wine, fatigue and sleep; or
+rather, have they dared to imagine that they should involve Napoleon in
+this catastrophe; that the loss of such a man would be fully equivalent
+to that of their capital; that it was a result sufficiently important to
+justify the sacrifice of all Moscow to obtain it; that perhaps Heaven,
+in order to grant them so signal a victory, had decreed so great a
+sacrifice; and lastly, that so immense a colossus required a not less
+immense funeral pile?
+
+Whether this was their plan we cannot tell, but nothing less than the
+Emperor's good fortune was required to prevent its being realized. In
+fact, not only did the Kremlin contain, unknown to us, a magazine of
+gunpowder; but that very night, the guards, asleep and carelessly
+posted, suffered a whole park of artillery to enter and draw up under
+the windows of Napoleon.
+
+It was at this moment that the furious flames were driven from all
+quarters with the greatest violence towards the Kremlin; for the wind,
+attracted no doubt by this vast combustion, increased every moment in
+strength. The flower of the army and the Emperor would have been
+destroyed, if but one of the brands that flew over our heads had
+alighted on one of the powder-waggons. Thus upon each of the sparks that
+were for several hours floating in the air, depended the fate of the
+whole army.
+
+At length the day, a gloomy day, appeared: it came to add to the horrors
+of the scene, and to deprive it of its brilliancy. Many of the officers
+sought refuge in the halls of the palace. The chiefs, and Mortimer
+himself, overcome by the fire with which, for thirty six hours, they had
+been contending, there dropped down from fatigue and despair.
+
+They said nothing and we accused ourselves. Most of us imagined that
+want of discipline in our troops and intoxication had begun the
+disaster, and that the high wind had completed it. We viewed ourselves
+with a sort of disgust. The cry of horror which all Europe would not
+fail to set up terrified us. Filled with consternation by so tremendous
+a catastrophe, we accosted each other with downcast looks: it sullied
+our glory; it deprived us of the fruits of it; it threatened our present
+and our future existence; we were now but an army of criminals, whom
+Heaven and the civilized world would severely judge. From these
+overwhelming thoughts and paroxysms of rage against the incendiaries, we
+were roused only by an eagerness to obtain intelligence; and all the
+accounts began to accuse the Russians alone of this disaster.
+
+In fact, officers arrived from all quarters, and they all agreed. The
+very first night, that of the 14th, a fire-balloon had settled on the
+palace of Prince Trubetskoi, and consumed it: this was a signal. Fire
+had been immediately set to the Exchange: Russian police soldiers had
+been seen stirring it up with tarred lances. Here howitzer shells,
+perfidiously placed, had discharged themselves in the stoves of several
+houses, and wounded the military who crowded round them. Retiring to
+other quarters which were still standing, they sought fresh retreats;
+but when they were on the point of entering houses closely shut up and
+uninhabited, they had heard faint explosions within; these were
+succeeded by a light smoke, which immediately became thick and black,
+then reddish, and lastly the colour of fire, and presently the whole
+edifice was involved in flames.
+
+All had seen hideous-looking men, covered with rags, and women
+resembling furies, wandering among these flames, and completing a
+frightful image of the infernal regions. These wretches, intoxicated
+with wine and the success of their crimes, no longer took any pains to
+conceal themselves: they proceeded in triumph through the blazing
+streets; they were caught, armed with torches, assiduously striving to
+spread the conflagration: it was necessary to strike down their hands
+with sabres to oblige them to loose their hold. It was said that these
+banditti had been released from prison by the Russian generals for the
+purpose of burning Moscow; and that in fact so grand, so extreme a
+resolution could have been adopted only by patriotism and executed only
+by guilt.
+
+Orders were immediately issued to shoot all the incendiaries on the
+spot. The army was on foot. The old guard which exclusively occupied one
+part of the Kremlin, was under arms: the baggage, and the horses ready
+loaded, filled the courts; we were struck dumb with astonishment,
+fatigue and disappointment, on witnessing the destruction of such
+excellent quarters. Though masters of Moscow, we were forced to go and
+bivouac without provisions outside its gates.
+
+While our troops were yet struggling with the conflagration, and the
+army was disputing their prey with the flames, Napoleon, whose sleep
+none had dared to disturb during the night, was awoke by the two-fold
+light of day and of the fire. His first feeling was that of irritation,
+and he would have commanded the devouring element; but he soon paused
+and yielded to impossibility. Surprised that when he had struck at the
+heart of an empire, he should find there any other sentiment than
+submission and terror, he felt himself vanquished, and surpassed in
+determination.
+
+This conquest, for which he had sacrificed every thing, was like a
+phantom which he had pursued, and which at the moment when he imagined
+he had grasped it, vanished in a mingled mass of smoke and flame. He was
+then seized with extreme agitation; he seemed to be consumed by the
+fires which surrounded him. He rose every moment, paced to and fro, and
+again sat down abruptly. He traversed his apartments with quick steps:
+his sudden and vehement gestures betrayed painful uneasiness: he
+quitted, resumed, and again quitted, an urgent occupation, to hasten to
+the windows and watch the progress of the conflagration. Short and
+incoherent exclamations burst from his labouring bosom. "What a
+tremendous spectacle!--It is their own work!--So many palaces!--What
+extraordinary resolution!--What men!--These are Scythians indeed!"
+
+Between the fire and him there was an extensive vacant space, then the
+Moskwa and its two quays; and yet the panes of the windows against which
+he leaned felt already burning to the touch, and the constant exertions
+of sweepers, placed on the iron roofs of the palace, were not sufficient
+to keep them clear of the numerous flakes of fire which alighted upon
+them.
+
+At this moment a rumour was spread that the Kremlin was undermined: this
+was confirmed, it was said, by Russians, and by written documents. Some
+of his attendants were beside themselves with fear; while the military
+awaited unmoved what the orders of the Emperor and fate should decree:
+And to this alarm the Emperor replied only with a smile of incredulity.
+
+But he still walked convulsively; he stopped at every window, and beheld
+the terrible, the victorious element furiously consuming his brilliant
+conquest; seizing all the bridges, all the avenues to his fortress,
+inclosing, and as it were besieging him in it; spreading every moment
+among the neighbouring houses; and, reducing him within narrower and
+narrower limits, confining him at length to the site of the Kremlin
+alone.
+
+We already breathed nothing but smoke and ashes. Night approached, and
+was about to add darkness to our dangers: the equinoxial gales, in
+alliance with the Russians, increased in violence. The King of Naples
+and Prince Eugene hastened to the spot: in company with the Prince of
+Neufchatel they made their way to the Emperor, and urged him by their
+entreaties, their gestures, and on their knees, and insisted on removing
+him from this scene of desolation. All was in vain.
+
+Napoleon, in possession of the palace of the Czars, was bent on not
+yielding that conquest even to the conflagration, when all at once the
+shout of "the Kremlin is on fire!" passed from mouth to mouth, and
+roused us from the contemplative stupor with which we had been seized.
+The Emperor went out to ascertain the danger. Twice had the fire
+communicated to the building in which he was, and twice had it been
+extinguished; but the tower of the arsenal was still burning. A soldier
+of the police had been found in it. He was brought in, and Napoleon
+caused him to be interrogated in his presence. This man was the
+incendiary: he had executed his commission at the signal given by his
+chief. It was evident that every thing was devoted to destruction, the
+ancient and sacred Kremlin itself not excepted.
+
+The gestures of the Emperor betokened disdain and vexation: the wretch
+was hurried into the first court, where the enraged grenadiers
+dispatched him with their bayonets.
+
+[Illustration: Conflagration of Moscow]
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+This incident had decided Napoleon. He hastily descended the northern
+staircase, famous for the massacre of the Strelitzes, and desired to be
+conducted out of the city, to the distance of a league on the road to
+Petersburgh, toward the imperial palace of Petrowsky.
+
+But we were encircled by a sea of fire, which blocked up all the gates
+of the citadel, and frustrated the first attempts that were made to
+depart. After some search, we discovered a postern gate leading between
+the rocks to the Moskwa. It was by this narrow passage that Napoleon,
+his officers and guard escaped from the Kremlin. But what had they
+gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the fire, and
+could neither retreat nor remain where they were; and how were they to
+advance? how force a passage through the waves of this ocean of flame?
+Those who had traversed the city, stunned by the tempest, and blinded by
+the ashes, could not find their way, since the streets themselves were
+no longer distinguishable amidst smoke and ruins.
+
+There was no time to be lost. The roaring of the flames around us became
+every moment more violent. A single narrow winding street completely on
+fire, appeared to be rather the entrance than the outlet to this hell.
+The Emperor rushed on foot and without hesitation into this narrow
+passage. He advanced amid the crackling of the flames, the crash of
+floors, and the fall of burning timbers, and of the red-hot iron roofs
+which tumbled around him. These ruins impeded his progress. The flames
+which, with impetuous roar, consumed the edifices between which we were
+proceeding spreading beyond the walls, were blown about by the wind, and
+formed an arch over our heads. We walked on a ground of fire, beneath a
+fiery sky, and between two walls of fire. The intense heat burned our
+eyes, which we were nevertheless obliged to keep open and fixed on the
+danger. A consuming atmosphere, glowing ashes, detached flames, parched
+our throats, and rendered our respiration short and dry; and we were
+already almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned, either in
+endeavouring to protect our faces from the insupportable heat, or in
+brushing off the sparks which every moment covered and penetrated our
+garments.
+
+In this inexpressible distress, and when a rapid advance seemed to be
+our only mean of safety, our guide stopped in uncertainty and agitation.
+Here would probably have terminated our adventurous career, had not some
+pillagers of the first corps recognised the Emperor amidst the whirling
+flames: they ran up and guided him towards the smoking ruins of a
+quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the morning.
+
+It was then that we met the Prince of Eckmühl. This marshal, who had
+been wounded at the Moskwa, had desired to be carried back among the
+flames to rescue Napoleon, or to perish with him. He threw himself into
+his arms with transport; the emperor received him kindly, but with that
+composure which in danger he never lost for a moment.
+
+To escape from this vast region of calamities, it was further necessary
+to pass a long convoy of powder, which was defiling amidst the fire.
+This was not the least of his dangers, but it was the last, and by
+nightfall he arrived at Petrowsky.
+
+Next morning, the 17th of September, Napoleon cast his first looks
+towards Moscow, hoping to see that the conflagration had subsided. He
+beheld it again raging with the utmost violence: the whole city appeared
+like a vast spout of fire rising in whirling eddies to the sky, which it
+deeply coloured. Absorbed by this melancholy contemplation, he preserved
+a long and gloomy silence, which he broke only by the exclamation, "This
+forebodes great misfortunes to us!"
+
+The effort which he had made to reach Moscow had expended all his means
+of warfare. Moscow had been the term of his projects, the aim of all his
+hopes, and Moscow was no more! What was now to be done? Here this
+decisive genius was forced to hesitate. He, who in 1805 had ordered the
+sudden and total abandonment of an expedition, prepared at an immense
+cost, and determined at Bologne-sur-mer on the surprise and annihilation
+of the Austrian army, in short, all the operations of the campaign
+between Ulm and Munich exactly as they were executed; the same man, who,
+the following year, dictated at Paris with the same infallibility all
+the movements of his army as far as Berlin, the day fixed for his
+entrance into that capital, and the appointment of the governor whom he
+destined for it--he it was, who, astonished in his turn, was now
+undecided what course to pursue. Never had he communicated his most
+daring projects to the most confidential of his ministers but in the
+order for their execution; he was now constrained to consult, and put to
+the proof, the moral and physical energies of those about him.
+
+In doing this, however, he still preserved the same forms. He declared,
+therefore, that he should march for Petersburg. This conquest was
+already marked out on his maps, hitherto so prophetic: orders were even
+issued to the different corps to hold themselves in readiness. But his
+decision was only a feint: it was but a better face that he strove to
+assume, or an expedient for diverting his grief for the loss of Moscow:
+so that Berthier, and more especially Bessičres, soon convinced him that
+he had neither time, provisions, roads, nor a single requisite for so
+extensive an excursion.
+
+At this moment he was apprised that Kutusoff, after having fled
+eastward, had suddenly turned to the south, and thrown himself between
+Moscow and Kalouga. This was an additional motive against the expedition
+to Petersburg; there was a threefold reason for marching upon this
+beaten army for the purpose of extinguishing it; to secure his right
+flank and his line of operation; to possess himself of Kalouga and
+Toula, the granary and arsenal of Russia; and lastly, to open a safe,
+short, new, and virgin retreat to Smolensk and Lithuania.
+
+Some one proposed to return upon Wittgenstein and Witepsk. Napoleon was
+undecided between all these plans. That for the conquest of Petersburg
+alone flattered him: the others appeared but as ways of retreat, as
+acknowledgments of error; and whether from pride, or policy which will
+not admit itself to be in the wrong, he rejected them.
+
+Besides, where was he to stop in a retreat? He had so fully calculated
+on concluding a peace at Moscow, that he had no winter quarters provided
+in Lithuania. Kalouga had no temptations for him. Wherefore lay waste
+fresh provinces? It would be wiser to threaten them, and leave the
+Russians something to lose, in order to induce them to conclude a peace
+by which it might be preserved. Would it be possible to march to another
+battle, to fresh conquests, without exposing a line of operation,
+covered with sick, stragglers, wounded and convoys of all sorts? Moscow
+was the general rallying point; how could it be changed? What other name
+would have any attraction?
+
+Lastly, and above all, how relinquish a hope to which he had made so
+many sacrifices, when he knew that his letter to Alexander had just
+passed the Russian advanced posts; when eight days would be sufficient
+for receiving an answer so ardently desired; when he wanted that time to
+rally and re-organize his army, to collect the relics of Moscow, the
+conflagration of which had but too strongly sanctioned pillage, and to
+draw his soldiers from that vast infirmary!
+
+Scarcely indeed a third of that army and of that capital now existed.
+But himself and the Kremlin were still standing: his renown was still
+entire, and he persuaded himself that those two great names, Napoleon
+and Moscow, combined, would be sufficient to accomplish every thing. He
+determined, therefore, to return to the Kremlin, which a battalion of
+his guard had unfortunately preserved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+The camps which he traversed on his way thither presented an
+extraordinary sight. In the fields, amidst thick and cold mud, large
+fires were kept up with mahogany furniture, windows, and gilded doors.
+Around these fires, on a litter of damp straw, imperfectly sheltered by
+a few boards, were seen the soldiers, and their officers, splashed all
+over with mud, and blackened with smoke, seated in arm-chairs or
+reclined on silken couches. At their feet were spread or heaped Cashmere
+shawls, the rarest furs of Siberia, the gold stuffs of Persia, and
+silver plates, off which they had nothing to eat but a black dough baked
+in the ashes, and half broiled and bloody horse-flesh. Singular
+assemblage of abundance and want, of riches and filth, of luxury and
+wretchedness!
+
+Between the camp and the city were met troops of soldiers dragging along
+their booty, or driving before them, like beasts of burden, Muscovites
+bending under the weight of the pillage of their capital; for the fire
+brought to view nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, previously
+unobserved in that immense city. Some of these Muscovites of both sexes
+were well dressed; they were tradespeople. They came with the wreck of
+their property to seek refuge at our fires. They lived pell-mell with
+our soldiers, protected by some, and tolerated, or rather scarcely
+remarked by others.
+
+About ten thousand of the enemy's troops were in the same predicament.
+For several days they wandered about among us free, and some of them
+even still armed. Our soldiers met these vanquished enemies without
+animosity, or without thinking of making them prisoners; either because
+they considered the war as at an end, from thoughtlessness, or from
+pity, and because when not in battle the French delight in having no
+enemies. They suffered them to share their fires; nay, more, they
+allowed them to pillage in their company. When some degree of order was
+restored, or rather when the officers had organized this marauding as a
+regular system of forage, the great number of these Russian stragglers
+then attracted notice. Orders were given to secure them; but seven or
+eight thousand had already escaped. It was not long before we had to
+fight them.
+
+On entering the city, the Emperor was struck by a sight still more
+extraordinary: a few houses scattered among the ruins were all that was
+left of the mighty Moscow. The smell issuing from this colossus,
+overthrown, burned, and calcined, was horrible. Heaps of ashes, and at
+intervals, fragments of walls or half demolished pillars, were now the
+only vestiges that marked the site of streets.
+
+The suburbs were sprinkled with Russians of both sexes, covered with
+garments nearly burned. They flitted like spectres among the ruins;
+squatted in the gardens, some of them were scratching up the earth in
+quest of vegetables, while others were disputing with the crows for the
+relics of the dead animals which the army had left behind. Farther on,
+others again were seen plunging into the Moskwa to bring out some of the
+corn which had been thrown into it by command of Rostopchin, and which
+they devoured without preparation, sour and spoiled as it already was.
+
+Meanwhile the sight of the booty, in such of the camps where every thing
+was yet wanting, inflamed the soldiers whom their duty or stricter
+officers had kept with their colours. They murmured. "Why were they to
+be kept back? Why were they to perish by famine and want, when every
+thing was within their reach! Was it right to leave the enemy's fires to
+destroy what might be saved? Why was such respect to be paid them?" They
+added, that "as the inhabitants of Moscow had not only abandoned, but
+even endeavoured utterly to destroy it, all that they could save would
+be legitimately acquired; that the remains of that city, like the relics
+of the arms of the conquered, belonged by right to the victors, as the
+Muscovites had turned their capital into a vast machine of war, for the
+purpose of annihilating us."
+
+The best principled and the best disciplined were those who argued thus,
+and it was impossible to reply. Too rigid scruples at first prevented
+the issuing of orders for pillage; it was now permitted, unrestrained by
+regulations. Urged by the most imperious necessities, all hurried to
+share in the spoil, the soldiers of the _élite_, and even officers
+themselves. Their chiefs were obliged to shut their eyes: only such
+guards as were absolutely indispensable were left with the eagles and
+the fasces.
+
+The Emperor saw his whole army dispersed over the city. His progress was
+obstructed by a long file of marauders going in quest of booty, or
+returning with it; by tumultuous assemblages of soldiers grouped around
+the entrances of cellars, or the doors of palaces, shops, and churches,
+which the fire had nearly reached, and into which they were endeavouring
+to penetrate.
+
+His steps were impeded by the fragments of furniture of every kind which
+had been thrown out of the windows to save it from the flames, or by
+rich pillage which had been abandoned from caprice for some other booty;
+for such is the way with soldiers; they are incessantly beginning their
+fortune afresh, taking every thing without discrimination, loading
+themselves beyond measure, as if they could carry all they find; then,
+after they have gone a few steps, compelled by fatigue to throw away the
+greatest part of their burden.
+
+The roads were obstructed; the open places, like the camps, were turned
+into markets, whither every one repaired to exchange superfluities for
+necessaries. There, the rarest articles, the value of which was not
+known to their possessors, were sold at a low price; others, of
+deceitful appearance, were purchased at a price far beyond their worth.
+Gold, as being more portable, was bought at an immense loss with silver,
+which the knapsacks were incapable of holding. Everywhere soldiers were
+seen seated on bales of merchandize, on heaps of sugar and coffee,
+amidst wines and the most exquisite liqueurs, which they were offering
+in exchange for a morsel of bread. Many, in an intoxication aggravated
+by inanition, had fallen near the flames, which reached them, and put an
+end to their lives.
+
+Most of the houses and palaces which had escaped the fire served
+nevertheless for quarters for the officers, and all that they contained
+was respected. All of them beheld with pain this vast destruction, and
+the pillage which was its necessary consequence. Some of our men
+belonging to the _élite_ were charged with taking too much pleasure in
+collecting what they were able to save from the flames; but their number
+was so few that they were mentioned by name. In these ardent men, war
+was a passion which presupposed the existence of others. It was not
+covetousness, for they did not hoard; they spent lavishly what they
+picked up, taking in order to give, believing that one hand washed the
+other, and that they had paid for every thing with the danger.
+
+Besides, on such an occasion, there is scarcely any distinction to be
+made, unless in the motive: some took with regret, others with pleasure,
+and all from necessity. Amidst wealth which had ceased to belong to any
+individual, ready to be consumed, or to be buried in ashes, they were
+placed in a quite novel situation, where right and wrong were
+confounded, and for which no rule was laid down. The most delicate,
+either from principle, or because they were richer than others, bought
+of the soldiers the provision and apparel which they required: some sent
+agents to plunder for them; and the most necessitous were forced to help
+themselves with their own hands.
+
+As to the soldiers, many of them being embarrassed with the fruits of
+their pillage, became less active, less thoughtless: in danger they
+began to calculate, and in order to save their booty, they did what they
+would have disdained to do to save themselves.
+
+It was amidst this confusion that Napoleon again entered Moscow. He had
+allowed this pillage, hoping that his army, scattered over the ruins,
+would not ransack them in vain. But when he learned that the disorder
+increased; that the old guard itself was seduced; that the Russian
+peasants, who were at length allured thither with provisions, for which
+he caused them to be liberally paid for the purpose of drawing others,
+were robbed of the provisions which they brought us, by our famished
+soldiers; when he was informed that the different corps, destitute of
+every thing, were ready to fight for the relics of Moscow; that,
+finally, all the existing resources were wasted by this irregular
+pillage; he then issued strict orders, and forbade his guard to leave
+their quarters. The churches, in which our cavalry had sheltered
+themselves, were restored to the Greek worship. The business of plunder
+was ordered to be taken in turn by the corps like any other duty, and
+directions were at length given for securing the Russian stragglers.
+
+But it was too late. These soldiers had fled: the affrighted peasants
+returned no more; great quantities of provisions were spoiled. The
+French army have sometimes fallen into this fault, but on the present
+occasion the fire pleads their excuse: no time was to be lost in
+anticipating the flames. It is, however, a remarkable fact, that at the
+first command perfect order was restored.
+
+Some writers, and even French ones, have ransacked these ruins in quest
+of traces of outrages which might have been committed in them. There
+were very few. Most of our men behaved generously, considering the small
+number of inhabitants, and the great number of enemies, that they met
+with. But if in the first moments of pillage some excesses were
+committed, ought this to appear surprising in an army exasperated by
+such urgent wants, such severe sufferings, and composed of so many
+different nations?
+
+Misfortune having since humbled these warriors, reproaches have, as is
+always the case, been raised against them. Who can be ignorant that such
+disorders have always been the bad side of great wars, the inglorious
+part of glory; that the renown of conquerors casts its shadow like every
+thing else in this world! Does there exist a creature ever so
+diminutive, on every side of which the sun, great as is that luminary,
+can shine at once? It is therefore a law of nature, that large bodies
+have large shadows.
+
+For the rest, people have been too much astonished at the virtues as
+well as at the vices of that army. They were the virtues of the moment,
+the vices of the age; and for this very reason, the former were less
+praiseworthy, and the latter less reprehensible, inasmuch as they were,
+if I may so express myself, enjoined by example and circumstances. Thus
+every thing is relative, which does not exclude fixed principles and
+absolute good as the point of departure and aim. But here the question
+relates to the judgment formed of this army and its chief; and he who
+would form a correct judgment of them must put himself in their place.
+As, then, this position is very elevated, very extraordinary, very
+complicated, few minds are capable of attaining it, embracing the whole
+of it, and appreciating all its necessary results.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+Meanwhile Kutusoff, on leaving Moscow, had drawn Murat towards Kolomna,
+to the point where the Moskwa intersects the road. Here, under favour of
+the night, he suddenly turned to the south, proceeding by way of Podol,
+to throw himself between Moscow and Kalouga. This nocturnal march of the
+Russians around Moscow, the ashes and flames of which were wafted to
+them by the violence of the wind, was melancholy and religious. They
+advanced by the baleful light of the conflagration, which was consuming
+the centre of their commerce, the sanctuary of their religion, the
+cradle of their empire! Filled with horror and indignation, they all
+kept a sullen silence, which was unbroken save by the dull and
+monotonous sound of their footsteps, the roaring of the flames, and the
+howling of the tempest. The dismal light was frequently interrupted by
+livid and sudden flashes. The brows of these warriors might then be seen
+contracted by a savage grief, and the fire of their sombre and
+threatening looks answered these flames, which they regarded as our
+work; it already betrayed that ferocious revenge which was rankling in
+their hearts, which spread throughout the whole empire, and to which so
+many Frenchmen fell victims.
+
+At that solemn moment, Kutusoff in a firm and noble tone informed his
+sovereign of the loss of his capital. He declared, that, "in order to
+preserve the fertile provinces of the south, and his communication with
+Tormasof and Tchitchakof, he had been obliged to abandon Moscow, but
+emptied of the inhabitants, who were the life of it; that as the people
+are the soul of every empire, so wherever the Russian people were, there
+would be Moscow and the whole empire of Russia."
+
+Here, however, he seemed to bend under the weight of his grief. He
+admitted that "this wound was deep and could never be effaced;" but soon
+recovering himself, he added, that "the loss of Moscow made but one city
+less in the empire, that it was the sacrifice of a part for the
+salvation of the whole. He was throwing himself on the flank of the
+enemy's long line of operation, keeping him as it were blockaded by his
+detachments: there he should watch his movements, cover the resources of
+the empire, and again complete his army;" and already (on the 16th of
+September) he announced, that "Napoleon would be forced to abandon his
+fatal conquest."
+
+It is said that on the receipt of this intelligence Alexander was
+thunderstruck. Napoleon built hopes on the weakness of his rival, and
+the Russians at the same time dreaded the effect of that weakness. The
+Czar belied both these hopes and these fears. In his addresses to his
+subjects he exhibited himself great as his misfortune; "No pusillanimous
+dejection!" he exclaimed: "Let us vow redoubled courage and
+perseverance! The enemy is in deserted Moscow as in a tomb, without
+means of domination or even of existence. He entered Russia with three
+hundred thousand men of all countries, without union or any national or
+religious bond;--he has lost half of them by the sword, famine, and
+desertion: he has but the wreck of this army in Moscow; he is in the
+heart of Russia, and not a single Russian is at his feet.
+
+"Meanwhile, our forces are increasing and inclosing him. He is in the
+midst of a mighty population, encompassed by armies which are waiting
+for, and keeping him in check. To escape famine, he will soon be obliged
+to direct his flight through the close ranks of our brave soldiers.
+Shall we then recede, when all Europe is looking on and encouraging us?
+Let us on the contrary set it an example, and kiss the hand which has
+chosen us to be the first of the nations in the cause of virtue and
+independence." He concluded with an invocation to the Almighty.
+
+The Russians entertain different opinions respecting their general and
+their Emperor. We, for our part, as enemies, can only judge of our
+enemies by their actions. Now such were their words, and their actions
+corresponded with them. Comrades! let us do them justice! their
+sacrifice was complete, without reserve, without tardy regrets. They
+have since claimed nothing, even in the enemy's capital which they
+preserved. Their renown has therefore remained great and unsullied. They
+have known real glory; and when a more advanced civilization shall have
+spread among all classes of that great nation, it will have its
+brilliant era, and will sway in its turn the sceptre of glory, which it
+seems to be decreed that the nations of the earth shall successively
+relinquish to each other.
+
+This circuitous march made by Kutusoff, either from indecision or
+stratagem, turned out fortunate for him. Murat lost all trace of him for
+three days. The Russian employed this interval in studying the ground
+and entrenching himself. His advanced guard had nearly reached Woronowo,
+one of the finest domains belonging to Count Rostopchin, when that
+nobleman proceeded forward before it. The Russians supposed that he was
+going to take a last look at this mansion, when all at once the edifice
+was wrapt from their sight by clouds of smoke.
+
+They hurried on to extinguish the fire, but Rostopchin himself rejected
+their aid. They beheld him amid the flames which he was encouraging,
+smiling at the demolition of this splendid mansion, and then with a firm
+hand penning these words, which the French, shuddering with surprise,
+read on the iron gate of a church which was left standing: "For eight
+years I have been embellishing this country seat, where I have lived
+happily in the bosom of my family. The inhabitants of this estate, to
+the number of 1,720, will leave it on your approach, while I have set
+fire to my house, that it might not be polluted by your presence.
+Frenchmen, I have relinquished to you my two houses at Moscow, with
+their furniture, worth half a million of rubles. Here you will find
+nothing but ashes."
+
+It was near this place that Murat came up with Kutusoff. On the 29th of
+September there was a smart engagement of cavalry towards Czerikowo, and
+another, on the 4th of October, near Vinkowo. But there, Miloradowitch,
+too closely pressed, turned round furiously, with twelve thousand horse,
+upon Sebastiani. He brought him into such danger, that Murat, amidst the
+fire, dictated a proposal for a suspension of arms, announcing to
+Kutusoff the approach of a flag of truce. It was Lauriston that he
+expected. But as the arrival of Poniatowski at that moment gave us some
+superiority, the king made no use of the letter which he had written; he
+fought till nightfall, and repulsed Miloradowitch.
+
+Meanwhile the conflagration at Moscow, which commenced in the night of
+the 14th of September, suspended through our exertions during the day of
+the 15th, revived in the following night, and raging in its utmost
+violence on the 16th, 17th, and 18th, abated on the 19th. It ceased on
+the 20th. That very day, Napoleon, whom the flames had driven from the
+Kremlin, returned to the palace of the czars. He invited thither the
+looks of all Europe. He there awaited his convoys, his reinforcements,
+and the stragglers of his army; certain that all his men would be
+rallied by his victory, by the allurements of such vast booty, by the
+astonishing sight of captive Moscow, and above all, by his own glory,
+which from the top of this immense pile of ruins, still shone attractive
+like a beacon upon a rock.
+
+Twice, however, on the 22d and 28th of September, letters from Murat had
+well nigh drawn Napoleon from this fatal abode. They announced a battle;
+but twice the orders for departure, written in consequence, were burned.
+It seemed as though the war was finished for our Emperor, and that he
+was only waiting for an answer from Petersburg. He nourished his hopes
+with the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt. Was it possible that at
+Moscow he should have less ascendancy over Alexander? Then, like men who
+have long been favourites of fortune, what he ardently wished he
+confidently expected.
+
+His genius possessed besides that extraordinary faculty, which consisted
+in throwing aside the most important occupation whenever he pleased,
+either for the sake of variety or of rest: for in him the power of
+volition surpassed that of imagination. In this respect he reigned over
+himself as much as he did over others.
+
+Thus Paris diverted his attention from Petersburg. His affairs were as
+yet divided, and the couriers, which in the first days succeeded each
+other without intermission, served to engage him. But the rapidity with
+which he transacted business soon left him nothing to do. His expresses,
+which at first came from France in a fortnight, ceased to arrive. A few
+military posts, placed in four towns reduced to ashes, and in wooden
+houses rudely palisaded, were not sufficient to guard a road of
+ninety-three leagues: for we had not been able to establish more than a
+few echelons, and those at too great distances, on too long a line of
+operation, broken at every point where it was touched by the enemy; and
+for which a few peasants and a handful of Cossacks were quite
+sufficient.
+
+Still no answer was received from Alexander. The uneasiness of Napoleon
+increased, and his means of distraction diminished. The activity of his
+genius, accustomed to the government of all Europe, had nothing
+wherewith to occupy itself but the management of one hundred thousand
+men; and then, the organization of his army was so perfect, that this
+was scarcely any occupation. Here every thing was fixed; he held all the
+wires in his hand: he was surrounded by ministers who could tell him
+immediately, at any hour of the day, the position of each man in the
+morning or at night, whether alone or not, whether with his colours, or
+in the hospital, or on leave of absence, or wherever else he might be,
+and that from Moscow to Paris--to such a degree of perfection had the
+science of military administration been brought, so experienced and well
+chosen were the officers, and so much was required by their commander.
+
+But eleven days had now elapsed; still Alexander was silent, and still
+did Napoleon hope to overcome his rival in obstinacy: thus losing the
+time which he ought to have gained, and which is always serviceable to
+defence against attack.
+
+From this period all his actions indicated to the Russians still more
+strongly than at Witepsk, that their mighty foe was resolved to fix
+himself in the heart of their empire. Moscow, though in ashes, received
+an intendant and municipalities. Orders were issued to provision it for
+the winter. A theatre was formed amidst the ruins. The first-rate actors
+of Paris were said to have been sent for. An Italian singer strove to
+reproduce in the Kremlin the evening entertainments of the Tuileries. By
+such means Napoleon expected to dupe a government, which the habit of
+reigning over error and ignorance had rendered an adept in all these
+deceptions.
+
+He was himself sensible of the inadequacy of these means, and yet
+September was past, October had begun. Alexander had not deigned to
+reply! it was an affront! he was exasperated. On the 3d of October,
+after a night of restlessness and anger, he summoned his marshals. "Come
+in," said he, as soon as he perceived them, "hear the new plan which I
+have conceived; Prince Eugene, read it." They listened. "We must burn
+the remains of Moscow, march by Twer to Petersburg, where we shall be
+joined by Macdonald. Murat and Davoust will form the rear-guard."--The
+Emperor, all animation, fixed his sparkling eyes on his generals, whose
+frigid and silent countenances expressed nothing but astonishment.
+
+Then exalting himself in order to rouse them--"What!" said he, "and are
+_you_ not inflamed by this idea? Was there ever so great a military
+achievement? Henceforth this conquest is the only one that is worthy of
+us! With what glory we shall be covered, and what will the whole world
+say, when it learns that in three months we have conquered the two great
+capitals of the North!"
+
+But Davoust, as well as Daru, objected to him, "the season, the want of
+supplies, a sterile desert and artificial road, that from Twer to
+Petersburg, running for a hundred leagues through morasses, and which
+three hundred peasants might in one day render impassable. Why keep
+proceeding northward? why go to meet winter, to provoke and to defy
+it?--it was already too near; and what was to become of the six thousand
+wounded still in Moscow? were they then to be left to the mercy of
+Kutusoff? That general would not fail to follow close at our heels. We
+should have at once to attack and to defend ourselves, and to march, as
+though we were fleeing to a conquest."
+
+These officers have declared that they then proposed various plans; a
+useless trouble with a prince whose genius outstripped all other
+imaginations, and whom their objections would not have stopped, had he
+been really determined to march to Petersburg. But that idea was in him
+only a sally of anger, an inspiration of despair, on finding himself
+obliged in the face of Europe to give way, to relinquish a conquest, and
+to retreat.
+
+It was more especially a threat to frighten his officers as well as the
+enemy, and to bring about and promote a negotiation which Caulaincourt
+was to open. That officer had pleased Alexander; he was the only one of
+the grandees of Napoleon's court who had acquired any influence over his
+rival; but for some months past, Napoleon had kept him at a distance,
+because he had not been able to persuade him to approve his expedition.
+
+It was nevertheless to this very man that he was that day obliged to
+have recourse, and to disclose his anxiety. He sent for him; but when
+alone with him, he hesitated. Taking him by the arm, he walked to and
+fro a long time in great agitation, while his pride prevented him from
+breaking so painful a silence: at length it yielded, but in a
+threatening manner. He was to beg the enemy to solicit peace, as if he
+deigned to grant it.
+
+After a few words, which were scarcely articulate, he said, that "he was
+about to march to Petersburg. He knew that the destruction of that city
+would no doubt give pain to his grand-equerry. Russia would then rise
+against the Emperor Alexander: there would be a conspiracy against that
+monarch; he would be assassinated, which would be a most unfortunate
+circumstance. He esteemed that prince, and should regret him, both for
+his own sake and that of France. His character, he added, was suitable
+to our interests; no prince could replace him with such advantage to us.
+He thought therefore of sending Caulaincourt to him, to prevent such a
+catastrophe."
+
+The Duke of Vicenza, however, more obstinate, than susceptible of
+flattery, did not alter his tone. He maintained that "these overtures
+would be useless; that so long as the Russian territory was not entirely
+evacuated, Alexander would not listen to any proposals; that Russia was
+sensible of all her advantage at this season of the year; nay, more,
+that this step would be detrimental to himself, inasmuch as it would
+demonstrate the need which Napoleon had of peace, and betray all the
+embarrassment of our situation."
+
+He added, "that the higher the rank of the negotiator whom he selected,
+the more clearly he would show his anxiety; that of course he himself
+would be more likely to fail than any other, especially as he should go
+with this certainty." The Emperor abruptly terminated the conversation
+by these words: "Well, then, I will send Lauriston."
+
+The latter asserts, that he added fresh objections to the preceding, and
+that, being urged by the Emperor, he recommended to him to begin his
+retreat that very day by way of Kalouga. Napoleon, irritated at this,
+acrimoniously replied, that "he liked simple plans, less circuitous
+routes, high roads, the road by which he had come, yet he would not
+retread it but with peace." Then showing to him, as he had done to the
+Duke of Vicenza, the letter which he had written to Alexander, he
+ordered him to go and obtain of Kutusoff a safe-conduct to Petersburg.
+The last words of the Emperor to Lauriston were: "I want peace, I must
+have peace, I absolutely will have peace; only save my honour!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+The general set out, and reached the advanced posts on the 5th of
+October. Hostilities were instantly suspended, the interview granted;
+but Wolkonsky, aide-de-camp to Alexander, and Beningsen were there
+without Kutusoff. Wilson asserts, that the Russian generals and
+officers, suspecting their commander, and accusing him of weakness, had
+raised a cry of treason, and that the latter had not dared to leave his
+camp.
+
+Lauriston's instructions purported that he was to address himself to no
+one but Kutusoff. He therefore peremptorily rejected any intermediate
+communication, and seizing, as he said, this occasion for breaking off a
+negotiation which he disapproved, he retired, in spite of all the
+solicitations of Wolkonsky, and determined to return to Moscow. In that
+case, no doubt, Napoleon, exasperated, would have fallen upon Kutusoff,
+overthrown him and destroyed his army, as yet very incomplete, and have
+forced him into a peace. In case of less decisive success, he would at
+least have been able to retire without loss upon his reinforcements.
+
+Beningsen unfortunately desired an interview with Murat. Lauriston
+paused. The chief of the Russian staff, an abler negotiator than
+soldier, strove to charm the new king by demonstrations of respect; to
+seduce him by praises; to deceive him with smooth words, breathing
+nothing but a weariness of war and the hope of peace: and Murat, tired
+of battles, anxious respecting their result, and as it is said,
+regretting his throne, now that he had no hope of a better, suffered
+himself to be charmed, seduced and deceived.
+
+Beningsen was equally successful in persuading his own commander, and
+the leader of our vanguard; he sent in great haste for Lauriston, and
+had him conducted to the Russian camp, where Kutusoff was waiting for
+him at midnight. The interview began ill. Konownitzin and Wolkonsky
+wished to be present. This shocked the French general: he insisted that
+they should retire, and they complied.
+
+As soon as Lauriston was alone with Kutusoff, he explained his motives
+and his object, and applied for a safe-conduct to Petersburg. The
+Russian general replied, that a compliance with this demand exceeded his
+powers; but he immediately proposed to send Wolkonsky with the letter
+from Napoleon to Alexander, and offered an armistice till the return of
+that officer. He accompanied these proposals with pacific protestations,
+which were repeated by all his generals.
+
+"According to their account," they all deplored the continuance of the
+war. And for what reason? Their nations, like their Emperors, ought to
+esteem, to love, and to be allies of one another. It was their ardent
+wish that a speedy peace might arrive from Petersburg. Wolkonsky could
+not make "haste enough." They pressed round Lauriston, drawing him
+aside, taking him by the hand, and lavishing upon him those caressing
+manners which they have inherited from Asia.
+
+It was soon demonstrated that the chief point in which they were all
+agreed was to deceive Murat and his Emperor; and in this they succeeded.
+These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope,
+perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these
+appearances; eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed
+him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an
+expansive joy. He summoned all his generals; he triumphantly "announced
+to them a very speedy peace. They had but to wait another fortnight.
+None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character. On the
+receipt of his letter, Petersburg would be full of bonfires."
+
+But the armistice proposed by Kutusoff was unsatisfactory to him, and he
+ordered Murat to break it instantly; but notwithstanding, it continued
+to be observed, the cause of which is unknown.
+
+This armistice was a singular one. If either party wished to break it,
+three hours notice was to be sufficient. It was confined to the fronts
+of the two camps, but did not extend to their flanks. Such at least was
+the interpretation put upon it by the Russians. We could not bring up a
+convoy, or send out a foraging party, without fighting; so that the war
+continued everywhere, excepting where it could be favourable to us.
+
+In the first of the succeeding days, Murat took it into his head to show
+himself at the enemy's advanced posts. There, he was gratified by the
+notice which his fine person, his reputation for bravery, and his rank
+procured him. The Russian officers took good care not to displease him;
+they were profuse of all the marks of respect calculated to strengthen
+his illusion. He could give his orders to their vedettes just as he did
+to the French. If he took a fancy to any part of the ground which they
+occupied, they cheerfully gave it up to him.
+
+Some Cossack chiefs even went so far as to affect enthusiasm, and to
+tell him that they had ceased to acknowledge any other as Emperor but
+him who reigned at Moscow. Murat believed for a moment that they would
+no longer fight against him. He went even farther. Napoleon was heard to
+exclaim, while reading his letters, "Murat, King of the Cossacks! What
+folly!" The most extravagant ideas were conceived by men on whom fortune
+had lavished all sorts of favours.
+
+As for the Emperor, who could scarcely be deceived, he had but a few
+moments of a factitious joy. He soon complained "that an annoying
+warfare of partizans hovered around him; that notwithstanding all these
+pacific demonstrations, he was sensible that bodies of Cossacks were
+prowling on his flanks and in his rear. Had not one hundred and fifty
+dragoons of his old guard been surprised and routed, by a number of
+these barbarians? And this two days after the armistice, on the road to
+Mojaisk, on his line of operation, that by which the army communicated
+with its magazines, its reinforcements, its depôts, and himself with
+Europe!"
+
+In fact two convoys had just fallen into the enemy's hands on that road:
+one through the negligence of its commander, who put an end to his life
+in despair; and the other through the cowardice of an officer, who was
+about to be punished when the retreat commenced. To the destruction of
+the army he owed his escape.
+
+Our soldiers, and especially our cavalry, were obliged every morning to
+go to a great distance in quest of provisions for the evening and the
+next day; and as the environs of Moscow and Vinkowo became gradually
+more and more drained, they were daily necessitated to extend their
+excursions. Both men and horses returned worn out with fatigue, that is
+to say such of them as returned at all; for we had to fight for every
+bushel of rye, and for every truss of forage. It was a series of
+incessant surprises, skirmishes, and losses. The peasantry took a part
+in it. They punished with death such of their number as the prospect of
+gain had allured to our camp with provisions. Others set fire to their
+own villages, to drive our foragers out of them, and to give them up to
+the Cossacks whom they had previously summoned, and who kept us there in
+a state of siege.
+
+It was the peasantry also who took Vereďa, a town in the neighbourhood
+of Moscow. One of their priests is said to have planned and executed
+this _coup-de-main_. He armed the inhabitants, obtained some troops from
+Kutusoff; then on the 10th of October, before daybreak, he caused the
+signal of a false attack to be given in one quarter, while in another he
+himself rushed upon our palisades, destroyed them, penetrated into the
+town, and put the whole garrison to the sword.
+
+Thus the war was every where; in our front, on our flanks and in our
+rear: the army was weakening, and the enemy becoming daily more
+enterprising. This conquest was destined to fare like many others, which
+are won in the mass, and lost in detail.
+
+Murat himself at length grew uneasy. In these daily skirmishes he saw
+half of the remnant of his cavalry melted away. At the advanced posts,
+or on meeting with our officers, those of the Russians, either from
+weariness, vanity, or military frankness carried to indiscretion,
+exaggerated the disasters which threatened us. They showed us those
+"wild-looking horses, scarcely at all broken in, whose long manes swept
+the dust of the plain. Did not this tell us that a numerous cavalry was
+joining them from all quarters, while ours was gradually perishing? Did
+not the continual discharges of fire-arms within their line apprise us
+that a multitude of recruits were there training under favour of the
+armistice?"
+
+And in fact, notwithstanding the long journies which they had to make,
+all these recruits joined the army. There was no occasion to defer
+calling them together as in other years, till deep snows, obstructing
+all the roads excepting the high road, rendered their desertion
+impossible. Not one failed to obey the national appeal; all Russia rose:
+mothers, it was said, wept for joy on learning that their sons had been
+selected for soldiers: they hastened to acquaint them with this glorious
+intelligence, and even accompanied them to see them marked with the sign
+of the Crusaders, to hear them cry, _'Tis the will of God!_
+
+The Russian officers added, "that they were particularly astonished at
+our security on the approach of their mighty winter, which was their
+natural and most formidable ally, and which they expected every moment:
+they pitied us and urged us to fly. In a fortnight, your nails will drop
+off, and your arms will fall from your benumbed and half-dead fingers."
+
+The language of some of the Cossack chiefs was also remarkable. They
+asked our officers, "if they had not, in their own country, corn enough,
+air enough, graves enough--in short, room enough to live and die? Why
+then did they come so far from home to throw away their lives and to
+fatten a foreign soil with their blood?" They added, that "this was a
+robbery of their native land, which, while living, it is our duty to
+cultivate, to defend and to embellish; and to which after our death we
+owe our bodies, which we received from it, which it has fed, and which
+in their turn ought to feed it."
+
+The Emperor was not ignorant of these warnings, but he would not suffer
+his resolution to be shaken by them. The uneasiness which had again
+seized him betrayed itself in angry orders. It was then that he caused
+the churches of the Kremlin to be stripped of every thing that could
+serve for a trophy to the grand army. These objects, devoted to
+destruction by the Russians themselves, belonged, he said, to the
+conquerors by the two-fold right conferred by victory, and still more by
+the conflagration.
+
+It required long efforts to remove the gigantic cross from the steeple
+of Ivan the Great, to the possession of which the Russians attached the
+salvation of their empire. The Emperor determined that it should adorn
+the dome of the invalids, at Paris. During the work it was remarked that
+a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that
+Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed, that "it seemed as
+if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot
+pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it
+is well known that he was accessible to every kind of presentiment.
+
+His daily excursions, always illumined by a brilliant sun, in which he
+strove himself to perceive and to make others recognize his star, did
+not amuse him. To the sullen silence of inanimate Moscow was superadded
+that of the surrounding deserts, and the still more menacing silence of
+Alexander. It was not the faint sound of the footsteps of our soldiers
+wandering in this vast sepulchre, that could rouse our Emperor from his
+reverie, and snatch him from his painful recollections and still more
+painful anticipations.
+
+His nights in particular became irksome to him. He passed part of them
+with Count Daru. It was then only that he admitted the danger of his
+situation. "From Wilna to Moscow what submission, what point of support,
+rest or retreat, marks his power? It is a vast, bare and desert field of
+battle, in which his diminished army is imperceptible, insulated, and as
+it were lost in the horrors of an immense void. In this country of
+foreign manners and religion, he has not conquered a single individual;
+he is in fact master only of the ground on which he stands. That which
+he has just quitted and left behind him is no more his than that which
+he has not yet reached. Insufficient for these vast deserts, he is lost
+as it were in their immense space."
+
+He then reviewed the different resolutions of which he still had the
+choice. "People imagined," he said, "that he had nothing to do but
+march, without considering that it would take a month to refit his army
+and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the
+Cossacks would celebrate daily triumphs over his sick and his
+stragglers. He would appear to fly. All Europe would resound with the
+report! Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom
+to rally, and which imagined that it had found such a rival in
+Alexander."
+
+Then appreciating all the power which he derived from the notion of his
+infallibility, he shuddered at the idea of giving it the first blow.
+"What a frightful series of dangerous wars would date from his first
+retrograde step! Let not then his inactivity be censured! As if I did
+not know," added he, "that in a military point of view Moscow is of no
+value! But Moscow is not a military position, it is a political
+position. People look upon me as general there, when in fact I am
+Emperor!" He then exclaimed that "in politics a person ought never to
+recede, never to retrograde, never to admit himself to be wrong, as it
+lessened his consideration; that when mistaken, he ought to persevere,
+in order to give him the appearance of being in the right."
+
+On this account he adhered to his own opinion with that tenacity which,
+on other occasions, was his best quality, but in this case his worst
+defect.
+
+His distress meanwhile increased. He knew that he could not rely on the
+Prussian army: an intimation from too authentic a source, addressed to
+Berthier, extinguished his confidence in the support of the Austrians.
+He was sensible that Kutusoff was playing with him, but he had gone so
+far, that he could neither advance nor stay where he was, nor retreat,
+nor fight with honour and success. Thus alternately impelled and held
+back by all that can decide and dissuade, he remained upon those ashes,
+ceasing to hope, but continuing to desire.
+
+The letter of which Lauriston was the bearer had been dispatched on the
+6th of October; the answer to it could scarcely arrive before the 20th;
+and yet in spite of so many threatening demonstrations, the pride, the
+policy, and perhaps the health of Napoleon induced him to pursue the
+worst of all courses, that of waiting for this answer, and of trusting
+to time which was destroying him. Daru, like his other grandees, was
+astonished to find in him no longer that prompt decision, variable and
+rapid as the circumstances that called it forth; they asserted, that his
+genius could no longer accommodate itself to them; they placed it to the
+account of his natural obstinacy, which led to his elevation, and was
+likely to cause his downfall.
+
+But in this extremely critical warlike position, which by its
+complication with a political position, became the most delicate which
+ever existed, it was not to be expected that a character like his, which
+had hitherto been so great from its unshaken constancy, would make a
+speedy renunciation of the object which he had proposed to himself ever
+since he left Witepsk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+Napoleon however, was completely aware of his situation. To him every
+thing seemed lost if he receded in the face of astonished Europe, and
+every thing saved if he could yet overcome Alexander in determination.
+He appreciated but too well the means that were left him to shake the
+constancy of his rival; he knew that the number of effective troops,
+that his situation, the season, in short every thing would become daily
+more and more unfavourable to him; but he reckoned upon that force of
+illusion which gave him his renown. Till that day he had borrowed from
+it a real and never-failing strength; he endeavoured therefore to keep
+up by specious arguments the confidence of his people, and perhaps also
+the faint hope that was yet left to himself.
+
+Moscow, empty of inhabitants, no longer furnished him with any thing to
+lay hold of. "It is no doubt a misfortune," said he, "but this
+misfortune is not without its advantage. Had it been otherwise, he would
+not have been able to keep order in so large a city, to overawe a
+population of three hundred thousand souls, and to sleep in the Kremlin
+without having his throat cut. They have left us nothing but ruins, but
+at least we are quiet among them. Millions have no doubt slipped through
+our hands, but how many millions is Russia losing! Her commerce is
+ruined for a century to come. The nation is thrown back fifty years;
+this, of itself, is an important result. When the first moment of
+enthusiasm is past, this reflexion will fill them with consternation."
+The conclusion which he drew was, that so violent a shock would convulse
+the throne of Alexander, and force that prince to sue for peace.
+
+If he reviewed his different _corps d'armée_, as their reduced
+battalions now presented but a narrow front, which he had traversed in a
+moment, this diminution vexed him; and whether he wished to dissemble
+for the sake of his enemies or his own people, he declared that the
+practice hitherto pursued, of ranging the men three deep, was wrong, and
+that two were sufficient; he therefore ordered that in future his
+infantry should be drawn up in two ranks only.
+
+Nay, more, he insisted that the inflexibility of the _states of
+situation_ should give way to this illusion. He disputed their results.
+The obstinacy of Count Lobau could not overcome his: he was desirous no
+doubt of making his aide-de-camp understand what he wished others to
+believe, and that nothing could shake his resolution.
+
+Murat, nevertheless, transmitted to him tidings of the distress of his
+advanced guard. They terrified Berthier; but Napoleon sent for the
+officer who brought them, pressed him with his interrogatories, daunted
+him with his looks, brow-beat him with his incredulity. The assertions
+of Murat's envoy lost much of their assurance. Napoleon took advantage
+of his hesitation to keep up the hopes of Berthier, and to persuade him
+that matters were not yet so very urgent; and he sent back the officer
+to Murat's camp with the opinion which he would no doubt propagate, that
+the Emperor was immoveable, that he doubtless had his reasons for thus
+persisting, and that they must all redouble their exertions.
+
+Meanwhile the attitude of his army seconded his wishes. Most of the
+officers persevered in their confidence. The common soldiers, who,
+seeing their whole lives in the present moment and expecting but little
+from the future, concerned themselves but little about it, retained
+their thoughtlessness, the most valuable of their qualities. The
+rewards, however, which the Emperor bestowed profusely upon them in the
+daily reviews, were received only with a sedate joy, mingled with some
+degree of dejection. The vacant places that were just filled up were yet
+dyed with blood. These favours were threatening.
+
+On the other hand, ever since they had left Wilna many of them had
+thrown away their winter garments, that they might load themselves with
+provisions. Their shoes were worn by the length of the way, and the rest
+of their apparel by the actions in which they had been engaged; but, in
+spite of all, their attitude was still lofty. They carefully concealed
+their wretched plight from the notice of the Emperor, and appeared
+before him with their arms bright and in the best order. In this first
+court of the palace of the Czars, eight hundred leagues from their
+resources, and after so many battles and bivouacs, they were anxious to
+appear still clean, ready and smart; for herein consists the pride of
+the soldier: here they piqued themselves upon it the more on account of
+the difficulty, in order to astonish, and because man prides himself on
+every thing that requires extraordinary effort.
+
+The Emperor complaisantly affected to know no better, catching at every
+thing to keep up his hopes, when all at once the first snows fell. With
+them fell all the illusions with which he had endeavoured to surround
+himself. From that moment he thought of nothing but retreat, without,
+however, pronouncing the word, and yet no positive order for it could be
+obtained from him. He merely said, that in twenty days the army must be
+in winter-quarters, and he urged the departure of his wounded. On this,
+as on other occasions, he would not consent to the voluntary
+relinquishment of any thing, however trifling; there was a deficiency of
+horses for his artillery, now too numerous for an army so reduced; it
+did not signify, and he flew into a passion at the proposal to leave
+part of it in Moscow. "No; the enemy would make a trophy of it."--and he
+insisted that every thing should go along with him.
+
+In this desert country, he gave orders for the purchase of twenty
+thousand horses, and he expected forage for two months to be provided,
+on a tract where the most distant and dangerous excursions were not
+sufficient for the supply of the passing day. Some of his officers were
+astonished to hear orders which it was so impossible to execute; but we
+have already seen that he sometimes issued such orders to deceive his
+enemies, and most frequently to indicate to his own troops the extent of
+his necessities, and the exertions which they ought to make for the
+purpose of supplying them.
+
+His distress manifested itself only in some paroxysms of ill humour. It
+was in the morning at his levee. There, amid the assembled chiefs, in
+whose anxious looks he imagined he could read disapprobation, he seemed
+desirous to awe them by the severity of his attitude, by his sharp tone
+and his abrupt language. From the paleness of his face, it was evident
+that Truth, whose best time for obtaining a hearing is in the darkness
+of night, had oppressed him grievously by her presence, and tired him
+with her unwelcome light. Sometimes, on these occasions, his bursting
+heart would overflow, and pour forth his sorrows around him by movements
+of impatience; but so far from lightening his grief, he aggravated them
+by those acts of injustice for which he reproached himself, and which he
+was afterwards anxious to repair.
+
+It was to Count Daru alone that he unbosomed himself frankly, but
+without weakness. He said, "he should march upon Kutusoff, crush or
+drive him back, and then turn suddenly towards Smolensk." Daru, who had
+before approved this course, replied, that "it was now too late; that
+the Russian army was reinforced, his own weakened; his victory
+forgotten; that the moment his troops should turn their faces towards
+France, they would slip away from him by degrees; that each soldier,
+laden with booty, would try to get the start of the army, for the
+purpose of selling it in France."--"What then is to be done?" exclaimed
+the Emperor. "Remain here," replied Daru, "make one vast entrenched camp
+of Moscow and pass the winter in it. He would answer for it that there
+would be no want of bread and salt: the rest foraging on a large scale
+would supply. Such of the horses as they could not procure food for
+might be salted down. As to lodgings, if there were not houses enough,
+the cellars might make up the deficiency. Here we might stay till the
+return of spring, when our reinforcements and all Lithuania in arms
+should come to relieve, to join us, and to complete the conquest."
+
+After listening to this proposal the Emperor was for some time silent
+and thoughtful; he then replied, "This is a lion's counsel! But what
+would Paris say? what would they do there? what have they been doing for
+the last three weeks that they have not heard from me? who knows what
+would be the effect of a suspension of communications for six months!
+No; France would not accustom itself to my absence, and Prussia and
+Austria would take advantage of it."
+
+Still Napoleon did not decide either to stay or to depart. Overcome in
+this struggle of obstinacy, he deferred from day to day the avowal of
+his defeat. Amid the dreadful storm of men and elements which was
+gathering around him, his ministers and his aides-de-camp saw him pass
+whole days in discussing the merits of some new verses which he had
+received, or the regulations for the _Comédie Française_ at Paris, which
+he took three evenings to finish. As they were acquainted with his deep
+anxiety, they admired the strength of his genius, and the facility with
+which he could take off or fix the whole force of his attention on
+whatever he pleased.
+
+It was merely remarked that he prolonged his meals, which had hitherto
+been so simple and so short. He seemed desirous of stifling thought by
+repletion. He would then pass whole hours, half reclined, as if torpid,
+and awaiting, with a novel in his hand, the catastrophe of his terrible
+history. On beholding this obstinate and inflexible character struggling
+with impossibility, his officers would then observe to one another, that
+having arrived at the summit of his glory, he no doubt foresaw that from
+his first retrograde step would date its decline; that for this reason
+he continued immoveable, clinging to and lingering a few moments longer
+on this elevation.
+
+Kutusoff, meanwhile, was gaining that time which we were losing. His
+letters to Alexander described "his army as being in the midst of
+abundance; his recruits arriving from all quarters and being trained;
+his wounded recovering in the bosom of their families; the peasants,
+some in arms, some on the look out from the tops of steeples, while
+others were stealing into our habitations and even into the Kremlin.
+Rostopchin received from them a daily report of what was passing at
+Moscow, as before its capture. If they undertook to be our guides, it
+was for the purpose of delivering us into his hands. His partizans were
+every day bringing in some hundreds of prisoners. Every thing concurred
+to destroy the enemy's army and to strengthen his own; to serve him and
+to betray us; in a word, the campaign, which was over for us, was but
+just about to begin for them."
+
+Kutusoff neglected no advantage. He made his camp ring with the news of
+the victory of Salamanca. "The French," said he, "are expelled from
+Madrid. The hand of the Most High presses heavily upon Napoleon. Moscow
+will be his prison, his grave, and that of all his grand army. We shall
+soon take France in Russia!" It was in such language that the Russian
+general addressed his troops and his Emperor; and nevertheless he still
+kept up appearances with Murat. At once bold and crafty, he contrived
+slowly to prepare a sudden and impetuous warfare, and to cover his plans
+for our destruction with demonstrations of kindness and honeyed words.
+
+At length, after several days of illusion, the charm was dispelled. A
+Cossack completely dissolved it. This barbarian fired at Murat, at the
+moment when that prince came as usual to show himself at the advanced
+posts. Murat was exasperated; he declared to Miloradowitch that an
+armistice which was incessantly violated was at an end; and that
+thenceforward each ought to put confidence in himself alone.
+
+At the same time he apprised the Emperor, that a woody country on his
+left might favour attempts against his flank and rear; that his first
+line, backed against a ravine, might be precipitated into it; that in
+short the position which he occupied, in advance of a defile, was
+dangerous, and rendered a retrograde movement absolutely necessary. But
+Napoleon would not consent to this step, though he had at first pointed
+out Woronowo as a more secure position. In this war, still in his view
+rather political than military, he dreaded above all the appearance of
+receding. He preferred risking every thing.
+
+At the same time, on the 13th of October, he sent back Lauriston to
+Murat, to examine the position of the vanguard. As to the Emperor,
+either from a tenacious adherence to his first hope, or that any
+disposition which might be construed into a preparation for retreat,
+equally shocked his pride and his policy, a singular negligence was
+remarked in his preparations for departure. He nevertheless thought of
+it, for that very day he traced his plan of retreat by Woloklamsk,
+Zubtzow, and Bieloé, on Witepsk. A moment afterwards he dictated another
+on Smolensk. Junot received orders to burn on the 21st, at Kolotskoi,
+all the muskets of the wounded, and to blow up the ammunition waggons.
+D'Hilliers was to occupy Elnia, and to form magazines at that place. It
+was not till the 17th, at Moscow, that Berthier thought of causing
+leather to be distributed for the first time among the troops.
+
+This major-general was a wretched substitute for his principal on this
+critical occasion. In a strange country and climate, he recommended no
+new precaution, and he expected the minutest details to be dictated by
+his Emperor. They were forgotten. This negligence or want of foresight
+was attended with fatal consequences. In an army, each division of which
+was commanded by a marshal, a prince, or even a king, one relied perhaps
+too much on the other. Besides, Berthier gave no orders of himself; he
+thought it enough to repeat exactly the very letter of Napoleon's
+commands; for, as to their spirit, either from fatigue or habit, he was
+incessantly confounding the positive with the conjectural parts of those
+instructions.
+
+Napoleon meanwhile rallied his _corps d'armée_. The reviews which he
+held in the Kremlin were more frequent; he formed all the dismounted
+cavalry into battalions, and lavishly distributed rewards. The division
+of Claparede, the trophies and all the wounded that could be removed,
+set out for Mojaisk; the rest were collected in the great foundling
+hospital; French surgeons were placed there; and the Russian wounded,
+intermixed with ours, were intended to serve them for a safeguard.
+
+But it was too late. Amid these preparations, and at the moment when
+Napoleon was reviewing Ney's divisions in the first court of the
+Kremlin, a report was all at once circulated around him, that the report
+of cannon was heard towards Vinkowo. It was some time before any one
+durst apprise him of the circumstance; some from incredulity or
+uncertainty, and dreading the first movement of his impatience; others
+from love of ease, hesitating to provoke a terrible signal, or
+apprehensive of being sent to verify this assertion, and of exposing
+themselves to a fatiguing excursion.
+
+Duroc, at length, took courage. The Emperor was at first agitated, but
+quickly recovering himself, he continued the review. An aide-de-camp,
+young Beranger, arrived shortly after with the intelligence that Murat's
+first line had been surprised and overthrown, his left turned by favour
+of the woods, his flank attacked, his retreat cut off; that twelve
+pieces of cannon, twenty ammunition waggons, and thirty waggons
+belonging to the train were taken, two generals killed, three or four
+thousand men lost and the baggage; and lastly, that the King was
+wounded. He had not been able to rescue the relics of his advanced guard
+from the enemy, but by repeatedly charging their numerous troops which
+already occupied the high road in his rear, his only retreat.
+
+Our honour however was saved. The attack in front, directed by Kutusoff,
+was feeble; Poniatowski, at some leagues distance on the right, made a
+glorious resistance; Murat and his carbineers, by supernatural
+exertions, checked Bagawout, who was ready to penetrate our left flank,
+and restored the fortune of the day. Claparede and Latour-Maubourg
+cleared the defile of Spaskaplia, two leagues in the rear of our line,
+which was already occupied by Platof. Two Russian generals were killed,
+and others wounded: the loss of the enemy was considerable, but the
+advantage of the attack, our cannon, our position, the victory in short,
+were theirs.
+
+As for Murat, he no longer had an advanced guard. The armistice had
+destroyed half the remnant of his cavalry. This engagement finished it;
+the survivors, emaciated with hunger, were so few as scarcely to furnish
+a charge. Thus had the war recommenced. It was now the 18th of October.
+
+At these tidings Napoleon recovered the fire of his early years. A
+thousand orders general and particular, all differing, yet all in unison
+and all necessary, burst at once from his impetuous genius. Night had
+not yet arrived, and the whole army was already in motion for Woronowo;
+Broussier was sent in the direction of Fominskoë, and Poniatowski toward
+Medyn. The Emperor himself quitted Moscow before daylight on the 19th of
+October. "Let us march upon Kalouga," said he, "and woe be to those whom
+I meet with by the way!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+In the southern part of Moscow, near one of its gates, one of its most
+extensive suburbs is divided by two high roads; both run to Kalouga: the
+one, that on the right, is the more ancient; the other is new. It was on
+the first that Kutusoff had just beaten Murat. By the same road Napoleon
+left Moscow on the 19th of October, announcing to his officers his
+intention to return to the frontiers of Poland by Kalouga, Medyn,
+Yuknow, Elnia, and Smolensk. One of them, Rapp, observed that "it was
+late, and that winter might overtake them by the way." The Emperor
+replied, "that he had been obliged to allow time to the soldiers to
+recruit themselves, and to the wounded collected in Moscow, Mojaisk, and
+Kolotskoi, to move off towards Smolensk." Then pointing to a still
+serene sky, he asked, "if in that brilliant sun they did not recognize
+his star?" But this appeal to his fortune, and the sinister expression
+of his looks, belied the security which he affected.
+
+Napoleon entered Moscow with ninety thousand fighting men, and twenty
+thousand sick and wounded, and quitted it with more than a hundred
+thousand combatants. He left there only twelve hundred sick. His stay,
+notwithstanding daily losses, had therefore served to rest his infantry,
+to complete his stores, to augment his force by ten thousand men, and to
+protect the recovery or the retreat of a great part of his wounded. But
+on this very first day he could perceive, that his cavalry and artillery
+might be said rather to crawl than to march.
+
+A melancholy spectacle added to the gloomy presentiments of our chief.
+The army had ever since the preceding day been pouring out of Moscow
+without intermission. In this column of one hundred and forty thousand
+men and about fifty thousand horses of all kinds, a hundred thousand
+combatants marching at the head with their knapsacks, their arms,
+upwards of five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand
+artillery-waggons, still exhibited a formidable appearance, worthy of
+soldiers who had conquered the world. But the rest, in an alarming
+proportion, resembled a horde of Tartars after a successful invasion. It
+consisted of three or four files of infinite length, in which there was
+a mixture, a confusion of chaises, ammunition waggons, handsome
+carriages, and vehicles of every kind. Here trophies of Russian,
+Turkish, and Persian colours, and the gigantic cross of Ivan the
+Great--there, long-bearded Russian peasants carrying or driving along
+our booty, of which they constituted a part: others dragging even
+wheelbarrows filled with whatever they could remove. The fools were not
+likely to proceed in this manner till the conclusion of the first day:
+their senseless avidity made them think nothing of battles and a march
+of eight hundred leagues.
+
+In these followers of the army were particularly remarked a multitude of
+men of all nations, without uniform and without arms, and servants
+swearing in every language, and urging by dint of shouts and blows the
+progress of elegant carriages, drawn by pigmy horses harnessed with
+ropes. They were filled with provisions, or with the booty saved from
+the flames. They carried also French women with their children. Formerly
+these females were happy inhabitants of Moscow; they now fled from the
+hatred of the Muscovites, which the invasion had drawn upon their heads;
+the army was their only asylum.
+
+A few Russian girls, voluntary captives, also followed. It looked like a
+caravan, a wandering nation, or rather one of those armies of antiquity
+returning loaded with slaves and spoil after a great devastation. It was
+inconceivable how the head of this column could draw and support such a
+heavy mass of equipages in so long a route.
+
+Notwithstanding the width of the road and the shouts of his escort,
+Napoleon had great difficulty to obtain a passage through this immense
+throng. No doubt the obstruction of a defile, a few forced marches and a
+handful of Cossacks, would have been sufficient to rid us of all this
+incumbrance: but fortune or the enemy had alone a right to lighten us in
+this manner. As for the Emperor, he was fully sensible that he could
+neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor
+reproach them for securing it. Besides, the provisions concealed the
+booty, and could he, who could not give his troops the subsistence which
+he ought to have done, forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly,
+in failure of military conveyances, these vehicles would be the only
+means of preservation for the sick and wounded.
+
+Napoleon, therefore, extricated himself in silence from the immense
+train which he drew after him, and advanced on the old road leading to
+Kalouga. He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that
+he should go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all
+at once, about mid-day, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he
+halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three
+marches across the country gained the new road to Kalouga.
+
+The rain, which overtook him in the midst of this manoeuvre, spoiled
+the cross-roads, and obliged him to halt in them. This was a most
+unfortunate circumstance. It was not without difficulty that our cannon
+were drawn out of the sloughs.
+
+At any rate the Emperor had masked his movement by Ney's corps and the
+relics of Murat's cavalry, which had remained behind the Motscha and at
+Woronowo. Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the
+grand army on the old road, whilst on the 23rd of October, the whole of
+it, transferred to the new one, had but one march to make in order to
+pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kalouga.
+
+A letter from Berthier to Kutusoff, dated the first day of this flanking
+march, was at once a last attempt at peace, and perhaps a _ruse de
+guerre_. No satisfactory answer was returned to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+On the 23rd the imperial quarters were at Borowsk. That night was an
+agreeable one for the Emperor: he was informed that at six in the
+evening Delzons and his division had, four leagues in advance of him,
+found Malo-Yaroslawetz and the woods which command it unoccupied: this
+was a strong position within reach of Kutusoff, and the only point where
+he could cut us off from the new road to Kalouga.
+
+The Emperor wished first to secure this advantage by his presence; the
+order to march was even given, but withdrawn, we know not why. He passed
+the whole of that evening on horseback, not far from Borowsk, on the
+left of the road, the side on which he supposed Kutusoff to be. He
+reconnoitred the ground in the midst of a heavy rain, as if he
+anticipated that it might become a field of battle. Next day, the 24th,
+he learned that the Russians had disputed the possession of
+Malo-Yaroslawetz with Delzons. Owing either to confidence or uncertainty
+in his plans, this intelligence gave him very little concern.
+
+He quitted Borowsk, therefore, late and leisurely, when the noise of a
+very smart engagement reached where he was; he then became uneasy,
+hastened to an eminence and listened. "Had the Russians anticipated him?
+Was his manoeuvre thwarted? Had he not used sufficient expedition in
+that march, the object of which was to pass the left flank of Kutusoff?"
+
+In reality there was in this whole movement a little of that torpor
+which succeeds a long repose. Moscow is but one hundred and ten wersts
+from Malo-Yaroslawetz; four days would have been sufficient to go that
+distance; we took six. The army, laden with provisions and pillage, was
+heavy, and the roads were deep. A whole day had been sacrificed to the
+passage of the Nara and its morass, as also to the rallying of the
+different corps. It is true that in defiling so near the enemy it was
+necessary to march close, that we might not present to him too long a
+flank. Be this as it may, we may date all our calamities from that
+delay.
+
+The Emperor was still listening; the noise increased. "Is it then a
+battle?" he exclaimed. Every discharge agitated him, for the chief point
+with him was no longer to conquer, but to preserve, and he urged on
+Davoust, who accompanied him; but he and that marshal did not reach the
+field of battle till dark, when the firing was subsiding and the whole
+was over.
+
+The Emperor saw the end of the battle, but without being able to assist
+the viceroy. A band of Cossacks from Twer had nearly captured one of his
+officers, who was only a very short distance from him.
+
+It was not till then that an officer, sent by Prince Eugene, came to him
+to explain the whole affair. "The troops had," he said, "in the first
+place, been obliged to cross the Louja at the foot of Malo-Yaroslawetz,
+at the bottom of an elbow which the river makes in its course; and then
+to climb a steep hill: it is on this rapid declivity, broken by pointed
+crags, that the town is built. Beyond is an elevated plain, surrounded
+with wood from which run three roads, one in front, coming from Kalouga,
+and two on the left, from Lectazowo, the entrenched camp of Kutusoff.
+
+"On the preceding day Delzons found no enemy there; but he did not think
+it prudent to place his whole division in the upper town, beyond a river
+and a defile, and on the margin of a precipice, down which it might have
+been thrown by a nocturnal surprise. He remained, therefore, on the low
+bank of the Louja, sending only two battalions to occupy the town and to
+watch the elevated plain.
+
+"The night was drawing to a close; it was four o'clock, and all were
+already asleep in Delzons's bivouacs, excepting a few sentinels, when
+Doctorof's Russians suddenly rushed in the dark out of the wood with
+tremendous shouts. Our sentinels were driven back on their posts, the
+posts on their battalions, the battalions on the division: and yet it
+was not a _coup-de-main_, for the Russians had brought up cannon. At the
+very commencement of the attack, the firing had conveyed the tidings of
+a serious affair to the viceroy, who was three leagues distant."
+
+The report added, that "the Prince had immediately hastened up with some
+officers, and that his divisions and his guard had precipitately
+followed him. As he approached, a vast amphitheatre, where all was
+bustle, opened before him; the Louja marked the foot of it, and a
+multitude of Russian riflemen already disputed its banks."
+
+Behind them from the summit of the declivities on which the town was
+situated, their advanced guard poured their fire on Delzons: beyond
+that, on the elevated plain, the whole army of Kutusoff was hastening up
+in two long black columns, by the two roads from Lectazowo. They were
+seen stretching and entrenching themselves on this bare slope, upon a
+line of about half a league, where they commanded and embraced every
+thing by their number and position: they were already placing themselves
+across the old road to Kalouga, which was open the preceding day, which
+we might have occupied and travelled if we had pleased, but which
+Kutusoff would henceforward have it in his power to defend inch by inch.
+
+The enemy's artillery had at the same time taken advantage of the
+heights which bordered the river on their side; their fire traversed the
+low ground in the bend of the river, in which were Delzons and his
+troops. The position was untenable, and hesitation would have been
+fatal. It was necessary to get out of it either by a prompt retreat, or
+by an impetuous attack; but it was before us that our retreat lay, and
+the viceroy gave orders for the attack.
+
+After crossing the Louja by a narrow bridge, the high road from Kalouga
+runs along the bottom of a ravine which ascends to the town, and then
+enters Malo-Yaroslawetz. The Russians, in mass occupied this hollow way:
+Delzons and his Frenchmen rushed upon them head foremost; the Russians
+were broken and overthrown; they gave way and presently our bayonets
+glistened on the heights.
+
+Delzons, conceiving himself sure of the victory, announced it as won. He
+had nothing but a pile of buildings to storm, his soldiers hesitated. He
+himself advanced and was encouraging them by his words, gestures and
+example, when a ball struck him on the forehead, and extended him on the
+ground. His brother threw himself upon him, covered him with his body,
+clasped him in his arms, and would have borne him off out of the fire
+and the fray, but a second ball hit him also, and both expired together.
+
+This loss left a great void, which required to be filled up. Guilleminot
+succeeded Delzons, and the first thing he did was to throw a hundred
+grenadiers into a church and church-yard, in the walls of which they
+made loop-holes. This church stood on the left of the high road, which
+it commanded, and to this edifice we owed the victory. Five times on
+that day was this post passed by the Russian columns, which were
+pursuing ours, and five times did its fire, seasonably poured upon their
+flank and rear, harass them and slacken their progress: afterwards when
+we resumed the offensive, this position placed them between two fires
+and ensured the success of our attacks.
+
+Scarcely had that general made this disposition when he was assailed by
+hosts of Russians; he was driven back towards the bridge, where the
+viceroy had stationed himself, in order to judge how to act and prepare
+his reserves. At first the reinforcements which he sent came up but
+slowly one after another; and as is almost always the case, each of
+them, being inadequate to any great effort, was successively destroyed
+without result.
+
+At length the whole of the 14th division was engaged: the combat was
+then carried, for the third time, to the heights. But when the French
+had passed the houses, when they had removed from the central point from
+which they set out; when they had reached the plain, where they were
+exposed, and where the circle expanded; they could advance no farther:
+overwhelmed by the fire of a whole army they were daunted and shaken:
+fresh Russians incessantly came up; our thinned ranks gave way and were
+broken; the obstacles of the ground increased their confusion: they
+again descended precipitately and abandoned every thing.
+
+Meanwhile the shells having set fire to the wooden town behind them, in
+their retreat they were stopped by the conflagration; one fire drove
+them back upon another; the Russian recruits, wrought up to a pitch of
+fanatic fury, closely pursued them; our soldiers became enraged; they
+fought man to man: some were seen seizing each other by one hand,
+striking with the other, until both victors and vanquished rolled down
+precipices into the flames, without losing their hold. There the wounded
+expired, either suffocated by the smoke, or consumed by the fire. Their
+blackened and calcined skeletons soon presented a hideous sight, when
+the eye could still discover in them the traces of a human form.
+
+All, however, were not equally intent on doing their duty. There was one
+officer, a man who was known to talk very big, and who, at the bottom of
+a ravine, wasted the time for action in making speeches. In this place
+of security he kept about him a sufficient number of troops to authorize
+his remaining himself, leaving the rest to expose themselves in detail,
+without unison and at random.
+
+The 15th division was still left. The viceroy summoned it: as it
+advanced, it threw a brigade into the suburb on the left, and another
+into the town on the right. It consisted of Italians, recruits, who had
+never before been in action. They ascended, shouting enthusiastically,
+ignorant of the danger or despising it, from that singular disposition,
+which renders life less dear in its flower than in its decline, either
+because while young we fear death less from the feeling of its distance,
+or because at that age, rich in years and prodigal of every thing, we
+squander life as the wealthy do their fortune.
+
+The shock was terrible: every thing was reconquered for the fourth time,
+and lost in like manner. More eager to begin than their seniors, they
+were sooner disheartened, and returned flying to the old battalions,
+which supported and were obliged to lead them back to the danger.
+
+The Russians, emboldened by their incessantly increasing numbers and
+success, then descended by their right to gain possession of the bridge
+and to cut off our retreat. Prince Eugene had nothing left but his last
+reserve: he and his guard now took part in the combat. At this sight,
+and at his call, the remains of the 13th, 14th, and 15th divisions
+mustered their courage; they made a powerful and a last effort, and for
+the fifth time the combat was transferred to the heights.
+
+At the same time Colonel Peraldi and the Italian chasseurs overthrew
+with their bayonets the Russians, who were already approaching the left
+of the bridge, and inebriated by the smoke and the fire, through which
+they had passed, by the havoc which they made, and by their victory,
+they pushed forward without stopping on the elevated plain, and
+endeavoured to make themselves masters of the enemy's cannon: but one of
+those deep clefts, with which the soil of Russia is intersected, stopped
+them in the midst of a destructive fire; their ranks opened, the enemy's
+cavalry attacked them, and they were driven back to the very gardens of
+the suburbs. There they paused and rallied: all, both French and
+Italians, obstinately defended the upper avenues of the town, and the
+Russians being at length repulsed, drew back and concentrated themselves
+on the road to Kalouga, between the woods and Malo-Yaroslawetz.
+
+In this manner eighteen thousand Italians and French crowded together at
+the bottom of a ravine, defeated fifty thousand Russians, posted over
+their heads, and seconded by all the obstacles that a town built on a
+steep declivity is capable of presenting.
+
+The army, however, surveyed with sorrow this field of battle, where
+seven generals and four thousand Italians had been killed or wounded.
+The sight of the enemy's loss afforded no consolation; it was not twice
+the amount of ours, and their wounded would be saved. It was moreover
+recollected that in a similar situation Peter I., in sacrificing ten
+Russians for one Swede, thought that he was not sustaining merely an
+equal loss, but even gaining by so terrible a bargain. But what caused
+the greatest pain, was the idea that so sanguinary a conflict might have
+been spared.
+
+In fact, the fires which were discovered on our left, in the night
+between the 23d and 24th, had apprised us of the movement of the
+Russians towards Malo-Yaroslawetz; and yet the French army had marched
+thither languidly; a single division, thrown to the distance of three
+leagues from all succour, had been carelessly risked; the _corps
+d'armée_ had remained out of reach of each other. Where were now the
+rapid movements of Marengo, Ulm, and Eckmühl? Why so slow and drawling a
+march on such a critical occasion? Was it our artillery and baggage that
+had caused this tardiness? Such was at least the most plausible
+presumption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+When the Emperor heard the report of this combat, he was a few paces to
+the right of the high road, at the bottom of a ravine, close to the
+rivulet and village of Ghorodinia, in the habitation of a weaver, an
+old, crazy, filthy, wooden hut. Here he was half a league from
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, at the commencement of the bend of the Louja. It was
+in this worm-eaten dwelling, and in a dirty dark room, parted off into
+two by a cloth, that the fate of the army and of Europe was about to be
+decided.
+
+The first hours of the night passed in receiving reports. All agreed
+that the enemy was making preparations against the next day for a
+battle, which all were disposed to decline. About eleven o'clock
+Bessičres entered. This marshal owed his elevation to honourable
+services, and above all to the affection of the Emperor, who had become
+attached to him as to a creation of his own. It is true, that a man
+could not be a favourite with Napoleon, as with any other monarch; that
+it was necessary at least to have followed and been of some service to
+him, for he sacrificed little to the agreeable; in short, it was
+requisite that he should have been more than a witness of so many
+victories; and the Emperor when fatigued, accustomed himself to see with
+eyes which he believed to be of his own formation.
+
+He had sent this marshal to examine the attitude of the enemy. Bessičres
+had obeyed: he had carefully explored the front of the Russian position.
+"It is," said he, "unassailable!"--"Oh heavens!" exclaimed the Emperor,
+clasping his hands, "are you sure you are right? Are you not mistaken?
+Will you answer for that?" Bessičres repeated his assertion: he affirmed
+that "three hundred grenadiers would there be sufficient to keep in
+check a whole army." Napoleon then crossed his arms with a look of
+consternation, hung his head, and remained as if overwhelmed with the
+deepest dejection. "His army was victorious and himself conquered. His
+route was intercepted, his manoeuvre, thwarted: Kutusoff, an old man,
+a Scythian, had been beforehand with him! And he could not accuse his
+star. Did not the sun of France seem to have followed him to Russia? Was
+not the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz open but the preceding day? It was not
+his fortune then that had failed him, but he who had been wanting to his
+fortune?"
+
+Absorbed in this abyss of painful reflections, he fell into so profound
+a stupor, that none of those about him could draw from him a single
+word. Scarcely could a nod of the head be obtained from him by dint of
+importunity. At length he strove to get some rest: but a feverish
+anxiety prevented him from closing his eyes. During all the rest of that
+cruel night he kept rising, lying down again, and calling incessantly,
+but yet not a single word betrayed his distress: it was only from the
+agitation of his body that the anguish of his mind was to be inferred.
+
+About four in the morning, one of his orderly officers, the Prince
+d'Aremberg, came to inform him that under favour of the night, the woods
+and some inequalities of ground, Cossacks were slipping in between him
+and his advanced posts. The Emperor had just sent off Poniatowski on his
+right to Kremenskoe. So little did he expect the enemy from that side,
+that he had neglected to order out any scouts on his right flank. He
+therefore slighted the report of his orderly officer.
+
+No sooner did the sun appear above the horizon on the 25th, than he
+mounted his horse, and advanced on the Kalouga road, which to him was
+now nothing more than the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz. To reach the bridge
+of that town, he had to cross the plain, about a league in length and
+breadth, embraced by the bend of the Louja: a few officers only attended
+him. The four squadrons of his usual escort, not having been previously
+apprised, hastened to rejoin, but had not yet overtaken him. The road
+was covered with sick-waggons, artillery, and vehicles of luxury: it was
+the interior of the army, and every one was marching on without
+mistrust.
+
+In the distance, towards the right, a few small bodies of men were first
+seen running, and then large black lines advancing. Outcries were
+presently heard: some women and attendants on the army were met running
+back, too much affrighted and out of breath, either to listen to any
+thing, or to answer any question. At the same time the file of vehicles
+stopped in uncertainty; disorder arose in it: some endeavoured to
+proceed, others to turn back; they crossed, jostled and upset one
+another: and the whole was soon a scene of complete uproar and
+confusion.
+
+The Emperor looked on and smiled, still advancing, and believing it to
+be a groundless panic. His aides-de-camp suspected that it was Cossacks
+whom they saw, but they marched in such regular platoons that they still
+had doubts on the subject; and if those wretches had not howled at the
+moment of attack, as they all do to stifle the sense of danger, it is
+probable that Napoleon would not have escaped them. A circumstance which
+increased the peril was, that their cries were at first mistaken for
+acclamations, and their hurrahs for shouts of _Vive l'Empereur!_
+
+It was Platof and six thousand Cossacks, who in the rear of our
+victorious advanced-guard, had ventured to cross the river, the low
+plain and the high road, carrying all before them; and it was at the
+very moment when the Emperor, perfectly tranquil in the midst of his
+army, and the windings of a deep river, was advancing, refusing belief
+to so audacious a plan, that they put it in execution.
+
+When they had once started, they approached with such speed, that Rapp
+had but just time to say to the Emperor, "It is the Cossacks!--turn
+back!" The Emperor, whose eyes deceived him, or who disliked running
+away, stood firm, and was on the point of being surrounded, when Rapp
+seized the bridle of his horse, and turned him round, crying. "Indeed
+you must!" And really it was high time to fly, although Napoleon's pride
+would not allow him to do so. He drew his sword, the Prince of
+Neufchatel and the grand equerry did the same; then placing themselves
+on the left side of the road, they waited the approach of the horde,
+from which they were not forty paces distant. Rapp had barely time to
+turn himself round to face these barbarians, when the foremost of them
+thrust his lance into the chest of his horse with such violence as to
+throw him down. The other aides-de-camp, and a few horse belonging to
+the guard, extricated the general. This action, the bravery of
+Lecoulteux, the efforts of a score of officers and chasseurs, and above
+all the thirst of these barbarians for plunder, saved the Emperor. And
+yet they needed only to have stretched out their hands and seized him;
+for, at the same moment, the horde, in crossing the high road, overthrew
+every thing before them, horses, men, and carriages, wounding and
+killing some, and dragging them into the woods for the purpose of
+plundering them; then, loosing the horses harnessed to the guns, they
+took them along with them across the country. But they had only a
+momentary victory; a triumph of surprise. The cavalry of the guard
+galloped up; at this sight they let go their prey and fled; and this
+torrent subsided, leaving indeed melancholy traces, but abandoning all
+that it was hurrying away in its course.
+
+Some of these barbarians, however, carried their audacity even to
+insolence. They were seen retiring at a foot-pace across the interval
+between our squadrons, and coolly reloading their arms. They reckoned
+upon the heaviness of our cavalry of the _élite_, and the swiftness of
+their own horses, which they urge with a whip. Their flight was effected
+without disorder; they faced round several times, without waiting indeed
+till within reach of fire, so that they left scarcely any wounded and
+not one prisoner. At length they enticed us on to ravines covered with
+bushes, where we were stopped by their artillery, which was waiting for
+them. All this furnished subject for reflection. Our army was worn down;
+and the war had begun again with new and undiminished spirit.
+
+The Emperor, struck with astonishment that the enemy had dared to attack
+him, halted until the plain was cleared; after which he returned to
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, where the viceroy pointed out to him the obstacles
+which had been conquered the preceding day.
+
+The ground itself spoke sufficiently. Never was field of battle more
+terribly eloquent. Its marked features; its ruins covered with blood;
+the streets, the line of which could no longer be recognized but by the
+long train of the dead, whose heads were crushed by the wheels of the
+cannon, the wounded, who were still seen issuing from the rubbish and
+crawling along, with their garments, their hair, and their limbs half
+consumed by the fire, and uttering lamentable cries; finally, the
+doleful sound of the last melancholy honours which the grenadiers were
+paying to the remains of their colonels and generals who had been
+slain--all attested the extreme obstinacy of the conflict. In this scene
+the Emperor, it was said, beheld nothing but glory: he exclaimed, that
+"the honour of so proud a day belonged exclusively to Prince Eugene."
+This sight, nevertheless, aggravated the painful impression which had
+already seized him. He then advanced to the elevated plain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+Can you ever forget, comrades, the fatal field which put a stop to the
+conquest of the world, where the victories of twenty years were blasted,
+where the great edifice of our fortune began to totter to its
+foundation? Do you not still figure to yourselves the blood-stained
+ruins of that town, those deep ravines, and the woods which surround
+that elevated plain and convert it, as it were, into a tented field? On
+one side were the French, quitting the north, which they shunned; on the
+other, at the entrance of the wood, were the Russians, guarding the
+south, and striving to drive us back upon their mighty winter. In the
+midst of this plain, between the two armies, was Napoleon, his steps and
+his eyes wandering from south to west, along the roads to Kalouga and
+Medyn, both which were closed against him. On that to Kalouga, were
+Kutusoff and one hundred and twenty thousand men, ready to dispute with
+him twenty leagues of defiles; towards Medyn he beheld a numerous
+cavalry: it was Platof and those same hordes which had just penetrated
+into the flank of the army, had traversed it through and through, and
+burst forth, laden with booty, to form again on his right flank, where
+reinforcements and artillery were waiting for them. It was on that side
+that the eyes of the Emperor were fixed longest; it was there that he
+received the reports of his officers and consulted his maps: then,
+oppressed with regret and gloomy forebodings, he slowly returned to his
+head-quarters.
+
+Murat, Prince Eugene, Berthier, Davoust and Bessičres followed him. This
+mean habitation of an obscure artisan contained within it an Emperor,
+two Kings, and three Generals. Here they were about to decide the fate
+of Europe, and of the army which had conquered it. Smolensk was the
+goal. Should they march thither by Kalouga, Medyn or Mojaisk? Napoleon
+was seated at a table, his head supported by his hands, which concealed
+his features, as well as the anguish which they no doubt expressed.
+
+A silence fraught with such imminent destinies continued to be
+respected, until Murat, whose actions were always the result of
+impetuous feeling, became weary of this hesitation. Yielding to the
+dictates of his genius, which was wholly directed by his ardent
+temperament, he was eager to burst from that uncertainty, by one of
+those first movements which elevate to glory, or hurry to destruction.
+
+Rising, he exclaimed, that "he might possibly be again accused of
+imprudence, but that in war circumstances decided and gave to every
+thing its name; that where there is no other course than to attack,
+prudence becomes temerity and temerity prudence; that to stop was
+impossible, to fly dangerous, consequently they ought to pursue. What
+signified the menacing attitude of the Russians and their impenetrable
+woods? For his part he cared not for them. Give him but the remnant of
+his cavalry, and that of the guard, and he would force his way into
+their forests and their battalions, overthrow all before him, and open
+anew to the army the road to Kalouga."
+
+Here Napoleon, raising his head, extinguished all this fire, by saying,
+that "we had exhibited temerity enough already; that we had done too
+much for glory, and it was high time to give up thinking of any thing
+but how to save the rest of the army."
+
+Bessičres, either because his pride revolted from the idea of obeying
+the King of Naples, or from a desire to preserve uninjured the cavalry
+of the guard, which he had formed, for which he was answerable to
+Napoleon, and which he exclusively commanded; Bessičres, finding himself
+supported, then ventured to add, that "neither the army nor even the
+guard had sufficient spirit left for such efforts. It was already said
+in both, that as the means of conveyance were inadequate, henceforth the
+victor, if overtaken, would fall a prey to the vanquished; that of
+course every wound would be mortal. Murat would therefore be but feebly
+seconded. And in what a position! its strength had just been but too
+well demonstrated. Against what enemies! had they not remarked the field
+of the preceding day's battle, and with what fury the Russian recruits,
+only just armed and clothed, had there fought and fell?" The Marshal
+concluded by voting in favour of retreat, which the Emperor approved by
+his silence.
+
+The Prince of Eckmühl immediately observed, that, "as a retreat was
+decided upon, he proposed that it should be by Medyn and Smolensk." But
+Murat interrupted Davoust, and whether from enmity or from that
+discouragement which usually succeeds the rejection of a rash measure,
+he declared his astonishment, "that any one should dare to propose so
+imprudent a step to the Emperor. Had Davoust sworn the destruction of
+the army? Would he have so long and so heavy a column trail along,
+without guides and in uncertainty, on an unknown track, within reach of
+Kutusoff, presenting its flank to all the attacks of the enemy? Would
+he, Davoust, defend it? Why--when in our rear Borowsk and Vereďa would
+lead us without danger to Mojaisk--why reject that safe route? There,
+provisions must have been collected, there every thing was known to us,
+and we could not be misled by any traitor."
+
+At these words Davoust, burning with a rage which he had great
+difficulty to repress, replied, that "he proposed a retreat through a
+fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful and well supplied route,
+villages still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might
+not avail himself of it, to cut us off from the route from Mojaisk to
+Smolensk, recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and
+ashes, where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where
+we should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons and
+famine!
+
+"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was
+asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as
+if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the Emperor alone
+had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his
+Sovereign, and never should be!"
+
+The quarrel growing warm, Bessičres and Berthier interposed. As for the
+Emperor, still absorbed in the same attitude, he appeared insensible to
+what was passing. At length he broke up this council with the words,
+"Well, gentlemen, I will decide."
+
+He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most
+speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate
+effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to
+him. So painful was this effort, that in the inward struggle which it
+occasioned, he lost the use of his senses. Those who attended him have
+asserted, that the report of another warm affair with the Cossacks,
+towards Borowsk, a few leagues in the rear of the army, was the last
+shock which induced him finally to adopt this fatal resolution.
+
+It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat
+northward, at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed
+by the defeat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, were retiring southward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The very same night a similar anxiety had agitated the Russian camp.
+During the combat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, Kutusoff had approached the field
+of battle, groping his way, as it were, pausing at every step, and
+examining the ground, as if he was afraid of its sinking beneath him; he
+did not send off the different corps which were dispatched to the
+assistance of Doctorof, till the orders for that purpose were absolutely
+extorted from him. He durst not place himself in person across
+Napoleon's way, till an hour when general battles are not to be
+apprehended.
+
+Wilson, warm from the action, then hastened to him.--Wilson, that active
+bustling Englishman, whom we had seen in Egypt, in Spain, and every
+where else, the enemy of the French and of Napoleon. He was the
+representative of the allies in the Russian army; he was in the midst of
+Kutusoff's army an independent man, an observer, nay, even a
+judge--infallible motives of aversion; his presence was odious to the
+old Russian general; and as hatred never fails to beget hatred, both
+cordially detested each other.
+
+Wilson reproached him with his excessive dilatoriness; he reminded him
+that five times in one day it had caused them to lose the victory, in
+the battle of Vinkowo, on the 18th of October. In fact, on that day
+Murat would have been destroyed, had Kutusoff fully occupied the front
+of the French by a brisk attack, while Beningsen was turning their left
+wing. But either from negligence, or that tardiness which is the fault
+of age, or as several Russians assert, because Kutusoff was more envious
+of Beningsen than inimical to Napoleon, the veteran had attacked too
+faintly, and too late, and had stopped too soon.
+
+Wilson continued to insist on his agreeing to a decisive engagement on
+the following day, and on his refusal, he asked, "Was he then determined
+to open a free passage for Napoleon? to allow him to escape with his
+victory? What a cry of indignation would be raised in Petersburgh, in
+London, throughout all Europe! Did he not already hear the murmurs of
+his own troops?"
+
+Kutusoff, irritated at this, replied, that "he would certainly rather
+make a bridge of gold for the enemy than compromise his army, and with
+it the fate of the whole empire. Was not Napoleon fleeing? why then stop
+him and force him to conquer? The season was sufficient to destroy him:
+of all the allies of Russia, they could rely with most confidence on
+winter; and he should wait for its assistance. As for the Russian army,
+it was under his command, and it would obey him in spite of the clamours
+of Wilson; Alexander, when informed of his proceedings, would approve
+them. What did he care for England? was it for her that he was fighting?
+He was a true-born Russian, his fondest wish was to see Russia
+delivered, and delivered she would be without risking the chance of
+another battle; and as for the rest of Europe, it was nothing to him
+whether it was under the dominion of France or England."
+
+Thus was Wilson repulsed, and yet Kutusoff, shut up with the French army
+in the elevated plain of Malo-Yaroslawetz, was compelled to put himself
+into the most threatening attitude. He there drew up, on the 25th, all
+his divisions, and seven hundred pieces of artillery. No doubts were any
+longer entertained in the two armies that a decisive day had arrived:
+Wilson was of that opinion himself. He remarked that the Russian lines
+had at their back a muddy ravine, across which there was an unsafe
+bridge. This only way of retreat, in the sight of an enemy, appeared to
+him to be impracticable. Kutusoff was now in such a situation that he
+must either conquer or perish; and the Englishman was hugging himself at
+the prospect of a decisive engagement: whether its issue proved fatal to
+Napoleon or dangerous to Russia, it must be bloody, and England could
+not but be a gainer by it.
+
+Still uneasy, however, he went at night through the ranks: he was
+delighted to hear Kutusoff swear that he was at length going to fight;
+he triumphed on seeing all the Russian generals preparing for a terrible
+conflict; Beningsen alone had still his doubts on the subject. The
+Englishman, nevertheless, considering that the position no longer
+admitted of falling back, at length lay down to wait for daylight, when
+about three in the morning a general order for retreat awoke him. All
+his efforts were ineffectual. Kutusoff had resolved to direct his flight
+southward, first to Gonczarewo, and then beyond Kalouga; and at the Oka
+every thing was by this time ready for his passage.
+
+It was at that very instant that Napoleon ordered his troops to retire
+northward on Mojaisk. The two armies therefore turned their backs on
+each other, mutually deceiving each other by means of their rear-guards.
+
+On the part of Kutusoff, Wilson asserts, that his retreat was like a
+rout. Cavalry, cannon, carriages, and battalions thronged from all sides
+to the entrance of the bridge, against which the Russian army was
+backed. There all these columns, hurrying from the right, the left, and
+the centre, met, clashed, and became blended into so enormous and so
+dense a mass, that it lost all power of motion. It took several hours to
+disentangle it and to clear the passage. A few balls discharged by
+Davoust, which he regarded as thrown away, fell among this confused
+crowd.
+
+Napoleon needed but to have advanced upon this disorderly rabble. It was
+after the greatest effort, that of Malo-Yaroslawetz, had been made, and
+when he had nothing to do but to march, that he retreated. But such is
+war! in which it is impossible to attempt too much or to be too daring.
+One army knows not what the other is doing. The advanced posts are the
+exterior of these two great hostile bodies, by means of which they
+overawe one another. What an abyss there is between two armies that are
+in the presence of each other!
+
+Besides, it was perhaps because the Emperor had been wanting in prudence
+at Moscow that he was now deficient in audacity: he was worn out; the
+two affairs with the Cossacks had disgusted him: he felt for his
+wounded; so many horrors disheartened him, and like men of extreme
+resolutions, having ceased to hope for a complete victory, he determined
+upon a precipitate retreat.
+
+From that moment he had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on
+leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October
+that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust with
+twenty-five thousand men remained as a rear-guard. While he advanced a
+few paces, and, without being aware of it, spread consternation among
+the Russians, the grand army in astonishment turned its back on them. It
+marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of
+it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring
+his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.
+
+For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but
+two points where he could halt and rest, the first, Smolensk, and the
+second, Minsk. He had made these two towns his two great depôts, where
+immense magazines were established. But Wittgenstein, still before
+Polotsk, threatened the left flank of the former, and Tchitchakof,
+already at Bresk-litowsky, the right flank of the latter. Wittgenstein's
+force was gaining strength by recruits and fresh corps which he was
+daily receiving, and by the gradual diminution of that of Saint Cyr.
+
+Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six
+thousand fresh troops. The _corps d'armée_ had been at Smolensk ever
+since the beginning of September. He reckoned also upon detachments
+being sent from his depôts, on the sick and wounded who had recovered,
+and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into
+marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and
+fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease.
+He should therefore have time to regain that position on the Düna and
+the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence,
+added to that of Victor, Saint Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe
+Wittgenstein, check Kutusoff, and threaten Alexander even in his second
+capital.
+
+He therefore proclaimed that he was going to take post on the Düna. But
+it was not upon that river and the Borysthenes that his thoughts rested:
+he was sensible that it was not with a harassed and reduced army that he
+could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses,
+which the ice would speedily efface. He placed no reliance on a sea of
+snow six feet deep, with which winter would speedily cover those parts,
+but to which it would also give solidity: the whole then would be one
+wide road for the enemy to reach him, to penetrate into the intervals
+between his wooden cantonments, scattered over a frontier of two hundred
+leagues, and to burn them.
+
+Had he at first stopped there, as he declared he should on his arrival
+at Witepsk; had he there taken proper measures for preserving and
+recruiting his army; had Tormasof, Tchitchakof and Hoertel been driven
+out of Volhynia; had he raised a hundred thousand Cossacks in those rich
+provinces; his winter-quarters would then have been habitable. But now,
+nothing was ready for him there; and not only was his force inadequate
+to the purpose, but Tchitchakof, a hundred leagues in his rear, would
+still threaten his communications with Germany and France and his
+retreat. It was therefore at a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a
+more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina, it was to
+Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter-quarters,
+from which he was forty marches distant.
+
+But should he arrive there in time? He had reason to think so.
+Dombrowski and his Poles, placed around Bobruisk, would be sufficient to
+keep Ertell in check. As for Schwartzenberg, that general had been
+victorious; he was at the head of forty-two thousand Austrians, Saxons,
+and Poles, whom Durutte, and his French division, from Warsaw, would
+augment to more than fifty thousand men. He had pursued Tormasof as far
+as the Styr.
+
+It was true that the Russian army of Moldavia had just formed a junction
+with the remnant of the army of Volhynia; that Tchitchakof, an active
+and resolute general, had assumed the command of fifty-five thousand
+Russians; that the Austrian had paused and even thought it prudent, on
+the 23d of September, to retire behind the Bug; but he was to have
+recrossed that river at Bresk-litowsky, and Napoleon knew no more.
+
+At any rate, without a defection, which it was too late to foresee, and
+which a precipitate return could alone prevent, he flattered himself
+that Schwartzenberg, Regnier, Durutte, Dombrowski, and twenty thousand
+men, divided between Minsk, Slonim, Grodno, and Wilna--in short, that
+seventy thousand men; would not allow sixty thousand Russians to gain
+possession of his magazines and to cut off his retreat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+Napoleon, reduced to such hazardous conjectures, arrived quite pensive
+at Vereďa, when Mortier presented himself before him. But I perceive
+that, hurried along, just as we then were, by the rapid succession of
+violent scenes and memorable events, my attention has been diverted from
+a fact worthy of notice. On the 23d of October, at half-past one in the
+morning, the air was shaken by a tremendous explosion which for a moment
+astonished both armies, though amid such mighty expectations scarcely
+any thing now excited astonishment.
+
+Mortier had obeyed his orders; the Kremlin was no more: barrels of
+powder had been placed in all the halls of the palace of the Czars, and
+one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which
+supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on
+this volcano, which a Russian howitzer-shell might have exploded. Here
+he covered the march of the army upon Kalouga and the retreat of our
+different convoys towards Mojaisk.
+
+Among these eight thousand men there were scarcely two thousand on whom
+Mortier could rely: the others were dismounted cavalry, men of different
+countries and regiments, under new officers, without similar habits,
+without common recollections, in short, without any bond of union, who
+formed rather a rabble than an organized body; they could scarcely fail
+in a short time to disperse.
+
+This marshal was looked upon as a devoted victim. The other chiefs, his
+old companions in glory, had left him with tears in their eyes, as well
+as the Emperor, who said to him, "that he relied on his good fortune;
+but still in war we must sometimes make part of a fire." Mortier had
+resigned himself without hesitation. His orders were to defend the
+Kremlin, and on retreating to blow it up, and to burn what yet remained
+of the city. It was from the castle of Krasnopachra, on the 21st of
+October, that Napoleon had sent him his last orders. After executing
+them, Mortier was to march upon Vereďa and to form the rear-guard of the
+army.
+
+In this letter Napoleon particularly recommended to him "to put the men
+still remaining in the hospitals into the carriages belonging to the
+young guard, those of the dismounted cavalry, and any others that he
+might find. The Romans," added he, "awarded civic crowns to those who
+saved citizens: so many soldiers as he should save, so many crowns would
+the Duke of Treviso deserve. He must put them on his horses and those of
+any of his troops. It was thus that he, Napoleon, acted at St. Jean
+d'Acre. He ought so much the more to take this measure, since, as soon
+as the convoy should have rejoined the army, there would be plenty of
+horses and carriages, which the consumption would have rendered useless
+for its supply. The Emperor hoped that he should have to testify his
+satisfaction to the Duke of Treviso for having saved him five hundred
+men. He must begin with the officers and then with the subalterns, and
+give the preference to Frenchmen. He would therefore assemble all the
+generals and officers under his command, to make them sensible of the
+importance of this measure, and how well they would deserve of the
+Emperor if they saved him five hundred men."
+
+Meanwhile, as the grand army was leaving Moscow, the Cossacks were
+penetrating into the suburbs, and Mortier had retired towards the
+Kremlin, as a remnant of life retires towards the heart, when death has
+begun to seize the extremities. These Cossacks were the scouts to ten
+thousand Russians under the command of Winzingerode.
+
+This foreigner, inflamed with hatred of Napoleon, and animated by the
+desire of retaking Moscow and naturalizing himself in Russia by this
+signal exploit, pushed on to a considerable distance from his men; he
+traversed, running, the Georgian colony, hastened towards the Chinese
+town and the Kremlin, met with advanced posts, mistook them, fell into
+an ambuscade, and finding himself a prisoner in a city which he had come
+to take, he suddenly changed his part, waving his handkerchief in the
+air, and declaring that he had brought a flag of truce.
+
+He was conducted to the Duke of Treviso. There he claimed, in a high
+tone, the protection of the law of nations, which, he said, was violated
+in his person. Mortier replied, that "a general-in-chief, coming in this
+manner, might be taken for a rash soldier, but never for a flag of
+truce, and that he must immediately deliver his sword." The Russian
+general, having no longer any hope of imposing upon him, complied and
+admitted his imprudence.
+
+At length, after four days' resistance, the French bid an eternal adieu
+to that fatal city. They carried with them four hundred wounded, and, on
+retiring, deposited, in a safe and secret place, a fire-work skilfully
+prepared, which a slow fire was already consuming; its progress was
+minutely calculated; so that it was known at what hour the fire would
+reach the immense heap of powder buried among the foundations of these
+condemned palaces.
+
+Mortier hastened his flight; but while he was rapidly retiring, some
+greedy Cossacks and squalid Muscovites, allured probably by the prospect
+of pillage, approached; they listened, and emboldened by the apparent
+quiet which pervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate into it;
+they ascended, and their hands, eager after plunder, were already
+stretched forth, when in a moment they were all destroyed, crushed,
+hurled into the air, with the buildings which they had come to pillage,
+and thirty thousand stand of arms that had been left behind there: and
+then their mangled limbs, mixed with fragments of walls and shattered
+weapons, blown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower.
+
+The earth shook under the feet of Mortier. At Feminskoe, ten leagues
+off, the Emperor heard the explosion, and he himself, in that tone of
+anger in which he sometimes addressed Europe, published the following
+day a bulletin, dated from Borowsk, to this effect, that "the Kremlin,
+the arsenal, the magazines were all destroyed; that the ancient citadel,
+which dated from the origin of the monarchy, and the first palace of the
+Czars, no longer existed; that Moscow was now but a heap of ruins, a
+filthy and unwholesome sink, without importance, either political or
+military. He had abandoned it to Russian beggars and plunderers to march
+against Kutusoff, to throw himself on the left wing of that general, to
+drive him back, and then to proceed quietly to the banks of the Düna,
+where he should take up his winter-quarters." Then, apprehensive lest he
+should appear to be retreating, he added, that "there he should be
+within eighty leagues of Wilna and Petersburg, a double advantage; that
+is to say, twenty marches nearer to his resources and his object." By
+this remark he hoped to give to his retreat the air of an offensive
+march.
+
+It was on this occasion that he declared, that "he had refused to give
+orders for the destruction of the whole country which he was quitting;
+he felt a repugnance to aggravate the miseries of its inhabitants. To
+punish the Russian incendiary and a hundred wretches who make war like
+Tartars, he would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two
+hundred thousand serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely
+destitute of resources."
+
+He had not then been soured by misfortune; but in three days every thing
+had changed. After coming in collision with Kutusoff, he retreated
+through this same town of Borowsk, and no sooner had he passed through
+it than it ceased to exist. It was thus that in future all was destined
+to be burned behind him. While conquering, he had preserved: when
+retiring, he resolved to destroy: either from necessity, to ruin the
+enemy and to retard his march, every thing being imperative in war; or
+by way of reprisal, the dreadful consequence of wars of invasion, which
+in the first place authorize every means of defence, while these
+afterwards operate as motives to those of attack.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the aggression in this terrible
+species of warfare was not on the side of Napoleon. On the 19th of
+October, Berthier had written to Kutusoff, proposing "to regulate
+hostilities in such a manner that they might not inflict on the
+Muscovite empire more evils than were inseparable from a state of war;
+the devastation of Russia being as detrimental to that empire as it was
+painful to Napoleon." But Kutusoff replied, that "it was not in his
+power to restrain the Russian patriotism," which amounted to an approval
+of the Tartar war made upon us by his militia, and authorized us in some
+measure to repay them in their own coin.
+
+The like flames consumed Vereďa, where Mortier rejoined the Emperor,
+bringing to him Winzingerode. At sight of that German general, all the
+secret resentments of Napoleon took fire; his dejection gave place to
+anger, and he discharged all the spleen that oppressed him upon his
+enemy. "Who are you?" he exclaimed, crossing his arms with violence as
+if to grasp and to restrain himself, "a man without country! You have
+always been my personal enemy. When I was at war with the Austrians, I
+found you in their ranks. Austria is become my ally, and you have
+entered into the Russian service. You have been one of the warmest
+instigators of the present war. Nevertheless you are a native of the
+states of the Confederation of the Rhine; you are my subject. You are
+not an ordinary enemy, you are a rebel; I have a right to bring you to
+trial! _Gendarmes d'élite_, seize this man!" The _gendarmes_ remained
+motionless, like men accustomed to see these violent scenes terminate
+without effect, and sure of obeying best by disobeying.
+
+The Emperor resumed: "Do you see, sir, this devastated country, these
+villages in flames? To whom are these disasters to be charged? to fifty
+adventurers like yourself, paid by England, who has thrown them upon the
+continent; but the weight of this war will ultimately fall on those who
+have excited it. In six months I shall be at Petersburg, and I will call
+them to account for all this swaggering."
+
+Then addressing the aide-de-camp of Winzingerode, who was a prisoner
+like himself, "As for you, Count Narischkin," said he, "I have nothing
+to upbraid you with; you are a Russian, you are doing your duty; but how
+could a man of one of the first families in Russia become the
+aide-de-camp of a foreign mercenary? Be the aide-de-camp of a Russian
+general; that employment will be far more honourable."
+
+Till then General Winzingerode had not had an opportunity to answer this
+violent language, except by his attitude: it was calm as his reply. "The
+Emperor Alexander," he said, "was his benefactor and that of his family:
+all that he possessed he owed to him; gratitude had made him his
+subject; he was at the post which his benefactor had allotted to him,
+and consequently he was only doing his duty."
+
+Napoleon added some threats, but in a less violent strain, and he
+confined himself to words, either because he had vented all his wrath in
+the first explosion, or because he merely designed to frighten the
+Germans who might be tempted to abandon him. Such at least was the
+interpretation which those about him put upon his violence. It was
+disapproved; no account was taken of it, and each was eager to accost
+the captive general, to tranquillize and to console him. These
+attentions were continued till the army reached Lithuania, where the
+Cossacks retook Winzingerode and his aide-de-camp. The Emperor had
+affected to treat this young Russian nobleman with kindness, at the same
+time that he stormed so loudly against his general--a proof that there
+was calculation even in his wrath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk. That town was still full
+of wounded; some were carried away and the rest collected together and
+left, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians. Napoleon had
+proceeded but a few wersts from that place, when the winter began. Thus,
+after an obstinate combat, and ten days' marching and countermarching,
+the army, which had brought from Moscow only fifteen rations of flour
+per man, had advanced but three days' march in its retreat. It was in
+want of provisions and overtaken by the winter.
+
+Some men had already sunk under these hardships. In the first days of
+the retreat, on the 26th of October, carriages, laden with provisions,
+which the horses could no longer draw, were burned. The order for
+setting fire to all behind the army then followed; in obedience to it,
+powder-waggons, the horses of which were already worn out, were blown up
+together with the houses. But at length, as the enemy had not again
+shown himself, we seemed to be but once more setting out on a toilsome
+journey; and Napoleon, on again seeing the well-known road, was
+recovering his confidence, when, towards evening, a Russian chasseur,
+who had been made prisoner, was sent to him by Davoust.
+
+At first he questioned him carelessly; but as chance would have it, this
+Russian had some knowledge of roads, names, and distances. He answered,
+that "the whole Russian army was marching by Medyn upon Wiazma." The
+Emperor then became attentive. Did Kutusoff mean to forestall him there,
+as at Malo-Yaroslawetz, to cut off his retreat upon Smolensk, as he had
+done that upon Kalouga, and to coop him up in this desert without
+provisions, without shelter, and in the midst of a general insurrection?
+His first impulse, however, inclined him to reject this notion; for,
+whether owing to pride or experience, he was accustomed not to give his
+adversaries credit for that ability which he should have displayed in
+their place.
+
+In this instance, however, he had another motive. His security was but
+affected: for it was evident that the Russian army was taking the Medyn
+road, the very one which Davoust had recommended for the French army:
+and Davoust, either from vanity or inadvertence, had not confided this
+alarming intelligence to his dispatch alone. Napoleon feared its effects
+on his troops, and therefore affected to disbelieve and to despise it;
+but at the same time he gave orders that his guard should march next day
+in all haste, and so long as it should be light, as far as Gjatz. Here
+he proposed to afford rest and provisions to this flower of his army, to
+ascertain, so much nearer, the direction of Kutusoff's march, and to be
+beforehand with him at that point.
+
+But he had not consulted the season, which seemed to avenge the slight.
+Winter was so near at hand, that a blast of a few minutes was sufficient
+to bring it on, sharp, biting, intense. We were immediately sensible
+that it was indigenous to this country, and that we were strangers in
+it. Every thing was altered: roads, faces, courage: the army became
+sullen, the march toilsome, and consternation began.
+
+Some leagues from Mojaisk, we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a
+large rivulet; two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks
+were sufficient to ensure the passage: but such was the confusion and
+inattention, that the Emperor was detained there. Several pieces of
+cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It
+seemed as if each _corps d'armée_ was marching separately as if there
+was no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing that bound these
+corps together. In reality the elevation of each of their chiefs
+rendered them too independent of one another. The Emperor himself had
+become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance
+from the details of his army; and Berthier, holding an intermediate
+place between him and officers, who were all kings, princes, or
+marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution. He was
+besides wholly incompetent to the situation.
+
+The Emperor, stopped by the trifling obstacle of a broken bridge,
+confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and
+contempt; to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On
+this particular point he had received no orders from the Emperor: he
+therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a
+faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear and
+distinct, he reflected, he repeated the Emperor, but added nothing, and
+what Napoleon forgot was forgotten without retrieve.
+
+After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some
+of us, raising our eyes, uttered an exclamation of horror. Each
+instantly looked around him, and beheld a plain trampled, bare and
+devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface,
+and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared to be the
+most misshapen. It had all the appearance of an extinguished and
+destroyed volcano. The ground was covered all around with fragments of
+helmets and cuirasses, broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms,
+and standards dyed with blood.
+
+On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corses. A number
+of skeletons, left on the summit of one of the hills, overlooked the
+whole. It seemed as if death had here fixed his empire; it was that
+terrible redoubt, the conquest and the grave of Caulaincourt. Presently
+the cry, "It is the field of the great battle!" formed a long and
+doleful murmur. The Emperor passed quickly. Nobody stopped. Cold,
+hunger, and the enemy urged us on: we merely turned our faces as we
+proceeded to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so many
+companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whom we were obliged to
+leave behind.
+
+It was here that we had inscribed with the sword and blood one of the
+most memorable pages of our history. A few relics yet recorded it, and
+they would soon be swept away. Some day the traveller will pass with
+indifference over this plain, undistinguished from any other; but when
+he shall learn that it was the theatre of the great battle, he will turn
+back, long survey it with inquisitive looks, impress its minutest
+features on his greedy memory, and doubtless exclaim, What men! what a
+commander! what a destiny! These were the soldiers, who thirteen years
+before in the south attempted a passage to the East, through Egypt, and
+were dashed against its gates. They afterwards conquered Europe, and
+hither they came by the north to present themselves again before that
+same Asia, to be again foiled. What then urged them into this roving and
+adventurous life? They were not barbarians, seeking a more genial
+climate, more commodious habitations, more enchanting spectacles,
+greater wealth: on the contrary, they possessed all these advantages,
+and all possible pleasures; and yet they forsook them, to live without
+shelter, and without food, to fall daily and in succession, either slain
+or mutilated. What necessity drove them to this?--Why, what but
+confidence in a leader hitherto infallible! the ambition to complete a
+great work gloriously begun! the intoxication of victory, and above all,
+that insatiable thirst of fame, that powerful instinct, which impels man
+to seek death, in order to obtain immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+While the army was passing this fatal field in grave and silent
+meditation, one of the victims of that sanguinary day was perceived, it
+is said, still living, and piercing the air with his groans. It was
+found by those who ran up to him that he was a French soldier. Both his
+legs had been broken in the engagement; he had fallen among the dead,
+where he remained unnoticed. The body of a horse, gutted by a shell, was
+at first his asylum; afterwards, for fifty days, the muddy water of a
+ravine, into which he had rolled, and the putrified flesh of the dead,
+had served for dressing for his wounds and food for the support of his
+languishing existence. Those who say that they discovered this man
+affirm that they saved him.
+
+Farther on, we again beheld the great abbey or hospital of Kolotskoi, a
+sight still more hideous than that of the field of battle. At Borodino
+all was death, but not without its quiet; there at least the battle was
+over; at Kolotskoi it was still raging. Death here seemed to be pursuing
+his victims, who had escaped from the engagement, with the utmost
+malignity; he penetrated into them by all their senses at once. They
+were destitute of every thing for repelling his attacks, excepting
+orders, which it was impossible to execute in these deserts, and which,
+moreover, issuing from too high and too distant a quarter, passed
+through too many hands to be executed.
+
+Still, in spite of famine, cold, and the most complete destitution, the
+devotedness of a few surgeons and a remnant of hope, still supported a
+great number of wounded in this pestiferous abode. But when they saw the
+army repass, and that they were about to be left behind, the least
+infirm crawled to the threshold of the door, lined the way, and extended
+towards us their supplicating hands.
+
+The Emperor had just given orders that each carriage, of whatever kind
+it might be, should take up one of these unfortunate creatures, that the
+weakest should be left, as at Moscow, under the protection of such of
+the wounded and captive Russian officers as had been recovered by our
+attentions. He halted to see this order carried into execution, and it
+was at a fire kindled with his forsaken waggons that he and most of his
+attendants warmed themselves. Ever since morning a multitude of
+explosions proclaimed the numerous sacrifices of this kind which it
+already had been found necessary to make.
+
+During this halt, an atrocious action was witnessed. Several of the
+wounded had just been placed in the suttlers' carts. These wretches,
+whose vehicles were overloaded with the plunder of Moscow, murmured at
+the new burden imposed upon them; but being compelled to admit it, they
+held their peace. No sooner, however, had the army recommenced its
+march, than they slackened their pace, dropped behind their columns, and
+taking advantage of a lonely situation, they threw all the unfortunate
+men committed to their care into the ditches. One only lived long enough
+to be picked up by the next carriages that passed: he was a general, and
+through him this atrocious procedure became known. A shudder of horror
+spread throughout the column; it reached the Emperor; for the sufferings
+of the army were not yet so severe and so universal as to stifle pity,
+and to concentrate all his affections within the bosom of each
+individual.
+
+In the evening of this long day, as the imperial column approached
+Gjatz, it was surprised to find Russians quite recently killed on the
+way. It was remarked, that each of them had his head shattered in the
+same manner, and that his bloody brains were scattered near him. It was
+known that two thousand Russian prisoners were marching on before, and
+that their guard consisted of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Poles. On this
+discovery, each, according to his disposition, was indignant, approved,
+or remained indifferent. Around the Emperor these various feelings were
+mute. Caulaincourt broke out into the exclamation, that "it was an
+atrocious cruelty. Here was a pretty specimen of the civilization which
+we were introducing into Russia! What would be the effect of this
+barbarity on the enemy? Were we not leaving our wounded and a multitude
+of prisoners at his mercy? Did he want the means of wreaking the most
+horrible retaliation?"
+
+Napoleon preserved a gloomy silence, but on the ensuing day these
+murders had ceased. These unfortunate people were then merely left to
+die of hunger in the enclosures where, at night, they were confined like
+cattle. This was no doubt a barbarity too; but what could we do?
+Exchange them? the enemy rejected the proposal. Release them? they would
+have gone and published the general distress, and, soon joined by
+others, they would have returned to pursue us. In this mortal warfare,
+to give them their lives would have been sacrificing our own. We were
+cruel from necessity. The mischief arose from our having involved
+ourselves in so dreadful an alternative.
+
+Besides, in their march to the interior of Russia, our soldiers, who had
+been made prisoners, were not more humanely treated, and there,
+certainly, imperious necessity was not an excuse.
+
+At length the troops arrived with the night at Gjatz; but this first day
+of winter had been cruelly occupied. The sight of the field of battle,
+and of the two forsaken hospitals, the multitude of waggons consigned to
+the flames, the Russians with their brains blown out, the excessive
+length of the march, the first severities of winter, all concurred to
+render it horrible: the retreat became a flight; and Napoleon, compelled
+to yield and run away, was a spectacle perfectly novel.
+
+Several of our allies enjoyed it with that inward satisfaction which is
+felt by inferiors, when they see their chiefs at length thwarted, and
+obliged in their turn to give way. They indulged that miserable envy
+that is excited by extraordinary success, which rarely occurs without
+being abused, and which shocks that equality which is the first want of
+man. But this malicious joy was soon extinguished and lost in the
+universal distress.
+
+The wounded pride of Napoleon justified the supposition of such
+reflections. This was perceived in one of the halts of that day: there,
+on the rough furrows of a frozen field, strewed with wrecks both Russian
+and French, he attempted, by the energy of his words, to relieve himself
+from the weight of the insupportable responsibility of so many
+disasters. "He had in fact dreaded this war, and he devoted its author
+to the execration of the whole world. It was ---- whom he accused of
+this; it was that Russian minister, sold to the English, who had
+fomented it, and the traitor had drawn into it both Alexander and
+himself."
+
+These words, uttered before two of his generals, were heard with that
+silence enjoined by old respect, added to that which is due to
+misfortune. But the Duke of Vicenza, perhaps too impatient, betrayed his
+indignation by a gesture of anger and incredulity, and, abruptly
+retiring, put an end to this painful conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+From Gjatz the Emperor proceeded in two marches to Wiazma. He there
+halted to wait for Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the
+road of Medyn and Yucknow, which runs at that place into the high road
+to Smolensk. It was this cross-road which might bring the Russian army
+from Malo-Yaroslawetz on his passage. But on the first of November,
+after waiting thirty-six hours, Napoleon had not seen any avant-courier
+of that army; he set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had
+fallen asleep, and the fear that the Russian had left Wiazma on his
+right, and proceeded two marches farther towards Dorogobouje to cut off
+his retreat. At any rate, he left Ney at Wiazma, to collect the first
+and fourth corps, and to relieve, as the rear-guard, Davoust, whom he
+judged to be fatigued.
+
+He complained of the tardiness of the latter; he wrote to reproach him
+with being still five marches behind him, when he ought to have been no
+more than three days later; he considered the genius of that marshal as
+too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.
+
+The whole army, and the corps of Prince Eugene in particular, repeated
+these complaints. They said, that "owing to his spirit of order and
+obstinacy, Davoust had suffered the enemy to overtake him at the Abbey
+of Kalotskoi; that he had there done ragamuffin Cossacks the honour of
+retiring before them, step by step, and in square battalions, as if they
+had been Mamelukes; that Platof, with his cannon, had played at a
+distance on the deep masses which he had presented to him; that then
+only the marshal had opposed to them merely a few slender lines, which
+had speedily formed again, and some light pieces, the first fire of
+which had produced the desired effect; but that these manoeuvres and
+regular foraging excursions had occasioned a great loss of time, which
+is always valuable in retreat, and especially amidst famine, through
+which the most skilful manoeuvre was to pass with all possible
+expedition."
+
+In reply to this, Davoust urged his natural horror of every kind of
+disorder, which had at first led him to attempt to introduce regularity
+into this flight; he had endeavoured to cover the wrecks of it, fearing
+the shame and the danger of leaving for the enemy these evidences of our
+disastrous state.
+
+He added, that, "people were not aware of all that he had had to
+surmount; he had found the country completely devastated, houses
+demolished, and the trees burned to their very roots; for it was not to
+him who came last, that the work of general destruction had been left;
+the conflagration preceded him. It appeared as if the rear-guard had
+been totally forgotten! No doubt, too, people forgot the frozen road
+rough with the tracks of all who had gone before him; as well as the
+deep fords and broken bridges, which no one thought of repairing, as
+each corps, when not engaged, cared but for itself alone."
+
+Did they not know besides, that the whole tremendous train of
+stragglers, belonging to the other corps, on horseback, on foot, and in
+vehicles, aggravated these embarrassments, just as in a diseased body
+all the complaints fly to and unite in the part most affected? Every day
+he marched between these wretches and the Cossacks, driving forward the
+one and pressed by the other.
+
+Thus, after passing Gjatz, he had found the slough of Czarewo-Zaimcze
+without a bridge, and completely encumbered with carriages. He had
+dragged them out of the marsh in sight of the enemy, and so near to them
+that their fires lighted his labours, and the sound of their drums
+mingled with that of his voice. For the marshal and his generals could
+not yet resolve to relinquish to the enemy so many trophies; nor did
+they make up their minds to it, till after superfluous exertions, and in
+the last extremity, which happened several times a day.
+
+The road was in fact crossed every moment by marshy hollows. A slope,
+slippery as glass with the frost, hurried the carriages into them and
+there they stuck; to draw them out it was necessary to climb the
+opposite ascent by an icy road, where the horses, whose shoes were worn
+quite smooth, could not obtaining a footing, and where every moment they
+and their drivers dropped exhausted one upon the other. The famished
+soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to
+pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they
+broiled the yet bleeding flesh and devoured it.
+
+Meanwhile the artillerymen, a chosen corps, and their officers, all
+brought up in the first school in the world, kept off these unfortunate
+wretches whenever they could, and took the horses from their own chaises
+and waggons, which they abandoned to save the guns. To these they
+harnessed their horses, nay even themselves: the Cossacks, observing
+this disaster from a distance, durst not approach; but with their light
+pieces mounted on sledges they threw their balls into all this disorder,
+and served to increase it.
+
+The first corps had already lost ten thousand men: nevertheless, by dint
+of efforts and sacrifices, the viceroy and the Prince of Eckmühl were,
+on the 2d of November, within two leagues of Wiazma. It is certain that
+the same day they might have passed that town, joined Ney, and avoided a
+disastrous engagement. It is affirmed, that such was the opinion of
+Prince Eugene, but that Davoust believed his troops to be too much
+fatigued, on which the viceroy, sacrificing himself to his duty, staid
+to share a danger which he foresaw. Davoust's generals say, on the
+contrary, that Prince Eugene, who was already encamped, could not find
+in his heart to make his soldiers leave their fires and their meal,
+which they had already begun, and the cooking of which always cost them
+a great deal of trouble.
+
+Be that as it may, during the deceptive tranquillity of that night, the
+advanced-guard of the Russians arrived from Malo-Yaroslawetz, our
+retreat from which place had put an end to theirs: it skirted along the
+two French corps and that of Poniatowski, passed their bivouacs, and
+disposed its columns of attack against the left flank of the road, in
+the intermediate two leagues which Davoust and Eugene had left between
+themselves and Wiazma.
+
+Miloradowitch, whom we denominated the Russian Murat, commanded this
+advanced-guard. He was, according to his countrymen, an indefatigable
+and successful warrior, impetuous as that soldier-king, of a stature
+equally remarkable, and, like him, a favourite of fortune. He was never
+known to be wounded, though numbers of officers and soldiers had fallen
+around him, and several horses had been killed under him. He despised
+the principles of war: he even made an art of not following the rules of
+that art, pretending to surprise the enemy by unexpected blows, for he
+was prompt in decision; he disdained to make any preparations, leaving
+places and circumstances to suggest what was proper to be done, and
+guiding himself only by sudden inspirations. In other respects, a
+general in the field of battle alone, he was destitute of foresight in
+the management of any affairs, either public or private, a notorious
+spendthrift, and, what is rare, not less upright than prodigal.
+
+It was this general, with Platof and twenty thousand men, whom we had
+now to fight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+On the 3d of November, Prince Eugene was proceeding towards Wiazma,
+preceded by his equipages and his artillery, when the first light of day
+shewed him at once his retreat threatened by an army on his left; behind
+him his rear-guard cut off; and on his left the plain covered with
+stragglers and scattered vehicles, fleeing before the lances of the
+enemy. At the same time, towards Wiazma, he heard Marshal Ney, who
+should have assisted him, fighting for his own preservation.
+
+That Prince was not one of those generals, the offspring of favour, to
+whom every thing is unexpected and cause of astonishment, for want of
+experience. He immediately looked the evil in the face, and set about
+remedying it. He halted, turned about, deployed his divisions on the
+right of the high road, and checked in the plain the Russian columns,
+who were striving to cut him off from that road. Their foremost troops,
+overpowering the right of the Italians, had already seized one point, of
+which they kept possession, when Ney despatched from Wiazma one of his
+regiments, which attacked them in the rear and dislodged them.
+
+At the same time Compans, a general of Davoust's, joined the Italian
+rear-guard with his division. They cleared a way for themselves, and
+while they, united with the Viceroy, were engaged, Davoust with his
+column passed rapidly behind them, along the left side of the high road,
+then crossing it as soon as he had got beyond them, he claimed his place
+in the order of battle, took the right wing, and found himself between
+Wiazma and the Russians. Prince Eugene gave up to him the ground which
+he had defended, and crossed to the other side of the road. The enemy
+then began to extend himself before them, and endeavoured to break
+through their wings.
+
+By the success of this first manoeuvre, the two French and Italian
+corps had not conquered the right to continue their retreat, but only
+the possibility of defending it. They were still thirty thousand strong;
+but in the first corps, that of Davoust, there was some disorder. The
+hastiness of the manoeuvre, the surprise, so much wretchedness, and,
+above all, the fatal example of a multitude of dismounted cavalry,
+without arms, and running to and fro bewildered with fear, threw it into
+confusion.
+
+This sight encouraged the enemy; he took it for a rout. His artillery,
+superior in number, manoeuvred at a gallop: it took obliquely and in
+flank our lines, which it cut down, while the French cannon, already at
+Wiazma, and which had been ordered to return in haste, could with
+difficulty be brought along. However, Davoust and his generals had still
+their firmest troops, about them. Several of these officers, still
+suffering from the wounds received at the Moskwa, one with his arm in a
+sling, another with his head wrapped in cloths, were seen supporting the
+best, encouraging the most irresolute, dashing at the enemy's batteries,
+forcing them to retire, and even seizing three of their pieces; in
+short, astonishing both the enemy and their own fugitives, and combating
+a mischievous example by their noble behaviour.
+
+Miloradowitch, perceiving that his prey was escaping, now applied for
+reinforcement; and it was again Wilson, who was sure to be present
+wherever he could be most injurious to France, who hastened to summon
+Kutusoff. He found the old marshal unconcernedly resting himself with
+his army within hearing of the action. The ardent Wilson, urgent as the
+occasion, excited him in vain: he could not induce him to stir.
+Transported with indignation, he called him traitor, and declared that
+he would instantly despatch one of his Englishmen full speed to
+Petersburg, to denounce his treason to his Emperor and his allies.
+
+This threat had no effect on Kutusoff; he persisted in remaining
+inactive; either because to the frost of age was superadded that of
+winter, and that in his shattered frame his mind was depressed by the
+sight of so many ruins; or that, from another effect of old age, a
+person becomes prudent when he has scarcely any thing to risk, and a
+temporiser when he has no more time to lose. He seemed still to be of
+opinion, as at Malo-Yaroslawetz, that the Russian winter alone could
+overthrow Napoleon; that this genius, the conqueror of men, was not yet
+sufficiently conquered by Nature; that it was best to leave to the
+climate the honour of that victory, and to the Russian atmosphere the
+work of vengeance.
+
+Miloradowitch, left to himself, then tried to break the French line of
+battle; but he could not penetrate it except by his fire, which made
+dreadful havoc in it. Eugene and Davoust were growing weak; and as they
+heard another action in the rear of their right, they imagined that the
+rest of the Russian army was approaching Wiazma by the Yuknof road, the
+outlet of which Ney was defending.
+
+It was only an advanced-guard: but they were alarmed at the noise of
+this fight in the rear of their own, threatening their retreat. The
+action had lasted ever since seven in the morning; night was
+approaching; the baggage must by this time have got away; the French
+generals therefore began to retire.
+
+This retrograde movement increased the ardour of the enemy, and but for
+a memorable effort of the 25th, 57th, and 85th regiments, and the
+protection of a ravine, Davoust's corps would have been broken, turned
+by its right, and destroyed. Prince Eugene, who was not so briskly
+attacked, was able to effect his retreat more rapidly through Wiazma;
+but the Russians followed him thither, and had penetrated into the town,
+when Davoust, pursued by twenty thousand men, and overwhelmed by eighty
+pieces of cannon, attempted to pass in his turn.
+
+Morand's division first entered the town: it was marching on with
+confidence, under the idea that the action was over, when the Russians,
+who were concealed by the windings of the streets, suddenly fell upon
+it. The surprise was complete and the confusion great: Morand
+nevertheless rallied and re-encouraged his men, retrieved matters, and
+fought his way through.
+
+It was Compans who put an end to the whole. He closed the march with his
+division. Finding himself too closely pressed by the bravest troops of
+Miloradowitch, he turned about, dashed in person at the most eager,
+overthrew them, and having thus made them fear him, he finished his
+retreat without further molestation. This conflict was glorious to each,
+and its result disastrous to all: it was without order and unity. There
+would have been troops enough to conquer, had there not been too many
+commanders. It was not till near two o'clock that the latter met to
+concert their manoeuvres, and these were even then executed without
+harmony.
+
+When at length the river, the town of Wiazma, night, mutual fatigue, and
+Marshal Ney had separated them from the enemy, the danger being
+adjourned and the bivouacs established, the numbers were counted.
+Several pieces of cannon which had been broken, the baggage, and four
+thousand killed or wounded, were missing. Many of the soldiers had
+dispersed. Their honour was saved, but there were immense gaps in the
+ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring every thing within a
+narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each
+regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion a platoon. The
+soldiers had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, or officers.
+
+This sad re-organization took place by the light of the conflagration of
+Wiazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and
+Miloradowitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double
+darkness of night and the forests. Several times the relics of these
+brave troops, conceiving that they were attacked, crawled to their arms.
+Next morning, when they fell into their ranks again, they were
+astonished at the smallness of their number.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+The spirits of the troops were 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, of that universal
+source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the
+spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed us.
+
+But on the 6th of November, the heavens declared against us. Their azure
+disappeared. The army marched enveloped in cold fogs. These fogs became
+thicker, and presently an immense cloud descended upon it in large
+flakes of snow. It seemed as if the very sky was falling, and joining
+the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects
+changed their appearance, and became confounded, and not to be
+recognised again; we proceeded, without knowing where we were, without
+perceiving the point to which we were bound; every thing was transformed
+into an obstacle. While the soldier was struggling with the tempest of
+wind and snow, the flakes, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated
+in every hollow; their surfaces concealed unknown abysses, which
+perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the men were engulphed, and
+the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found a grave in these
+snow-pits.
+
+Those who followed turned aside, but the storm drove into their faces
+both the snow that was descending from the sky, and that which it raised
+from the ground: it seemed bent on opposing their progress. The Russian
+winter, under this new form, attacked them on all sides: it penetrated
+through their light garments and their torn shoes and boots. Their wet
+clothes froze upon their bodies; an icy envelope encased them and
+stiffened all their limbs. A keen and violent wind interrupted
+respiration: it seized their breath at the moment when they exhaled it,
+and converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all round
+their mouths.
+
+The unfortunate creatures still crawled on, shivering, till the snow,
+gathering like balls under their feet, or the fragment of some broken
+article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades,
+caused them to stumble and fall. There they groaned in vain; the snow
+soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spot where they lay: such
+was their only grave! The road was studded with these undulations, like
+a cemetery: the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected;
+they passed on quickly with averted looks. But before them, around them,
+there was nothing but snow: this immense and dreary uniformity extended
+farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded; it was
+like 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 funeral verdure, the motionless aspect of their
+gigantic black trunks and their dismal look, which completed the doleful
+appearance of a general mourning, and of an army dying amidst a nature
+already dead.
+
+Every thing, even to their very arms, still offensive at
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, but since then defensive only, now turned against
+them. These seemed to their frozen limbs insupportably heavy, in the
+frequent falls which they experienced, they dropped from their hands and
+were broken or buried in the snow. If they rose again, it was without
+them; for they did not throw them away; hunger and cold wrested them
+from their grasp. The fingers of many others were frozen to the musket
+which they still held, which deprived them of the motion necessary for
+keeping up some degree of warmth and life.
+
+We soon met with numbers of men belonging to all the corps, sometimes
+singly, at others in troops. They had not basely deserted their colours;
+it was cold and inanition which had separated them from their columns.
+In this general and individual struggle, they had parted from one
+another, and there they were, disarmed, vanquished, defenceless, without
+leaders, obeying nothing but the 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 passage, all had been laid waste to the
+extent of seven or eight leagues; they met with nothing but Cossacks,
+and an armed population, which encompassed, wounded, and stripped them
+naked, and then left them, with ferocious bursts of laughter, to expire
+on 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
+nobly a country which they were unable to defend, hovered on both flanks
+of the army under favour of the woods. Those whom they did not despatch
+with their pikes and hatchets, they brought back to the fatal and
+all-devouring high road.
+
+Night then came on--a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow which
+covered every thing, they knew not where to halt, where to sit, where to
+lie down, where to find some root or other to eat, and 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 kept together. They strove to establish themselves;
+but the tempest, still active, dispersed the first preparations for
+bivouacs. The pines, laden with frost, obstinately resisted the flames;
+their snow, that from the sky which yet continued to fall fast, and that
+on the ground, which melted with the efforts of the soldiers, and the
+effect of the first fires, extinguished those fires, as well as the
+strength and spirits of the men.
+
+When at length the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and
+soldiers around them prepared their wretched repast; it consisted of
+lean and bloody pieces of flesh torn from the horses that were knocked
+up, and at most a few spoonfuls of rye-flour mixed with snow-water. Next
+morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked 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
+lively army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an
+advanced civilization, discouragement and neglect of discipline spread
+rapidly, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil as in good.
+Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, at every
+moment, some portion separated from the yet organised troops, and fell
+into disorder. There were some, however, who withstood this wide
+contagion of indiscipline and despondency. These were officers,
+non-commissioned officers, and steady soldiers. These were extraordinary
+men: they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk,
+which they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised
+that all their wants should be supplied.
+
+It was in this manner that, after this deluge of snow, and the increase
+of cold which it foreboded, each, whether officer or soldier, preserved
+or lost his fortitude, according to his disposition, his age, and his
+constitution. That one of our leaders who had hitherto been the
+strictest in enforcing discipline, now paid little attention to it.
+Thrown out of all his fixed ideas of regularity, order, and method, he
+was seized with despair at the sight of such universal disorder, and
+conceiving, before the others, that all was lost, he felt himself ready
+to abandon all.
+
+From Gjatz to Mikalewska, a village between Dorogobouje and Smolensk,
+nothing remarkable occurred in the imperial column, unless that it was
+found necessary to throw the spoils of Moscow into the lake of Semlewo:
+cannon, gothic armour, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of
+Ivan the Great, were buried in its waters; trophies, glory, all those
+acquisitions to which we had sacrificed every thing, became a burden to
+us; our object was no longer to embellish, to adorn life, but to
+preserve it. In this vast wreck, the army, like a great ship tossed by
+the most tremendous of tempests, threw without hesitation into that sea
+of ice and snow, every thing that could slacken or impede its progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+During the 3d and 4th of November Napoleon halted at Stakowo. This
+repose, and the shame of appearing to flee, inflamed his imagination. He
+dictated orders, according to which his rear-guard, by appearing to
+retreat in disorder, was to draw the Russians into an ambuscade, where
+he should be waiting for them in person; but this vain project passed
+off with the pre-occupation which gave it birth. On the 5th he slept at
+Dorogobouje. Here he found the hand-mills which were ordered for the
+expedition at the time the cantonments of Smolensk were projected; of
+these a late and totally useless distribution was made.
+
+Next day, the 6th of November, opposite to Mikalewska, at the moment
+when the clouds, laden with sleet and snow, were bursting over our
+heads, Count Daru was seen hastening up, and a circle of vedettes
+forming around him and the Emperor.
+
+An express, the first that had been able to reach us for ten days, had
+just brought intelligence of that strange conspiracy, hatched in Paris
+itself, and in the depth of a prison, by an obscure general. He had had
+no other accomplices than the false news of our destruction, and forged
+orders to some troops to apprehend the Minister, the Prefect of Police,
+and the Commandant of Paris. His plan had completely succeeded, from the
+impulsion of a first movement, from ignorance and the general
+astonishment; but no sooner was a rumour of the affair spread abroad,
+than an order was sufficient again to consign the leader, with his
+accomplices or his dupes, to a prison.
+
+The Emperor was apprised at the same moment of their crime and their
+punishment. Those who at a distance strove to read his thoughts in his
+countenance could discover nothing. He repressed his feelings; his first
+and only words to Daru were, "How now, if we had remained at Moscow!" He
+then hastened into a house surrounded with a palisade, which had served
+for a post of correspondence.
+
+The moment he was alone with the most devoted of his officers, all his
+emotions burst forth at once in exclamations of astonishment,
+humiliation and anger. Presently afterwards he sent for several other
+officers, to observe the effect which so extraordinary a piece of
+intelligence would produce upon them. He perceived in them a painful
+uneasiness and consternation, and their confidence in the stability of
+his government completely shaken. He had occasion to know that they
+accosted each other with a sigh, and the remark, that it thus appeared
+that the great revolution of 1789, which was thought to be finished, was
+not yet over. Grown old in struggles to get out of it, were they to be
+again plunged into it, and to be thrown once more into the dreadful
+career of political convulsions? Thus war was coming upon us in every
+quarter, and we were liable to lose every thing at once.
+
+Some rejoiced at this intelligence, in the hope that it would hasten the
+return of the Emperor to France, that it would fix him there, and that
+he would no longer risk himself abroad, since he was not safe at home.
+On the following day, the sufferings of the moment put an end to these
+conjectures. As for Napoleon, all his thoughts again flew before him to
+Paris, and he was advancing mechanically towards Smolensk, when his
+whole attention was recalled to the present place and time, by the
+arrival of an aide-de-camp of Ney.
+
+From Wiazma that Marshal had begun to protect this retreat, mortal to so
+many others, but immortal for himself. As far as Dorogobouje, it had
+been molested only by some bands of Cossacks, troublesome insects
+attracted by our dying and by our forsaken carriages, flying away the
+moment a hand was lifted, but harassing by their continual return.
+
+They were not the subject of Ney's message. On approaching Dorogobouje
+he had met with the traces of the disorder which prevailed in the corps
+that preceded him, and which it was not in his power to efface. So far
+he had made up his mind to leave the baggage to the enemy; but he
+blushed with shame at the sight of the first pieces of cannon abandoned
+before Dorogobouje.
+
+The marshal had halted there. After a dreadful night, in which snow,
+wind, and famine had driven most of his men from the fires, the dawn,
+which is always awaited with such impatience in a bivouac, had brought
+him a tempest, the enemy, and the spectacle of an almost general
+defection. In vain he had just fought in person at the head of what men
+and officers he had left: he had been obliged to retreat precipitately
+behind the Dnieper; and of this he sent to apprise the Emperor.
+
+He wished him to know the worst. His aide-de-camp, Colonel Dalbignac,
+was instructed to say, that "the first movement of retreat from
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, for soldiers who had never yet run away, had
+dispirited the army; that the affair at Wiazma had shaken its firmness;
+and that lastly, the deluge of snow and the increased cold which it
+betokened, had completed its disorganization: that a multitude of
+officers, having lost every thing, their platoons, battalions,
+regiments, and even divisions, had joined the roving masses: generals,
+colonels, and officers of all ranks, were seen mingled with the
+privates, and marching at random, sometimes with one column, sometimes
+with another: that as order could not exist in the presence of disorder,
+this example was seducing even the veteran regiments, which had served
+during the whole of the wars of the revolution: that in the ranks, the
+best soldiers were heard asking one another, why they alone were
+required to fight in order to secure the flight of the rest; and how any
+one could expect to keep up their courage, when they heard the cries of
+despair issuing from the neighbouring woods, in which large convoys of
+their wounded, who had been dragged to no purpose all the way from
+Moscow, had just been abandoned? Such then was the fate which awaited
+themselves! what had they to gain by remaining by their colours?
+Incessant toils and combats by day, and famine at night; no shelter, and
+bivouacs still more destructive than battle: famine and cold drove sleep
+far away from them, or if fatigue got the better of these for the
+moment, that repose which ought to refresh them put a period to their
+lives. In short, the eagles had ceased to protect--they destroyed. Why
+then remain around them to perish by battalions, by masses? It would be
+better to disperse, and since there was no other course than flight, to
+try who could run fastest. It would not then be the best that would
+fall: the cowards behind them would no longer eat up the relics of the
+high road." Lastly, the aide-de-camp was commissioned to explain to the
+Emperor all the horrors of his situation, the responsibility of which
+Ney absolutely declined.
+
+But Napoleon saw enough around himself to judge of the rest. The
+fugitives were passing him; he was sensible that nothing could now be
+done but sacrifice the army successively, part by part, beginning at the
+extremities, in order to save the head. When, therefore, the
+aide-de-camp was beginning, he sharply interrupted him with these words,
+"Colonel, I do not ask you for these details." The Colonel was silent,
+aware that in this disaster, now irremediable, and in which every one
+had occasion for all his energies, the Emperor was afraid of complaints,
+which could have no other effect but to discourage both him who indulged
+in, and him who listened to them.
+
+He remarked the attitude of Napoleon, the same which he retained
+throughout the whole of this retreat. It was grave, silent, and
+resigned; suffering much less in body than others, but much more in
+mind, and brooding over his misfortunes. At that moment General
+Charpentier sent him from Smolensk a convoy of provisions. Bessičres
+wished to take possession of them, but the Emperor instantly had them
+forwarded to the Prince of the Moskwa, saying, "that those who were
+fighting must eat before the others." 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 re-organized."
+
+But if this hope kept some to their duty, many others abandoned every
+thing, to hasten towards that promised term of their sufferings. As for
+Ney, he saw that a sacrifice was required, and that he was marked out as
+the victim: he resigned himself, ready to meet the whole of a danger
+great as his courage: thenceforward he neither attached his honour to
+baggage, nor to cannon, which the winter alone wrested from him. A first
+bend of the Borysthenes stopped and kept back part of his guns at the
+foot of its icy slopes; he sacrificed them without hesitation, passed
+that obstacle, faced about, and made the hostile river, which crossed
+his route, serve him as the means of defence.
+
+The Russians, however, advanced under favour of a wood and 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, got
+discouraged; they gave way, justifying themselves by their
+faint-heartedness on the preceding day, fleeing because they had fled;
+which before they would have considered as impossible. But Ney rushed in
+amongst them, snatched one of their muskets, and led them back to the
+fire, which he was the first to renew; exposing his life like a private
+soldier, with a musket in his hand, the same as when he was neither
+husband nor father, neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor
+consideration: in short, as if he had still every thing to gain, when in
+fact he had every thing to lose. At the same time that he again turned
+soldier, he ceased not to be a general; he took advantage of the ground,
+supported himself against a height, and covered himself with a palisaded
+house. His generals and his colonels, among whom he himself remarked
+Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who expected to
+pursue, was obliged to retreat.
+
+By this action, Ney gave the army a respite of twenty-four hours; it
+profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and all the
+succeeding days, he manifested the same heroism. Between Wiazma and
+Smolensk he fought ten whole days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIII.
+
+
+On the 13th of November he was approaching that city, which he was not
+to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to keep off the
+enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his
+left were seen covered with a multitude of fugitives. In their fright,
+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
+flock of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of
+Italy, returning quite stripped, without baggage, and without cannon.
+
+Platof had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.
+Near that town Prince Eugene had left 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 crossed before was
+a mere brook, and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swelled into a
+river. It ran over a bed of mud, and was bounded by two steep banks. It
+was found necessary to cut a way in these rough and frozen banks, and to
+give orders for the demolition, during the night, of the neighbouring
+houses, in order to build a bridge with the materials. But those who had
+taken shelter in them opposed their destruction. The Viceroy, more
+beloved than feared, was not obeyed. The pontonniers were disheartened,
+and when daylight appeared with the Cossacks, the bridge, after being
+twice broken down, was abandoned.
+
+Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of
+disbanded men, sick and wounded, upwards of a hundred pieces of cannon,
+ammunition waggons, and a multitude of other vehicles, lined the bank,
+and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford through the
+ice carried along by the torrent. The first guns that tried to cross
+reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while
+at the same time the bed of the river at the ford was deepened by the
+wheels and the efforts of the horses. A carriage stuck fast; others did
+the same; and 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 at length found himself necessitated to order his artillery and
+all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The
+owners had scarcely time to part from their effects; while they were
+selecting from them the articles which they most needed, and loading
+horses with them, a multitude of soldiers hastened up; they fell in
+preference upon the vehicles of luxury; they broke in pieces and
+rummaged every thing, revenging their destitution on this wealth, their
+privations on these superfluities, and snatching them from the Cossacks,
+who looked on at a distance.
+
+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 singular
+sight to behold the riches of Paris and 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 waggons, 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 waggons were
+blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not
+killed on the spot dispersed in dismay.
+
+A few hundred men, who were still called the 14th division, were opposed
+to these hordes, and sufficed to keep them at a respectful distance till
+the next day. All the rest, soldiers, administrators, women and
+children, sick and wounded, driven by the enemy's balls, crowded the
+bank of the torrent. But at the sight of its swollen current, of the
+sharp and massive sheets of ice flowing down it, and the necessity of
+aggravating their already intolerable sufferings from cold by plunging
+into its chilling waves, they all hesitated.
+
+An Italian, Colonel Delfanti, was obliged to set the example and cross
+first. The soldiers then moved and the crowd followed. The weakest, the
+least resolute, or the most avaricious, staid behind. Such as could not
+make up their minds to part from their booty, and to forsake fortune
+which was forsaking them, were surprised in the midst of their
+hesitation. Next day the savage Cossacks were seen amid all this wealth,
+still covetous of the squalid and tattered garments of the unfortunate
+creatures who had become their prisoners: they stripped them, and then
+collecting them in troops, drove them along naked on the snow, by hard
+blows with the shaft of their lances.
+
+The army of Italy, thus dismantled, thoroughly soaked in the waters of
+the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow
+near a village, where its officers expected to have found lodging for
+themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They
+rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on each habitation, profiting by the
+darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being
+known by them. They tore down every thing, doors, windows and even the
+wood-work of the roofs, feeling little compunction to compel others, be
+they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.
+
+Their generals strove in vain to drive them off; they took their blows
+without murmur or opposition, but without desisting; and 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 remained
+silently but actively engaged 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 should fall
+upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in
+their design, and respect for the anger of their generals.
+
+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.
+
+It is a fact which reflects disgrace on the enemy, that during this
+disaster, and in sight of so rich a booty, a few hundred men, left at
+the distance of half a league from the Viceroy, on the other side of the
+Wop, were sufficient to curb, for twenty hours, not only the courage but
+also the cupidity of Platof's Cossacks.
+
+It is possible, indeed, that the Hetman made sure of destroying the
+Viceroy on the following day. In fact, all his measures were so well
+planned, that at the moment when the army of Italy, after an unquiet and
+disorderly march, came in sight of Dukhowtchina, a town yet uninjured,
+and was joyfully hastening forward to shelter itself there, several
+thousand Cossacks sallied forth from it with cannon, and suddenly
+stopped its progress: at the same time Platof, with all his hordes, came
+up and attacked its rear-guard and both flanks.
+
+Persons, who were eye-witnesses, assert that a complete tumult and
+disorder then ensued; that the disbanded men, the women, and the
+attendants, ran over one another, and broke quite through the ranks;
+that, in short, there was a moment when this unfortunate army was but a
+shapeless mass, a mere rabble rout whirling round and round. All seemed
+to be lost; but the coolness of the Prince and the efforts of the
+officers saved all. The best men disengaged themselves; the ranks were
+again formed. They advanced, firing a few volleys, and the enemy, who
+had every thing on his side excepting courage, the only advantage yet
+left us, opened and retired, confining himself to a mere demonstration.
+
+The army took his place still warm in that town, beyond which he went to
+bivouac, and to prepare similar surprises to the very gates of Smolensk.
+For this disaster at the Wop had made the Viceroy give up the idea of
+separating from the Emperor; there these hordes grew bolder; they
+surrounded the 14th division. When Prince Eugene would have gone to its
+relief, the men and their officers, stiffened with a cold of twenty
+degrees, which the wind rendered most piercing, continued stretched on
+the warm ashes of their fires. To no purpose did he point out to them
+their comrades surrounded, the enemy approaching, the bullets and balls
+which were already reaching them; they refused to rise, protesting that
+they would rather perish than any longer have to endure such cruel
+hardships. The vedettes themselves had abandoned their posts. Prince
+Eugene nevertheless contrived to save his rear-guard.
+
+It was in returning with it towards Smolensk that his stragglers had
+been driven back on Ney's troops, to whom they communicated their panic;
+all hurried together towards the Dnieper; here they crowded together at
+the entrance of the bridge, without thinking of defending themselves,
+when a charge made by the 4th regiment stopped the advance of the enemy.
+
+Its colonel, young Fezenzac, contrived to infuse fresh life into these
+men who were half perished with cold. There, as in every thing that can
+be called action, was manifested the superiority of the sentiments of
+the soul over the sensations of the body; for every physical sensation
+tended to encourage despondency and flight; nature advised it with her
+hundred most urgent voices; and yet a few words of honour were
+sufficient to produce the most heroic devotedness. The soldiers of the
+4th regiment rushed like furies upon the enemy, against the mountain of
+snow and ice of which he had taken possession, and in the teeth of the
+northern hurricane, for they had every thing against them. Ney himself
+was obliged to moderate their impetuosity.
+
+A reproach from their colonel effected this change. These private
+soldiers devoted themselves, that they might not be wanting to their own
+characters, from that instinct which requires courage in a man, as well
+as from habit and the love of glory. A splendid word for so obscure a
+situation! For, what is the glory of a common soldier, who perishes
+unseen, who is neither praised, censured, nor regretted, but by his own
+division of a company! The circle of each, however, is sufficient for
+him: a small society embraces the same passions as a large one. The
+proportions of the bodies differ; but they are composed of the same
+elements; it is the same life that animates them, and the looks of a
+platoon stimulate a soldier, just as those of an army inflame a general.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIV.
+
+
+At length the army again beheld Smolensk; it approached the term so
+often held forth to its sufferings. The soldiers pointed it out to each
+other. There was that land of promise where their famine 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
+should enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel;
+there they should be furnished with new shoes and garments adapted to
+the climate.
+
+At this sight, the corps _d'élite_, some soldiers, and the veteran
+regiments, 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 masses round the lofty walls
+and gates of the city; but their disorderly multitude, their haggard
+faces, begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms and the
+grotesque habiliments which they had substituted for them, in short,
+their strange, hideous look, and their extreme ardour, excited alarm. It
+was conceived that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger,
+were not repelled, a general pillage would be the consequence, and the
+gates were closed against it.
+
+It was also hoped that by this rigour these men would be forced to
+rally. A horrid struggle between order and disorder then commenced in
+the remnant of that unfortunate army. In vain did some entreat, weep,
+conjure, threaten, strive to burst the gates, and drop down dead at the
+feet of their comrades, who had orders to repel them; they found them
+inexorable: they were forced to await the arrival of the first troops,
+who were still officered and in order.
+
+These were the old and young guard. It was not till afterwards that the
+disbanded men were allowed to enter; they and the other corps which
+arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed that their
+entry had been delayed merely to give more rest and more provisions to
+this guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust; they execrated it.
+"Were they then to be for ever sacrificed to this privileged class,
+fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost but at reviews,
+festivities, and distributions? Was the army always to put up with their
+leavings; and in order to obtain them, was it always to wait till they
+had glutted themselves?" It was impossible 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 last, however, these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk
+for which they had so ardently wished; they had left the banks of the
+Borysthenes strewed with the dying bodies of the weakest of their
+number; impatience and several hours' waiting had finished them. They
+left others on the icy steep which they had to climb to reach the upper
+town. The rest ran to the magazines, and there more of them expired
+while they beset the doors; for they were again repulsed. "Who were
+they? to what corps did they belong? what had they to show for it? The
+persons who had to distribute the provisions were responsible for them;
+they had orders to deliver them only to authorized officers, bringing
+receipts, for which they could exchange the rations committed to their
+care." Those who applied had no officers; nor could they tell where
+their regiments were. Two thirds of the army were in this predicament.
+
+These unfortunate men then dispersed through the streets, having no
+longer any other hope than pillage. But horses dissected to the very
+bones every where denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the houses
+had been all broken and torn away to feed the bivouac-fires: 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 still the fatal high-road, passing through an empty
+name; it was a new bivouac among deceitful ruins; colder even than the
+forests which they had just quitted.
+
+Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colours; they
+rejoined them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread
+that could be baked had been distributed: there was no more biscuit, no
+butcher's meat, rye-flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were delivered
+out to them. It required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the
+detachments of the different corps from murdering one another at the
+doors of the magazines: and when, after long formalities, their wretched
+fare was delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their
+regiments; they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds
+of flour, and ran to hide themselves till they had devoured it. The same
+was the case with the spirits. Next day the houses were found full of
+the bodies of these unfortunate wretches.
+
+In short, that fatal Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to as
+the term of its sufferings, marked only their commencement.
+Inexpressible hardships awaited us: we had yet to march forty days under
+that yoke of iron. Some, already overloaded with present miseries, sunk
+under the alarming prospect of those which awaited them. Others revolted
+against their destiny; finding they had nothing to rely on but
+themselves, they resolved to live at any rate.
+
+Henceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the
+weaker, they plundered their dying companions by violence or stealth, of
+their subsistence, their garments, and even the gold, with which they
+had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom
+despair had made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their
+infamous booty, profiting by the general condition, an obscure name, a
+uniform no longer distinguishable, and night, in short, by all kinds of
+obscurities, favourable to cowardice and guilt. If works already
+published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed in
+silence details so disgusting; for these atrocities were rare, and
+justice was dealt to the most criminal.
+
+The Emperor arrived on the 9th of November, 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 continue his retreat. He had
+calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one
+hundred thousand men; there was not more than half the quantity of
+flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were set up
+against one of the persons appointed to provide these supplies. The
+commissary saved his life only by crawling for a long time on his knees
+at the feet of Napoleon. Probably the reasons which he assigned did more
+for him than his supplications.
+
+"When he arrived," he said, "bands of stragglers, whom, when advancing,
+the army left behind it, had, as it were, involved Smolensk in terror
+and destruction. The men died there of hunger as upon the road. When
+some degree of order had been restored, the Jews alone had at first
+offered to furnish the necessary provisions. More generous motives
+subsequently engaged the aid of some Lithuanian noblemen. At length the
+foremost of the long convoys of provisions collected in Germany
+appeared. These were the carriages called _comtoises_, and were the only
+ones which had traversed the sands of Lithuania; they brought no more
+than two hundred quintals of flour and rice; several hundred German and
+Italian bullocks had also arrived with them.
+
+"Meanwhile the accumulation of dead bodies in the houses, courts, and
+gardens, and their unwholesome effluvia, infected the air. The dead were
+killing the living. The civil officers as well as many of the military
+were attacked: some had become to all appearance idiots, weeping or
+fixing their hollow eyes stedfastly on the ground. There were others
+whose hair had become stiff, erect, and ropy, and who, amidst a torrent
+of blasphemies, a horrid convulsion, or a still more frightful laugh,
+had dropped down dead.
+
+"At the same time it had been found necessary to kill without delay the
+greatest part of the cattle brought from Germany and Italy. These
+animals would neither walk any farther, nor eat. Their eyes, sunk in
+their sockets, were dull and motionless. They were killed without
+seeking to avoid the fatal blow. Other misfortunes followed: several
+convoys were intercepted, magazines taken, and a drove of eight hundred
+oxen had just been carried off from Krasnoë."
+
+This man added, that "regard ought also to be had to the great quantity
+of detachments which had passed through Smolensk; to the stay which
+Marshal Victor, twenty-eight thousand men, and about fifteen thousand
+sick, had made there; to the multitude of posts and marauders whom the
+insurrection and the approach of the enemy had driven back into the
+city. All had subsisted upon the magazines; it had been necessary to
+deliver out nearly sixty thousand rations per day; and lastly,
+provisions and cattle had been sent forward towards Moscow as far as
+Mojaisk and towards Kalouga as far as Yelnia."
+
+Many of these allegations 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
+quantity of provisions distributed over this space was incalculable; the
+efforts for transporting them thither gigantic, and the result little
+better than nothing. They were insufficient in that immensity.
+
+Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had
+been surpassed; the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above
+time, climate, and distances, had, as it were, lost itself in space:
+great as was its measure, it had been beyond it.
+
+For the rest, he was passionate, from necessity. He had not deceived
+himself in regard to the inadequacy of his supplies. Alexander alone had
+deceived him. Accustomed to triumph over every thing by the terror of
+his name, and the astonishment produced by his audacity, he had ventured
+his army, himself, his fortune, his all, on a first movement of
+Alexander's. He was still the same man as in Egypt, at Marengo, Ulm, and
+Esslingen; it was Ferdinand Cortes; it was the Macedonian burning his
+ships, and above all solicitous, in spite of his troops, to penetrate
+still farther into unknown Asia; finally, it was Cćsar risking his whole
+fortune in a fragile bark.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The surprise of Vinkowo, however, that unexpected attack of Kutusoff in
+front of Moscow, was only the spark of a great conflagration. On the
+same day, at the same hour, the whole of Russia had resumed the
+offensive. The general plan of the Russians was at once developed. The
+inspection of the map became truly alarming.
+
+On the 18th of October, at the very moment that the cannon of Kutusoff
+were destroying Napoleon's illusions of glory and of peace,
+Wittgenstein, at one hundred leagues in the rear of his left wing, had
+thrown himself upon Polotsk; Tchitchakof, behind his right, and two
+hundred leagues farther off, had taken advantage of his superiority over
+Schwartzenberg; and both of them, one descending from the north, and the
+other ascending from the south, were endeavouring to unite their forces
+at Borizof.
+
+This was the most difficult passage in our retreat, and both these
+hostile armies were already close to it, at the time that Napoleon was
+at the distance of twelve days' journey, with the winter, famine, and
+the grand Russian army between them.
+
+At Smolensk it was only suspected that Minsk was in danger; the officers
+who were present at the loss of Polotsk gave the following details
+respecting it:--
+
+Ever since the battle of the 18th of August, which raised him to the
+dignity of marshal, Saint Cyr had remained on the Russian bank of the
+Düna, in possession of Polotsk, and of an entrenched camp in front of
+its walls. This camp showed how easy it would have been for the whole
+army to have taken up its winter quarters on the frontiers of Lithuania.
+Its barracks, constructed by our soldiers, were more spacious than the
+houses of the Russian peasantry, and equally warm: they were beautiful
+military villages, properly entrenched, and equally protected from the
+winter and from the enemy.
+
+For two months the two armies carried on merely a war of partizans. With
+the French its object was to extend themselves through the country in
+search of provisions; on the part of the Russians, to strip them of what
+they found. A war of this sort was entirely in favour of the Russians,
+as our people, being ignorant of the country as well as of the language,
+even of the names of the places where they attempted to enter, were
+incessantly betrayed by the inhabitants, and even by their guides.
+
+In consequence of these checks, and of hunger, and disease, the strength
+of Saint Cyr's army was diminished one half, while that of Wittgenstein
+had been more than doubled by the arrival of recruits. By the middle of
+October, the Russian army at that point amounted to fifty-two thousand
+men, while ours was only seventeen thousand. In this number must be
+included the 6th corps, or the Bavarians, reduced from twenty-two
+thousand to eighteen hundred men, and two thousand cavalry. The latter
+were then absent; Saint Cyr being without forage, and uneasy respecting
+the attempts of the enemy upon his flanks, had sent them to a
+considerable distance up the river, with orders to return by the left
+bank, in order to procure subsistence and to gain intelligence.
+
+For this marshal was afraid of having his right turned by Wittgenstein
+and his left by Steingell, who was advancing at the head of two
+divisions of the army of Finland, which had recently arrived at Riga.
+Saint Cyr had sent a very pressing letter to Macdonald, requesting him
+to use his efforts to stop the march of these Russians, who would have
+to pass his army, and to send him a reinforcement of fifteen thousand
+men; or if he would not do that, to come himself with succours to that
+amount, and take the command. In the same letter he also submitted to
+Macdonald all his plans of attack and defence. But Macdonald did not
+feel himself authorized to operate so important a movement without
+orders. He distrusted Yorck, whom he perhaps suspected of an intention
+of allowing the Russians to get possession of his park of besieging
+artillery. His reply was that he must first of all think of defending
+that, and he remained stationary.
+
+In this state of affairs, the Russians became daily more and more
+emboldened; and finally, on the 17th of October, the out-posts of Saint
+Cyr were driven into his camp, and Wittgenstein possessed himself of all
+the outlets of the woods which surround Polotsk. He threatened us with a
+battle, which he did not believe we would venture to accept.
+
+The French marshal, without orders from his Emperor, had been too late
+in his determination to entrench himself. His works were only marked out
+as much as was necessary, (not to cover their defenders), but to point
+out the place where their efforts would be principally required. Their
+left, resting on the Düna, and defended by batteries placed on the left
+bank of the river, was the strongest. Their right was weak. The Polota,
+a stream which flows into the Düna, separated them.
+
+Wittgenstein sent Yatchwil to threaten the least accessible side, and
+on the 18th he himself advanced against the other; at first with some
+rashness, for two French squadrons, the only ones which Saint Cyr had
+retained, overthrew his column in advance, took its artillery, and made
+himself prisoner, it is said, without being aware of it; so that they
+abandoned this general-in-chief, as an insignificant prize, when they
+were forced by numbers to retreat.
+
+Rushing from their woods, the Russians then exhibited their whole force,
+and attacked Saint Cyr in the most furious manner. In one of the first
+discharges of their musketry, the marshal was wounded by a ball. He
+remained, however, in the midst of the troops, but being unable to
+support himself, was obliged to be carried about. Wittgenstein's
+determination to carry this point lasted as long as it was daylight. The
+redoubts, which were defended by Maison, were taken and retaken seven
+times. Seven times did Wittgenstein believe himself the conqueror; Saint
+Cyr finally wore him out. Legrand and Maison remained in possession of
+their entrenchments, which were bathed with the blood of the Russians.
+
+But while on the right the victory appeared completely gained, on the
+left every thing seemed to be lost: the eagerness of the Swiss and the
+Croats was the cause of this reverse. Their rivalry had up to that
+period wanted an opportunity of showing itself. From a too great anxiety
+to show themselves worthy of belonging to the grand army, they acted
+rashly. Having been placed carelessly in front of their position, in
+order to draw on Yacthwil, they had, instead of abandoning the ground
+which had been prepared for his destruction, rushed forward to meet his
+masses, and were overwhelmed by numbers. The French artillery, being
+prevented from firing on this medley, became useless, and our allies
+were driven back into Polotsk.
+
+It was then that the batteries on the left bank of the Düna discovered,
+and were able to commence firing on the enemy, but instead of arresting,
+they only quickened his march. The Russians under Yacthwil, in order to
+avoid that fire, threw themselves with great rapidity into the ravine of
+the Polota, by which they were about to penetrate into the town, when at
+last three cannon, which were hastily directed against the head of their
+column, and a last effort of the Swiss, succeeded in driving them back.
+At five o'clock the battle terminated; the Russians retreated on all
+sides into their woods, and fourteen thousand men had beat fifty
+thousand.
+
+The night which followed was perfectly tranquil, even to Saint Cyr. His
+cavalry were deceived, and brought him wrong intelligence; they assured
+him that no enemy had passed the Düna either above or below his
+position: this was incorrect, as Steingell and thirteen thousand
+Russians had crossed the river at Drissa, and gone up the left bank,
+with the object of taking the marshal in the rear, and shutting him up
+in Polotsk, between them, the Düna, and Wittgenstein.
+
+The morning of the 19th exhibited the latter under arms, and making
+every disposition for an attack, the signal for which he appeared to be
+afraid of giving. Saint Cyr, however, was not to be deceived by these
+appearances; he was satisfied that it was not his feeble entrenchments
+which kept back an enterprising and numerous enemy, but that he was
+doubtless waiting the effect of some manoeuvre, the signal of an
+important co-operation, which could only be effected in his rear.
+
+In fact, about ten o'clock in the morning, an aide-de-camp came in full
+gallop from the other side of the river, with the intelligence, that
+another hostile army, that of Steingell, was marching rapidly along the
+Lithuanian side of the river, and that it had defeated the French
+cavalry. He required immediate assistance, without which this fresh army
+would speedily get in the rear of the camp and surround it. The news of
+this engagement soon reached the army of Wittgenstein, where it excited
+the greatest joy, while it carried dismay into the French camp. Their
+position became dreadfully critical. Let any one figure to himself these
+brave fellows, hemmed in, against a wooden town, by a force treble their
+number, with a great river behind them, and no other means of retreat
+but a bridge, the passage from which was threatened by another army.
+
+It was in vain that Saint Cyr then weakened his force by three
+regiments, which he dispatched to the other side to meet Steingell, and
+whose march he contrived to conceal from Wittgenstein's observation.
+Every moment the noise of the former's artillery was approaching nearer
+and nearer to Polotsk. The batteries, which from the left side protected
+the French camp, were now turned round, ready to fire upon this new
+enemy. At sight of this, loud shouts of joy burst out from the whole of
+Wittgenstein's line; but that officer still remained immoveable. To make
+him begin it was not merely necessary that he should _hear_ Steingell;
+he seemed absolutely determined to _see_ him make his appearance.
+
+Meanwhile, all Saint Cyr's generals, in consternation, were surrounding
+him, and urging him to order a retreat, which would soon become
+impossible. Saint Cyr refused; convinced that the 50,000 Russians before
+him under arms, and on the tiptoe of expectation, only waited for his
+first retrograde movement to dart upon him, he remained immoveable,
+availing himself of their unaccountable inaction, and still flattering
+himself that night would cover Polotsk with its shades before Steingell
+could make his appearance.
+
+He has since confessed, that never in his life was his mind in such a
+state of agitation. A thousand times, in the course of these three hours
+of suspense, he was seen looking at his watch and at the sun; as if he
+could hasten his setting.
+
+At last, when Steingell was within half an hour's march of Polotsk, when
+he had only to make a few efforts to appear in the plain, to reach the
+bridge of the town, and shut out Saint Cyr from the only outlet by which
+he could escape from Wittgenstein, he halted. Soon after, a thick fog,
+which the French looked upon as an interposition from heaven, preceded
+the approach of night, and shut out the three armies from the sight of
+each other.
+
+Saint Cyr only waited for that moment. His numerous artillery was
+already silently crossing the river, his divisions were about to follow
+it and conceal their retreat, when the soldiers of Legrand, either from
+habit, or regret at abandoning their camp entire to the enemy, set fire
+to it; the other two divisions, fancying that this was a signal agreed
+upon, followed their example, and in an instant the whole line was in a
+blaze.
+
+This fire disclosed their movement; the whole of Wittgenstein's
+batteries immediately began their fire; his columns rushed forward, his
+shells set fire to the town; the French troops were obliged to contend
+every inch of ground with the flames, the fire throwing light on the
+engagement the same as broad daylight. The retreat, however, was
+effected in good order; on both sides the loss was great; but it was not
+until three o'clock in the morning of the 20th of October that the
+Russian eagle regained possession of Polotsk.
+
+As good luck would have it, Steingell slept soundly at the noise of this
+battle, although he might have heard even the shouts of the Russian
+militia. He seconded the attack of Wittgenstein during that night as
+little as Wittgenstein had seconded his the day before. It was not until
+Wittgenstein had finished on the right side, that the bridge of Polotsk
+was broken down, and Saint Cyr, with all his force on the left bank, and
+then fully able to cope with Steingell, that the latter began to put
+himself in motion. But De Wrede, with 6,000 French, surprised him in his
+first movement, beat him back several leagues into the woods which he
+had quitted, and took or killed 2,000 of his men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Those three days were days of glory. Wittgenstein was repulsed,
+Steingell defeated, and ten thousand Russians, with six generals, killed
+or put _hors du combat_. But Saint Cyr was wounded, the offensive was
+lost, confidence, joy, and plenty reigned in the enemy's corps,
+despondency and scarcity in ours; it was necessary to fall back. The
+army required a commander: De Wrede aspired to be so, but the French
+generals refused even to enter into concert with that officer, from a
+knowledge of his character, and a belief that it was impossible to go on
+harmoniously with him. Amidst their jarring pretensions Saint Cyr,
+although wounded, was obliged to retain the command of these two corps.
+
+Immediately after, he gave orders to retreat on Smoliantzy by all the
+roads leading to that place. He himself kept in the centre, regulating
+the march of the different columns by that of each other. This was a
+mode of retreat completely contrary to that which Napoleon had just
+followed.
+
+Saint Cyr's object was to find more provisions, to march with greater
+freedom, and more concert; in short, to avoid that confusion which is so
+common in the march of numerous columns, when troops, artillery, and
+baggage are crowded together on one road. He completely succeeded. Ten
+thousand French, Swiss, and Croats, with fifty thousand Russians at
+their heels, retired slowly in four columns, without allowing themselves
+to be broken, and kept Wittgenstein and Steingell from advancing more
+than three marches in eight days.
+
+By retreating in this manner towards the south, they covered the right
+flank of the road from Orcha to Borizof, by which the Emperor was
+returning from Moscow. One column only, that of the left, met with a
+check. It was that of De Wrede and his fifteen hundred Bavarians,
+augmented with a brigade of French cavalry, which he retained with him
+in spite of Saint Cyr's orders. He marched at his own pleasure; his
+wounded pride would no longer suffer him to yield obedience to others;
+but it cost him the whole of his baggage. Afterwards, under pretence of
+better serving the common cause by covering the line of operations from
+Wilna to Witepsk, which the Emperor had abandoned, he separated himself
+from the second corps, retreated by Klubokoe on Vileika, and made
+himself useless.
+
+The discontent of De Wrede had existed ever since the 19th of August. He
+fancied that he had contributed so great a part to the victory of the
+18th, that he thought it was made too little of in the report of the
+following day. This feeling had rankled in his mind, and was increased
+by repeated complaints, and by the instigation of a brother, who it was
+said was serving in the Austrian army. Added to this, it was believed,
+that at the last period of the retreat, the Saxon general, Thielmann,
+had drawn him into his plans for the liberation of Germany.
+
+This defection was scarcely felt at the time. The Duke of Belluno, with
+twenty-five thousand men, hastened from Smolensk, and on the 31st of
+October effected a junction with Saint Cyr in front of Smoliantzy, at
+the very moment that Wittgenstein, ignorant of this junction, and
+relying on his superior strength, had crossed the Lukolmlia, imprudently
+engaged himself in defiles at his rear, and attacked our out-posts. It
+only required a simultaneous effort of the two French corps to have
+destroyed his army completely. The generals and soldiers of the second
+corps were burning with ardour. But at the moment that victory was in
+their hearts, and when, believing it before their eyes, they were
+waiting for the signal to engage, Victor gave orders to retreat.
+
+Whether this prudence, which was then considered unseasonable, arose
+from his unacquaintance with a country, which he then saw for the first
+time, or from his distrust of soldiers whom he had not yet tried, we
+know not. It is possible that he did not feel himself justified in
+risking a battle, the loss of which would certainly have involved that
+of the grand army and its leader.
+
+After falling back behind the Lukolmlia, and keeping on the defensive
+the whole of the day, he took advantage of the night to gain Sienno. The
+Russian general then became sensible of the peril of his position; it
+was so critical, that he only took advantage of our retrograde movement,
+and the discouragement which it occasioned, to effect his retreat.
+
+The officers who gave us these details added, that ever since that time
+Wittgenstein seemed to think of nothing but retaking Witepsk, and
+keeping on the defensive. He probably thought it too rash to turn the
+Berezina at its sources, in order to join Tchitchakof; for a vague
+rumour had already reached us of the march of this army from the south
+upon Minsk and Borizof, and of the defection of Schwartzenberg.
+
+It was at Mikalewska, on the 6th of November, that unfortunate day when
+he had just received information of Mallet's conspiracy, that Napoleon
+was informed of the junction of the second and the ninth corps, and of
+the unfortunate engagement at Czazniki. Irritated at the intelligence,
+he sent orders to the Duke of Belluno immediately to drive Wittgenstein
+behind the Düna, as the safety of the army depended upon it. He did not
+conceal from the marshal that he had arrived at Smolensk with an army
+harassed to death and his cavalry entirely dismounted.
+
+Thus, therefore, the days of good fortune were passed, and from all
+quarters nothing but disastrous intelligence arrived. On one side
+Polotsk, the Düna, and Witepsk lost, and Wittgenstein already within
+four days march of Borizof; on the other, towards Elnia, Baraguay
+d'Hilliers defeated. That general had allowed the enemy to cut off the
+brigade of Augereau, and to take the magazines, and the Elnia road, by
+the possession of which Kutusoff was now enabled to anticipate us at
+Krasnoë, as he had done at Wiazma.
+
+At the same time, at one hundred leagues in advance of us,
+Schwartzenberg informed the Emperor, that he was covering Warsaw; in
+other words, that he had uncovered Minsk and Borizof, the magazine, and
+the retreat of the grand army, and that probably, the Emperor of Austria
+would deliver up his son-in-law to Russia.
+
+At the same moment, in our rear and our centre, Prince Eugene was
+conquered by the Wop; the draught-horses which had been waiting for us
+at Smolensk were devoured by the soldiers; those of Mortier carried off
+in a forage; the cattle at Krasnoë captured; the army exhibiting
+frightful symptoms of disease; and at Paris the period of conspiracies
+appeared to have returned; in short, every thing seemed to combine to
+overwhelm Napoleon.
+
+The daily reports which he received of the state of each corps of the
+army were like so many bills of mortality; in these he saw his army,
+which had conquered Moscow, reduced from an hundred and eighty thousand,
+to thirty thousand men, still capable of fighting. To this mass of
+calamities, he could only oppose an inert resistance, an impassable
+firmness, and an unshaken attitude. His countenance remained the same;
+he changed none of his habits, nothing in the form of his orders; in
+reading them, you would have supposed that he had still several armies
+under his command. He did not even expedite his march. Irritated only at
+the prudence of Marshal Victor, he repeated his orders to him to attack
+Wittgenstein, and thereby remove the danger which menaced his retreat.
+As to Baraguay d'Hilliers, whom an officer had just accused, he had him
+brought before him, and sent him off to Berlin, where that general,
+overwhelmed by the fatigues of the retreat, and sinking under the weight
+of chagrin, died before he was able to make his defence.
+
+The unshaken firmness which the Emperor preserved was the only attitude
+which became so great a spirit, and so irreparable a misfortune. But
+what appears surprising, is, that he allowed fortune to strip him of
+every thing, rather than sacrifice a part to save the rest. It was at
+first without his orders that the commanders of corps burnt the baggage
+and destroyed their artillery; he only allowed it to be done. If he
+afterwards gave similar instructions, they were absolutely extorted from
+him; he seemed as if he was tenacious, above every thing, that no action
+of his should confess his defeat; either from a feeling that he thus
+respected his misfortunes, and by his inflexibility set the example of
+inflexible courage to those around him, or from that proud feeling of
+men who have been long fortunate, which precipitates their downfall.
+
+Smolensk, however, which was twice fatal to the army, was a place of
+rest for some. During the respite which this afforded to their
+sufferings, these were asking each other, "how it happened, that at
+Moscow every thing had been forgotten; why there was so much useless
+baggage; why so many soldiers had already died of hunger and cold under
+the weight of their knapsacks, which were loaded with gold, instead of
+food and raiment; and, above all, if three and thirty days rest had not
+allowed sufficient time to make snow shoes for the artillery, cavalry,
+and draught-horses, which would have made their march more sure and
+rapid?
+
+"If that had been done, we should not have lost our best men at Wiazma,
+at the Wop, at the Dnieper, and along the whole road; in short, even
+now, Kutusoff, Wittgenstein, and perhaps Tchitchakof would not have had
+time to prepare more fatal days for us.
+
+"But why, in the absence of orders from Napoleon, had not that
+precaution been taken by the commanders, all of them kings, princes, and
+marshals? Had not the winter in Russia been foreseen? Was it that
+Napoleon, accustomed to the active intelligence of his soldiers, had
+reckoned too much upon their foresight? Had the recollection of the
+campaign in Poland, during a winter as mild as that of our own climate,
+deceived him, as well as an unclouded sun, whose continuance, during the
+whole of the month of October, had astonished even the Russians
+themselves? What spirit of infatuation is it that has seized the whole
+army as well as its leader? What has every one been reckoning upon? as
+even supposing that at Moscow the hope of peace had dazzled us all, it
+was always necessary to return, and nothing had been prepared, even for
+a pacific journey homeward!"
+
+The greater number could not account for this general infatuation,
+otherwise than by their own carelessness, and because in armies, as well
+as in despotic governments, it is the office of one to think for all; in
+this case that _one_ was alone regarded as responsible, and misfortune,
+which authorizes distrust, led every one to condemn him. It had been
+already remarked, that in this important fault, this forgetfulness, so
+improbable in an active genius during so long and unoccupied a
+residence, there was something of that spirit of error, "the fatal
+forerunner of the fall of kings!"
+
+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 Doukhowtchina. "Then it was not the necessity of waiting
+for the army of Italy which detained him! To what then must we attribute
+this delay, when famine, disease and the winter, and three hostile
+armies were gradually surrounding us?
+
+"While we had been penetrating to the heart of the Russian Colossus, had
+not his arms remained advanced and extended towards the Baltic and the
+Black Sea? was he likely to leave them motionless now, when, instead of
+striking him mortal blows, we had been struck ourselves? Was not the
+fatal moment arrived when this Colossus was about to surround us with
+his threatening arms? Could we imagine that we had either tied them up,
+or paralysed them, by opposing to them the Austrians in the south, and
+the Prussians in the north? Was it not rather a method of rendering the
+Poles and the French, who were mixed with these dangerous allies,
+entirely useless?
+
+"But without going far in search of causes of uneasiness, was the
+Emperor ignorant of the joy of the Russians, when three months before he
+stopped to attack Smolensk, instead of marching to the right to Elnia,
+where he would have cut off the enemy's army from a retreat upon their
+capital? Now that the war has returned back to the same spots, will the
+Russians, whose movements are much more free than ours were then,
+imitate our error? Will they keep in our rear when they can so easily
+place themselves before us, on the line of our retreat?
+
+"Is Napoleon unwilling to allow that Kutusoff's attack may be bolder and
+more skilful than his own had been? Are the circumstances still the
+same? Was not every thing favourable to the Russians during their
+retreat, and, on the contrary, has not every thing been unfavourable to
+us, in our retreat? Will not the cutting off Augereau and his brigade
+upon that road open his eyes? What business had we in the burnt and
+ravaged Smolensk, but to take a supply of provisions and proceed rapidly
+onwards?
+
+"But the Emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches five
+days from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the
+appearance of a slow and glorious retreat! This was the reason of his
+ordering the destruction of the towers which surround Smolensk, from the
+wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its walls!
+as if there was any idea of our returning to a place, which we did not
+even know whether we should ever get out of.
+
+"Will any one believe that he wished to give time to the artillerymen to
+shoe their horses against the ice? as if he could expect any labour from
+workmen emaciated with hunger and long marches; from poor wretches who
+hardly found, the day long enough to procure provisions and dress them,
+whose forges were thrown away or damaged, and who besides wanted the
+indispensable materials for a labour so considerable.
+
+"But perhaps he wished to allow himself time to drive on before him, out
+of danger and clear of the ranks, the troublesome crowd of soldiers, who
+had become useless, to rally the better sort, and to re-organize the
+army? as if it were possible to convey any orders whatever to men so
+scattered about, or to rally them, without lodgings, or distribution of
+provisions, to _bivouacs_; in short, to think of re-organization for
+corps of dying soldiers, all of whom had no longer any thing to adhere
+to, and whom the least touch would dissolve."
+
+Such, around Napoleon, were the conversations of his officers; or rather
+their secret reflexions: for their devotion to him remained entire for
+two whole years longer, in the midst of the greatest calamities, and of
+the general revolt of nations.
+
+The Emperor, however, made an effort which was not altogether fruitless;
+namely, to rally, under one commander, all that remained of the cavalry:
+of thirty-seven thousand cavalry which were present at the passage of
+the Niemen, there were now only eighteen hundred left on horseback. He
+gave the command of them to Latour-Maubourg; whether from the esteem
+felt for him, or from fatigue, no one objected to it.
+
+As to Latour-Maubourg, he received the honour or the charge without
+expressing either pleasure or regret. He was a character of peculiar
+stamp; always ready without forwardness, calm and active, remarkable for
+his extreme purity of morals, simple and unostentatious; in other
+respects, unaffected and sincere in his relations with others, and
+attaching the idea of glory only to actions, and not to words. He always
+marched with the same order and moderation in the midst of the most
+immoderate disorder; and yet, what does honour to the age, he attained
+to the highest distinctions as quickly and as rapidly as any who could
+be named.
+
+This feeble re-organization, the distribution of a part of the
+provisions, the plunder of the rest, the repose which the Emperor and
+his guard were enabled to take, the destruction of part of the artillery
+and baggage, and finally, the expedition of a number of orders, were
+nearly all the benefits which were derived from that fatal delay. In
+other respects, all the misfortunes happened which had been foreseen. A
+few hundred men were only rallied for a moment. The explosion of the
+mines scarcely blew up the outside of some of the walls, and was only of
+use on the last day, in driving out of the town the stragglers whom we
+had been unable to set in motion.
+
+The soldiers who had totally lost heart, the women, and several thousand
+sick and wounded, were here abandoned. This was when Augereau's disaster
+near Elnia made it but too evident that Kutusoff, now become the
+pursuer, did not confine himself to the high road; that he was marching
+from Wiazma by Elnia, direct upon Krasnoë; finally, when we ought to
+have foreseen that we should be obliged to cut our way through the
+Russian army, it was only on the 14th of November that the grand army
+(or rather thirty-six thousand troops) commenced its march.
+
+The old and young guard had not then more than from nine to ten thousand
+infantry, and two thousand cavalry; Davoust and the first corps, from
+eight to nine thousand; Ney and the third corps, five to six thousand;
+Prince Eugene and the army of Italy, five thousand; Poniatowski, eight
+hundred; Junot and the Westphalians, seven hundred; Latour-Maubourg and
+the rest of the cavalry, fifteen hundred; there might also be about one
+thousand light horse, and five hundred dismounted cavalry, whom we had
+succeeded in collecting together.
+
+This army had left Moscow one hundred thousand strong; in
+five-and-twenty days it had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men. The
+artillery had already lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon, and
+yet these feeble remains were always divided into eight armies, which
+were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers, and a long train
+of cannon and baggage.
+
+Whether it was this incumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a
+mistaken sense of security, which led the Emperor to order a day's
+interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; most
+probably it was the latter. Be that as it may, he, Eugene, Davoust, and
+Ney only quitted Smolensk in succession; Ney was not to leave it till
+the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery saw the trunnions
+of the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the ammunition, to
+drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the towers which
+surrounded the city.
+
+Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues distance from
+thence, and preparing to cut in pieces successively those remnants of
+corps thus extended and parcelled out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+It was on the 14th of November, about five in the morning, that the
+imperial column at last quitted Smolensk. Its march was still firm, but
+gloomy and silent as night, and mute and discoloured as the aspect of
+the country through which it was advancing.
+
+This silence was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied
+to the poor horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met
+with ravines; and when upon these icy declivities, men, horses, and
+artillery were rolling in obscurity, one over the other. The first day
+they advanced five leagues. The artillery of the guard took twenty-two
+hours to get over that ground.
+
+Nevertheless, this first column arrived, without any great loss of men,
+at Korythinia, which Junot had passed with his Westphalian corps, now
+reduced to seven hundred men. A vanguard had pushed on as far as
+Krasnoë. The wounded and disbanded men were on the point of reaching
+Liady. Korythinia is five leagues from Smolensk; Krasnoë five leagues
+from Korythinia; Liady four leagues from Krasnoë. The Boristhenes flows
+at two leagues on the right of the high road from Korythinia to Krasnoë.
+
+Near Korythinia another road, that from Elnia to Krasnoë, runs close to
+the great road. That very day Kutusoff advanced upon that road with
+ninety thousand men, which completely covered it; his march was parallel
+with that of Napoleon, whom he soon outstripped; on the cross-roads he
+sent forward several vanguards to intercept our retreat.
+
+One of these, said to be commanded by Ostermann, made its appearance at
+Korythinia at the same time with Napoleon, and was driven back.
+
+A second, consisting of twenty thousand men, and commanded by
+Miloradowitch, took a position three leagues in advance of us, towards
+Merlino and Nikoulina, behind a ravine which skirts the left side of the
+great road; and there, lying in ambush on the flank of our retreat, it
+awaited our passage.
+
+At the same time a third reached Krasnoë, which it surprised during the
+night, but was driven out by Sebastiani, who had just arrived there.
+
+Finally, a fourth, pushed still more in advance, got between Krasnoë and
+Liady, and carried off, upon the high road, several generals and other
+officers who were marching singly.
+
+Kutusoff, at the same time, with the bulk of his army, advanced, and
+took a position in the rear of these vanguards, and within reach of them
+all, and felicitated himself on the success of his manoeuvres, which
+would have inevitably failed, owing to his tardiness, had it not been
+for our want of foresight; for this was a contest of errors, in which
+ours being the greatest, we could have no thought of escaping total
+destruction. Having made these dispositions, the Russian commander must
+have believed that the French army was entirely in his power; but this
+belief saved us. Kutusoff was wanting to himself at the moment of
+action; his old age executed only half and badly the plans which it had
+combined wisely.
+
+During the time that all these masses were arranging themselves round
+Napoleon, he remained perfectly tranquil in a miserable hut, the only
+one left standing in Korythinia, apparently quite unconscious of all
+these movements of troops, artillery, and cavalry, which were
+surrounding him in all directions; at least he sent no orders to the
+three corps which had halted at Smolensk to expedite their march, and he
+himself waited for daylight to proceed.
+
+His column was advancing, without precaution, preceded by a crowd of
+stragglers, all eager to reach Krasnoë, when at two leagues from that
+place, a row of Cossacks, placed from the heights on our left all across
+the great road, appeared before them. Seized with astonishment, these
+stragglers halted; they had looked for nothing of the kind, and at first
+were inclined to believe that relentless fate had traced upon the snow
+between them and Europe, that long, black, and motionless line as the
+fatal term assigned to their hopes.
+
+Some of them, stupified and rendered insensible by the misery of their
+situation, with their eyes mentally fixed on home, and pursuing
+mechanically and obstinately that direction, would listen to no warning,
+and were about to surrender; the others collected together, and on both
+sides there was a pause, in order to consider each other's force.
+Several officers, who then came up, put these disbanded soldiers in some
+degree of order; seven or eight riflemen, whom they sent forward, were
+sufficient to break through that threatening curtain.
+
+The French were smiling at the audacity of this idle demonstration, when
+all at once, from the heights on their left, an enemy's battery began
+firing. Its bullets crossed the road; at the same time thirty squadrons
+showed themselves on the same side, threatening the Westphalian corps
+which was advancing, the commander of which was so confused, that he
+made no disposition to meet their attack.
+
+A wounded officer, unknown to these Germans, and who was there by mere
+chance, called out to them with an indignant voice, and immediately
+assumed their command. The men obeyed him as they would their own
+leader. In this case of pressing danger the differences of convention
+disappeared. The man really superior having shown himself, acted as a
+rallying point to the crowd, who grouped themselves around him, while
+the general-in-chief remained mute and confounded, receiving with
+docility the impulse the other had given, and acknowledging his
+superiority, which, after the danger was over, he disputed, but of which
+he did not, as too often happens, seek to revenge himself.
+
+This wounded officer was Excelmans! In this action he was every thing,
+general, officer, soldier, even an artilleryman, for he actually laid
+hold of a cannon that had been abandoned, loaded and pointed it, and
+made it once more be of use against our enemies. As to the commander of
+the Westphalians, after this campaign, his premature and melancholy end
+makes us presume that excessive fatigue and the consequences of some
+severe wounds had already affected him mortally.
+
+On seeing this leading column marching in such good order, the enemy
+confined itself to attacking it with their bullets, which it despised,
+and soon left behind it. When it came to the turn of the grenadiers of
+the old guard to pass through this fire, they closed their ranks around
+Napoleon like a moveable fortress, proud of having to protect him. Their
+band of music expressed this pride. When the danger was greatest, they
+played the well-known air, "_Oů peut-on ętre mieux qu'au sein de sa
+famille!_" (Where can we be happier than in the bosom of our family!) But
+the Emperor, whom nothing escaped, stopped them with an exclamation,
+"Rather play, _Veillons au salut de l'Empire_!" (Let us watch for the
+safety of the empire!) words much better suited to his pre-occupation,
+and to the general situation.
+
+At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders
+to silence it, and in two hours after he reached Krasnoë. The sight of
+Sebastiani, and of the first grenadiers who preceded him, had been
+sufficient to drive away the enemy's infantry. Napoleon entered in a
+state of great anxiety, from not knowing what corps had been attacking
+him, and his cavalry being too weak to enable them to get him
+information, out of reach of the high road. He left Mortier and the
+young guard a league behind him, in this way stretching out from too
+great a distance a hand too feeble to assist his army, and determined to
+wait for it.
+
+The passage of his column had not been sanguinary, but it could not
+conquer the ground as it did the enemy; the road was hilly; at every
+eminence cannon were obliged to be left behind without being spiked, and
+baggage, which was plundered before it was abandoned. The Russians from
+their heights saw the whole interior of the army, its weaknesses, its
+deformities, its most shameful parts: in short, all that is generally
+concealed with the greatest care.
+
+Notwithstanding, it appeared as if Miloradowitch, from his elevated
+position, was satisfied with merely insulting the passage of the
+Emperor, and of that old guard which had been so long the terror of
+Europe. He did not dare to gather up its fragments until it had passed
+on; but then he became bold, concentrated his forces, and descending
+from the heights, took up a strong position with twenty thousand men,
+quite across the high road; by this movement he separated Eugene,
+Davoust, and Ney from the Emperor, and closed the road to Europe against
+these three leaders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+While he was making these preparations, Eugene was using all his efforts
+at Smolensk to collect his scattered troops; with great difficulty he
+tore them from the plunder of the magazines, and he did not succeed in
+rallying eight thousand men until late on the 15th of November. He was
+obliged to promise them supplies of provisions, and to show them the
+road to Lithuania, in order to induce them to renew their march. Night
+compelled him to halt at three leagues distance from Smolensk; the half
+of his soldiers had already left their ranks. Next morning he continued
+his march, with all that the cold of the night and of death had not
+fastened round their _bivouacs_.
+
+The noise of the cannon which they had heard the day before had ceased;
+the royal column was advancing with difficulty, adding its own fragments
+to those which it encountered. At its head, the viceroy and the chief of
+his staff, buried in their own melancholy reflections, gave the reins to
+their horses. Insensibly they left their troop behind them, without
+being sensible of it; for the road was strewed with stragglers and men
+marching at their pleasure, the idea of keeping whom in order had been
+abandoned.
+
+In this way they advanced to within two leagues of Krasnoë, but then a
+singular movement which was passing before them attracted their absent
+looks. Several of the disbanded soldiers had suddenly halted; those who
+followed as they came up, formed a group with them; others who had
+advanced farther fell back upon the first; they crowded together; a mass
+was soon formed. The viceroy surprised, then looked about him; he
+perceived that he had got the start of the main body of his army by an
+hour's march: that he had about him only fifteen hundred men of all
+ranks, of all nations, without organization, without leaders, without
+order, without arms ready or fit for an engagement, and that he was
+summoned to surrender.
+
+This summons was answered by a general cry of indignation! But the
+Russian flag of truce, who presented himself singly, insisted: "Napoleon
+and his guard," said he to them, "have been beaten; you are surrounded
+by twenty thousand Russians: you have no means of safety but in
+accepting honourable conditions, and these Miloradowitch proposes to
+you."
+
+At these words, Guyon, one of the generals whose soldiers were either
+all dead or dispersed, rushed from the crowd, and with a loud voice
+called out, "Return immediately to whence you came, and tell him who
+sent you, that if he has twenty thousand men, we have eighty thousand!"
+The Russian, confounded, immediately retired.
+
+All this happened in the twinkling of an eye; in a moment after the
+hills on the left of the road were spouting out lightning and whirlwinds
+of smoke; showers of shells and grape-shot swept the high road, and
+threatening advancing columns showed their bayonets.
+
+The viceroy hesitated for a moment; it grieved him to leave that
+unfortunate troop, but at last, leaving his chief of the staff with
+them, he returned back to his divisions, in order to bring them forward
+to the combat, to make them get beyond the obstacle before it became
+insurmountable, or to perish; for with the pride derived from a crown
+and so many victories, it was not to be expected that he could ever
+admit the thought of surrender.
+
+Meanwhile, Guilleminot summoned about him the officers who, in this
+crowd, had mingled with the soldiers. Several generals, colonels, and a
+great number of officers immediately started forth and surrounded him;
+they concerted together, and accepting him for their leader, they
+distributed into platoons all the men who had hitherto formed but one
+mass, and whom in that state they had found it impossible to excite.
+
+This organization was made under a sharp fire. Several superior officers
+went and placed themselves proudly in the ranks, and became once more
+common soldiers. From a different species of pride, some marines of the
+guard insisted on being commanded by one of their own officers, while
+each of the other platoons was commanded by a general. Hitherto the
+Emperor himself had been their colonel; now they were on the point of
+perishing they maintained their privilege, which nothing could make them
+forget, and which was respected accordingly.
+
+These brave men, in this order, proceeded on their march to Krasnoë: and
+they had already got beyond the batteries of Miloradowitch, when the
+latter, rushing with his columns upon their flanks, hemmed them in so
+closely, as to compel them to turn about, and seek a position in which
+they could defend themselves. To the eternal glory of these warriors it
+should be told, that these fifteen hundred French and Italians, one to
+ten, with nothing in their favour but a determined countenance and very
+few fire-arms in a state fit for use, kept their enemies at a respectful
+distance upwards of an hour.
+
+But as there was still no appearance of the viceroy and the rest of his
+divisions, a longer resistance was evidently impossible. They were again
+and again summoned to lay down their arms. During these short pauses
+they heard the cannon rolling at a distance in their front and in their
+rear. Thus, therefore, "the whole army was attacked at once, and from
+Smolensk to Krasnoë it was but one engagement! If we wanted assistance,
+there could be none expected by waiting for it; we must go and look for
+it; but on which side? At Krasnoë it was impossible; we were too far
+from it; there was every reason to believe that our troops were beaten
+there. It would besides become matter of necessity for us to retreat;
+and we were too near the Russians under Miloradowitch, who were calling
+to us from their ranks to lay down our arms, to venture to turn our
+backs upon them. It would therefore be a much better plan, as our faces
+were now turned towards Smolensk, and as Prince Eugene was on that side,
+to form ourselves into one compact mass, keep all its movements well
+connected, and rushing headlong, to re-enter Russia by cutting our way
+through these Russians, and rejoin the viceroy; then to return together,
+to overthrow Miloradowitch, and at last reach Krasnoë."
+
+To this proposition of their leader, there was a loud and unanimous cry
+of assent. Instantly the column formed into a mass, and rushed into the
+midst of ten thousand hostile muskets and cannon. The Russians, at first
+seized with astonishment, opened their ranks and allowed this handful of
+warriors, almost disarmed, to advance into the middle of them. Then,
+when they comprehended their purpose, either from pity or admiration,
+the enemy's battalions, which lined both sides of the road, called out
+to our men to halt; they entreated and conjured them to surrender; but
+the only answer they received was a more determined march, a stern
+silence, and the point of the bayonet. The whole of the enemy's fire was
+then poured upon them at once, at the distance of a few yards, and the
+half of this heroic column was stretched wounded or lifeless on the
+ground.
+
+The remainder proceeded without a single man quitting the body of his
+troop, which no Russian was bold enough to venture near. Few of these
+unfortunate men again saw the viceroy and their advancing divisions.
+Then only they separated; they ran and threw themselves into these
+feeble ranks, which were opened to receive and protect them.
+
+For more than an hour the Russian cannon had been thinning them. While
+one half of their forces had pursued Guilleminot and compelled him to
+retreat, Miloradowitch, with the other half, had stopped Prince Eugene.
+His right rested on a wood which was protected by heights entirely
+covered with cannon; his left touched the great road, but more in the
+rear. This disposition dictated that of Eugene. The royal column, by
+degrees, as it came up, deployed on the right of the road, its right
+more forward than its left. The viceroy thus placed obliquely between
+him and the enemy the great road, the possession of which was the
+subject of contest. Each of the two armies occupied it by its left.
+
+The Russians, placed in a position so offensive, kept entirely on the
+defensive; their bullets alone attacked Eugene. A cannonade was kept up
+on both sides, on theirs most destructive, on ours almost totally
+ineffective. Tired out with this firing, Eugene formed his resolution;
+he called the 14th French division, drew it up on the left of the great
+road, pointed out to it the woody height on which the enemy rested, and
+which formed his principal strength; _that_ was the decisive point, the
+centre of the action, and to make the rest fall, _that_ must be carried.
+He did not expect it would; but that effort would draw the attention and
+the strength of the enemy on that side, the right of the great road
+would remain free, and he would endeavour to take proper advantage of
+it.
+
+Three hundred soldiers, formed into three troops, were all that could be
+found willing to mount to this assault. These devoted men advanced
+resolutely against hostile thousands in a formidable position. A battery
+of the Italian guard advanced to protect them, but the Russian batteries
+immediately demolished it, and their cavalry took possession of it.
+
+In spite of the grape-shot which was mowing them rapidly down, the three
+hundred French kept moving on, and they had actually reached the enemy's
+position, when, suddenly from two sides of the wood two masses of
+cavalry rushed forth, bore down upon, overwhelmed and massacred them.
+Not one escaped; and with them perished all remains of discipline and
+courage in their division.
+
+It was then that General Guilleminot again made his appearance. That in
+a position so critical, Prince Eugene, with four thousand enfeebled
+troops, the remnant of forty-two thousand and upwards, should not have
+despaired, that he should still have exhibited a bold countenance, may
+be conceived, from the known character of that commander; but that the
+sight of our disaster and the ardour of victory should not have urged
+the Russians to more than indecisive efforts, and that they should have
+allowed the night to put an end to the battle, is with us, to this day,
+matter of complete astonishment. Victory was so new to them, that even
+when they held it in their hands, they knew not how to profit by it;
+they delayed its completion until the next day.
+
+The viceroy saw that the greater part of the Russians, attracted by his
+demonstrations, had collected on the left of the road, and he only
+waited until night, the sure ally of the weakest, had chained all their
+movements. Then it was, that leaving his fires burning on that side, to
+deceive the enemy, he quitted it, and marching entirely across the
+fields, he turned, and silently got beyond the left of Miloradowitch's
+position, while that general, too certain of his victory, was dreaming
+of the glory of receiving, next morning, the sword of the son of
+Napoleon.
+
+In the midst of this perilous march, there was an awful moment. At the
+most critical instant, when these soldiers, the survivors of so many
+battles, were stealing along the side of the Russian army, holding their
+breath and the noise of their steps; when their all depended on a look
+or a cry of alarm; the moon all at once coming out of a thick cloud
+appeared to light their movements. At the same moment a Russian sentinel
+called out to them to halt, and demanded who they were? They gave
+themselves up for lost! but Klisky, a Pole, ran up to this Russian, and
+speaking to him in his own language, said to him with the greatest
+composure, in a low tone of voice, "Be silent, fellow! don't you see
+that we belong to the corps of Ouwarof, and that we are going on a
+secret expedition?" The Russian, outwitted, held his tongue.
+
+But the Cossacks were galloping up every moment to the flanks of the
+column, as if to reconnoitre it, and then returned to the body of their
+troop. Their squadrons advanced several times as if they were about to
+charge; but they did no more, either from doubt as to what they saw, for
+they were still deceived, or from prudence, as it frequently halted, and
+presented a determined front to them.
+
+At last, after two hours most anxious march, they again reached the high
+road, and the viceroy was actually in Krasnoë on the 17th of November,
+when Miloradowitch, descending from his heights in order to seize him,
+found the field of battle occupied only by a few stragglers, whom no
+effort could induce the night before to quit their fires.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The Emperor on his side had waited for the viceroy during the whole of
+the preceding day. The noise of his engagement had irritated him. An
+effort to break through the enemy, in order to join him, had been
+ineffectually attempted; and when night came on without his making his
+appearance, the uneasiness of his adopted father was at the height.
+"Eugene and the army of Italy, and this long day of baffled expectation,
+had they then terminated together?" Only one hope remained to Napoleon;
+and that was, that the viceroy, driven back towards Smolensk, had there
+joined Davoust and Ney, and that the following day they would, with
+united forces, attempt a decisive effort.
+
+In his anxiety, the Emperor assembled the marshals who remained with
+him. These were Berthier, Bessičres, Mortier, and Lefebvre; these were
+saved; they had cleared the obstacle; they had only to continue their
+retreat through Lithuania, which was open to them; but would they
+abandon their companions in the midst of the Russian army? No,
+certainly; and they determined once more to enter Russia, either to
+deliver, or to perish with them.
+
+When this resolution was taken, Napoleon coolly prepared the
+dispositions to carry it into effect. He was not at all shaken by the
+great movements which the enemy were evidently making around him. He saw
+that Kutusoff was advancing in order to surround and take him prisoner
+in Krasnoë. The very night before, he had learned that Ojarowski, with a
+vanguard of Russian infantry, had got beyond him, and taken a position
+at Maliewo, in a village in the rear of his left. Irritated, instead of
+depressed, by misfortune, he called his aide-de-camp, Rapp, and
+exclaimed, "that he must set out immediately, and proceed during the
+night and the darkness to attack that body of infantry with the bayonet;
+that this was the first time of its exhibiting so much audacity, and
+that he was determined to make it repent it, in such a way, that it
+should never again dare to approach so near to his head-quarters." Then
+instantly recalling him, he continued, "But, no! let Roguet and his
+division go alone! As for thee, remain where thou art, I don't wish thee
+to be killed here, I shall have occasion for thee at Dantzic."
+
+Rapp, while he was carrying this order to Roguet, could not help feeling
+astonished, that his leader, surrounded by eighty thousand enemies, whom
+he was going to attack next day with nine thousand, should have so
+little doubt about his safety, as to be thinking of what he should have
+to do at Dantzic, a city from which he was separated by the winter, two
+other hostile armies, famine, and a hundred and eighty leagues.
+
+The nocturnal attack on Chirkowa and Maliewo was successful. Roguet
+formed his idea of the enemy's position by the direction of their fires;
+they occupied two villages, connected by a causeway, which was defended
+by a ravine. He disposed his troop into three columns of attack; those
+on the right and left were to advance silently, as close as possible to
+the enemy; then at the signal to charge, which he himself would give
+them from the centre, they were to rush into the midst of the enemy
+without firing a shot, and making use only of their bayonets.
+
+Immediately the two wings of the young guard commenced the action. While
+the Russians, taken by surprise, and not knowing on which side to defend
+themselves, were wavering from their right to their left, Roguet, with
+his column, rushed suddenly upon their centre and into the midst of
+their camp, into which he entered pell-mell with them. Thus divided and
+thrown into confusion, they had barely time to throw the best part of
+their great and small arms into a neighbouring lake, and to set fire to
+their tents, the flames arising from which, instead of saving them, only
+gave light to their destruction.
+
+This check stopped the movement of the Russian army for four-and-twenty
+hours, put it in the Emperor's power to remain at Krasnoë, and enabled
+Eugene to rejoin him during the following night. He was received by
+Napoleon with the greatest joy; but the Emperor's uneasiness respecting
+Davoust and Ney became shortly after proportionably greater.
+
+Around us the camp of the Russians presented a spectacle similar to what
+it had done at Vinkowo, Malo-Yaroslawetz, and Wiazma. Every evening,
+close to the general's tent, the relics of the Russian saints,
+surrounded by an immense number of wax tapers, were exposed to the
+adoration of the soldiers. While each of these was, according to custom,
+giving proofs of his devotion by an endless repetition of crossings and
+genuflections, the priests were addressing them with fanatical
+exhortations, which would appear barbarous and absurd to every civilized
+nation.
+
+In spite, however, of the great power of such means, of the number of
+the Russians, and of our weakness, Kutusoff, who was only at two
+leagues' distance from Miloradowitch, while the latter was beating
+Prince Eugene, remained immoveable. During the following night,
+Beningsen, urged on by the ardent Wilson, in vain attempted to animate
+the old Russian. Elevating the faults of his age into virtues, he
+applied the names of wisdom, humanity, and prudence, to his dilatoriness
+and strange circumspection; he was resolved to finish as he had begun.
+For if we may be allowed to compare small things with great, his renown
+had been established on a principle directly contrary to that of
+Napoleon, fortune having made the one, and the other having created his
+fortune.
+
+He made a boast of "advancing only by short marches; of allowing his
+soldiers to rest every third day; he would blush, and halt immediately,
+if they wanted bread or spirits for a single moment." Then, with great
+self-gratulation, he pretended that "all the way from Wiazma, he had
+been escorting the French army as his prisoners; chastising them
+whenever they wished to halt, or strike out of the high road; that it
+was useless to run any risks with captives; that the Cossacks, a
+vanguard, and an army of artillery, were quite sufficient to finish
+them, and make them pass successively under the yoke; and that in this
+plan, he was admirably seconded by Napoleon himself. Why should he seek
+to _purchase_ of Fortune what she was so generously giving him? Was not
+the term of Napoleon's destiny already irrevocably marked? it was in the
+marshes of the Berezina that this meteor would be extinguished, this
+colossus overthrown, in the midst of Wittgenstein, Tchitchakof, and
+himself, and in the presence of the assembled Russian armies. As for
+himself, he would have the glory of delivering him up to them,
+enfeebled, disarmed, and dying; and to him that glory was sufficient."
+
+To this discourse the English officer, still more active and eager,
+replied only by entreating the field-marshal "to leave his head-quarters
+only for a few moments, and advance upon the heights; there he would see
+that the last moment of Napoleon was already come. Would he allow him
+even to get beyond the frontiers of Russia proper, which loudly called
+for the sacrifice of this great victim? Nothing remained but to strike;
+let him only give the order, one charge would be sufficient, and in two
+hours the face of Europe would be entirely changed!"
+
+Then, gradually getting warmer at the coolness with which Kutusoff
+listened to him, Wilson, for the third time, threatened him with the
+general indignation. "Already, in his army, at the sight of the
+straggling, mutilated, and dying column, which was about to escape from
+him, he might hear the Cossacks exclaiming, what a shame it was to allow
+these skeletons to escape in this manner out of their tomb!" But
+Kutusoff, whom old age, that misfortune without hope, rendered
+indifferent, became angry at the attempts made to rouse him, and by a
+short and violent answer, shut the indignant Englishman's mouth.
+
+It is asserted that the report of a spy had represented to him Krasnoë
+as filled with an enormous mass of the imperial guard, and that the old
+marshal was afraid of compromising his reputation by attacking it. But
+the sight of our distress emboldened Beningsen; this chief of the staff
+prevailed upon Strogonof, Gallitzin, and Miloradowitch, with a force of
+more than fifty thousand Russians, and one hundred pieces of cannon, to
+venture to attack at daylight, in spite of Kutusoff, fourteen thousand
+famished, enfeebled, and half-frozen French and Italians.
+
+This was a danger, the imminence of which Napoleon fully comprehended.
+He might escape from it; daylight had not yet appeared. He was at
+liberty to avoid this fatal engagement; to gain Orcha and Borizof by
+rapid marches along with Eugene and his guard; there he could rally his
+forces with thirty thousand French under Victor and Oudinôt, with
+Dombrowski, with Regnier, with Schwartzenberg, and with all his depôts,
+and be might again, the following year, make his appearance as
+formidable as ever.
+
+On the 17th, before daylight, he issued his orders, armed himself, and
+going out on foot, at the head of his old guard, began his march. But it
+was not towards Poland, his ally, that it was directed, nor towards
+France, where he would be still received as the head of a rising
+dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on taking up his sword
+on this occasion, were "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is
+time that I should become the general." He turned back into the midst of
+eighty thousand enemies, plunged into the thickest of them, in order to
+draw all their efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favour of
+Davoust and Ney, and to tear them from a country, the gates of which had
+been closed upon them.
+
+Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on one side the Russian battalions
+and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right, and in our
+rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other, Napoleon with his six
+thousand guards advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to take his
+place in the middle of that terrible circle. At the same time Mortier, a
+few yards in front of his Emperor, displayed in the face of the whole
+Russian army, the five thousand men which still remained to him.
+
+Their object was to defend the right flank of the great road from
+Krasnoë to the great ravine in the direction of Stachowa. A battalion of
+_chasseurs_ of the old guard, formed in a square like a fortress, was
+planted close to the high road, and acted as a support to the left wing
+of our young soldiers. On their right, in the snowy plains which
+surrounded Krasnoë, the remains of the cavalry of the guard, a few
+cannon, and the four hundred cavalry of Latour-Maubourg (as, since they
+left Smolensk, the cold had killed or dispersed fourteen hundred of
+them) occupied the place of the battalions and batteries which the
+French army no longer possessed.
+
+The artillery of the Duke of Treviso was reinforced by a battery
+commanded by Drouot; one of those men who are endowed with the whole
+strength of virtue, who think that duty embraces every thing, and are
+capable of making the noblest sacrifices simply and without the least
+effort.
+
+Claparede remained at Krasnoë, where, with a few soldiers, he protected
+the wounded, the baggage, and the retreat. Prince Eugene continued his
+retreat towards Liady. His engagement of the preceding day and his night
+march had entirely broken up his corps; his divisions only retained
+sufficient unity to drag themselves along, and to perish, but not to
+fight.
+
+Meantime Roguet had been recalled to the field of battle from Maliewo.
+The enemy kept pushing columns across that village, and was extending
+more and more beyond our right in order to surround us. The battle then
+commenced. But what kind of battle? The Emperor had here no sudden
+illumination to trust to, no flashes of momentary inspiration, none of
+these great strokes so unforeseen from their boldness, which ravish
+fortune, extort a victory, and by which he had so often disconcerted,
+stunned, and crushed his enemies. All _their_ movements were now free,
+all _ours_ enchained, and this genius of attack was reduced to defend
+himself.
+
+Here therefore it became perfectly evident that renown is not a vain
+shadow, that she is real strength, and doubly powerful by the inflexible
+pride which she imparts to her favourites, and the timid precautions
+which she suggests to them who venture to attack her. The Russians had
+only to march forward without manoeuvring, even without firing: their
+mass was sufficient, they might have crushed Napoleon and his feeble
+troop: but they did not dare to come to close quarters with him. They
+were awed by the presence of the conqueror of Egypt and of Europe. The
+Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, an army of victories, seemed
+to rise between him and the whole of the Russians. We might almost fancy
+that, in the eyes of that submissive and superstitious people, a renown
+so extraordinary appeared like some thing supernatural; that they
+regarded it as beyond their reach; that they believed they could only
+attack and demolish it from a distance; and in short, that against that
+old guard, that living fortress, that column of granite, as it had been
+styled by its leader, human efforts were impotent, and that cannon alone
+could demolish it.
+
+These made wide and deep breaches in the ranks of Roguet and the young
+guard, but they killed without vanquishing. These young soldiers, one
+half of whom had never before been in an engagement, received the shock
+of death during three hours without retreating one step, without making
+a single movement to escape it, and without being able to return it,
+their artillery having been broken, and the Russians keeping beyond the
+reach of their musketry.
+
+But every instant strengthened the enemy and weakened Napoleon. The
+noise of the cannon as well as Claparede apprised him, that in the rear
+of Krasnoë and his army, Beningsen was proceeding to take possession of
+the road to Liady, and cut off his retreat. The east, the west, and the
+south were sparkling with the enemy's fires; one side only remained
+open, that of the north and the Dnieper, towards an eminence, at the
+foot of which were the high road and the Emperor. We fancied we saw the
+enemy covering this eminence with his cannon: in that situation they
+were just over Napoleon's head, and might have crushed him at a few
+yards' distance. He was apprised of his danger, cast his eyes for an
+instant upon it, and uttered merely these words, "Very well, let a
+battalion of my _chasseurs_ take possession of it!" Immediately
+afterwards, without paying farther attention to it, his whole looks and
+attention reverted to the perilous situation of Mortier.
+
+Then at last Davoust made his appearance, forcing his way through a
+swarm of Cossacks, whom he drove away by a precipitate march. At the
+sight of Krasnoë, this marshal's troops disbanded themselves, and ran
+across the fields to get beyond the right of the enemy's line, in the
+rear of which they had come up. Davoust and his generals could only
+rally them at Krasnoë.
+
+The first corps was thus preserved, but we learned at the same time,
+that our rear-guard could no longer defend itself at Krasnoë; that Ney
+was probably still at Smolensk, and that we must give up waiting for him
+any longer. Napoleon, however, still hesitated; he could not determine
+on making this great sacrifice.
+
+But at last, as all were likely to perish, his resolution was fixed. He
+called Mortier, and squeezing his hand sorrowfully, told him, "that he
+had not a moment to lose; that the enemy were overwhelming him in all
+directions; that Kutusoff might already reach Liady, perhaps Orcha, and
+the last winding of the Boristhenes before him; that he would therefore
+proceed thither rapidly with his old guard, in order to occupy that
+passage. Davoust would relieve Mortier; but both of them must endeavour
+to hold out in Krasnoë until night, after which they must come and
+rejoin him." Then with his heart full of Ney's misfortune, and of
+despair at abandoning him, he withdrew slowly from the field of battle,
+traversed Krasnoë, where he again halted, and then cleared his way to
+Liady.
+
+Mortier was anxious to obey, but at that moment the Dutch troops of the
+guard had lost, along with a third part of their number, an important
+post which they were defending, which the enemy immediately after
+covered with his artillery. Roguet, feeling the destructive effects of
+its fire, fancied he was able to extinguish it. A regiment which he sent
+against the Russian battery was repulsed; a second (the 1st of the
+_voltigeurs_) got into the middle of the Russians, and stood firm
+against two charges of their cavalry. It continued to advance, torn to
+pieces by their grape-shot, when a third charge overwhelmed it. Fifty
+soldiers and eleven officers were all of it that Roguet was able to
+preserve.
+
+That general had lost the half of his men. It was now two o'clock, and
+his unshaken fortitude still kept the Russians in astonishment, when at
+last, emboldened by the Emperor's departure, they began to press upon
+him so closely, that the young guard was nearly hemmed in, and very soon
+in a situation in which it could neither hold out, nor retreat.
+
+Fortunately, some platoons which Davoust had rallied, and the appearance
+of another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy's attention.
+Mortier availed himself of it. He gave orders to the three thousand men
+he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty
+thousand enemies. "Do you hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde, "the
+marshal orders ordinary time! Ordinary time, soldiers!" And this brave
+and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a
+shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as slowly from this field of
+carnage, as they would have done from a field of manoeuvre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoë between him and
+Beningsen, he was in safety. The communication between that town and
+Liady was only interrupted by the fire of the enemy's batteries, which
+flanked the left side of the great road. Colbert and Latour-Maubourg
+kept them in check upon their heights. In the course of this march a
+most singular accident occurred. A howitzer shell entered the body of a
+horse, burst there, and blew him to pieces without wounding his rider,
+who fell upon his legs, and went on.
+
+The Emperor, meanwhile, halted at Liady, four leagues from the field of
+battle. When night came on, he learned that Mortier, who he thought was
+in his rear, had got before him. Melancholy and uneasy, he sent for him,
+and with an agitated voice, said to him, "that he had certainly fought
+gloriously, and suffered greatly. But why had he placed his Emperor
+between him and the enemy? why had he exposed himself to be cut off?"
+
+The marshal had got the start of Napoleon without being aware of it. He
+exclaimed, "that he had at first left Davoust in Krasnoë, again
+endeavouring to rally his troops, and that he himself had halted, not
+far from that: but that the first corps, having been driven back upon
+him, had obliged him to retrograde. That besides, Kutusoff did not
+follow up his victory with vigour, and appeared to hang upon our flank
+with all his army with no other view than to feast his eyes with our
+distress, and gather up our fragments."
+
+Next day the march was continued with hesitation. The impatient
+stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of Napoleon; he
+was on foot, with a stick in his hand, walking with difficulty and
+repugnance, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to
+tear himself from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then passing,
+and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.
+
+In the evening he reached Dombrowna, a wooden town, with a population
+like Liady; a novel sight for an army, which had for three months seen
+nothing but ruins. We had at last emerged from old Russia and her
+deserts of snow and ashes, and entered into a friendly and inhabited
+country, whose language we understood. The weather just then became
+milder, a thaw had begun, and we received some provisions.
+
+Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and with some famine and bivouacs,
+all ceased at once; but it was too late. The Emperor saw that his army
+was destroyed; every moment the name of Ney escaped from his lips, with
+exclamations of grief. That night particularly he was heard groaning and
+exclaiming, "That the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to the heart,
+and yet that he could not succour them without fixing himself in some
+place: but where was it possible for him to rest, without ammunition,
+provisions, or artillery? He was no longer strong enough to halt; he
+must reach Minsk as quickly as possible."
+
+He had hardly spoken the words, when a Polish officer arrived with the
+news, that Minsk itself, his magazine, his retreat, his only hope, had
+just fallen into the hands of the Russians, Tchitchakof having entered
+it on the 16th. Napoleon, at first, was mute and overpowered at this
+last blow; but immediately afterwards, elevating himself in proportion
+to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now nothing to do,
+but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets."
+
+But in order to reach this new enemy, who had escaped from
+Schwartzenberg, or whom Schwartzenberg had perhaps allowed to pass, (for
+we knew nothing of the circumstances,) and to escape from Kutusoff and
+Wittgenstein, we must cross the Berezina at Borizof. With that view
+Napoleon (on the 19th of November, from Dombrowna) sent orders to
+Dombrowski to give up all idea of fighting Hoertel, and proceed with all
+haste to occupy that passage. He wrote to the Duke of Reggio, to march
+rapidly to the same point, and to hasten to recover Minsk; the Duke of
+Belluno would cover his march. After giving these orders, his agitation
+was appeased, and his mind, worn out with suffering, sunk into
+depression.
+
+It was still far from daylight, when a singular noise drew him out of
+his lethargy. Some say that shots were at first heard, which had been
+fired by our own people, in order to draw out of the houses such as had
+taken shelter in them, that they might take their places; others assert,
+that from a disorderly practice, too common in our bivouacs, of
+vociferating to each other, the name of _Hausanne_, a grenadier, being
+suddenly called out loudly, in the midst of a profound silence, was
+mistaken for the alert cry of _aux armes_, which announced a surprise by
+the enemy.
+
+Whatever might be the cause, every one immediately saw, or fancied he
+saw, the Cossacks, and a great noise of war and of alarm surrounded
+Napoleon. Without disturbing himself, he said to Rapp, "Go and see, it
+is no doubt some rascally Cossacks, determined to disturb our rest!" But
+it became very soon a complete tumult of men running to fight or to
+flee, and who, meeting in the dark, mistook each other for enemies.
+
+Napoleon for a moment imagined that a serious attack had been made. As
+an embanked stream of water ran through the town, he inquired if the
+remaining artillery had been placed behind that ravine, and being
+informed that the precaution had been neglected, he himself immediately
+ran to the bridge, and caused his cannon to be hurried over to the other
+side.
+
+He then returned to his old guard, and stopping in front of each
+battalion: "Grenadiers!" said he to them, "we are retreating without
+being conquered by the enemy, let us not be vanquished by ourselves! Set
+an example to the army! Several of you have already deserted their
+eagles, and even thrown away their arms. I have no wish to have recourse
+to military laws to put a stop to this disorder, but appeal entirely to
+yourselves! Do justice among yourselves. To your own honour I commit the
+support of your discipline!"
+
+The other troops he harangued in a similar style. These few words were
+quite sufficient to the old grenadiers, who probably had no occasion for
+them. The others received them with acclamation, but an hour afterwards,
+when the march was resumed, they were quite forgotten. As to his
+rear-guard, throwing the greatest part of the blame of this hot alarm
+upon it, he sent an angry message to Davoust on the subject.
+
+At Orcha we found rather an abundant supply of provisions, a bridge
+equipage of sixty boats, with all its appurtenances, which were entirely
+burnt, and thirty-six pieces of cannon, with their horses, which were
+distributed between Davoust, Eugene, and Latour-Maubourg.
+
+Here for the first time we again met with the officers and gendarmes,
+who had been sent for the purpose of stopping on the two bridges of the
+Dnieper the crowd of stragglers, and making them rejoin their columns.
+But those eagles, which formerly promised every thing, were now looked
+upon as of fatal omen, and deserted accordingly.
+
+Disorder was already regularly organized, and had enlisted in its ranks
+men who showed their ability in its service. When an immense crowd had
+been collected, these wretches called out "the Cossacks!" with a view to
+quicken the march of those who preceded them and to increase the tumult.
+They then took advantage of it, to carry off the provisions and cloaks
+of those whom they had thrown off their guard.
+
+The gendarmes, who again saw this army for the first time since its
+disaster, were astonished at the sight of such misery, terrified at the
+great confusion, and became discouraged. This friendly frontier was
+entered tumultuously; it would have been given up to pillage, had it not
+been for the guard, and a few hundred men who remained, with Prince
+Eugene.
+
+Napoleon entered Orcha with six thousand guards, the remains of
+thirty-five thousand! Eugene, with eighteen hundred soldiers, the
+remains of forty-two thousand! Davoust, with four thousand, the remains
+of seventy thousand!
+
+This marshal had lost every thing, was actually without linen, and
+emaciated with hunger. He seized upon a loaf which was offered him by
+one of his comrades, and, voraciously devoured it. A handkerchief was
+given him to wipe his face, which was covered with rime. He exclaimed,
+"that none but men of iron constitutions could support such trials, that
+it was physically impossible to resist them; that there were limits to
+human strength, the utmost of which had been exceeded."
+
+He it was who at first supported the retreat as far as Wiazma. He was
+still, according to his custom, halting at all the defiles, and
+remaining there the very last, sending every one to his ranks, and
+constantly struggling with the disorder. He urged his soldiers to insult
+and strip of their booty such of their comrades as threw away their
+arms; the only means of retaining the first and punishing the last.
+Nevertheless, his methodical and severe genius, so much out of its
+element in that scene of universal confusion, has been accused of being
+too much intimidated at it.
+
+The Emperor made fruitless attempts to check this discouragement. When
+alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers; but
+in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear inflexible.
+He issued a proclamation, "ordering every one to return to their ranks;
+if they did not, he would strip the officers of their grades, and put
+the soldiers to death."
+
+A threat like this produced neither good nor bad impression upon men who
+had become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from
+danger, but from suffering, and less apprehensive of the _death_ with
+which they were threatened than of the _life_ that was offered to them.
+
+But Napoleon's confidence increased with his peril; in his eyes, and in
+the midst of these deserts of mud and ice, this handful of men was still
+the grand army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! and there was no
+infatuation in this firmness; we were certain of it, when, in this very
+town, we saw him burning with his own hands every thing belonging to
+him, which might serve as trophies to the enemy, in the event of his
+fall.
+
+There also were unfortunately consumed all the papers which he had
+collected in order to write the history of his life, for such was his
+intention when he set out for this fatal war. He had then determined to
+halt as a threatening conqueror on the borders of the Düna and the
+Boristhenes, to which he now returned as a disarmed fugitive. At that
+time he regarded the _ennui_ of six winter months, which he would have
+been detained on these rivers, as his greatest enemy, and to overcome
+it, this second Cćsar intended there to have dictated his Commentaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Every thing, however, was now changed; two hostile armies were cutting
+off his retreat. The question to decide was, through which of them he
+must attempt to force his way: and as he knew nothing of the Lithuanian
+forests into which he was about to penetrate, he summoned such of his
+officers as had passed through them in order to reach him.
+
+The Emperor began by telling them, that "Too much familiarity with great
+victories was frequently the precursor of great disasters, but that
+recrimination was now out of the question." He then mentioned the
+capture of Minsk, and after admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff's
+persevering manoeuvres on his right flank, declared "that he meant to
+abandon his line of operations on the Minsk, unite with the Dukes of
+Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein's army, and regain
+Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina."
+
+Jomini combated this plan. That Swiss general described the position of
+Wittgenstein as a series of long defiles, in which his resistance might
+be either obstinate or flexible, but in either way sufficiently long to
+consummate our destruction. He added, that in this season, and in such a
+state of disorder, a change of route would complete the destruction of
+the army; that it would lose itself in the cross-roads of these barren
+and marshy forests; he maintained that the high road alone could keep it
+in any degree of union. Borizof, and its bridge over the Berezina, were
+still open; and it would be sufficient to reach it.
+
+He then stated that he knew of a road to the right of that town,
+constructed on wooden bridges, and passing across the marshes of
+Lithuania. This was the only road, by his account, by which the army
+could reach Wilna by Zembin and Malodeczno, leaving Minsk on the left,
+its road a day's journey longer, its fifty broken bridges rendering a
+passage impracticable, and Tchitchakof in possession of it. In this
+manner we should pass between the two hostile armies, avoiding them
+both.
+
+The Emperor was staggered; but as his pride revolted at the appearance
+of avoiding an engagement, and he was anxious to signalize his departure
+from Russia by a victory, he sent for General Dodde, of the engineers.
+As soon as he saw him he called out to him, "Whether shall we retreat by
+Zembin, or go and beat Wittgenstein at Smoliantzy?" and knowing that
+Dodde had just come from the latter position, he asked him if it was
+approachable?
+
+His reply was, that Wittgenstein occupied a height which entirely
+commanded that miry country; that it would be necessary for us to tack
+about, within his sight and within his reach, by following the windings
+and turnings of the road, in order to ascend to the Russian camp; that
+thus our column of attack would be long exposed to their fire, first its
+left and then its right flank; that this position was therefore
+unapproachable in front, and that to turn it, it would be necessary to
+retrograde towards Witepsk, and take too long a circuit.
+
+Disappointed in this last hope of glory, Napoleon then decided for
+Borizof. He ordered General Eblé to proceed with eight companies of
+sappers and pontonniers to secure the passage of the Berezina, and
+General Jomini to act as his guide. But he said at the same time, "that
+it was cruel to retreat without fighting, to have the appearance of
+flight. If he had any magazine, any point of support, which would allow
+him to halt, he would still prove to Europe that he always knew how to
+fight and to conquer."
+
+All these illusions were now destroyed. At Smolensk, where he arrived
+first, and from which he was the first to depart, he had rather been
+informed of, than witnessed his disaster. At Krasnoë, where our miseries
+had successively been unrolled before his eyes, the peril had distracted
+his attention; but at Orcha he could contemplate, at once and leisurely,
+the full extent of his misfortunes.
+
+At Smolensk, thirty-six thousand combatants, one hundred and fifty
+cannon, the army-chest, and the hope of life and breathing at liberty on
+the other side of the Berezina, still remained; here, there were
+scarcely ten thousand soldiers, almost without clothing or shoes,
+entangled amidst a crowd of dying men, with a few cannon, and a pillaged
+army-chest.
+
+In five days, every evil had been aggravated; destruction and
+disorganization had made frightful progress; Minsk had been taken. He
+had no longer to look for rest and abundance on the other side of the
+Berezina, but fresh contests with a new enemy. Finally, the defection of
+Austria from his alliance seemed to be declared, and perhaps it was a
+signal given to all Europe.
+
+Napoleon was even uncertain whether he should reach Borizof in time to
+meet the new peril, which Schwartzenberg's hesitation seemed to have
+prepared for him. We have seen that a third Russian army, that of
+Wittgenstein, menaced, on his right, the interval which separated him
+from that town; that he had sent the Duke of Belluno against him, and
+had ordered that marshal to retrieve the opportunity he had lost on the
+1st of November, and to resume the offensive.
+
+In obedience to these orders, on the 14th of November, the very day
+Napoleon quitted Smolensk, the Dukes of Belluno and of Reggio had
+attacked and driven back the out-posts of Wittgenstein towards
+Smoliantzy, preparing, by this engagement, for a battle which they
+agreed should take place on the following day.
+
+The French were thirty thousand against forty thousand; there, as well
+as at Wiazma, the soldiers were sufficiently numerous, if they had not
+had too many leaders.
+
+The two Marshals disagreed. Victor wished to manoeuvre on the enemy's
+left wing, to overthrow Wittgenstein with the two French corps, and
+march by Botscheikowo on Kamen, and from Kamen by Pouichna on Berezina.
+Oudinôt warmly disapproved of this plan, saying that it would separate
+them from the grand army, which required their assistance.
+
+Thus, one of the leaders wishing to manoeuvre, and the other to attack
+in front, they did neither the one nor the other. Oudinôt retired during
+the night to Czereďa, and Victor, discovering this retreat at daybreak,
+was compelled to follow him.
+
+He halted within a day's march of the Lukolmlia, near Sienno, where
+Wittgenstein did not much disturb him; but the Duke of Reggio having at
+last received the order dated from Dombrowna, which directed him to
+recover Minsk, Victor was about to be left alone before the Russian
+general. It was possible that the latter would then become aware of his
+superiority: and the Emperor, who at Orcha, on the 20th of November, saw
+his rear-guard, lost, his left flank menaced by Kutusoff, and his
+advance column stopped at the Berezina by the army of Volhynia, learned
+that Wittgenstein and forty thousand more enemies, far from being beaten
+and repulsed, were ready to fall upon his right, and that he had no time
+to lose.
+
+But Napoleon was long before he could determine to quit the Boristhenes.
+It appeared to him that this was like a second abandonment of the
+unfortunate Ney, and casting off for ever his intrepid companion in
+arms. There, as he had done at Liady and Dombrowna, he was calling every
+hour of the day and night, and sending to inquire if no tidings had been
+heard of that marshal; but not a trace of his existence had transpired
+through the Russian army; four days this mortal silence had lasted, and
+yet the Emperor still continued to hope.
+
+At last, being compelled, on the 20th of November, to quit Orcha, he
+still left there Eugene, Mortier, and Davoust, and halted at two leagues
+from thence, inquiring for Ney, and still expecting him. The same
+feeling of grief pervaded the whole army, of which Orcha then contained
+the remains. As soon as the most pressing wants allowed a moment's rest,
+the thoughts and looks of every one were directed towards the Russian
+bank. They listened for any warlike noise which might announce the
+arrival of Ney, or rather his last sighs; but nothing was to be seen but
+enemies who were already menacing the bridges of the Boristhenes! One of
+the three leaders then wished to destroy them, but the others refused
+their consent, on the ground, that this would be again separating them
+from their companion in arms, and a confession that they despaired of
+saving him, an idea to which, from their dread of so great a misfortune,
+they could not reconcile themselves.
+
+But with the fourth day all hope at last vanished. Night only brought
+with it a wearisome repose. They blamed themselves for Ney's misfortune,
+forgetting that it was utterly impossible to wait longer for the third
+corps in the plains of Krasnoë, where they must have fought for another
+twenty-eight hours, when they had merely strength and ammunition left
+for one.
+
+Already, as is the case in all cruel losses, they began to treasure up
+recollections. Davoust was the last who had quitted the unfortunate
+marshal, and Mortier and the viceroy were inquiring of him what were his
+last words! At the first reports of the cannonade opened on the 15th on
+Napoleon, Ney was anxious immediately to evacuate Smolensk in the suite
+of the viceroy; Davoust refused, pleading the orders of the Emperor, and
+the obligation to destroy the ramparts of the town. The two chiefs
+became warm, and Davoust persisting to remain until the following day,
+Ney, who had been appointed to bring up the rear, was compelled to wait
+for him.
+
+It is true, that on the 16th, Davoust sent to warn him of his danger;
+but Ney, either from a change of opinion, or from an angry feeling
+against Davoust, then returned him for answer, "That all the Cossacks in
+the universe should not prevent him from executing his instructions."
+
+After exhausting these recollections and all their conjectures, they
+again relapsed into a more gloomy silence, when suddenly they heard the
+steps of several horses, and then the joyful cry, "Marshal Ney is safe!
+here are some Polish cavalry come to announce his approach!" One of his
+officers then galloped in, and informed them that the marshal was
+advancing on the right bank of the Boristhenes, and had sent him to ask
+for assistance.
+
+Night had just set in; Davoust, Eugene, and Mortier had only its short
+duration to revive and animate the soldiers, who had hitherto always
+bivouacked. For the first time since they left Moscow, these poor
+fellows had received a sufficient quantum of provisions; they were about
+to prepare them and to take their rest, warm and under cover: how was it
+possible to make them resume their arms, and turn them from their
+asylums during that night of rest, whose inexpressible sweets they had
+just begun to taste? Who could persuade them to interrupt it, to retrace
+their steps, and return once more into the darkness and frozen deserts
+of Russia?
+
+Eugene and Mortier disputed the honour of this sacrifice, and the first
+only carried it in right of his superior rank. Shelter and the
+distribution of provisions had effected that which threats had failed to
+do. The stragglers were rallied, the viceroy again found himself at the
+head of four thousand men; all were ready to march at the news of Ney's
+danger; but it was their last effort.
+
+They proceeded in the darkness, by unknown roads, and had marched two
+leagues at random, halting every few minutes to listen. Their anxiety
+was already increased. Had they lost their way? were they too late? had
+their unfortunate comrades fallen? was it the victorious Russian army
+they were about to meet? In this uncertainty, Prince Eugene directed
+some cannon shot to be fired. Immediately after they fancied they heard
+signals of distress on that sea of snow; they proceeded from the third
+corps, which, having lost all its artillery, answered the cannon of the
+fourth by some volleys of platoon firing.
+
+The two corps were thus directed towards their meeting. Ney and Eugene
+were the first to recognize each other; they ran up, Eugene more
+precipitately, and threw themselves into each other's arms. Eugene wept,
+Ney let some angry words escape him. The first was delighted, melted,
+and elevated by the warlike heroism which his chivalrous heroism had
+just saved! The latter, still heated from the combat, irritated at the
+dangers which the honour of the army had run in his person, and blaming
+Davoust, whom he wrongfully accused of having deserted him.
+
+Some hours afterwards, when the latter wished to excuse himself, he
+could draw nothing from Ney but a severe look, and these words,
+"Monsieur le Maréchal, I have no reproaches to make to you; God is our
+witness and your judge!"
+
+When the two corps had fairly recognized each other, they no longer kept
+their ranks. Soldiers, officers, generals, all ran towards each other.
+Those of Eugene shook hands with those of Ney; they touched them with a
+joyful mixture of astonishment and curiosity, and pressed them to their
+bosoms with the tenderest compassion. The refreshments and brandy which
+they had just received they lavished upon them; they overwhelmed them
+with questions. They then all proceeded together in company, towards
+Orcha, all impatient, Eugene's soldiers to hear, and Ney's to tell their
+story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+They stated, that on the 17th of November they had quitted Smolensk with
+twelve cannon, six thousand infantry, and three hundred cavalry, leaving
+there five thousand sick at the mercy of the enemy; and that had it not
+been for the noise of Platof's cannon, and the explosion of the mines,
+their marshal would never have been able to bring away from the ruins of
+that city seven thousand unarmed stragglers who had taken shelter in
+them. They dwelt upon the attentions which their leader had shown to the
+wounded, and to the women and their children, proving upon this occasion
+that the bravest was again the most humane.
+
+At the gates of the city an unnatural action struck them with a degree
+of horror which was still undiminished. A mother had abandoned her
+little son, only five years old; in spite of his cries and tears she had
+driven him away from her sledge which was too heavily laden. She herself
+cried out with a distracted air, "that _he_ had never seen France! that
+_he_ would not regret it! as for _her_, _she_ knew France! _she_ was
+resolved to see France once more!" Twice did Ney himself replace the
+unfortunate child in the arms of his mother, twice did she cast him off
+on the frozen snow.
+
+This solitary crime, amidst a thousand instances of the most devoted and
+sublime tenderness, they did not leave unpunished. The unnatural mother
+was herself abandoned to the same snow from which her infant was
+snatched, and entrusted to another mother; this little orphan was
+exhibited in their ranks; he was afterwards seen at the Berezina, then
+at Wilna, even at Kowno, and finally escaped from all the horrors of the
+retreat.
+
+The officers of Ney continued, in answer to the pressing questions of
+those of Eugene; they depicted themselves advancing towards Krasnoë,
+with their marshal at their head, completely across our immense wrecks,
+dragging after them one afflicted multitude, and preceded by another,
+whose steps were quickened by hunger.
+
+They described how they found the bottom of each ravine filled with
+helmets, hussar-caps, trunks broken open, scattered garments, carriages
+and cannon, some overturned, others with the horses still harnessed, and
+the poor animals worn out, expiring and half devoured.
+
+How, near Korythinia, at the end of their first day's march, a violent
+cannonading and the whistling of several bullets over their heads, had
+led them to imagine that a battle had just commenced. This discharge
+appeared to proceed from before and quite close to them even upon the
+road, and yet they could not get sight of a single enemy. Ricard and his
+division advanced with a view to discover them, but they only found, in
+a turn of the road, two French batteries abandoned, with their
+ammunition, and in the neighbouring field a horde of wretched Cossacks,
+who immediately fled, terrified at their audacity in setting fire to
+them, and at the noise they had made.
+
+Ney's officers here interrupted their narrative to inquire in their turn
+what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why
+had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had
+time to spike them, or at least to spoil their ammunition?
+
+In continuation, they said they had hitherto only discovered the traces
+of a disastrous march. But next morning there was a complete change, and
+they confessed their unlucky presentiments when they arrived at that
+field of snow reddened with blood, sprinkled with broken cannon and
+mutilated corses. The dead bodies still marked the ranks and places of
+battle; they pointed them out to each other. _There_ had been the 14th
+division; _there_ were still to be seen, on the broken plates of their
+caps, the numbers of its regiments. _There_ had been the Italian guard;
+there were its dead, whose uniforms were still distinguishable! But
+where were its living remnants? Vainly did they interrogate that field
+of blood, these lifeless forms, the motionless and frozen silence of the
+desert and the grave! they could neither penetrate into the fate of
+their companions, nor into that which awaited themselves.
+
+Ney hurried them rapidly over all these ruins, and they had advanced
+without impediment to a part of the road, where it descends into a deep
+ravine, from which it rises into a broad and level height. It was that
+of Katova, and the same field of battle, where, three months before, in
+their triumphant march, they had beat Newerowskoi, and saluted Napoleon
+with the cannon which they had taken the day before from his enemies.
+They said they recollected the situation, notwithstanding the different
+appearance given to it by the snow.
+
+Mortier's officers here exclaimed, "that it was in that very position
+that the Emperor and they had waited for them on the 17th, fighting all
+the time." Very well, replied those of Ney, Kutusoff, or rather
+Miloradowitch, occupied Napoleon's place, for the old Russian general
+had not yet quitted Dobroé.
+
+Their disbanded men were already retrograding, pointing to the snowy
+plains completely black with the enemy's troops, when a Russian,
+detaching himself from their army, descended the hill; he presented
+himself alone to their marshal, and either from an affectation of
+extreme politeness, respect for the misfortune of their leader, or dread
+of the effects of his despair, covered with honied words the summons to
+surrender.
+
+It was Kutusoff who had sent him. "That field-marshal would not have
+presumed to make so cruel a proposal to so great a general, to a warrior
+so renowned, if there remained a single chance of safety for him. But
+there were eighty thousand Russians before and around him, and if he had
+any doubt of it, Kutusoff offered to let him send a person to go through
+his ranks, and count his forces."
+
+The Russian had not finished his speech, when suddenly forty discharges
+of grape shot, proceeding from the right of his army, and cutting our
+ranks to pieces, struck him with amazement, and interrupted what he had
+to say. At the same moment a French officer darted forward, seized, and
+was about to kill him as a traitor, when Ney, checking this fury, called
+to him angrily, "A marshal never surrenders; there is no parleying under
+an enemy's fire; you are my prisoner." The unfortunate officer was
+disarmed, and placed in a situation of exposure to the fire of his own
+army. He was not released until we reached Kowno, after twenty-six days
+captivity, sharing all our miseries, at liberty to escape, but
+restrained by his parole.
+
+At the same time the enemy's fire became still hotter, and, as they
+said, all the hills, which but an instant before looked cold and silent,
+became like so many volcanoes in eruption, but that Ney became still
+more elevated at it: then with a burst of enthusiasm that seemed to
+return every time they had occasion to mention his name in their
+narrative, they added, that in the midst of all this fire that ardent
+man seemed to breathe an element exclusively his own.
+
+Kutusoff had not deceived him. On the one side, there were eighty
+thousand men in complete ranks, full, deep, well-fed, and in double
+lines, a numerous cavalry, an immense artillery occupying a formidable
+position, in short, every thing, and fortune to boot, which alone is
+equal to all the rest. On the other side, five thousand soldiers, a
+straggling and dismembered column, a wavering and languishing march,
+arms defective and dirty, the greatest part mute and tottering in
+enfeebled hands.
+
+And yet the French leader had no thought of yielding, nor even of dying,
+but of penetrating and cutting his way through the enemy; and that
+without the least idea that he was attempting a sublime effort. Alone,
+and looking no where for support, while all were supported by him, he
+followed the impulse of a strong natural temperament, and the pride of a
+conqueror, whom the habit of gaining improbable victories had impressed
+with the belief that every thing was possible.
+
+But what most astonished them, was, that they had been all so docile;
+for all had shown themselves worthy of him, and they added, that it was
+there they clearly saw that it is not merely great obstinacy, great
+designs, or great temerity which constitute the great man, but
+principally the power of influencing and supporting others.
+
+Ricard and his fifteen hundred soldiers were in front. Ney impelled them
+against the enemy, and prepared the rest of his army to follow them.
+That division descended with the road into the ravine, but in ascending,
+was driven back into it, overwhelmed by the first Russian line.
+
+The marshal, without being intimidated, or allowing others to be so,
+collected the survivors, placed them in reserve, and proceeded forward
+in their place; Ledru, Razont, and Marchand seconded him. He ordered
+four hundred Illyrians to take the enemy on their left flank, and with
+three thousand men, he himself mounted in front to the assault. He made
+no harangue; he marched at their head, setting the example, which, in a
+hero, is the most eloquent of all oratorical movements, and the most
+imperious of all orders. All followed him. They attacked, penetrated,
+and overturned the first Russian line, and without halting were
+precipitating themselves upon the second; but before they could reach
+it, a volley of artillery and grape shot poured down upon them. In an
+instant Ney saw all his generals wounded, the greatest part of his
+soldiers killed; their ranks were empty, their shapeless column whirled
+round, tottered, fell back, and drew him along with it.
+
+Ney found that he had attempted an impossibility, and he waited until
+the flight of his men had once more placed the ravine between them and
+the enemy, that ravine which was now his sole resource; there, equally
+hopeless and fearless, he halted and rallied them. He drew up two
+thousand men against eighty thousand; he returned the fire of two
+hundred cannon with six pieces, and made fortune blush that she should
+ever betray such courage.
+
+She it was, doubtless, who then struck Kutusoff with the palsy of
+inertness. To their infinite surprise, they saw this Russian Fabius
+running into extremes like all imitators, persisting in what he called
+his humanity and prudence, remaining upon his heights with his pompous
+virtues, without allowing himself, or daring to conquer, as if he was
+astonished at his own superiority. Seeing that Napoleon had been
+conquered by his rashness, he pushed his horror of that fault to the
+very extreme of the opposite vice.
+
+It required, however, but a transport of indignation in any one of the
+Russian corps to have completely extinguished them; but all were afraid
+to make a decisive movement; they remained clinging to their soil with
+the immobility of slaves, as if they had no boldness but in their
+watchword, or energy but in their obedience. This discipline, which
+formed their glory in _their_ retreat, was their disgrace in _ours_.
+
+They were for a long time uncertain, not knowing which enemy they were
+fighting with; for they had imagined that Ney had retreated from
+Smolensk by the right bank of the Dnieper; they were mistaken, as is
+frequently the case, from supposing that their enemy had done what he
+ought to have done.
+
+At the same time, the Illyrians had returned completely in disorder;
+they had had a most singular adventure. In their advance to the left
+flank of the enemy's position, these four hundred men had met with five
+thousand Russians returning from a partial engagement, with a French
+eagle, and several of our soldiers prisoners.
+
+These two hostile troops, the one returning to its position, the other
+going to attack it, advanced in the same direction, side by side,
+measuring each other with their eyes, but neither of them venturing to
+commence the engagement. They marched so close to each other, that from
+the middle of the Russian ranks the French prisoners stretched out their
+arms towards their friends, conjuring them to come and deliver them. The
+latter called out to them to come to them, and they would receive and
+defend them; but no one moved on either side. Just then Ney was
+overthrown, and they retreated along with him.
+
+Kutusoff, however, relying more on his artillery than his soldiers,
+sought only to conquer at a distance. His fire so completely commanded
+all the ground occupied by the French, that the same bullet which
+prostrated a man in the first rank proceeded to deal destruction in the
+last of the train of carriages, among the women who had fled from
+Moscow.
+
+Under this murderous hail, Ney's soldiers remained astonished,
+motionless, looking at their chief, waiting his decision to be satisfied
+that they were lost, hoping they knew not why, or rather, according to
+the remark of one of their officers, because in the midst of this
+extreme peril they saw his spirit calm and tranquil, like any thing in
+its place. His countenance became silent and devout; he was watching the
+enemy's army, which, becoming more suspicious since the successful
+artifice of Prince Eugene, extended itself to a great distance on his
+flanks, in order to shut him out from all means of preservation.
+
+The approach of night began to render objects indistinct; winter, which
+in that sole point was favourable to our retreat, brought it on quickly.
+Ney had been waiting for it, but the advantage he took of the respite
+was to order his men to return to Smolensk. They all said that at these
+words they remained frozen with astonishment. Even his aide-de-camp
+could not believe his ears; he remained silent like one who did not
+understand what he heard, and looked at his general with amazement. But
+the marshal repeated the same order; in his brief and imperious tone,
+they recognized a resolution taken, a resource discovered, that
+self-confidence which inspires others with the same quality, and a
+spirit which commands his position, however strong that may be. They
+immediately obeyed, and without hesitation turned their backs on their
+own army, on Napoleon, and on France! They returned once more into that
+fatal Russia. Their retrograde march lasted an hour; they passed again
+over the field of battle marked by the remains of the army of Italy;
+there they halted, and their marshal, who had remained alone in the
+rear-guard, then rejoined them.
+
+Their eyes followed his every movement. What was he going to do; and
+whatever might be his plan, whither would he direct his steps, without a
+guide, in an unknown country? But he, with his warlike instinct, halted
+on the edge of a ravine of such depth, as to make it probable that a
+rivulet ran through it. He made them clear away the snow and break the
+ice; then consulting his map, he exclaimed "That this was one of the
+streams which flowed into the Dnieper! this must be our guide, and we
+must follow it; that it would lead us to that river, which we must
+cross, and that on the other side we should be safe!" He immediately
+proceeded in that direction.
+
+However at a little distance from the high road which he had abandoned,
+he again halted in a village, the name of which they knew not, but
+believed that it was either Fomina, or Danikowa. There he rallied his
+troops, and made them light their fires, as if he intended to take up
+his quarters in it for the night. Some Cossacks who followed him took it
+for granted, and no doubt sent immediately to apprise Kutusoff of the
+spot where, next day, a French marshal would surrender his arms to him;
+for shortly after the noise of their cannon was heard.
+
+Ney listened: "Is this Davoust at last," he exclaimed, "who has
+recollected me?" and he listened a second time. But there were regular
+intervals between the firing; it was a salvo. Being then fully satisfied
+that the Russian army was triumphing by anticipation over his captivity,
+he swore he would give the lie to their joy, and immediately resumed his
+march.
+
+At the same time his Poles ransacked the country. A lame peasant was the
+only inhabitant they had discovered; this was an unlooked-for piece of
+good fortune. He informed them that they were within the distance of a
+league from the Dnieper, but that it was not fordable there, and could
+not yet be frozen over. "It will be so," was the marshal's remark; but
+when it was observed to him that the thaw had just commenced, he added
+"that it did not signify, we must pass, as there was no other resource."
+
+At last, about eight o'clock, after passing through a village, the
+ravine terminated, and the lame Russian, who walked first, halted and
+pointed to the river. They imagined that this must have been between
+Syrokorenia and Gusinoé. Ney, and those immediately behind him, ran up
+to it. They found the river sufficiently frozen to bear their weight,
+the course of the flakes which it bore along to that point, being
+counteracted by a sudden turn in its banks, was there suspended; the
+winter had completely frozen it over only in that single spot; both
+above and below it, its surface was still moveable.
+
+This observation was sufficient to make their first sensation of joy
+give way to uneasiness. This hostile river might only offer them a
+treacherous appearance. One officer devoted himself for the rest; he
+crossed to the other side with great difficulty. He returned and
+reported, that the men, and perhaps some of the horses might pass over,
+but that the rest must be abandoned, and there was no time to lose, as
+the ice was beginning to give way in consequence of the thaw.
+
+But in this nocturnal and silent march across fields, of a column
+composed of weakened and wounded men, and women with their children,
+they had been unable to keep close enough, to prevent their extending,
+separating, and losing the traces of each other in the darkness. Ney
+perceived that only a part of his people had come up; nevertheless, he
+might have always surmounted the obstacle, thereby secured his own
+safety, and waited on the other side. The idea never once entered his
+mind; some one proposed it to him, but he rejected it instantly. He
+allowed three hours for the rallying; and without suffering himself to
+be agitated by impatience, or the danger of waiting so long, he wrapped
+himself up in his cloak, and passed these three dangerous hours in a
+profound sleep on the bank of the river. So much did he possess of the
+temperament of great men, a strong mind in a robust body, and that
+vigorous health, without which no man can ever expect to be a hero.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+At last, about midnight, the passage began; but the first persons who
+ventured on the ice, called out that the ice was bending under them,
+that it was sinking, that they were up to their knees in water;
+immediately after which that frail support was heard splitting with
+frightful cracks, which were prolonged in the distance, as in the
+breaking up of a frost. All halted in consternation.
+
+Ney ordered them to pass only one at a time; they proceeded with
+caution, not knowing sometimes in the darkness if they were putting
+their feet on the flakes or into a chasm; for there were places where
+they were obliged to clear large crevices, and jump from one piece of
+ice to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing for
+ever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling to
+them to make haste.
+
+When at last, after several of these dreadful panics, they reached the
+opposite bank and fancied themselves saved, a perpendicular steep,
+entirely covered with rime, again opposed their landing. Many were
+thrown back upon the ice which they broke in their fall, or which
+bruised them. By their account, this Russian river and its banks
+appeared only to have contributed with regret, by surprise, and as it
+were by compulsion, to their escape.
+
+But what seemed to affect them with the greatest horror in their
+relation, was the trouble and distraction of the females and the sick,
+when it became necessary to abandon, along with the baggage, the remains
+of their fortune, their provisions, and in short, their whole resources
+against the present and the future. They saw them stripping themselves,
+selecting, throwing away, taking up again, and falling with exhaustion
+and grief upon the frozen bank of the river. They seemed to shudder
+again at the recollection of the horrible sight of so many men scattered
+over that abyss, the continual noise of persons falling, the cries of
+such as sunk in, and, above all, of the wailing and despair of the
+wounded, who, from their carts, which durst not venture on this weak
+support, stretched out their hands to their companions, and intreated
+not to be left behind.
+
+Their leader then determined to attempt the passage of several waggons,
+loaded with these poor creatures; but in the middle of the river, the
+ice sunk down and separated. Then were heard, on the opposite bank,
+proceeding from the gulf, first, cries of anguish long and piercing,
+then stifled and feeble groans, and last of all an awful silence. All
+had disappeared!
+
+Ney was looking stedfastly at the abyss with an air of consternation,
+when through the darkness, he imagined he saw an object still moving; it
+turned out to be one of those unfortunate persons, an officer, named
+Briqueville, whom a deep wound in the groin had disabled from standing
+upright. A large piece of ice had borne him up. He was soon distinctly
+seen, dragging himself from one piece to another on his knees and hands,
+and on his getting near enough to the side, the marshal himself caught
+hold of, and saved him.
+
+The losses since the preceding day amounted to four thousand stragglers
+and three thousand soldiers, either killed, dead, or missing; the cannon
+and the whole of the baggage were lost; there remained to Ney scarcely
+three thousand soldiers, and about as many disbanded men. Finally, when
+all these sacrifices were consummated, and all that had been able to
+cross the river were collected, they resumed their march, and the
+vanquished river became once more their friend and their guide.
+
+They proceeded at random and uncertain, when one of them happening to
+fall, recognised a beaten road; it was but too much so, for those who
+were marching first, stooping and using their hands, as well as their
+eyes, halted in alarm, exclaiming, "that they saw the marks quite fresh
+of a great quantity of cannon and horses." They had, therefore, only
+avoided one hostile army to fall into the midst of another; at a time
+when they could scarcely walk, they must be again obliged to fight! The
+war was therefore everywhere! But Ney made them push on, and without
+disturbing himself, continued to follow these menacing traces.
+
+They brought them to a village called Gusinoé, into which they entered
+suddenly, and seized every thing; they found in it all that they had
+been in want of since they left Moscow, inhabitants, provisions, repose,
+warm dwellings, and a hundred Cossacks, who awoke to find themselves
+prisoners. Their reports, and the necessity of taking some refreshment
+to enable him to proceed, detained the marshal there a few minutes.
+
+About ten o'clock, they reached two other villages, and were resting
+themselves there, when suddenly they saw the surrounding forests filled
+with movements. They had scarcely time to call to each other, to look
+about, and to concentrate themselves in the village which was nearest to
+the Boristhenes, when thousands of Cossacks came pouring out from
+between the trees, and surrounded the unfortunate troop with their
+lances and their cannon.
+
+These were Platof, and his hordes, who were following the right bank of
+the Dnieper. They might have burnt the village, discovered the weakness
+of Ney's force, and exterminated it; but for three hours they remained
+motionless, without even firing; for what reason, is not known. The
+account since given by themselves is, that they had no orders; that at
+that moment their leader was not in a state to give any: and that in
+Russia no one dares to take upon himself a responsibility that does not
+belong to him.
+
+The bold countenance of Ney kept them in check. He himself and a few
+soldiers were sufficient; he even ordered the rest of his people to
+continue their repast till night came on. He then caused the order to be
+circulated to decamp in silence, to give notice to each other in a low
+tone of voice, and to march as compact as possible. Afterwards, they all
+began their march together; but their very first step was like a signal
+given to the enemy, who immediately discharged the whole of his
+artillery at them: all his squadrons also put themselves in movement at
+once.
+
+At the noise occasioned by this, the disarmed stragglers, of whom there
+were yet between three and four thousand, took the alarm. This flock of
+men wandered here and there; the great mass of them kept reeling about
+in uncertainty, sometimes attempting to throw themselves into the ranks
+of the soldiers, who drove them back. Ney contrived to keep them between
+him and the Russians, whose fire was principally absorbed by these
+useless beings. The most timid, therefore, in this instance, served as a
+covering to the bravest.
+
+At the same time that the marshal made a rampart of these poor wretches
+to cover his right flank, he regained the banks of the Dnieper, and by
+that covered his left flank; he marched on thus between the two,
+proceeding from wood to wood, from one turning to another, taking
+advantage of all the windings, and of the least accidents of the soil.
+Whenever he ventured to any distance from the river, which he was
+frequently obliged to do, Platof then surrounded him on all sides.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of Marshal Ney]
+
+In this manner, for two days and a distance of twenty leagues, did six
+thousand Cossacks keep constantly buzzing about the flanks of their
+column, now reduced to fifteen hundred men in arms, keeping it in a
+state of siege, disappearing before its sallies, and returning again
+instantly, like their Scythian ancestors; but with this fatal
+difference, that they managed their cannon mounted on sledges, and
+discharged their bullets in their flight, with the same agility which
+their forefathers exhibited in the management of their bows and the
+discharge of their arrows.
+
+The night brought some relief, and at first they plunged into the
+darkness with a degree of joy; but then, if any one halted for a moment
+to bid a last adieu to some worn out or wounded comrade, who sunk to
+rise no more, he ran the risk of losing the traces of his column. Under
+such circumstances there were many cruel moments, and not a few
+instances of despair. At last, however, the enemy slackened his pursuit.
+
+This unfortunate column was proceeding more tranquilly, groping its way
+through a thick wood, when all at once, a few paces before it, a
+brilliant light and several discharges of cannon flashed in the faces of
+the men in the first rank. Seized with terror, they fancied that there
+was an end of them, that they were cut off, that their end was now come,
+and they fell down terrified; those who were behind, got entangled among
+them, and were brought to the ground. Ney, who saw that all was lost,
+rushed forward, ordered the charge to be beat, and, as if he had
+foreseen the attack, called out, "Comrades, now is your time: forward!
+They are our prisoners!" At these words, his soldiers, who but a minute
+before were in consternation, and fancied themselves surprised, believed
+they were about to surprise their foes; from being vanquished, they rose
+up conquerors; they rushed upon the enemy, who had already disappeared,
+and whose precipitate flight through the forest they heard at a
+distance.
+
+They passed quickly through this wood; but about ten o'clock at night,
+they met with a small river embanked in a deep ravine, which they were
+obliged to cross one by one, as they had done the Dnieper. Intent on the
+pursuit of these poor fellows, the Cossacks again got sight of them, and
+tried to take advantage of that moment: but Ney, by a few discharges of
+his musketry, again repulsed them. They surmounted this obstacle with
+difficulty, and in an hour after reached a large village, where hunger
+and exhaustion compelled them to halt for two hours longer.
+
+The next day, the 19th of Nov., from midnight till ten o'clock in the
+morning, they kept marching on, without meeting any other enemy than a
+hilly country; about that time Platof's columns again made their
+appearance, and Ney halted and faced them, under the protection of the
+skirts of a wood. As long as the day lasted, his soldiers were obliged
+to resign themselves to see the enemy's bullets overturning the trees
+which served to shelter them, and furrowing their bivouacs; for they had
+now nothing but small arms, which could not keep the Cossack artillery
+at a sufficient distance.
+
+On the return of night, the marshal gave the usual signal, and they
+proceeded on their march to Orcha. During the preceding day, he had
+already despatched thither Pchébendowski with fifty horse, to require
+assistance; they must already have arrived there, unless the enemy had
+already gained possession of that town.
+
+Ney's officers concluded their narrative by saying, that during the rest
+of their march, they had met with several formidable obstacles, but that
+they did not think them worth relating. They continued, however,
+speaking enthusiastically of their marshal, and making us sharers of
+their admiration of him; for even his equals had no idea of being
+jealous of him. He had been too much regretted, and his preservation had
+excited too agreeable emotions, to allow envy to have any part in them;
+besides, Ney had placed himself completely beyond its reach. As to
+himself, in all this heroism, he had gone so little beyond his natural
+disposition, that had it not been for the éclat of his glory in the
+eyes, the gestures, and the acclamations of every one, he would never
+have imagined that he had done a sublime action.
+
+And this was not an enthusiasm of surprise. Each of the latter days had
+had its remarkable men; amongst others, that of the 16th had Eugene,
+that of the 17th Mortier; but from this time, Ney was universally
+proclaimed the hero of the retreat.
+
+The distance between Smolensk and Orcha is hardly five days' march. In
+that short passage, what a harvest of glory had been reaped! how little
+space and time are required to establish an immortal renown! Of what
+nature then are these great inspirations, that invisible and impalpable
+germ of great devotion, produced in a few moments, issuing from a single
+heart, and which must fill time and eternity?
+
+When Napoleon, who was two leagues farther on, heard that Ney had just
+re-appeared, he leaped and shouted for joy, and exclaimed, "I have then
+saved my eagles! I would have given three hundred millions from my
+treasury, sooner than have lost such a man."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The army had thus for the third and last time repassed the Dnieper, a
+river half Russian and half Polish, but of Russian origin. It runs from
+east to west as far as Orcha, where it appears as if it would penetrate
+into Poland; but there the heights of Lithuania oppose its farther
+progress, and compel it to turn towards the south, and to become the
+frontier of the two countries.
+
+Kutusoff and his eighty thousand Russians halted before this feeble
+obstacle. Hitherto they had been rather the spectators than the authors
+of our calamities; we saw them no more; our army was released from the
+punishment of their joy.
+
+In this war, and as always happens, the character of Kutusoff availed
+him more than his talents. So long as it was necessary to deceive and
+temporize, his crafty spirit, his indolence, and his great age, acted of
+themselves; he was the creature of circumstances, which he ceased to be
+as soon as it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to
+anticipate, and to attack.
+
+But after passing Smolensk, Platof passed over to the right flank of the
+road, in order to join Wittgenstein. The war was then entirely
+transferred to that side.
+
+On the 22d of November, the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to
+Borizof, on a wide road, (skirted by a double row of large birch trees,)
+in which the snow had melted, and through a deep and liquid mud. The
+weakest were drowned in it; it detained and delivered to the Cossacks
+such of our wounded, as, under the idea of a continuance of the frost,
+had exchanged their waggons for sledges.
+
+In the midst of this gradual decay, an action was witnessed exhibiting
+something of antique energy. Two marines of the guard were cut off from
+their column by a band of Cossacks, who seemed determined to take them.
+One became discouraged, and wished to surrender; the other continued to
+fight, and called out to him, that if he was coward enough to do so, he
+would certainly shoot him. In fact, seeing his companion throw away his
+musket, and stretching out his arms to the enemy, he brought him to the
+ground just as he fell into the hands of the Cossacks; then profiting by
+their surprise, he quickly reloaded his musket, with which he threatened
+the most forward. He kept them thus at bay, retreated from tree to tree,
+gained ground upon them, and succeeded in rejoining his troop.
+
+It was during the first days of the march to Borizof, that the news of
+the fall of Minsk became generally known in the army. The leaders
+themselves began then to look around them with consternation; their
+imagination, tormented with such a long continuance of frightful
+spectacles, gave them glimpses of a still more fatal futurity. In their
+private conversations, several exclaimed, that, "like Charles XII. in
+the Ukraine, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow only to destroy
+it."
+
+Others would not agree in attributing the calamities we at present
+suffered to that incursion. Without wishing to excuse the sacrifices to
+which we had submitted, by the hope of terminating the war in a single
+campaign, they asserted, "that that hope had been well founded; that in
+pushing his line of operation as far as Moscow, Napoleon had given to
+that lengthened column a base sufficiently broad and solid."
+
+They showed "the trace of this base marked out by the Düna, the Dnieper,
+the Ula, and the Berezina, from Riga to Bobruisk; they said that
+Macdonald, Saint Cyr and De Wrede, Victor and Dombrowski were there
+waiting for them; there were thus, including Schwartzenberg, and even
+Augereau, (who protected the interval between the Elbe and the Niemen
+with fifty thousand men,) nearly two hundred and eighty thousand
+soldiers on the defensive, who, from the north to the south, supported
+the attack of one hundred and fifty thousand men upon the east; and from
+thence they argued, that this _point_ upon Moscow, however hazardous it
+might appear, had been both sufficiently prepared, and was worthy of the
+genius of Napoleon, and that its success was possible; in fact, its
+failure had been entirely occasioned by errors of detail."
+
+They then brought to mind our useless waste of lives before Smolensk,
+Junot's inaction at Valoutina, and they maintained, "that in spite of
+all these losses, Russia would have been completely conquered on the
+field of battle of the Moskwa, if Marshal Ney's first successes had been
+followed up.
+
+"Even at the last, although the expedition had failed in a military
+point of view, by the indecision of that day, and politically by the
+burning of Moscow, the army might still have returned from it safe and
+sound. From the time of our entrance into that capital, had not the
+Russian general and the Russian winter allowed us, the one forty, and
+the other fifty days, to recover ourselves, and to make our retreat?"
+
+Deploring afterwards the rash obstinacy of losing so much time at
+Moscow, and the fatal hesitation at Malo-Yaroslawetz, they proceeded to
+reckon up their losses. Since their leaving Moscow, they had lost all
+their baggage, five hundred cannon, thirty-one eagles, twenty-seven
+generals, forty thousand prisoners, sixty thousand dead: all that
+remained were forty thousand stragglers, unarmed, and eight thousand
+effective soldiers.
+
+Last of all, when their column of attack had been destroyed, they asked,
+"by what fatality it had happened, that the remains of this column, when
+collected at its base, which had been vigorously supported, were left
+without knowing where to halt, or to take breath? Why could they not
+even concentrate themselves at Minsk and at Wilna, behind the marshes of
+the Berezina, and there keep back the enemy, at least for some time,
+take advantage of the winter and recruit themselves?
+
+"But no, all is lost by another side, by the fault of entrusting an
+Austrian to guard the magazines, and cover the retreat of all these
+brave armies, and not placing a military leader at Wilna or Minsk, with
+a force sufficient either to supply the insufficiency of the Austrian
+army to meet the combined armies of Moldavia and Volhynia, or to prevent
+its betraying us."
+
+Those who made such complaints were not unaware of the presence of the
+Duke of Bassano at Wilna; but notwithstanding the talents of that
+minister, and the great confidence the Emperor placed in him, they
+considered that being a stranger to the art of war, and overloaded with
+the cares of a great administration, and of every thing political, the
+direction of military affairs should not have been left to him. Such
+were the complaints of those, whose sufferings left them the leisure
+necessary for observation. That a fault had been committed, it was
+impossible to deny; but to say how it might have been avoided, to weigh
+the value of the motives which had occasioned it, in so great a crisis,
+and in the presence of so great a man, is more than one would venture to
+undertake. Who is there besides that does not know, that in these
+hazardous and gigantic enterprises, every thing becomes a fault, when
+the object of them has failed?
+
+Although the treachery of Schwartzenberg was by no means so evident, it
+is certain, that, with the exception of the three French generals who
+were with him, the whole of the grand army considered it as beyond a
+doubt. They said, "that Walpole's only object at Vienna was to act as a
+secret agent of England; that he and Metternich composed between them
+the perfidious instructions which were sent to Schwartzenberg. Hence it
+was that ever since the 20th of September, the day when the arrival of
+Tchitchakof and the battle of Lutsk closed the victorious career of
+Schwartzenberg, that marshal had repassed the Bug, and covered Warsaw by
+uncovering Minsk; hence his perseverance in that false manoeuvre:
+hence, after a feeble effort towards Bresk-litowsky on the 10th of
+October, his neglect to avail himself of Tchitchakof's inaction by
+getting between him and Minsk, and hence his losing his time in military
+promenades, and insignificant marches towards Briansk, Bialystok, and
+Volkowitz.
+
+"He had thus allowed the admiral to take rest, and rally his sixty
+thousand men, to divide them into two, to leave one half with Sacken to
+oppose him, and to set out on the 27th of October with the other half to
+take possession of Minsk, of Borizof, of the magazine, of the passage of
+Napoleon, and of his winter quarters. Then only did Schwartzenberg put
+himself in the rear of this hostile movement, instead of anticipating
+it, as he had orders to do, leaving Regnier in the presence of Sacken,
+and marching so slowly, that from the very first the admiral had got
+five marches the start of him.
+
+"On the 14th of November, at Volkowitz, Sacken attacked Regnier,
+separated him from the Austrians, and pressed him so closely, that he
+was obliged to call Schwartzenberg to his aid. Immediately, the latter,
+as if he had been expecting the summons, retrograded, leaving Minsk to
+its fate. It is true that he released Regnier, that he beat Sacken and
+destroyed half his army, pursuing him as far as the Bug; but on the 16th
+of November, the very day of his victory, Minsk was taken by
+Tchitchakof: this was a double victory for Austria. Thus all appearances
+were preserved; the new field-marshal satisfied the wishes of his
+government, which was equally the enemy of the Russians whom he had just
+weakened on one side, and of Napoleon, whom on the other he had betrayed
+to them."
+
+Such was the language of almost the whole of the grand army; its leader
+was silent, either because he expected no more zeal on the part of an
+ally, or from policy, or because he believed that Schwartzenberg had
+acted with sufficient honour, in sending him the sort of notice which he
+did six weeks before, when he was at Moscow.
+
+However, he did address some reproaches to the field-marshal. To these
+the latter replied, by complaining bitterly, first, of the double and
+contradictory instructions which he had received, to cover Warsaw and
+Minsk at the same time; and second, of the false news which had been
+transmitted to him by the Duke of Bassano.
+
+He said, "that minister had constantly represented to him that the grand
+army was retreating safe and sound, in good order, and always
+formidable. Why had he been trifled with, by sending him bulletins made
+to deceive the idlers of the capital? His only reason for not making
+greater efforts to join the grand army was, because he believed that it
+was fully able to protect itself."
+
+He also alleged his own weakness. "How could it be expected that with
+twenty-eight thousand men he could so long keep sixty thousand in check?
+In that situation, if Tchitchakof stole a few marches on him, was it at
+all wonderful? Had he then hesitated to follow him, to leave Gallicia,
+his point of departure, his magazines, and his depôt? If he ceased his
+pursuit, it was only because Regnier and Durutte, the two French
+generals, summoned him in the most urgent manner to come to their
+assistance. Both they and he had reason to expect that Maret, Oudinôt,
+or Victor, would provide for the safety of Minsk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+In fact, no one had any right to accuse another of treachery, when we
+had betrayed ourselves, for all had been wanting in the time of need.
+
+At Wilna, they appeared to have had no suspicion of the real state of
+affairs; and at a time when the garrisons, the depôts, the marching
+battalions, and the divisions of Durutte, Loison, and Dombrowski,
+between the Berezina and the Vistula, might have formed at Minsk an army
+of thirty thousand men, three thousand men, headed by a general of no
+reputation, were the only forces which Tchitchakof found there to oppose
+him. It was a known fact that this handful of young soldiers was exposed
+in front of a river, into which they were precipitated by the admiral,
+whereas, if they had been placed on the other side, that obstacle would
+have protected them for some time.
+
+For thus, as frequently happens, the faults of the general plan had led
+to faults of detail. The governor of Minsk had been negligently chosen.
+He was, it was said, one of those men who undertake every thing, who
+promise every thing, and who do nothing. On the 16th of November, he
+lost that capital, and with it four thousand seven hundred sick, the
+warlike ammunition, and two million rations of provisions. It was five
+days since the news of this loss had reached Dombrowna, and the news of
+a still greater calamity came on the heels of it.
+
+This same governor had retreated towards Borizof. There he neglected to
+inform Oudinôt, who was only at the distance of two marches, to come to
+his assistance; and failed to support Dombrowski, who made a hasty march
+thither from Bobruisk and Igumen. The latter did not arrive, however, in
+the night of the 20th and 21st, at the _tęte-du-pont_, until after the
+enemy had taken possession of it; notwithstanding, he expelled
+Tchitchakof's vanguard, took possession of it, and defended himself
+gallantly there until the evening of the 21st; but being then
+overwhelmed by the fire of the Russian artillery, which took him in
+flank, and attacked by a force more than double his own, he was driven
+across the river, and out of the town, as far as the road to Moscow.
+
+Napoleon was wholly unprepared for this disaster; he fancied that he had
+completely prevented it by the instructions he had sent to Victor from
+Moscow, on the 6th of October. These instructions "anticipated a warm
+attack from Wittgenstein or Tchitchakof; they recommended Victor to keep
+within reach of Polotsk and of Minsk; to have a prudent, discreet, and
+intelligent officer about Schwartzenberg; to keep up a regular
+correspondence with Minsk, and to send other agents in different
+directions."
+
+But Wittgenstein having made his attack before Tchitchakof, the nearer
+and more pressing danger had attracted every one's attention; the wise
+instructions of the 6th of October had not been repeated by Napoleon,
+and they appeared to have been entirely forgotten by his lieutenant.
+Finally, when the Emperor learned at Dombrowna the loss of Minsk, he had
+no idea that Borizof was in such imminent danger, as when he passed the
+next day through Orcha, he had the whole of his bridge-equipage burnt.
+
+His correspondence also of the 20th of November with Victor proved his
+security; it supposed that Oudinôt would have nearly arrived on the 25th
+at Borizof, while that place had been taken possession of by Tchitchakof
+on the 21st.
+
+It was on the day immediately subsequent to that fatal catastrophe, at
+the distance of three marches from Borizof, and upon the high road, that
+an officer arrived and announced to Napoleon this fresh disaster. The
+Emperor, striking the ground with his stick, and darting a furious look
+to heaven, pronounced these words, "It is then written above that we
+shall now commit nothing but faults!"
+
+Meanwhile Marshal Oudinôt, who was already marching towards Minsk,
+totally ignorant of what had happened, halted on the 21st between Bobr
+and Kroupki, when in the middle of the night General Brownikowski
+arrived to announce to him his own defeat, as well as that of General
+Dombrowski; that Borizof was taken, and that the Russians were following
+hard at his heels.
+
+On the 22d the marshal marched to meet them, and rallied the remains of
+Dombrowski's force.
+
+On the 23d, at three leagues on the other side of Borizof, he came in
+contact with the Russian vanguard, which he overthrew, taking from it
+nine hundred men and fifteen hundred carriages, and drove back by the
+united force of his artillery, infantry, and cavalry, as far as the
+Berezina; but the remains of Lambert's force, on repassing Borizof and
+that river, destroyed the bridge.
+
+Napoleon was then at Toloczina: he made them describe to him the
+position of Borizof. They assured him that at that point the Berezina
+was not merely a river but a lake of moving ice; that the bridge was
+three hundred fathoms in length; that it had been irreparably destroyed,
+and the passage by it rendered completely impracticable.
+
+At that moment arrived a general of engineers, who had just returned
+from the Duke of Belluno's corps. Napoleon interrogated him; the general
+declared "that he saw no means of escape but through the middle of
+Wittgenstein's army." The Emperor replied, "that he must find a
+direction in which he could turn his back to all the enemy's generals,
+to Kutusoff, to Wittgenstein, to Tchitchakof;" and he pointed with his
+finger on the map to the course of the Berezina below Borizof; it was
+there he wished to cross the river. But the general objected to him the
+presence of Tchitchakof on the right bank; the Emperor then pointed to
+another passage below the first, and then to a third, still nearer to
+the Dnieper. Recollecting, however, that he was then approaching the
+country of the Cossacks, he stopped short, and exclaimed, "Oh yes!
+Pultawa! that is like Charles XII.!"
+
+In fact, every disaster which Napoleon could anticipate had occurred;
+the melancholy conformity, therefore, of his situation with that of the
+Swedish conqueror, threw his mind into such a state of agitation, that
+his health became still more seriously affected than it had been at
+Malo-Yaroslawetz. Among the expressions he made use of, loud enough to
+be overheard, was this: "See what happens when we heap faults on
+faults!"
+
+Nevertheless, these first movements were the only ones that had escaped
+him, and the valet-de-chambre who assisted him, was the only person that
+witnessed his agitation. Duroc, Daru, and Berthier have all said, that
+they knew nothing of it, that they saw him unshaken; this was very true,
+humanly speaking, as he retained sufficient command over himself to
+avoid betraying his anxiety, and as the strength of man most frequently
+consists in concealing his weakness.
+
+A remarkable conversation, which was overheard the same night, will show
+better than any thing else, how critical was his position, and how well
+he bore it. It was getting late; Napoleon had gone to bed. Duroc and
+Daru, who remained in his chamber, fancying that he was asleep, were
+giving way, in whispers, to the most gloomy conjectures; he overheard
+them, however, and the word "prisoner of state," coming to his ear,
+"How!" exclaimed he, "do you believe they would dare?" Daru, after his
+first surprise, immediately answered, "that if we were compelled to
+surrender, we must be prepared for every thing; that he had no reliance
+on an enemy's generosity; that we knew too well that great state-policy
+considered itself identified with morality, and was regulated by no
+law." "But France," said the Emperor, "what would France say?" "Oh, as
+to France," continued Daru, "we are at liberty to make a thousand
+conjectures more or less disagreeable, but none of us can know what will
+take place there." And he then added, "that for the sake of the
+Emperor's chief officers, as well as the Emperor himself, the most
+fortunate thing would be, if by the air or otherwise, as the earth was
+closed upon us, the Emperor could reach France, from whence he could
+much more certainly provide for their safety, than by remaining among
+them!" "Then I suppose I am in your way?" replied the Emperor, smiling.
+"Yes, Sire." "And you have no wish to be a prisoner of state?" Daru
+replied in the same tone, "that it was enough for him to be a prisoner
+of war." On which the Emperor remained for some time in a profound
+silence; then with a more serious air: "Are all the reports of my
+ministers burnt?" "Sire, hitherto you would not allow that to be done."
+"Very well, go and destroy them; for it must be confessed, we are in a
+most melancholy position." This was the sole avowal which it wrested
+from him, and on that idea he went to sleep, knowing, when it was
+necessary, how to postpone every thing to the next day.
+
+His orders displayed equal firmness. Oudinôt had just sent to inform him
+of his determination to overthrow Lambert; this he approved of, and he
+also urged him to make himself master of a passage, either above or
+below Borizof. He expressed his anxiety, that by the 24th this passage
+should be fixed on, and the preparations begun, and that he should be
+apprised of it, in order to make his march correspond. Far from thinking
+of making his escape through the midst of these three hostile armies,
+his only idea now was, that of beating Tchitchakof, and retaking Minsk.
+
+It is true, that eight hours afterwards, in a second letter to the Duke
+of Reggio, he resigned himself to cross the Berezina near Veselowo, and
+to retreat directly upon Wilna by Vileika, avoiding the Russian admiral.
+
+But on the 24th he learned that the passage could only be attempted near
+Studzianka; that at that spot the river was only fifty-four fathoms
+wide, and six feet deep; that they would land on the other side, in a
+marsh, under the fire of a commanding position strongly occupied by the
+enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+All hope of passing between the Russian armies was thus lost; driven by
+the armies of Kutusoff and Wittgenstein upon the Berezina, there was no
+alternative but to cross that river in the teeth of the army of
+Tchitchakof, which lined its banks.
+
+Ever since the 23d, Napoleon had been preparing for it, as for a
+desperate action. And first he had the eagles of all the corps brought
+to him, and burnt. He formed into two battalions, eighteen hundred
+dismounted cavalry of his guard, of whom only eleven hundred and
+fifty-four were armed with muskets and carbines.
+
+The cavalry of the army of Moscow was so completely destroyed, that
+Latour-Maubourg had not now remaining under his command more than one
+hundred and fifty men on horseback. The Emperor collected around his
+person all the officers of that arm who were still mounted; he styled
+this troop, of about five hundred officers, his _sacred squadron_.
+Grouchy and Sebastiani had the command of them; generals of division
+served in it as captains.
+
+Napoleon ordered further that all the useless carriages should be burnt;
+that no officer should keep more than one; that half the waggons and
+carriages of all the corps should also be burnt, and that the horses
+should be given to the artillery of the guard. The officers of that arm
+had orders to take all the draught-cattle within their reach, even the
+horses of the Emperor himself, sooner than abandon a single cannon, or
+ammunition waggon.
+
+After giving these orders, he plunged into the gloomy and immense forest
+of Minsk, in which a few hamlets and wretched habitations have scarcely
+cleared a few open spots. The noise of Wittgenstein's artillery filled
+it with its echo. That Russian general came rushing from the north upon
+the right flank of our expiring column; he brought back with him the
+winter which had quitted us at the same time with Kutusoff; the news of
+his threatening march quickened our steps. From forty to fifty thousand
+men, women, and children, glided through this forest as precipitately as
+their weakness and the slipperiness of the ground, from the frost
+beginning again to set in, would allow.
+
+These forced marches, commenced before daylight, and which did not
+finish at its close, dispersed all that had remained together. They lost
+themselves in the darkness of these great forests and long nights. They
+halted at night and resumed their march in the morning, in darkness, at
+random, and without hearing the signal; the dissolution of the remains
+of the corps was then completed; all were mixed and confounded together.
+
+In this last stage of weakness and confusion, as we were approaching
+Borizof, we heard loud cries before us. Some ran forward fancying it was
+an attack. It was Victor's army, which had been feebly driven back by
+Wittgenstein to the right side of our road, where it remained waiting
+for the Emperor to pass by. Still quite complete and full of animation,
+it received the Emperor, as soon as he made his appearance, with the
+customary but now long forgotten acclamations.
+
+Of our disasters it knew nothing; they had been carefully concealed even
+from its leaders. When therefore, instead of that grand column which had
+conquered Moscow, its soldiers perceived behind Napoleon only a train of
+spectres covered with rags, with female pelisses, pieces of carpet, or
+dirty cloaks, half burnt and holed by the fires, and with nothing on
+their feet but rags of all sorts, their consternation was extreme. They
+looked terrified at the sight of those unfortunate soldiers, as they
+defiled before them, with lean carcasses, faces black with dirt, and
+hideous bristly beards, unarmed, shameless, marching confusedly, with
+their heads bent, their eyes fixed on the ground and silent, like a
+troop of captives.
+
+But what astonished them more than all, was to see the number of
+colonels and generals scattered about and isolated, who seemed only
+occupied about themselves, and to think of nothing but saving the wrecks
+of their property or their persons; they were marching pell-mell with
+the soldiers, who did not notice them, to whom they had no longer any
+commands to give, and of whom they had nothing to expect, all ties
+between them being broken, and all ranks effaced by the common misery.
+
+The soldiers of Victor and Oudinôt could not believe their eyes. Moved
+with compassion, their officers, with tears in their eyes, detained such
+of their companions as they recognised in the crowd. They first supplied
+them with clothes and provisions, and then asked them where were their
+_corps d'armée_? And when the others pointed them out, seeing, instead
+of so many thousand men, only a weak platoon of officers and
+non-commissioned officers round a commanding officer, their eyes still
+kept on the look out.
+
+The sight of so great a disaster struck the second and the ninth corps
+with discouragement, from the very first day. Disorder, the most
+contagious of all evils, attacked them; for it would seem as if order
+was an effort against nature. And yet the disarmed, and even the dying,
+although they were now fully aware that they had to fight their way
+across a river, and through a fresh enemy, never doubted of their being
+victorious.
+
+It was now merely the shadow of an army, but it was the shadow of the
+grand army. It felt conscious that nature alone had vanquished it. The
+sight of its Emperor revived it. It had been long accustomed not to look
+to him for its means of support, but solely to lead it to victory. This
+was its first unfortunate campaign, and it had had so many fortunate
+ones! it only required to be able to follow him. He alone, who had
+elevated his soldiers so high, and now sunk them so low, was yet able to
+save them. He was still, therefore, cherished in the heart of his army,
+like hope in the heart of man.
+
+Thus, amid so many beings who might have reproached him with their
+misfortunes, he marched on without the least fear, speaking to one and
+all without affectation, certain of being respected as long as glory
+could command our respect. Knowing perfectly that he belonged to us, as
+much as we to him, his renown being a species of national property, we
+should have sooner turned our arms against ourselves, (which was the
+case with many,) than against him, and it was a minor suicide.
+
+Some of them fell and died at his feet, and though in the most frightful
+delirium, their sufferings never gave its wanderings the turn of
+reproach, but of entreaty. And in fact did not he share the common
+danger? Which of them all risked so much as he? Who suffered the
+greatest loss, in this disaster?
+
+If any imprecations were uttered, it was not in his presence; it seemed,
+that of all misfortunes, that of incurring his displeasure was still the
+greatest; so rooted were their confidence in, and submission to that man
+who had subjected the world to them; whose genius, hitherto uniformly
+victorious and infallible, had assumed the place of their free-will, and
+who having so long in his hands the book of pensions, of rank, and of
+history, had found wherewithal to satisfy not only covetous spirits, but
+also every generous heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+We were now approaching the most critical moment; Victor was in the rear
+with 15,000 men; Oudinôt in front with 5,000, and already on the
+Berezina; the Emperor, between them, with 7,000 men, 40,000 stragglers,
+and an enormous quantity of baggage and artillery, the greatest part of
+which belonged to the second and the ninth corps.
+
+On the 25th, as he was about to reach the Berezina, he appeared to
+linger on his march. He halted every instant on the high road, waiting
+for night to conceal his arrival from the enemy, and to allow the Duke
+of Reggio time to evacuate Borizof.
+
+This marshal, when he entered that town upon the 23d, found the bridge,
+which was 300 fathoms in length, destroyed at three different points,
+and that the vicinity of the enemy rendered it impossible to repair it.
+He had ascertained, that on his left, two miles lower down the river,
+there was, near Oukoholda, a deep and unsafe ford; that at the distance
+of a mile above Borizof, namely, at Stadhof, there was another, but of
+difficult approach. Finally, he had learned within the last two days,
+that at Studzianka, two leagues above Stadhof, there was a third
+passage;--for the knowledge of this he was indebted to Corbineau's
+brigade.
+
+This was the same brigade which the Bavarian general, De Wrede, had
+taken from the second corps, in his march to Smoliantzy. He had retained
+it until he reached Dokszitzi, from whence he sent it back to the second
+corps by way of Borizof. When Corbineau arrived there, he found
+Tchitchakof already in possession of it, and was compelled to make his
+retreat by ascending the Berezina, and concealing his force in the
+forests which border that river. Not knowing at what point to cross it,
+he accidentally saw a Lithuanian peasant, whose horse seemed to be quite
+wet, as if he had just come through it. He laid hold of this man, and
+made him his guide; he got up behind him, and crossed the river at a
+ford opposite to Studzianka. He immediately rejoined Oudinôt, and
+informed him of the discovery he had made.
+
+As Napoleon's intention was to retreat directly upon Wilna, the marshal
+saw at once that this passage was the most direct, as well as the least
+dangerous. It was also observed, that even if our infantry and artillery
+should be too closely pressed by Wittgenstein and Kutusoff, and
+prevented from crossing the river on bridges, there was at least a
+certainty, from the ford having been tried, that the Emperor and the
+cavalry would be able to pass; that all would not then be lost, both
+peace and war, as if Napoleon himself remained in the enemy's hands. The
+marshal therefore did not hesitate. In the night of the 23d, the general
+of artillery, a company of pontonniers, a regiment of infantry, and the
+brigade Corbineau, took possession of Studzianka.
+
+At the same time the other two passages were reconnoitred, and both
+found to be strongly observed. The object therefore was to deceive and
+displace the enemy. As force could do nothing, recourse was had to
+stratagem; in furtherance of which, on the 24th, three hundred men and
+several hundred stragglers were sent towards Oukoholda, with
+instructions to collect there, with as much noise as possible, all the
+necessary materials for the construction of a bridge; the whole division
+of the cuirassiers was also made to promenade on that side within view
+of the enemy.
+
+In addition to this, Major General Lorencé had several Jews sought out
+and brought to him; he interrogated them with great apparent minuteness
+relative to that ford, and the roads leading from it to Minsk. Then,
+affecting to be mightily pleased with their answers, and to be satisfied
+that there was no better passage to be found, he retained some of these
+rascals as guides, and had the others conveyed beyond our out-posts. But
+to make still more sure of the latter _not_ keeping their word with him,
+he made them swear that they would return to meet us, in the direction
+of lower Berezina, in order to inform us of the enemy's movements.
+
+While these attempts were making to draw Tchitchakof's attention
+entirely to the left, the means of effecting a passage were secretly
+preparing at Studzianka. It was only on the 25th, at five in the
+evening, that Eblé arrived there, followed only by two field forges, two
+waggons of coal, six covered waggons of utensils and nails, and some
+companies of pontonniers. At Smolensk he had made each workman provide
+himself with a tool and some cramp-irons.
+
+But the tressels, which had been made the day before, out of the beams
+of the Polish cabins, were found to be too weak. The work was all to do
+over again. It was found to be quite impossible to finish the bridge
+during the night; it could only be fixed during the following day, the
+26th, in full daylight, and under the enemy's fire; but there was no
+room for hesitation.
+
+On the first approach of that decisive night, Oudinôt ceded to Napoleon
+the occupation of Borizof, and went to take position with the rest of
+his corps at Studzianka. They marched in the most profound obscurity,
+without making the least noise, and mutually recommending to each other
+the deepest silence.
+
+By eight o'clock at night Oudinôt and Dombrowski had taken possession of
+the heights commanding the passage, while General Eblé descended from
+them. That general placed himself on the borders of the river, with his
+pontonniers and a waggon-load of the irons of abandoned wheels, which at
+all hazards he had made into cramp-irons. He had sacrificed every thing
+to preserve that feeble resource, and it saved the army.
+
+At the close of the night of the 25th he made them sink the first
+tressel in the muddy bed of the river. But to crown our misfortunes, the
+rising of the waters had made the traces of the ford entirely disappear.
+It required the most incredible efforts on the part of our unfortunate
+sappers, who were plunged in the water up to their mouths, and had to
+contend with the floating pieces of ice which were carried along by the
+stream. Many of them perished from the cold, or were drowned by the ice
+flakes, which a violent wind drove against them.
+
+They had every thing to conquer but the enemy. The rigour of the
+atmosphere was just at the degree necessary to render the passage of the
+river more difficult, without suspending its course, or sufficiently
+consolidating the moving ground upon which we were about to venture. On
+this occasion the winter showed itself more Russian than even the
+Russians themselves. The latter were wanting to their season, which
+never failed them.
+
+The French laboured during the whole night by the light of the enemy's
+fires, which shone on the heights of the opposite bank, and within reach
+of the artillery and musketry of the division Tchaplitz. The latter,
+having no longer any doubt of our intentions, sent to apprise his
+commander-in-chief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The presence of a hostile division deprived us of all hope of deceiving
+the Russian admiral. We were expecting every instant to hear the whole
+fire of his artillery directed upon our workmen; and even if he did not
+discover them until daylight, their labours would not then be
+sufficiently advanced; and the opposite bank, being low and marshy, was
+too much commanded by Tchaplitz's positions to make it at all possible
+for us to force a passage.
+
+When he quitted Borizof, therefore, at ten o'clock at night, Napoleon
+imagined that he was setting out for a most desperate contest. He
+settled himself for the night, with the 6,400 guards which still
+remained to him, at Staroi-Borizof, a chateau belonging to Prince
+Radzivil, situated on the right of the road from Borizof to Studzianka,
+and equidistant from these two points.
+
+He passed the remainder of that night on his feet, going out every
+moment, either to listen, or to repair to the passage where his destiny
+was accomplishing; for the magnitude of his anxieties so completely
+filled his hours, that as each revolved, he fancied that it was morning.
+Several times he was reminded of his mistake by his attendants.
+
+Darkness had scarcely disappeared when he joined Oudinôt. The sight of
+danger tranquillized him, as it always did; but on seeing the Russian
+fires and their position, his most determined generals, such as Rapp,
+Mortier, and Ney, exclaimed, "that if the Emperor escaped this danger,
+they must absolutely believe in the influence of his star!" Murat
+himself thought it was now time to think of nothing but saving Napoleon.
+Some of the Poles proposed it to him.
+
+The Emperor was waiting for the approach of daylight in one of the
+houses on the borders of the river, on a steep bank which was crowned
+with Oudinôt's artillery. Murat obtained access to him; he declared to
+his brother-in-law, "that he looked upon the passage as impracticable;
+he urged him to save his person while it was yet time. He informed him
+that he might, without any danger, cross the Berezina a few leagues
+above Studzianka; that in five days he would reach Wilna; that some
+brave and determined Poles, perfectly acquainted with all the roads, had
+offered themselves for his guards, and to be responsible for his
+safety."
+
+But Napoleon rejected this proposition as an infamous plan, as a
+cowardly flight, and was indignant that any one should dare to think for
+a moment that he would abandon his army, so long as it was in danger. He
+was not, however, at all displeased with Murat, probably because that
+prince had afforded him an opportunity of showing his firmness, or
+rather because he saw nothing in his proposal but a mark of devotion,
+and because the first quality in the eyes of sovereigns is attachment to
+their persons.
+
+At that moment the appearance of daylight made the Russian fires grow
+pale and disappear. Our troops stood to their arms, the artillerymen
+placed themselves by their pieces, the generals were observing, and the
+looks of all were steadily directed to the opposite bank, preserving
+that silence which betokens great expectation, and is the forerunner of
+great danger.
+
+Since the day before, every blow struck by our pontonniers, echoing
+among the woody heights, must, we concluded, have attracted the whole
+attention of the enemy. The first dawn of the 26th was therefore
+expected to display to us his battalions and artillery, drawn up, in
+front of the weak scaffolding, to the construction of which Eblé had yet
+to devote eight hours more. Doubtless they were only waiting for
+daylight to enable them to point their cannon with better aim. When day
+appeared, we saw their fires abandoned, the bank deserted, and upon the
+heights, thirty pieces of artillery in full retreat. A single bullet of
+theirs would have been sufficient to annihilate the only plank of
+safety, which we were about to fix, in order to unite the two banks; but
+that artillery retreated exactly as ours was placed in battery.
+
+Farther off, we perceived the rear of a long column, which was moving
+off towards Borizof without ever looking behind it; one regiment of
+infantry, however, and twelve cannon remained, but without taking up any
+position; we also saw a horde of Cossacks wandering about the skirts of
+the wood: they formed the rear-guard of Tchaplitz's division, six
+thousand strong, which was thus retiring, as if for the purpose of
+delivering up the passage to us.
+
+The French, at first could hardly venture to believe their eyes. At
+last, transported with joy, they clapped their hands, and uttered loud
+shouts. Rapp and Oudinôt rushed precipitately into the house where the
+Emperor was. "Sire," they said to him, "the enemy has just raised his
+camp, and quitted his position!"--"It is not possible!" he replied; but
+Ney and Murat just then entered and confirmed this report. Napoleon
+immediately darted out; he looked, and could just see the last files of
+Tchaplitz's column getting farther off and disappearing in the woods.
+Transported with joy, he exclaimed, "I have outwitted the admiral!"
+
+During this first movement, two of the enemy's pieces re-appeared, and
+fired. An order was given to remove them by a discharge of our
+artillery.
+
+One salvo was enough; it was an act of imprudence which was not
+repeated, for fear of its recalling Tchaplitz. The bridge was as yet
+scarcely begun; it was eight o'clock, and the first tressels were only
+then fixing.
+
+The Emperor, however, impatient to get possession of the opposite bank,
+pointed it out to the bravest. Jacqueminot, aide-de-camp to the Duke of
+Reggio, and the Lithuanian count Predziecski, were the first who threw
+themselves into the river, and in spite of the pieces of ice, which cut
+and bled the chests and sides of their horses, succeeded in reaching the
+other side. Sourd, chief of the squadron, and fifty chasseurs of the
+7th, each carrying a voltigeur _en croupe_, followed them, as well as
+two frail rafts which transported four hundred men in twenty trips. The
+Emperor having expressed a wish to have a prisoner to interrogate,
+Jacqueminot, who overheard him, had scarcely crossed the river, when he
+saw one of Tchaplitz's soldiers; he rushed after, attacked, and disarmed
+him; then seizing and placing him on the bow of his saddle, he brought
+him through the river and the ice to Napoleon.
+
+About one o'clock the bank was entirely cleared of the Cossacks, and the
+bridge for the infantry finished. The division Legrand crossed it
+rapidly with its cannon, the men shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" in the
+presence of their sovereign, who was himself actively pressing the
+passage of the artillery, and encouraged his brave soldiers by his voice
+and example.
+
+He exclaimed, when he saw them fairly in possession of the opposite
+bank, "Behold my star again appear!" for he was a believer in fatality,
+like all conquerors, those men, who, having the largest accounts with
+Fortune, are fully aware how much they are indebted to her, and who,
+moreover, having no intermediate power between themselves and heaven,
+feel themselves more immediately under its protection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+At that moment, a Lithuanian nobleman, disguised as a peasant, arrived
+from Wilna with the news of Schwartzenberg's victory over Sacken.
+Napoleon appeared pleased in proclaiming it aloud, with the addition,
+that "Schwartzenberg had immediately returned upon the heels of
+Tchitchakof, and that he was coming to our assistance." A conjecture, to
+which the disappearance of Tchaplitz gave considerable probability.
+
+Meantime, as the first bridge which was just finished had only been made
+for the infantry, a second was begun immediately after, a hundred
+fathoms higher up, for the artillery and baggage, which was not finished
+until four o'clock in the afternoon. During that interval, the Duke of
+Reggio, with the rest of the second corps, and Dombrowski's division,
+followed General Legrand to the other side; they formed about seven
+thousand men.
+
+The marshal's first care was to secure the road to Zembin, by a
+detachment which chased some Cossacks from it; to push the enemy towards
+Borizof, and to keep him as far back as possible from the passage of
+Studzianka.
+
+Tchaplitz, in obedience to the admiral's orders, proceeded as far as
+Stakhowa, a village close to Borizof, he then turned back, and
+encountered the first troops of Oudinôt commanded by Albert. Both sides
+halted. The French, finding themselves rather too far off from their
+main body, only wanted to gain time, and the Russian general waited for
+orders.
+
+Tchitchakof had found himself in one of those difficult situations, in
+which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between
+several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one
+side, than it removes and gets overturned upon another.
+
+His march from Minsk to Borizof in three columns, not only by the high
+road, but by the roads of Antonopolia, Logoďsk, and Zembin, showed that
+his whole attention was at first directed to that part of the Berezina,
+above Borizof. Feeling himself then so strong upon his left, he felt
+only that his right was weakened, and in consequence, his anxiety was
+entirely transferred to that side.
+
+The error which led him into that false direction had other and stronger
+foundations. Kutusoff's instructions directed his responsibility to that
+point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused
+to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend
+that part of the river. He alleged, as his justification for refusal,
+the danger of a distemper among the cattle, a pretext unheard of and
+improbable, but perfectly true, as Tchitchakof himself has admitted.
+
+The admiral adds further, that information sent to him by Wittgenstein
+directed his anxiety towards Lower Berezino, as well as the supposition,
+natural enough, that the presence of that general on the right flank of
+the grand army and above Borizof, would push Napoleon below that town.
+
+The recollection of the passages of Charles XII. and of Davoust at
+Berezino, might also be another of his motives. By taking that
+direction, Napoleon would not only escape Wittgenstein, but he might
+retake Minsk, and form a junction with Schwartzenberg. This last was a
+serious consideration with Tchitchakof, Minsk being his conquest, and
+Schwartzenberg his first adversary. Lastly, and principally, Oudinôt's
+demonstration near Ucholoda, and probably the report of the Jews,
+determined him.
+
+The admiral, completely deceived, had therefore resolved, on the evening
+of the 25th, to descend the Berezina, at the very moment that Napoleon
+had determined to re-ascend it. It might almost be said that the French
+Emperor dictated the Russian general's resolution, the time for adopting
+it, the precise moment, and every detail of its execution. Both started
+at the same time from Borizof, Napoleon for Studzianka, Tchitchakof for
+Szabaszawiczy, turning their backs to each other as if by mutual
+agreement, and the admiral recalling all the troops which he had above
+Borizof, with the exception of a small body of light troops, and without
+even taking the precaution of breaking up the roads.
+
+Notwithstanding, at Szabaszawiczy, he was not more than five or six
+leagues from the passage which was effectuating. On the morning of the
+26th he must have been informed of it. The bridge of Borizof was only
+three hours' march from the point of attack. He had left fifteen
+thousand men before that bridge; he might therefore have returned in
+person to that point, rejoined Tchaplitz at Stakhowa, on the same day
+made an attack, or at least made preparations for it, and on the
+following day, the 27th, overthrown with eighteen thousand men the seven
+thousand soldiers of Oudinôt and Dombrowski; and finally resumed, in
+front of the Emperor and of Studzianka, the position which Tchaplitz had
+quitted the day before.
+
+But great errors are seldom repaired with the same readiness with which
+they are committed; either because it is in our nature to be at first
+doubtful of them, and that no one is disposed to admit them until they
+are completely certain; or because they confuse, and in the distrust of
+our own judgment, we hesitate, and require the support of other
+opinions.
+
+Thus it was, that the admiral lost the remainder of the 26th and the
+whole of the 27th in consultations, in feeling his way, and in
+preparations. The presence of Napoleon and his grand army, of the
+weakness of which it was impossible for him to have any idea, dazzled
+him. He saw the Emperor every where; before his right, in the simulated
+preparations for a passage; opposite his centre at Borizof, because in
+fact the arrival of the successive portions of our army filled that
+place with movements; and finally, at Studzianka before his left, where
+the Emperor really was.
+
+On the 27th, so little had he recovered from his error that he made his
+chasseurs reconnoitre and attack Borizof; they crossed over upon the
+beams of the burnt bridge, but were repulsed by the soldiers of
+Partouneaux's division.
+
+On the same day, while he was thus irresolute, Napoleon, with about five
+thousand guards, and Ney's corps, now reduced to six hundred men,
+crossed the Berezina about two o'clock in the afternoon; he posted
+himself in reserve to Oudinôt, and secured the outlet from the bridges
+against Tchitchakof's future efforts.
+
+He had been preceded by a crowd of baggage and stragglers. Numbers of
+them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted.
+The army of Victor, at the same time, succeeded the guard in its
+position on the heights of Studzianka.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Hitherto all had gone on well. But Victor, in passing through Borizof,
+had left there Partouneaux with his division. That general had orders to
+stop the enemy in the rear of that town, to drive before him the
+numerous stragglers who had taken shelter there, and to rejoin Victor
+before the close of the day. It was the first time that Partouneaux had
+seen the disorder of the grand army. He was anxious, like Davoust at the
+beginning of the retreat, to hide the traces of it from the Cossacks of
+Kutusoff, who were at his heels. This fruitless attempt, the attacks of
+Platof by the high road of Orcha, and those of Tchitchakof by the burnt
+bridge of Borizof, detained him in that place until the close of the
+day.
+
+He was preparing to quit it, when an order reached him from the Emperor
+himself, to remain there all night. Napoleon's idea, no doubt, was, in
+that manner to direct the whole attention of the three Russian generals
+upon Borizof, and that Partouneaux's keeping them back upon that point,
+would allow him sufficient time to operate the passage of his whole
+army.
+
+But Wittgenstein left Platof to pursue the French army along the high
+road, and directed his own march more to the right. He debouched the
+same evening on the heights which border the Berezina, between Borizof
+and Studzianka, intercepted the road between these two points, and
+captured all that was found there. A crowd of stragglers, who were
+driven back on Partouneaux, apprised him that he was separated from the
+rest of the army.
+
+Partouneaux did not hesitate: although he had no more than three cannon
+with him, and three thousand five hundred soldiers, he determined to cut
+his way through, made his dispositions accordingly, and began his march.
+He had at first to march along a slippery road, crowded with baggage and
+runaways; with a violent wind blowing directly in his face, and in a
+dark and icy-cold night. To these obstacles were shortly added the fire
+of several thousand enemies, who lined the heights upon his right. As
+long as he was only attacked in flank, he proceeded; but shortly after,
+he had to meet it in front from numberless troops well posted, whose
+bullets traversed his column through and through.
+
+This unfortunate division then got entangled in a shallow; a long file
+of five or six hundred carriages embarrassed all its movements; seven
+thousand terrified stragglers, howling with terror and despair, rushed
+into the midst of its feeble lines. They broke through them, caused its
+platoons to waver, and were every moment involving in their disorder
+fresh soldiers who got disheartened. It became necessary to retreat, in
+order to rally, and take a better position, but in falling back, they
+encountered Platof's cavalry.
+
+Half of our combatants had already perished, and the fifteen hundred
+soldiers who remained found themselves surrounded by three armies and by
+a river.
+
+In this situation, a flag of truce came, in the name of Wittgenstein and
+fifty thousand men, to order the French to surrender. Partouneaux
+rejected the summons. He recalled into his ranks such of his stragglers
+as yet retained their arms; he wanted to make a last effort, and clear a
+sanguinary passage to the bridge of Studzianka; but these men, who were
+formerly so brave, were now so degraded by their miseries, that they
+would no longer make use of their arms.
+
+At the same time, the general of his vanguard apprised him that the
+bridges of Studzianka were burnt; an aide-de-camp, named Rochex, who had
+just brought the report, pretended that he had seen them burning.
+Partouneaux believed this false intelligence, for, in regard to
+calamities, misfortune is credulous.
+
+He concluded that he was abandoned and sacrificed; and as the night, the
+incumbrances, and the necessity of facing the enemy on three sides,
+separated his weak brigades, he desired each of them to be told to try
+and steal off, under favour of the darkness, along the flanks of the
+enemy. He himself, with one of these brigades, reduced to four hundred
+men, ascended the steep and woody heights on his right, with the hope of
+passing through Wittgenstein's army in the darkness, of escaping him,
+and rejoining Victor; or, at all events, of getting round by the sources
+of the Berezina.
+
+But at every point where he attempted to pass, he encountered the
+enemy's fires, and he turned again; he wandered about for several hours
+quite at random, in plains of snow, in the midst of a violent hurricane.
+At every step he saw his soldiers transfixed by the cold, emaciated with
+hunger and fatigue, falling half dead into the hands of the Russian
+cavalry, who pursued him without intermission.
+
+This unfortunate general was still struggling with the heavens, with
+men, and with his own despair, when he felt even the earth give way
+under his feet. In fact, being deceived by the snow, he had fallen into
+a lake, which was not frozen sufficiently hard to bear him, and in which
+he would have been drowned. Then only he yielded and gave up his arms.
+
+While this catastrophe was accomplishing, his other three brigades,
+being more and more hemmed in upon the road, lost all power of movement.
+They delayed their surrender till the next morning, first by fighting,
+and then by parleying; they then all fell in their turn; a common
+misfortune again united them with their general.
+
+Of the whole division, a single battalion only escaped: it had been left
+the last in Borizof. It quitted it in the midst of the Russians of
+Platof and of Tchitchakof, who were effecting in that town, and at that
+very moment, the junction of the armies of Moscow and of Moldavia. This
+battalion, being alone and separated from its division, might have been
+expected to be the first to fall, but that very circumstance saved it.
+Several long trains of equipages and disbanded soldiers were flying
+towards Studzianka in different directions; drawn aside by one of these
+crowds, mistaking his road, and leaving on his right that which had been
+taken by the army, the leader of this battalion glided to the borders of
+the river, followed all its windings and turnings, and protected by the
+combat of his less fortunate comrades, by the darkness, and the very
+difficulties of the ground, moved off in silence, escaped from the
+enemy, and brought to Victor the confirmation of Partouneaux's
+surrender.
+
+When Napoleon heard the news, he was struck with grief, and exclaimed,
+"How unfortunate it was, that when all appeared to be saved, as if
+miraculously, this _defection_ had happened, to spoil all!" The
+expression was improper, but grief extorted it from him, either because
+he anticipated that Victor, being thus weakened, would be unable to hold
+out long enough next day; or because he had made it a point of honour to
+have left nothing during the whole of his retreat in the hands of the
+enemy, but stragglers, and no armed and organised corps. In fact, this
+division was the first and the only one which laid down its arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+This success encouraged Wittgenstein. At the same time, after two days
+feeling his way, the report of a prisoner, and the recapture of Borizof
+by Platof had opened Tchitchakof's eyes. From that moment the three
+Russian armies of the north, east, and south, felt themselves united;
+their commanders had mutual communications. Wittgenstein and Tchitchakof
+were jealous of each other, but they detested us still more; hatred, and
+not friendship, was their bond of union. These generals were therefore
+prepared to attack in conjunction the bridges of Studzianka, on both
+sides of the river.
+
+This was on the 28th of November. The grand army had had two days and
+two nights to effect its passage; it ought to have been too late for the
+Russians. But the French were in a state of complete disorder, and
+materials were deficient for two bridges. Twice during the night of the
+26th, the one for the carriages had broke down, and the passage had been
+retarded by it for seven hours: it broke a third time on the 27th, about
+four in the afternoon. On the other hand, the stragglers, who had been
+dispersed in the woods and surrounding villages, had not taken advantage
+of the first night, and on the 27th, when daylight appeared, they all
+presented themselves at once in order to cross the bridges.
+
+This was particularly the case when the guard, by whose movements they
+regulated themselves, began its march. Its departure was like a signal;
+they rushed in from all parts, and crowded upon the bank. Instantly
+there was seen a deep, broad, and confused mass of men, horses, and
+chariots, besieging the narrow entrance of the bridge, and overwhelming
+it. The first, pushed forward by those behind them, and driven back by
+the guards and pontonniers, or stopped by the river, were crushed, trod
+underfoot, or precipitated among the floating ices of the Berezina. From
+this immense and horrible rabble-rout there arose at times a confused
+buzzing noise, at others a loud clamour, mingled with groans and fearful
+imprecations.
+
+The efforts of Napoleon and his lieutenants to save these desperate men
+by restoring order among them, were for a long time completely
+fruitless. The disorder was so great, that, about two o'clock, when the
+Emperor presented himself in his turn, it was necessary to employ force
+to open a passage for him. A corps of grenadiers of the guard, and
+Latour-Maubourg, out of pure compassion, declined clearing themselves a
+way through these poor wretches.
+
+The imperial head-quarters were established at the hamlet of Zaniwki,
+which is situated in the midst of the woods, within a league of
+Studzianka. Eblé had just then made a survey of the baggage with which
+the bank was covered; he apprised the Emperor that six days would not be
+sufficient to enable so many carriages to pass over. Ney, who was
+present, immediately called out, "that in that case they had better be
+burnt immediately." But Berthier, instigated by the demon of courts,
+opposed this; he assured the Emperor that the army was far from being
+reduced to that extremity, and the Emperor was led to believe him, from
+a preference for the opinion which flattered him the most, and from a
+wish to spare so many men, whose misfortunes he reproached himself as
+the cause of, and whose provisions and little all these carriages
+contained.
+
+In the night of the 27th the disorder ceased by the effect of an
+opposite disorder. The bridges were abandoned, and the village of
+Studzianka attracted all these stragglers; in an instant, it was pulled
+to pieces, disappeared, and was converted into an infinite number of
+bivouacs. Cold and hunger kept these wretched people fixed around them;
+it was found impossible to tear them from them. The whole of that night
+was again lost for their passage.
+
+Meantime Victor, with six thousand men, was defending them against
+Wittgenstein. But with the first dawn of the 28th, when they saw that
+marshal preparing for a battle, when they heard the cannon of
+Wittgenstein thundering over their heads, and that of Tchitchakof at the
+same time on the opposite bank, they rose all at once, they descended,
+precipitated themselves tumultuously, and returned to besiege the
+bridges.
+
+Their terror was not without foundation; the last day of numbers of
+these unfortunate persons was come. Wittgenstein and Platof, with forty
+thousand Russians of the armies of the north and east, attacked the
+heights on the left bank, which Victor, with his small force, defended.
+On the right bank, Tchitchakof, with his twenty-seven thousand Russians
+of the army of the south, debouched from Stachowa against Oudinôt, Ney,
+and Dombrowski. These three could hardly reckon eight thousand men in
+their ranks, which were supported by the sacred squadron, as well as by
+the old and young guard, who then consisted of three thousand eight
+hundred infantry and nine hundred cavalry.
+
+The two Russian armies attempted to possess themselves at once of the
+two outlets from the bridges, and of all who had been unable to push
+forward beyond the marshes of Zembin. More than sixty thousand men, well
+clothed, well fed, and completely armed, attacked eighteen thousand
+half-naked, badly armed, dying of hunger, separated by a river,
+surrounded by morasses, and additionally encumbered with more than fifty
+thousand stragglers, sick or wounded, and by an enormous mass of
+baggage. During the last two days, the cold and misery had been such
+that the old guard had lost two-thirds, and the young guard one-half of
+their effective men.
+
+This fact, and the calamity which had fallen upon Partouneaux's
+division, sufficiently explain the frightful diminution of Victor's
+corps, and yet that marshal kept Wittgenstein in check during the whole
+of that day, the 28th. As to Tchitchakof, he was beaten. Marshal Ney,
+with his eight thousand French, Swiss, and Poles, was a match for
+twenty-seven thousand Russians.
+
+The admiral's attack was tardy and feeble. His cannon cleared the road,
+but he durst not venture to follow his bullets, and penetrate by the
+chasm which they made in our ranks. Opposite to his right, however, the
+legion of the Vistula gave way to the attack of a strong column.
+Oudinôt, Albert, Dombrowski, Claparede, and Kosikowski were then
+wounded; some uneasiness began to be felt. But Ney hastened forward; he
+made Doumerc and his cavalry dash quite across the woods upon the flank
+of that Russian column; they broke through it, took two thousand
+prisoners, cut the rest to pieces, and by this vigorous charge decided
+the fate of the battle, which was dragging on in uncertainty.
+Tchitchakof, thus defeated, was driven back into Stachowa.
+
+[Illustration: Passage of the Berezina]
+
+On our side, most of the generals of the second corps were wounded; for
+the less troops they had, the more they were obliged to expose their
+persons. Many officers on this occasion took the muskets and the places
+of their wounded men. Among the losses of the day, that of young
+Noailles, Berthier's aide-de-camp, was remarkable. He was struck dead by
+a ball. He was one of those meritorious but too ardent officers, who are
+incessantly exposing themselves, and are considered sufficiently
+rewarded by being employed.
+
+During this combat, Napoleon, at the head of his guard, remained in
+reserve at Brilowa, covering the outlet of the bridges, between the two
+armies, but nearer to that of Victor. That marshal, although attacked in
+a very dangerous position, and by a force quadruple his own, lost very
+little ground. The right of his _corps d'armée_, mutilated by the
+capture of Partouneaux's division, was protected by the river, and
+supported by a battery which the Emperor had erected on the opposite
+bank. His front was defended by a ravine, but his left was in the air,
+without support, and in a manner lost, in the elevated plain of
+Studzianka.
+
+Wittgenstein's first attack was not made until ten o'clock in the
+morning of the 28th, across the road of Borizof, and along the Berezina,
+which he endeavoured to ascend as far as the passage, but the French
+right wing stopped him, and kept him back for a considerable time, out
+of reach of the bridges. He then deployed, and extended the engagement
+with the whole front of Victor, but without effect. One of his attacking
+columns attempted to cross the ravine, but it was attacked and
+destroyed.
+
+At last, about the middle of the day, the Russian discovered the point
+where his superiority lay: he overwhelmed the French left wing. Every
+thing would then have been lost had it not been for an effort of
+Fournier, and the devotion of Latour-Maubourg. That general was passing
+the bridges with his cavalry; he perceived the danger, retraced his
+steps, and the enemy was again stopped by a most sanguinary charge.
+Night came on before Wittgenstein's forty thousand men had made any
+impression on the six thousand of the Duke of Belluno. That marshal
+remained in possession of the heights of Studzianka, and still preserved
+the bridges from the attacks of the Russian infantry, but he was unable
+to conceal them from the artillery of their left wing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+During the whole of that day, the situation of the ninth corps was so
+much more critical, as a weak and narrow bridge was its only means of
+retreat; in addition to which its avenues were obstructed by the baggage
+and the stragglers. By degrees, as the action got warmer, the terror of
+these poor wretches increased their disorder. First of all they were
+alarmed by the rumours of a serious engagement, then by seeing the
+wounded returning from it, and last of all by the batteries of the
+Russian left wing, some bullets from which began to fall among their
+confused mass.
+
+They had all been already crowding one upon the other, and the immense
+multitude heaped upon the bank pell-mell with the horses and carriages,
+there formed a most alarming incumbrance. It was about the middle of the
+day that the first Russian bullets fell in the midst of this chaos; they
+were the signal of universal despair.
+
+Then it was, as in all cases of extremity, that dispositions exhibited
+themselves without disguise, and actions were witnessed, most base, and
+others most sublime. According to their different characters, some
+furious and determined, with sword in hand, cleared for themselves a
+horrible passage. Others, still more cruel, opened a way for their
+carriages by driving them without mercy over the crowd of unfortunate
+persons who stood in the way, whom they crushed to death. Their
+detestable avarice made them sacrifice their companions in misfortune to
+the preservation of their baggage. Others, seized with a disgusting
+terror, wept, supplicated, and sunk under the influence of that passion,
+which completed the exhaustion of their strength. Some were observed,
+(and these were principally the sick and wounded,) who, renouncing life,
+went aside and sat down resigned, looking with a fixed eye on the snow
+which was shortly to be their tomb.
+
+Numbers of those who started first among this crowd of desperadoes
+missed the bridge, and attempted to scale it by the sides, but the
+greater part were pushed into the river. There were seen women in the
+midst of the ice, with their children in their arms, raising them as
+they felt themselves sinking, and even when completely immerged, their
+stiffened arms still held them above them.
+
+In the midst of this horrible disorder, the artillery bridge burst and
+broke down. The column, entangled in this narrow passage, in vain
+attempted to retrograde. The crowds of men who came behind, unaware of
+the calamity, and not hearing the cries of those before them, pushed
+them on, and threw them into the gulf, into which they were precipitated
+in their turn.
+
+Every one then attempted to pass by the other bridge. A number of large
+ammunition waggons, heavy carriages, and cannon crowded to it from all
+parts. Directed by their drivers, and carried along rapidly over a rough
+and unequal declivity, in the midst of heaps of men, they ground to
+powder the poor wretches who were unlucky enough to get between them;
+after which, the greater part, driving violently against each other and
+getting overturned, killed in their fall those who surrounded them.
+Whole rows of these desperate creatures being pushed against these
+obstacles, got entangled among them, were thrown down and crushed to
+pieces by masses of other unfortunates who succeeded each other
+uninterruptedly.
+
+Crowds of them were rolling in this way, one over the other, nothing was
+heard but cries of rage and suffering. In this frightful medley, those
+who were trod under and stifled, struggled under the feet of their
+companions, whom they laid hold of with their nails and teeth, and by
+whom they were repelled without mercy, as if they had been enemies.
+
+Among them were wives and mothers, calling in vain, and in tones of
+distraction, for their husbands and their children, from whom they had
+been separated but a moment before, never more to be united: they
+stretched out their arms and entreated to be allowed to pass in order to
+rejoin them; but being carried backwards and forwards by the crowd, and
+overcome by the pressure, they sunk under without being even remarked.
+Amidst the tremendous noise of a furious hurricane, the firing of
+cannon, the whistling of the storm and of the bullets, the explosion of
+shells, vociferations, groans, and the most frightful oaths, this
+infuriated and disorderly crowd heard not the complaints of the victims
+whom it was swallowing up.
+
+The more fortunate gained the bridge by scrambling over heaps of
+wounded, of women and children thrown down and half suffocated, and whom
+they again trod down in their attempts to reach it. When at last they
+got to the narrow defile, they fancied they were safe, but the fall of a
+horse, or the breaking or displacing of a plank again stopped all.
+
+There was also, at the outlet of the bridge, on the other side, a
+morass, into which many horses and carriages had sunk, a circumstance
+which again embarrassed and retarded the clearance. Then it was, that in
+that column of desperadoes, crowded together on that single plank of
+safety, there arose an internal struggle, in which the weakest and worst
+situated were thrown into the river by the strongest. The latter,
+without turning their heads, and carried away by the instinct of
+self-preservation, pushed on toward the goal with fury, regardless of
+the imprecations of rage and despair, uttered by their companions or
+their officers, whom they had thus sacrificed.
+
+But on the other hand, how many noble instances of devotion! and why are
+time and space denied me to relate them? There were seen soldiers, and
+even officers, harnessing themselves to sledges, to snatch from that
+fatal bank their sick or wounded comrades. Farther off, and out of reach
+of the crowd, were seen soldiers motionless, watching over their dying
+officers, who had entrusted themselves to their care; the latter in vain
+conjured them to think of nothing but their own preservation, they
+refused, and, sooner than abandon their leaders, were contented to wait
+the approach of slavery or death.
+
+Above the first passage, while the young Lauriston threw himself into
+the river, in order to execute the orders of his sovereign more
+promptly, a little boat, carrying a mother and her two children, was
+overset and sunk under the ice; an artilleryman, who was struggling like
+the others on the bridge to open a passage for himself, saw the
+accident; all at once, forgetting himself, he threw himself into the
+river, and by great exertion, succeeded in saving one of the three
+victims. It was the youngest of the two children; the poor little thing
+kept calling for its mother with cries of despair, and the brave
+artilleryman was heard telling it, "not to cry; that he had not
+preserved it from the water merely to desert it on the bank; that it
+should want for nothing; that he would be its father, and its family."
+
+The night of the 28th added to all these calamities. Its darkness was
+insufficient to conceal its victims from the artillery of the Russians.
+Amidst the snow, which covered every thing, the course of the river, the
+thorough black mass of men, horses, carriages, and the noise proceeding
+from them, were sufficient to enable the enemy's artillerymen, to direct
+their fire.
+
+About nine o'clock at night there was a still farther increase of
+desolation, when Victor began his retreat, and his divisions came and
+opened themselves a horrible breach through these unhappy wretches, whom
+they had till then been protecting. A rear-guard, however, having been
+left at Studzianka, the multitude, benumbed with cold, or too anxious to
+preserve their baggage, refused to avail themselves of the last night
+for passing to the opposite side. In vain were the carriages set fire
+to, in order to tear them from them. It was only the appearance of
+daylight, which brought them all at once, but too late, to the entrance
+of the bridge, which they again besieged. It was half-past eight in the
+morning, when Eblé, seeing the Russians approaching, at last set fire to
+it.
+
+The disaster had reached its utmost bounds. A multitude of carriages,
+three cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were
+abandoned on the hostile bank. They were seen wandering in desolate
+troops on the borders of the river. Some threw themselves into it in
+order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice
+which were floating along: some there were also who threw themselves
+headlong into the flames of the burning bridge, which sunk under them;
+burnt and frozen at one and the same time, they perished under two
+opposite punishments. Shortly after, the bodies of all sorts were
+perceived collecting together and the ice against the tressels of the
+bridge. The rest awaited the Russians. Wittgenstein did not show himself
+upon the heights until an hour after Eblé's departure, and, without
+having gained a victory, reaped all the fruits of one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+While this catastrophe was accomplishing, the remains of the grand army
+on the opposite bank formed nothing but a shapeless mass, which
+unravelled itself confusedly, as it took the road to Zembin. The whole
+of this country is a high and woody plain of great extent, where the
+waters, flowing in uncertainty between different inclinations of the
+ground, form one vast morass. Three consecutive bridges, of three
+hundred fathoms in length, are thrown over it; along these the army
+passed, with a mingled feeling of astonishment, fear, and delight.
+
+These magnificent bridges, made of resinous fir, began at the distance
+of a few wersts from the passage. Tchaplitz had occupied them for
+several days. An _abatis_ and heaps of bavins of combustible wood,
+already dry, were laid at their entrance, as if to remind him of the use
+he had to make of them. It would not have required more than the fire
+from one of the Cossacks' pipes to set these bridges on fire. In that
+case all our efforts and the passage of the Berezina would have been
+entirely useless. Caught between the morass and the river, in a narrow
+space, without provisions, without shelter, in the midst of a tremendous
+hurricane, the grand army and its Emperor must have been compelled to
+surrender without striking a blow.
+
+In this desperate situation, in which all France seemed destined to be
+taken prisoner in Russia, where every thing was against us and in favour
+of the Russians, the latter did nothing but by halves. Kutusoff did not
+reach the Dnieper, at Kopis, until the very day that Napoleon approached
+the Berezina. Wittgenstein allowed himself to be kept in check during
+the time that the former required for his passage. Tchitchakof was
+defeated; and of eighty thousand men, Napoleon succeeded in saving sixty
+thousand.
+
+He remained till the last moment on these melancholy banks, near the
+ruins of Brilowa, unsheltered, and at the head of his guards, one-third
+of whom were destroyed by the storm. During the day they stood to arms,
+and were drawn up in order of battle; at night, they bivouacked in a
+square round their leader; there the old grenadiers incessantly kept
+feeding their fires. They sat upon their knapsacks, with their elbows
+planted on their knees, and their hands supporting their head;
+slumbering in this manner doubled upon themselves, in order that one
+limb might warm the other, and that they should feel less the emptiness
+of their stomachs.
+
+During these three days and three nights, spent in the midst of them,
+Napoleon, with his looks and his thoughts wandering on three sides at
+once, supported the second corps by his orders and his presence,
+protected the ninth corps and the passage with his artillery, and united
+his efforts with those of Eblé in saving as many fragments as possible
+from the wreck. He at last directed the remains to Zembin, where Prince
+Eugene had preceded him.
+
+It was remarked that he still gave orders to his marshals, who had no
+soldiers to command, to take up positions on that road, as if they had
+still armies at their beck. One of them made the observation to him with
+some degree of asperity, and was beginning an enumeration of his losses;
+but Napoleon, determined to reject all reports, lest they should
+degenerate into complaints, warmly interrupted him with these words:
+"why then do you wish to deprive me of my tranquillity?" and as the
+other was persisting, he shut his mouth at once, by repeating, in a
+reproachful manner, "I ask you, sir, why do you wish to deprive me of my
+tranquillity?" An expression, which in his adversity, explained the
+attitude which he imposed upon himself, and that which he exacted of
+others.
+
+Around him during these mortal days, every bivouac was marked by a heap
+of dead bodies. There were collected men of all classes, of all ranks,
+of all ages; ministers, generals, administrators. Among them was
+remarked an elderly nobleman of the times long passed, when light and
+brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was
+seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of a tree, occupying himself with
+unruffled gaiety every morning with the details of his toilette; in the
+midst of the hurricane, he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered
+with the greatest care, amusing himself in this manner with all the
+calamities, and with the fury of the combined elements which assailed
+him.
+
+Near him were officers of the scientific corps still finding subjects of
+discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age, which a few discoveries
+have encouraged to find explanations for every thing, the latter, amidst
+the acute sufferings which were inflicted upon them by the north wind,
+were endeavouring to ascertain the cause of its constant direction.
+According to them, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun,
+by warming the southern hemisphere, converted all its emanations into
+vapour, elevated them, and left on the surface of that zone a vacuum,
+into which the vapours of our hemisphere, which were lower, on account
+of being less rarefied, rushed with violence. From one to another, and
+from a similar cause, the Russian pole, completely surcharged with
+vapours which it had emanated, received, and cooled since the last
+spring, greedily followed that direction. It discharged itself from it
+by an impetuous and icy current, which swept the Russian territory quite
+bare, and stiffened or destroyed every thing which it encountered in its
+passage.
+
+Several others of these officers remarked with curious attention the
+regular hexagonal crystallization of each of the flakes of snow which
+covered their garments.
+
+The phenomenon of parhelias, or simultaneous appearances of several
+images of the sun, reflected to their eyes by means of icicles suspended
+in the atmosphere, was also the subject of their observations, and
+occurred several times to divert them from their sufferings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+On the 29th the Emperor quitted the banks of the Berezina, pushing on
+before him the crowd of disbanded soldiers, and marching with the ninth
+corps, which was already disorganized. The day before, the second and
+the ninth corps, and Dombrowski's division presented a total of fourteen
+thousand men; and now, with the exception of about six thousand, the
+rest had no longer any form of division, brigade, or regiment.
+
+Night, hunger, cold, the fall of a number of officers, the loss of the
+baggage on the other side of the river, the example of so many runaways,
+and the much more forbidding one of the wounded, who had been abandoned
+on both sides of the river, and were left rolling in despair on the
+snow, which was covered with their blood--every thing; in short, had
+contributed to discourage them; they were confounded in the mass of
+disbanded men who had come from Moscow.
+
+The whole still formed sixty thousand men, but without the least order
+or unity. All marched pell-mell, cavalry, infantry, artillery, French
+and Germans; there was no longer either wing or centre. The artillery
+and carriages drove on through this disorderly crowd, with no other
+instructions than to proceed as quickly as possible.
+
+On this narrow and hilly causeway, many were crushed to death in
+crowding together through the defiles, after which there was a general
+dispersion to every point where either shelter or provisions were likely
+to be found. In this manner did Napoleon reach Kamen, where he slept,
+along with the prisoners made on the preceding day, who were put into a
+fold like sheep. These poor wretches, after devouring even the dead
+bodies of their fellows, almost all perished of cold and hunger.
+
+On the 30th he reached Pleszezenitzy. Thither the Duke of Reggio, after
+being wounded, had retired the day before, with about forty officers and
+soldiers. He fancied himself in safety, when all at once the Russian
+partizan, Landskoy, with one hundred and fifty hussars, four hundred
+Cossacks, and two cannon, penetrated, into the village, and filled all
+the streets of it.
+
+Oudinôt's feeble escort was dispersed. The marshal saw himself reduced
+to defend himself with only seventeen others, in a wooden house, but he
+did so with such audacity and success, that the enemy was astonished,
+quitted the village, and took position on a height, from which he
+attacked it with his cannon. The relentless destiny of this brave
+marshal so ordered it, that in this skirmish he was again wounded by a
+splinter of wood.
+
+Two Westphalian battalions, which preceded the Emperor, at last made
+their appearance and disengaged him, but not till late, and not until
+these Germans and the marshal's escort (who at first did not recognize
+each other as friends) had taken a long and anxious survey of each
+other.
+
+On the 3d of December, Napoleon arrived in the morning at Malodeczno,
+which was the last point where Tchitchakof was likely to have got the
+start of him. Some provisions were found there, the forage was abundant,
+the day beautiful, the sun shining, and the cold bearable. There also
+the couriers, who had been so long in arrears arrived all at once. The
+Poles were immediately directed forward to Warsaw through Olita, and the
+dismounted cavalry by Merecz to the Niemen; the rest of the army was to
+follow the high road, which they had again regained.
+
+Up to that time, Napoleon seemed to have entertained no idea of quitting
+his army. But about the middle of that day, he suddenly informed Daru
+and Duroc of his determination to set off immediately for Paris.
+
+Daru did not see the necessity of it. He objected, "that the
+communication with France was again opened, and the most dangerous
+crisis passed; that at every retrograde step he would now be meeting the
+reinforcements sent him from Paris and from Germany." The Emperor's
+reply was, "that he no longer felt himself sufficiently strong to leave
+Prussia between him and France. What necessity was there for his
+remaining at the head of a routed army? Murat and Eugene would be
+sufficient to direct it, and Ney to cover its retreat.
+
+"That his return to France was become indispensable, in order to secure
+her tranquillity, and to summon her to arms; to take measures there for
+keeping the Germans steady in their fidelity to him; and finally, to
+return with new and sufficient forces to the assistance of his grand
+army.
+
+"But, in order to attain that object, it was necessary that he should
+travel alone over four hundred leagues of the territories of his allies;
+and to do so without danger, that his resolution should be there
+unforeseen, his passage unknown, and the rumour of his disastrous
+retreat still uncertain; that he should precede the news of it, and
+anticipate the effect which it might produce on them, and all the
+defections to which it might give rise. He had, therefore, no time to
+lose, and the moment of his departure was now arrived."
+
+He only hesitated in the choice of the leader whom he should leave in
+command of the army; he wavered between Murat and Eugene. He liked the
+prudence and devotedness of the latter; but Murat had greater celebrity,
+which would give him more weight. Eugene would remain with that monarch;
+his youth and his inferior rank would be a security for his obedience,
+and his character for his zeal. He would set an example of it to the
+other marshals.
+
+Finally, Berthier, the channel, to which they had been so long
+accustomed, of all the imperial orders and rewards, would remain with
+them; there would consequently be no change in the form or the
+organization of the army; and this arrangement, at the same time that it
+would be a proof of the certainty of his speedy return, would serve both
+to keep the most impatient of his own officers in their duty, and the
+most ardent of his enemies in a salutary dread.
+
+Such were the motives assigned by Napoleon. Caulaincourt immediately
+received orders to make secret preparations for their departure. The
+rendezvous was fixed at Smorgoni, and the time, the night of the 5th of
+December.
+
+Although Daru was not to accompany Napoleon, who left him the heavy
+charge of the administration of the army, he listened in silence, having
+nothing to urge in reply to motives of such weight; but it was quite
+otherwise with Berthier. This enfeebled old man, who had for sixteen
+years never quitted the side of Napoleon, revolted at the idea of this
+separation.
+
+The private scene which took place was most violent. The Emperor was
+indignant at his resistance. In his rage he reproached him with all the
+favours with which he had loaded him; the army, he told him, stood in
+need of the reputation which he had made for him, and which was only a
+reflection of his own; but to cut the matter short, he allowed him
+four-and-twenty hours to decide; and if he then persisted in his
+disobedience, he might depart for his estates, where he should order him
+to remain, forbidding him ever again to enter Paris or his presence.
+Next day, the 4th of December, Berthier, excusing himself for his
+previous refusal by his advanced age and impaired health, resigned
+himself sorrowfully to his sovereign's pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+But at the very moment that Napoleon determined on his departure, the
+winter became terrible, as if the Russian atmosphere, seeing him about
+to escape from it, had redoubled its severity in order to overwhelm him
+and destroy us. On the 4th of December, when we reached Bienitza, the
+thermometer was at 26 degrees.
+
+The Emperor had left Count Lobau and several hundred men of his old
+guard at Malodeczno, at which place the road to Zembin rejoins the
+high-road from Minsk to Wilna. It was necessary to guard this point
+until the arrival of Victor, who in his turn would defend it until that
+of Ney.
+
+For it was still to this marshal, and to the second corps commanded by
+Maison, that the rear-guard was entrusted. On the night of the 29th of
+November, when Napoleon quitted the banks of the Berezina, Ney, and the
+second and third corps, now reduced to three thousand soldiers, passed
+the long bridges leading to Zembin, leaving at their entrance Maison,
+and a few hundred men to defend and to burn them.
+
+Tchitchakof made a late but warm attack, and not only with musketry, but
+with the bayonet: but he was repulsed. Maison at the same time caused
+these long bridges to be loaded with the bavins, of which Tchaplitz,
+some days before, had neglected to make use. When every thing was ready,
+the enemy completely sickened of fighting, and night and the bivouacs
+well advanced, he rapidly passed the defile, and set fire to them. In a
+few minutes these long causeways were burnt to ashes, and fell into the
+morasses, which the frost had not yet rendered passable.
+
+These quagmires stopped the enemy and compelled him to make a _detour_.
+During the following day, therefore, the march of Ney and of Maison was
+unmolested. But on the day after, the 1st of December, as they came in
+sight of Pleszezenitzy, lo and behold! the whole of the Russian cavalry
+were seen rushing forward impetuously, and pushing Doumerc and his
+cuirassiers on their right. In an instant they were attacked and
+overwhelmed on all sides.
+
+At the same time, Maison saw that the village through which he had to
+retreat, was entirely filled with stragglers. He sent to warn them to
+flee directly; but these unfortunate and famished wretches, not seeing
+the enemy, refused to leave their meals which they had just begun;
+Maison was driven back upon them into the village. Then only, at the
+sight of the enemy, and the noise of the shells, the whole of them
+started up at once, rushed out, and crowded and encumbered every part of
+the principal street.
+
+Maison and his troop found themselves all at once in a manner lost in
+the midst of this terrified crowd, which pressed upon them, almost
+stifled them, and deprived them of the use of their arms. This general
+had no other remedy than to desire his men to remain close together and
+immoveable, and wait till the crowd had dispersed. The enemy's cavalry
+then came up with this mass, and got entangled with it, but it could
+only penetrate slowly and by cutting down. The crowd having at last
+dispersed, discovered to the Russians, Maison and his soldiers waiting
+for them with a determined countenance. But in its flight, the crowd had
+drawn along with it a portion of our combatants. Maison, in an open
+plain, and with seven or eight hundred men against thousands of enemies,
+lost all hope of safety; he was already seeking only to gain a wood not
+far off, in order to sell their lives more dearly, when he saw coming
+out of it eighteen hundred Poles, a troop quite fresh, which Ney had met
+with and brought to his assistance. This reinforcement stopped the
+enemy, and secured the retreat as far as Malodeczno.
+
+On the 4th of December, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Ney and
+Maison got within sight of that village, which Napoleon had quitted in
+the morning. Tchaplitz followed them close. Ney had now only six hundred
+men remaining with him. The weakness of this rear-guard, the approach of
+night, and the prospect of a place of shelter, excited the ardour of the
+Russian general; he made a warm attack. Ney and Maison, perfectly
+certain that they would die of cold on the high-road, if they allowed
+themselves to be driven beyond that cantonment, preferred perishing in
+defending it.
+
+They halted at its entrance, and as their artillery horses were dying,
+they gave up all idea of saving their cannon; determined however that it
+should do its duty for the last time in crushing the enemy, they formed
+every piece they possessed into a battery, and made a tremendous fire.
+Tchaplitz's attacking column was entirely broken by it, and halted. But
+that general, availing himself of his superior forces, diverted a part
+of them to another entrance, and his first troops had already crossed
+the inclosures of Malodeczno, when all at once, they there encountered a
+fresh enemy.
+
+As good luck would have it, Victor, with about four thousand men, the
+remains of the ninth corps, still occupied this village. The fury on
+both sides was extreme; the first houses were several times taken and
+retaken. The combat on both sides was much less for glory than to keep
+or acquire a refuge against the destructive cold. It was not until
+half-past eleven at night that the Russians gave up the contest, and
+went from it half frozen, to seek for another in the surrounding
+villages.
+
+The following day, December 5th, Ney and Maison had expected that the
+Duke of Belluno would replace them at the rear-guard; but they found
+that that marshal had retired, according to his instructions, and that
+they were left alone in Malodeczno with only sixty men. All the rest had
+fled; the rigour of the climate had completely knocked up their
+soldiers, whom the Russians to the very last moment were unable to
+conquer; their arms fell from their hands, and they themselves fell at a
+few paces distance from their arms.
+
+Maison, who united great vigour of mind with a very strong constitution,
+was not intimidated; he continued his retreat to Bienitza, rallying at
+every step men who were incessantly escaping from him, but still
+continuing to give proofs of the existence of a rear-guard, with a few
+foot-soldiers. This was all that was required; for the Russians
+themselves were frozen, and obliged to disperse before night into the
+neighbouring habitations, which they durst not quit until it was
+completely daylight. They then recommenced their pursuit of us, but
+without making any attack; for with the exception of some numb efforts,
+the violence of the temperature was such as not to allow either party to
+halt with the view of making an attack, or of defending themselves.
+
+In the mean time, Ney, being surprised at Victor's departure, went after
+him, overtook him, and tried to prevail upon him to halt; but the Duke
+of Belluno, having orders to retreat, refused. Ney then wanted him to
+give him up his soldiers, offering to take the command of them; but
+Victor would neither consent to do that, nor to take the rear-guard
+without express orders. In the altercation which arose in consequence
+between these two, the Prince of the Moskwa gave way to his passion in a
+most violent manner, without producing any effect on the coolness of
+Victor. At last an order of the Emperor arrived; Victor was instructed
+to support the retreat, and Ney was summoned to Smorgoni.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIII.
+
+
+Napoleon had just arrived there amidst a crowd of dying men, devoured
+with chagrin, but not allowing the least emotion to exhibit itself in
+his countenance, at the sight of these unhappy men's sufferings, who, on
+the other hand, had allowed no murmurs to escape them in his presence.
+It is true that a seditious movement was impossible; it would have
+required an additional effort, as the strength of every man was fully
+occupied in struggling with hunger, cold, and fatigue; it would have
+required union, agreement, and mutual understanding, while famine and so
+many evils separated and isolated them, by concentrating every man's
+feelings completely in himself. Far from exhausting themselves in
+provocations or complaints, they marched along silently, exerting all
+their efforts against a hostile atmosphere, and diverted from every
+other idea by a state of continual action and suffering. Their physical
+wants absorbed their whole moral strength; they thus lived mechanically
+in their sensations, continuing in their duty from recollection, from
+the impressions which they had received in better times, and in no
+slight degree from that sense of honour and love of glory which had been
+inspired by twenty years of victory, and the warmth of which still
+survived and struggled within them.
+
+The authority of the commanders also remained complete and respected,
+because it had always been eminently paternal, and because the dangers,
+the triumphs, and the calamities had always been shared in common. It
+was an unhappy family, the head of which was perhaps the most to be
+pitied. The Emperor and the grand army, therefore, preserved towards
+each other a melancholy and noble silence; they were both too proud to
+utter complaints, and too experienced not to feel the inutility of them.
+
+Meantime, however, Napoleon had entered precipitately into his last
+imperial head-quarters; he there finished his final instructions, as
+well as the 29th and last bulletin of his expiring army. Precautions
+were taken in his inner apartment, that nothing of what was about to
+take place there should transpire until the following day.
+
+But the presentiment of a last misfortune seized his officers; all of
+them would have wished to follow him. Their hearts yearned after France,
+to be once more in the bosom of their families, and to flee from this
+horrible climate; but not one of them ventured to express a wish of the
+kind; duty and honour restrained them.
+
+While they affected a tranquillity which they were far from tasting, the
+night and the moment which the Emperor had fixed for declaring his
+resolution to the commanders of the army arrived. All the marshals were
+summoned. As they successively entered, he took each of them aside in
+private, and first of all gained their approbation of his plan, of some
+by his arguments, and of others by confidential effusions.
+
+Thus it was, that on perceiving Davoust, he ran forward to meet him, and
+asked him why it was that he never saw him, and if he had entirely
+deserted him? And upon Davoust's reply that he fancied he had incurred
+his displeasure, the Emperor explained himself mildly, received his
+answers favourably, confided to him the road he meant to travel, and
+took his advice, respecting its details.
+
+His manner was kind and flattering to them all; afterwards, having
+assembled them at his table, he complimented them for their noble
+actions during the campaign. As to himself, the only confession he made
+of his temerity was couched in these words: "If I had been born to the
+throne, if I had been a Bourbon, it would have been easy for me not to
+have committed any faults."
+
+When their entertainment was over, he made Prince Eugene read to them
+his twenty-ninth bulletin; after which, declaring aloud what he had
+already confided to each of them, he told them, "that he was about to
+depart that very night with Duroc, Caulaincourt, and Lobau, for Paris.
+That his presence there was indispensable for France as well as for the
+remains of his unfortunate army. It was there only he could take
+measures for keeping the Austrians and Prussians in check. These nations
+would certainly pause before they declared war against him, when they
+saw him at the head of the French nation, and a fresh army of twelve
+hundred thousand men."
+
+He added, that "he had ordered Ney to proceed to Wilna, there to
+reorganise the army. That Rapp would second him, and afterwards go to
+Dantzic, Lauriston to Warsaw, and Narbonne to Berlin; that his household
+would remain with the army; but that it would be necessary to strike a
+blow at Wilna, and stop the enemy there. There they would find Loison,
+De Wrede, reinforcements, provisions, and ammunition of all sorts;
+afterwards they would go into winter-quarters on the other side of the
+Niemen; that he hoped the Russians would not pass the Vistula before his
+return."
+
+In conclusion, "I leave the King of Naples to command the army. I hope
+that you will yield him the same obedience as you would to myself, and
+that the greatest harmony will prevail among you."
+
+As it was now ten o'clock at night, he then rose, squeezed their hands
+affectionately, embraced them, and departed.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK XII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+Comrades! I must confess that my spirit, discouraged, refused to
+penetrate farther into the recollection of so many horrors. Having
+arrived at the departure of Napoleon, I had flattered myself that my
+task was completed. I had announced myself as the historian of that
+great epoch, when we were precipitated from the highest summit of glory
+to the deepest abyss of misfortune; but now that nothing remains for me
+to retrace but the most frightful miseries, why should we not spare
+ourselves, you the pain of reading them, and myself that of tasking a
+memory which has now only to rake up embers, nothing but disasters to
+reckon, and which can no longer write but upon tombs?
+
+But as it was our fate to push bad as well as good fortune to the utmost
+verge of improbability, I will endeavour to keep the promise I have made
+you to the conclusion. Moreover, when the history of great men relates
+even their last moments, how can I conceal the last sighs of the grand
+army when it was expiring? Every thing connected with it appertains to
+renown, its dying groans as well as its cries of victory. Every thing in
+it was grand; it will be our lot to astonish future ages with our glory
+and our sorrow. Melancholy consolation! but the only one that remains to
+us; for doubt it not, comrades, the noise of so great a fall will echo
+in that futurity, in which great misfortunes immortalize as much as
+great glory.
+
+Napoleon passed through the crowd of his officers, who were drawn up in
+an avenue as he passed, bidding them adieu merely by forced and
+melancholy smiles; their good wishes, equally silent, and expressed only
+by respectful gestures, he carried with him. He and Caulaincourt shut
+themselves up in a carriage; his Mameluke, and Wonsowitch, captain of
+his guard, occupied the box; Duroc and Lobau followed in a sledge.
+
+His escort at first consisted only of Poles; afterwards of the
+Neapolitans of the royal guard. This corps consisted of between six and
+seven hundred men, when it left Wilna to meet the Emperor; it perished
+entirely in that short passage; the winter was its only adversary. That
+very night the Russians surprised and afterwards abandoned Youpranoui,
+(or, as others say, Osmiana,) a town through which the escort had to
+pass. Napoleon was within an hour of falling into that affray.
+
+He met the Duke of Bassano at Miedniki. His first words to him were,
+"that he had no longer an army; that for several days past he had been
+marching in the midst of a troop of disbanded men wandering to and fro
+in search of subsistence; that they might still be rallied by giving
+them bread, shoes, clothing, and arms; but that the Duke's military
+administration had anticipated nothing, and his orders had not been
+executed." But upon Maret replying, by showing him a statement of the
+immense magazines collected at Wilna, he exclaimed, "that he gave him
+fresh life! that he would give him an order to transmit to Murat and
+Berthier to halt for eight days in that capital, there to rally the
+army, and infuse into it sufficient heart and strength to continue the
+retreat less deplorably."
+
+The subsequent part of Napoleon's journey was effected without
+molestation. He went round Wilna by its suburbs, crossed Wilkowiski,
+where he exchanged his carriage for a sledge, stopped during the 10th at
+Warsaw, to ask the Poles for a levy of ten thousand Cossacks, to grant
+them some subsidies, and to promise them he would speedily return at the
+head of three hundred thousand men. From thence he rapidly crossed
+Silesia, visited Dresden, and its monarch, passed through Hanau, Mentz,
+and finally got to Paris, where he suddenly made his appearance on the
+19th of December, two days after the appearance of his twenty-ninth
+bulletin.
+
+From Malo-Yaroslawetz to Smorgoni, this master of Europe had been no
+more than the general of a dying and disbanded army. From Smorgoni to
+the Rhine, he was an unknown fugitive, travelling through a hostile
+country; beyond the Rhine he again found himself the master and the
+conqueror of Europe. A last breeze of the wind of prosperity once more
+swelled his sails.
+
+Meanwhile, his generals, whom he left at Smorgoni, approved of his
+departure, and, far from being discouraged, placed all their hopes in
+it. The army had now only to flee, the road was open, and the Russian
+frontier at a very short distance. They were getting within reach of a
+reinforcement of eighteen thousand men, all fresh troops, of a great
+city, and immense magazines. Murat and Berthier, left to themselves,
+fancied themselves able to regulate the flight. But in the midst of the
+extreme disorder, it required a colossus for a rallying point, and he
+had just disappeared. In the great chasm which he left, Murat was
+scarcely perceptible.
+
+It was then too clearly seen that a great man is not replaced, either
+because the pride of his followers can no longer stoop to obey another,
+or that having always thought of, foreseen, and ordered every thing
+himself, he had only formed good instruments, skilful lieutenants, but
+no commanders.
+
+The very first night, a general refused to obey. The marshal who
+commanded the rear-guard was almost the only one who returned to the
+royal head-quarters. Three thousand men of the old and young guard were
+still there. This was the whole of the grand army, and of that gigantic
+body there remained nothing but the head. But at the news of Napoleon's
+departure, these veterans, spoiled by the habit of being commanded only
+by the conqueror of Europe, being no longer supported by the honour of
+serving him, and scorning to act as guards to another, gave way in their
+turn, and voluntarily fell into disorder.
+
+Most of the colonels of the army, who had hitherto been such subjects of
+admiration, and had marched on, with only four or five officers or
+soldiers around their eagle, preserving their place of battle, now
+followed no orders but their own; each of them fancied himself entrusted
+with his own safety, and looked only to himself for it. Men there were
+who marched two hundred leagues without even looking round. It was an
+almost general _sauve-qui-peut_.
+
+The Emperor's disappearance and Murat's incapacity were not, however,
+the only causes of this dispersion; the principal certainly was the
+severity of the winter, which at that moment became extreme. It
+aggravated every thing, and seemed to have planted itself completely
+between Wilna and the army.
+
+Till we arrived at Malodeczno, and up to the 4th of December, the day
+when it set in upon us with such violence, the march, although painful,
+had been marked by a smaller number of deaths than before we reached the
+Berezina. This respite was partly owing to the vigorous efforts of Ney
+and Maison, which had kept the enemy in check, to the then milder
+temperature, to the supplies which were obtained from a less ravaged
+country, and, finally, to the circumstance that they were the strongest
+men who had escaped from the passage of the Berezina.
+
+The partial organization which had been introduced into the disorder was
+kept up. The mass of runaways kept on their way, divided into a number
+of petty associations of eight or ten men. Many of these bands still
+possessed a horse, which carried their provisions, and was himself
+finally destined to be converted to that purpose. A covering of rags,
+some utensils, a knapsack, and a stick, formed the accoutrements and the
+armour of these poor fellows. They no longer possessed either the arms
+or the uniform of a soldier, nor the desire of combating any other
+enemies than hunger and cold; but they still retained perseverance,
+firmness, the habit of danger and suffering, and a spirit always ready,
+pliant, and quick in making the most of their situation. Finally, among
+the soldiers still under arms, the dread of a nickname, by which they
+themselves ridiculed their comrades who had fallen into disorder,
+retained some influence.
+
+But after leaving Malodeczno, and the departure of Napoleon, when winter
+with all its force, and doubled in severity, attacked each of us, there
+was a complete dissolution of all those associations against misfortune.
+It was no longer any thing but a multitude of isolated and individual
+struggles. The best no longer respected themselves; nothing stopped
+them; no speaking looks detained them; misfortune was hopeless of
+assistance, and even of regret; discouragement had no longer judges to
+condemn, or witnesses to prove it; all were its victims.
+
+Henceforward there was no longer fraternity in arms, there was an end to
+all society, to all ties; the excess of evils had brutified them.
+Hunger, devouring hunger, had reduced these unfortunate men to the
+brutal instinct of self-preservation, all which constitutes the
+understanding of the most ferocious animals, and which is ready to
+sacrifice every thing to itself; a rough and barbarous nature seemed to
+have communicated to them all its fury. Like savages, the strongest
+despoiled the weakest; they rushed round the dying, and frequently
+waited not for their last breath. When a horse fell, you might have
+fancied you saw a famished pack of hounds; they surrounded him, they
+tore him to pieces, for which they quarrelled among themselves like
+ravenous dogs.
+
+The greater number, however, preserved sufficient moral strength to
+consult their own safety without injuring others; but this was the last
+effort of their virtue. If either leader or comrade fell by their side,
+or under the wheels of the cannon, in vain did they call for assistance,
+in vain did they invoke the names of a common country, religion, and
+cause; they could not even obtain a passing look. The cold inflexibility
+of the climate had completely passed into their hearts; its rigour had
+contracted their feelings equally with their countenances. With the
+exception of a few of the commanders, all were absorbed by their
+sufferings, and terror left no room for compassion.
+
+Thus it was that the same egotism with which excessive prosperity has
+been reproached, was produced by the excess of misfortune, but much more
+excusable in the latter; the first being voluntary, and the last
+compulsive; the first a crime of the heart, and the other an impulse of
+instinct entirely physical; and certainly it was hazarding one's life to
+stop for an instant. In this universal shipwreck, the stretching forth
+one's hand to a dying leader or comrade was a wonderful act of
+generosity. The least movement of humanity became a sublime action.
+
+There were a few, however, who stood firm against both heaven and earth;
+these protected and assisted the weakest; but these were indeed rare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+On the 6th of December, the very day after Napoleon's departure, the sky
+exhibited a still more dreadful appearance. You might see icy particles
+floating in the air; the birds fell from it quite stiff and frozen. The
+atmosphere was motionless and silent; it seemed as if every thing which
+possessed life and movement in nature, the wind itself, had been seized,
+chained, and as it were frozen by an universal death. Not the least word
+or murmur was then heard: nothing but the gloomy silence of despair and
+the tears which proclaimed it.
+
+We flitted along in this empire of death like unhappy spirits. The dull
+and monotonous sound of our steps, the cracking of the snow, and the
+feeble groans of the dying, were the only interruptions to this vast and
+doleful silence. Anger and imprecations there were none, nor any thing
+which indicated a remnant of heat; scarcely did strength enough remain
+to utter a prayer; most of them even fell without complaining, either
+from weakness or resignation, or because people only complain when they
+look for kindness, and fancy they are pitied.
+
+Such of our soldiers as had hitherto been the most persevering, here
+lost heart entirely. Sometimes the snow opened under their feet, but
+more frequently its glassy surface affording them no support, they
+slipped at every step, and marched from one fall to another. It seemed
+as if this hostile soil refused to carry them, that it escaped under
+their efforts, that it led them into snares, as if to embarrass and
+slacken their march, and deliver them to the Russians who were in
+pursuit of them, or to their terrible climate.
+
+And really, whenever they halted for a moment from exhaustion, the
+winter, laying his heavy and icy hand upon them, was ready to seize upon
+his prey. In vain did these poor unfortunates, feeling themselves
+benumbed, raise themselves, and already deprived of the power of speech
+and plunged into a stupor, proceed a few steps like automatons; their
+blood freezing in their veins, like water in the current of rivulets,
+congealed their heart, and then flew back to their head; these dying men
+then staggered as if they had been intoxicated. From their eyes, which
+were reddened and inflamed by the continual aspect of the snow, by the
+want of sleep, and the smoke of bivouacs, there flowed real tears of
+blood; their bosom heaved heavy sighs; they looked at heaven, at us, and
+at the earth, with an eye dismayed, fixed and wild; it expressed their
+farewell, and perhaps their reproaches to the barbarous nature which
+tortured them. They were not long before they fell upon their knees, and
+then upon their hands; their heads still wavered for a few minutes
+alternately to the right and left, and from their open mouth some
+agonizing sounds escaped; at last it fell in its turn upon the snow,
+which it reddened immediately with livid blood; and their sufferings
+were at an end.
+
+Their comrades passed by them without moving a step out of their way,
+for fear of prolonging their journey, or even turning their head, for
+their beards and their hair were stiffened with the ice, and every
+moment was a pain. They did not even pity them; for, in short, what had
+they lost by dying? what had they left behind them? They suffered so
+much; they were still so far from France; so much divested of feelings
+of country by the surrounding aspect, and by misery; that every dear
+illusion was broken, and hope almost destroyed. The greater number,
+therefore, were become careless of dying, from necessity, from the habit
+of seeing it, and from fashion, sometimes even treating it
+contemptuously; but more frequently, on seeing these unfortunates
+stretched out, and immediately stiffened, contenting themselves with the
+thought that they had no more wishes, that they were at rest, that their
+sufferings were terminated! And, in fact, death, in a situation quiet,
+certain, and uniform, may be always a strange event, a frightful
+contrast, a terrible revolution; but in this tumult and violent and
+continual movement of a life of constant action, danger, and suffering,
+it appeared nothing more than a transition, a slight change, an
+additional removal, and which excited little alarm.
+
+Such, were the last _days_ of the grand army. Its last _nights_ were
+still more frightful; those whom they surprised marching together, far
+from every habitation, halted on the borders of the woods; there they
+lighted their fires, before which they remained the whole night, erect
+and motionless like spectres. They seemed as if they could never have
+enough of the heat; they kept so close to it as to burn their clothes,
+as well as the frozen parts of their body, which the fire decomposed.
+The most dreadful pain then compelled them to stretch themselves, and
+the next day they attempted in vain to rise.
+
+In the mean time, such as the winter had almost wholly spared, and who
+still retained some portion of courage, prepared their melancholy meal.
+It consisted, ever since they had left Smolensk, of some slices of
+horse-flesh broiled, and some rye-meal diluted into a _bouillie_ with
+snow water, or kneaded into muffins, which they seasoned, for want of
+salt, with the powder of their cartridges.
+
+The sight of these fires was constantly attracting fresh spectres, who
+were driven back by the first comers. These poor wretches wandered about
+from one bivouac to another, until they were struck by the frost and
+despair together, and gave themselves up for lost. They then laid
+themselves down upon the snow, behind their more fortunate comrades, and
+there expired. Many of them, devoid of the means and the strength
+necessary to cut down the lofty fir trees, made vain attempts to set
+fire to them at the trunk; but death speedily surprised them around
+these trees in every sort of attitude.
+
+Under the vast pent-houses which are erected by the sides of the high
+road in some parts of the way, scenes of still greater horror were
+witnessed. Officers and soldiers all rushed precipitately into them, and
+crowded together in heaps. There, like so many cattle, they squeezed
+against each other round the fires, and as the living could not remove
+the dead from the circle, they laid themselves down upon them, there to
+expire in their turn, and serve as a bed of death to some fresh victims.
+In a short time additional crowds of stragglers presented themselves,
+and being unable to penetrate into these asylums of suffering, they
+completely besieged them.
+
+It frequently happened that they demolished their walls, which were
+formed of dry wood, in order to feed their fires; at other times,
+repulsed and disheartened, they were contented to use them as shelters
+to their bivouacs, the flames of which very soon communicated to these
+habitations, and the soldiers whom they contained, already half dead
+with the cold, were completely killed by the fire. Such of us as these
+places of shelter preserved, found next day our comrades lying frozen
+and in heaps around their extinguished fires. To escape from these
+catacombs, a horrible effort was required to enable them to climb over
+the heaps of these poor wretches, many of whom were still breathing.
+
+At Youpranoui, the same village where the Emperor only missed by an hour
+being taken by the Russian partizan Seslawin, the soldiers burnt the
+houses completely as they stood, merely to warm themselves for a few
+minutes. The light of these fires attracted some of these miserable
+wretches, whom the excessive severity of the cold and their sufferings
+had rendered delirious; they ran to them like madmen, and gnashing their
+teeth and laughing like demons, they threw themselves into these
+furnaces, where they perished in the most horrible convulsions. Their
+famished companions regarded them undismayed; there were even some who
+drew out these bodies, disfigured and broiled by the flames, and it is
+but too true, that they ventured to pollute their mouths with this
+loathsome food!
+
+This was the same army which had been formed from the most civilized
+nation in Europe; that army, formerly so brilliant, which was victorious
+over men to its last moment, and whose name still reigned in so many
+conquered capitals. Its strongest and bravest warriors, who had recently
+been proudly traversing so many scenes of their victories, had lost
+their noble countenance; covered with rags, their feet naked and torn,
+supporting themselves on branches of fir tree, they dragged themselves
+along; all the strength and perseverance which they had hitherto put
+forth in order to conquer, they now made use of to flee.
+
+Then it was, that, like superstitious nations, we also had our
+prognostications, and heard talk of prophecies. Some pretended that a
+comet had enlightened our passage across the Berezina with its
+ill-omened fire; it is true that they added, "that doubtless these stars
+did not foretel the great events of this world, but that they might
+certainly contribute to modify them; at least, if we admitted their
+material influence upon our globe, and all the consequences which that
+influence may exercise upon the human mind, so far as it is dependant on
+the matter which it animates."
+
+There were others who quoted ancient predictions, which, they said, "had
+announced for that period, an invasion of the Tartars as far as the
+banks of the Seine. And, behold! they were already at liberty to pass
+over the overthrown French army, and in a fair way to accomplish that
+prediction."
+
+Some again there were, who were reminding each other of the awful and
+destructive storm which had signalized our entrance on the Russian
+territory. "Then it was heaven itself that spoke! Behold the calamity
+which it predicted! Nature had made an effort to prevent this
+catastrophe! Why had we been obstinately deaf to her voice?" So much did
+this simultaneous fall of four hundred thousand men (an event which was
+not in fact more extraordinary than the host of epidemical disorders and
+of revolutions which are constantly ravaging the globe) appear to them
+an extraordinary and unique event, which must have occupied all the
+powers of heaven and earth; so much is our understanding led to bring
+home every thing to itself; as if Providence, in compassion to our
+weakness, and from the fear of its annihilating itself at the prospect
+of eternity, had so ordered it, that every man, a mere point in space,
+should act and feel as if he himself was the centre of immensity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+The army was in this last state of physical and moral distress, when its
+first fugitives reached Wilna. Wilna! their magazine, their depôt, the
+first rich and inhabited city which they had met with since their
+entrance into Russia. Its name alone, and its proximity, still supported
+the courage of a few.
+
+On the 9th of December, the greatest part of these poor soldiers at last
+arrived within sight of that capital. Instantly, some dragging
+themselves along, others rushing forward, they all precipitated
+themselves headlong into its suburbs, pushing obstinately before them,
+and crowding together so fast, that they formed but one mass of men,
+horses, and chariots, motionless, and deprived of the power of movement.
+
+The clearing away of this crowd by a narrow passage became almost
+impossible. Those who came behind, guided by a stupid instinct, added to
+the incumbrance, without the least idea of entering the city by its
+other entrances, of which there were several. But there was such
+complete disorganization, that during the whole of that fatal day, not a
+single staff-officer made his appearance to direct these men to them.
+
+For the space of ten hours, with the cold at 27 and even at 28 degrees,
+thousands of soldiers who fancied themselves in safety, died either from
+cold or suffocation, just as had happened at the gates of Smolensk, and
+at the bridges across the Berezina. Sixty thousand men had crossed that
+river, and twenty thousand recruits had since joined them; of these
+eighty thousand, half had already perished, the greater part within the
+last four days, between Malodeczno and Wilna.
+
+The capital of Lithuania was still ignorant of our disasters, when, all
+at once, forty thousand famished soldiers filled it with groans and
+lamentations. At this unexpected sight, its inhabitants became alarmed,
+and shut their doors. Deplorable then was it to see these troops of
+wretched wanderers in the streets, some furious and others desperate,
+threatening or entreating, endeavouring to break open the doors of the
+houses and the magazines, or dragging themselves to the hospitals.
+Everywhere they were repulsed; at the magazines, from most unseasonable
+formalities, as, from the dissolution of the corps and the mixture of
+the soldiers, all regular distribution had become impossible.
+
+There had been collected there sufficient flour and bread to last for
+forty days, and butcher's meat for thirty-six days, for one hundred
+thousand men. Not a single commander ventured to step forward and give
+orders for distributing these provisions to all that came for them. The
+administrators who had them in charge were afraid of being made
+responsible for them; and the others dreaded the excesses to which the
+famished soldiers would give themselves up, when every thing was at
+their discretion. These administrators besides were ignorant of our
+desperate situation, and when there was scarcely time for pillage, had
+they been so inclined, our unfortunate comrades were left for several
+hours to die of hunger at the very doors of these immense magazines of
+provisions, all of which fell into the enemy's hands the following day.
+
+At the barracks and the hospitals they were equally repulsed, but not by
+the living, for there death held sway supreme. The few who still
+breathed complained that for a long time they had been without beds,
+even without straw, and almost deserted. The courts, the passages, and
+even the apartments were filled with heaps of dead bodies; they were so
+many charnel houses of infection.
+
+At last, the exertions of several of the commanders, such as Eugene and
+Davoust, the compassion of the Lithuanians, and the avarice of the Jews,
+opened some places of refuge. Nothing could be more remarkable than the
+astonishment which these unfortunate men displayed at finding themselves
+once more in inhabited houses. How delicious did a loaf of leavened
+bread appear to them, and how inexpressible the pleasure of eating it
+seated! and afterwards, with what admiration were they struck at seeing
+a scanty battalion still under arms, in regular order, and uniformly
+dressed! They seemed to have returned from the very extremities of the
+earth; so much had the violence and continuity of their sufferings torn
+and cast them from all their habits, so deep had been the abyss from
+which they had escaped!
+
+But scarcely had they begun to taste these sweets, when the cannon of
+the Russians commenced thundering over their heads and upon the city.
+These threatening sounds, the shouts of the officers, the drums beating
+to arms, and the wailings and clamour of an additional multitude of
+unfortunates, which had just arrived, filled Wilna with fresh confusion.
+It was the vanguard of Kutusoff and Tchaplitz, commanded by O'Rourke,
+Landskoy, and Seslawin, which had attacked Loison's division, which was
+protecting the city, as well as the retreat of a column of dismounted
+cavalry, on its way to Olita, by way of Novoď-Troky.
+
+At first an attempt was made to resist. De Wrede and his Bavarians had
+also just rejoined the army by Naroc-Zwiransky and Niamentchin. They
+were pursued by Wittgenstein, who from Kamen and Vileika hung upon our
+right flank, at the same time that Kutusoff and Tchitchakof pursued us.
+De Wrede had not two thousand men left under his command. As to Loison's
+division and the garrison of Wilna, which had come to meet us as far as
+Smorgoni, and render us assistance, the cold had reduced them from
+fifteen thousand men to three thousand in the space of three days.
+
+De Wrede defended Wilna on the side of Rukoni; he was obliged to fall
+back after a gallant resistance. Loison and his division, on his side,
+which was nearer to Wilna, kept the enemy in check. They had succeeded
+in making a Neapolitan division take arms, and even to go out of the
+city, but the muskets actually slipped from the hands of these "children
+of the sun" transplanted to a region of ice. In less than an hour they
+all returned disarmed, and the best part of them maimed.
+
+At the same time, the _générale_ was ineffectually beat in the streets;
+the old guard itself, now reduced to a few platoons, remained dispersed.
+Every one thought much more of disputing his life with famine and the
+cold than with the enemy. But when the cry of "Here are the Cossacks"
+was heard, (which for a long time had been the only signal which the
+greater number obeyed,) it echoed immediately throughout the whole city,
+and the rout again began.
+
+De Wrede presented himself unexpectedly before the king of Naples. He
+said, "the enemy were close at his heels! the Bavarians had been driven
+back into Wilna, which they could no longer defend." At the same time,
+the noise of the tumult reached the king's ears. Murat was astonished;
+fancying himself no longer master of the army, he lost all command of
+himself. He instantly quitted his palace on foot, and was seen forcing
+his way through the crowd. He seemed to be afraid of a skirmish, in the
+midst of a crowd similar to that of the day before. He halted, however,
+at the last house in the suburbs, from whence he despatched his orders,
+and where he waited for daylight and the army, leaving Ney in charge of
+the rest.
+
+Wilna might have been defended for twenty-four hours longer, and many
+men might have been saved. This fatal city retained nearly twenty
+thousand, including three hundred officers and seven generals. Most of
+them had been wounded by the winter more than by the enemy, who had the
+merit of the triumph. Several others were still in good health, to all
+appearance at least, but their moral strength was completely exhausted.
+After courageously battling with so many difficulties, they lost heart
+when they were near the port, at the prospect of four more days' march.
+They had at last found themselves once more in a civilized city, and
+sooner than make up their minds to return to the desert, they placed
+themselves at the mercy of Fortune; she treated them cruelly.
+
+It is true that the Lithuanians, although we had compromised them so
+much, and were now abandoning them, received into their houses and
+succoured several; but the Jews, whom we had protected, repelled the
+others. They did even more; the sight of so many sufferers excited their
+cupidity. Had their detestable avarice been contented with speculating
+upon our miseries, and selling us some feeble succours for their weight
+in gold, history would scorn to sully her pages with the disgusting
+detail; but they enticed our unhappy wounded men into their houses,
+stripped them, and afterwards, on seeing the Russians, threw the naked
+bodies of these dying victims from the doors and windows of their houses
+into the streets, and there unmercifully left them to perish of cold;
+these vile barbarians even made a merit in the eyes of the Russians of
+torturing them there; such horrible crimes as these must be denounced to
+the present and to future ages. Now that our hands are become impotent,
+it is probable that our indignation against these monsters may be their
+sole punishment in this world; but a day will come, when the assassins
+will again meet their victims, and there certainly, divine justice will
+avenge us!
+
+On the 10th of December, Ney, who had again voluntarily taken upon
+himself the command of the rear-guard, left that city, which was
+immediately after inundated by the Cossacks of Platof, who massacred all
+the poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way. In the midst of this
+butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from
+the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At
+sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying
+up, besetting them with loud cries, and assailing them on all sides.
+
+But the officer commanding this piquet had already drawn up his soldiers
+in a circle. Without hesitation, he ordered them to fire, and then,
+making them present bayonets, proceeded at the _pas de charge_. In an
+instant all fled before him; he remained in possession of the city; but
+without feeling more surprise about the cowardice of the Cossacks, than
+he had done at their attack, he took advantage of the moment, turned
+sharply round, and succeeded in rejoining the rear-guard without any
+loss.
+
+The latter was engaged with Kutusoff's vanguard, which it was
+endeavouring to drive back; for another catastrophe, which it vainly
+attempted to cover, detained it at a short distance from Wilna.
+
+There, as well as at Moscow, Napoleon had given no regular order for
+retreat; he was anxious that our defeat should have no forerunner, but
+that it should proclaim itself, and take our allies and their ministers
+by surprise, and that, taking advantage of their first astonishment, it
+might be able to pass through those nations before they were prepared to
+join the Russians and overpower us.
+
+This was the reason why the Lithuanians, foreigners, and every one at
+Wilna, even to the minister himself, had been deceived. They did not
+believe our disaster until they saw it; and in that, the almost
+superstitious belief of Europe in the infallibility of the genius of
+Napoleon was of use to him against his allies. But the same confidence
+had buried his own officers in a profound security; at Wilna, as well as
+at Moscow, not one of them was prepared for a movement of any
+description.
+
+This city contained a large proportion of the baggage of the army, and
+of its treasures, its provisions, a crowd of enormous waggons, loaded
+with the Emperor's equipage, a large quantity of artillery, and a great
+number of wounded men. Our retreat had come upon them like an unexpected
+storm, almost like a thunderbolt. Some were terrified and thrown into
+confusion, while consternation kept others motionless. Orders, men,
+horses, and carriages, were running about in all directions, crossing
+and overturning each other.
+
+In the midst of this tumult, several of the commanders pushed forward
+out of the city, towards Kowno, with every thing they could contrive to
+carry with them; but at the distance of a league from the latter place
+this heavy and frightened column had encountered the height and the
+defile of Ponari.
+
+During our conquering march, this woody hillock had only appeared to our
+hussars a fortunate accident of the ground, from which they could
+discover the whole plain of Wilna, and take a survey of their enemies.
+Besides, its rough but short declination had scarcely been remarked.
+During a regular retreat it would have presented an excellent position
+for turning round and stopping the enemy: but in a disorderly flight,
+where every thing that might be of service became injurious, where in
+our precipitation and disorder, every thing was turned against
+ourselves, this hill and its defile became an insurmountable obstacle, a
+wall of ice, against which all our efforts were powerless. It detained
+every thing, baggage, treasure, and wounded. The evil was sufficiently
+great in this long series of disasters to form an epoch.
+
+Here, in fact, it was, that money, honour, and every remains of
+discipline and strength were completely lost. After fifteen hours of
+fruitless efforts, when the drivers and the soldiers of the escort saw
+the King of Naples and the whole column of fugitives passing them by the
+sides of the hill, when turning their eyes at the noise of the cannon
+and musquetry which was coming nearer them every instant they saw Ney
+himself retreating with three thousand men (the remains of De Wrede's
+corps and Loison's division); when at last turning their eyes back to
+themselves, they saw the hill completely covered with cannon and
+carriages, broken or overturned, men and horses fallen to the ground,
+and expiring one upon the other,--then it was, that they gave up all
+idea of saving any thing, and determined only to anticipate the enemy by
+plundering themselves.
+
+One of the covered waggons of treasure, which burst open of itself,
+served as a signal; every one rushed to the others; they were
+immediately broken, and the most valuable effects taken from them. The
+soldiers of the rear-guard, who were passing at the time of this
+disorder, threw away their arms to join in the plunder; they were so
+eagerly engaged in it as neither to hear nor to pay attention to the
+whistling of the balls and the howling of the Cossacks in pursuit of
+them.
+
+It is even said that the Cossacks got mixed among them without being
+observed. For some minutes, French and Tartars, friends and foes, were
+confounded in the same greediness. French and Russians, forgetting they
+were at war, were seen pillaging together the same treasure-waggons. Ten
+millions of gold and silver then disappeared.
+
+But amidst all these horrors, there were noble acts of devotion. Some
+there were, who abandoned every thing to save some unfortunate wounded
+by carrying them on their shoulders; several others, being unable to
+extricate their half-frozen comrades from this medley, lost their lives
+in defending them from the attacks of their countrymen, and the blows of
+their enemies.
+
+On the most exposed part of the hill, an officer of the Emperor, Colonel
+the Count de Turenne, repulsed the Cossacks, and in defiance of their
+cries of rage and their fire, he distributed before their eyes the
+private treasure of Napoleon to the guards whom he found within his
+reach. These brave men, fighting with one hand and collecting the spoils
+of their leader with the other, succeeded in saving them. Long
+afterwards, when they were out of all danger, each man faithfully
+restored the depôt which had been entrusted to him. Not a single piece
+of money was lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+This catastrophe at Ponari was the more disgraceful, as it was easy to
+foresee, and equally easy to prevent it; for the hill could have been
+turned by its sides. The fragments which we abandoned, however, were at
+least of some use in arresting the pursuit of the Cossacks. While these
+were busy in collecting their prey, Ney, at the head of a few hundred
+French and Bavarians, supported the retreat as far as Evé. As this was
+his last effort, we must not omit the description of his method of
+retreat which he had followed ever since he left Wiazma, on the 3d of
+November, during thirty-seven days and thirty-seven nights.
+
+Every day, at 5 o'clock in the evening, he took his position, stopped
+the Russians, allowed his soldiers to eat and take some rest, and
+resumed his march at 10 o'clock. During the whole of the night, he
+pushed the mass of the stragglers before him, by dint of cries, of
+entreaties, and of blows. At daybreak, which was about 7 o'clock, he
+halted, again took position, and rested under arms and on guard until 10
+o'clock; the enemy then made his appearance, and he was compelled to
+fight until the evening, gaining as much or as little ground in the rear
+as possible. That depended at first on the general order of march, and
+at a later period upon circumstances.
+
+For a long time this rear-guard did not consist of more than two
+thousand, then of one thousand, afterwards about five hundred, and
+finally of sixty men; and yet Berthier, either designedly or from mere
+routine, made no change in his instructions. These were always addressed
+to the commander of a corps of thirty-five thousand men; in them he
+coolly detailed all the different positions, which were to be taken up
+and guarded until the next day, by divisions and regiments which no
+longer existed. And every night, when, in consequence of Ney's urgent
+warnings, he was obliged to go and awake the King of Naples, and compel
+him to resume his march, he testified the same astonishment.
+
+In this manner did Ney support the retreat from Wiazma to Evé, and a few
+wersts beyond it. There, according to his usual custom, he had stopped
+the Russians, and was giving the first hours of the night to rest, when,
+about ten o'clock, he and De Wrede perceived that they had been left
+alone. Their soldiers had deserted them, as well as their arms, which
+they saw shining and piled together close to their abandoned fires.
+
+Fortunately the intensity of the cold, which had just completed the
+discouragement of our people, had also benumbed their enemies. Ney
+overtook his column with some difficulty; it was now only a band of
+fugitives; a few Cossacks chased it before them; without attempting
+either to take or to kill them; either from compassion, for one gets
+tired of every thing in time, or that the enormity of our misery had
+terrified even the Russians themselves, and they believed themselves
+sufficiently revenged, and many of them behaved generously; or, finally,
+that they were satiated and overloaded with booty. It might be also,
+that in the darkness, they did not perceive that they had only to do
+with unarmed men.
+
+Winter, that terrible ally of the Muscovites, had sold them his
+assistance dearly. Their disorder pursued our disorder. We often saw
+prisoners who had escaped several times from their frozen hands and
+looks. They had at first marched in the middle of their straggling
+column without being noticed by it. There were some of them, who, taking
+advantage of a favourable moment, ventured to attack the Russian
+soldiers when isolated, and strip them of their provisions, their
+uniforms, and even their arms, with which they covered themselves. Under
+this disguise, they mingled with their conquerors; and such was the
+disorganization, the stupid carelessness; and the numbness into which
+their army had fallen, that these prisoners marched for a whole month in
+the midst of them without being recognised. The hundred and twenty
+thousand men of Kutusoff's army were then reduced to thirty-five
+thousand. Of Wittgenstein's fifty thousand, scarcely fifteen thousand
+remained. Wilson asserts, that of a reinforcement of ten thousand men,
+sent from the interior of Russia with all the precautions which they
+know how to take against the winter, not more than seventeen hundred
+arrived at Wilna. But a head of a column was quite sufficient against
+our disarmed soldiers. They attempted in vain to tally a few of them,
+and he who had hitherto been almost the only one whose commands had been
+obeyed in the rout, was now compelled to follow it.
+
+He arrived along with it at Kowno, which was the last town of the
+Russian empire. Finally, on the 13th of December, after marching
+forty-six days under a terrible yoke, they once more came in sight of a
+friendly country. Instantly, without halting or looking behind them, the
+greater part plunged into, and dispersed themselves, in the forests of
+Prussian Poland. Some there were, however, who, on their arrival on the
+allied bank of the Niemen, turned round. There, when they, cast a last
+look on that land of suffering from which they were escaping, when they
+found themselves on the same spot, whence five months previously their
+countless eagles had taken their victorious flight, it is said that
+tears flowed from their eyes, and that they uttered exclamations of
+grief.
+
+"This then was the bank which they had studded with their bayonets! this
+the allied country which had disappeared only five months before, under
+the steps of their immense united army, and seemed to them then to be
+metamorphosed into moving hills and valleys of men and horses! These
+were the same valleys, from which, under the rays of a burning sun,
+poured forth the three long columns of dragoons and cuirassiers,
+resembling three rivers of glittering iron and brass. And now men, arms,
+eagles, horses, the sun itself, and even this frontier river, which they
+had crossed replete with ardour and hope, all have disappeared. The
+Niemen is now only a long mass of flakes of ice, caught and chained to
+each other by the increasing severity of the winter. Instead of the
+three French bridges, brought from a distance of five hundred leagues,
+and thrown across it with such audacious promptitude, a Russian bridge
+is alone standing. Finally, in the room of these innumerable warriors,
+of their four hundred thousand comrades, who had been so often their
+partners in victory, and who had dashed forward with such joy and pride
+into the territory of Russia, they saw issuing from these pale and
+frozen deserts, only a thousand infantry and horsemen still under arms,
+nine cannon, and twenty thousand miserable wretches covered with rags,
+with downcast looks, hollow eyes, earthy and livid complexions, long
+beards matted with the frost; some disputing in silence the narrow
+passage of the bridge, which, in spite of their small number was not
+sufficient to the eagerness of their flight; others fleeing dispersed
+over the asperities of the river, labouring and dragging themselves from
+one point of ice to another; and this was the whole grand army! Besides,
+many of these fugitives were recruits who had just joined it."
+
+Two kings, one prince, eight marshals followed by a few officers,
+generals on foot, dispersed, and without any attendants; finally, a few
+hundred men of the old guard, still armed, were its remains; they alone
+represented it.
+
+Or rather, I should say, it still breathed completely and entirely in
+Marshal Ney. Comrades! allies! enemies! here I invoke your testimony;
+let us pay the homage which is due to the memory of an unfortunate hero:
+the facts will be sufficient.
+
+All were flying, and Murat himself, traversing Kowno as he had done
+Wilna, first gave, and then withdrew the order to rally at Tilsit, and
+subsequently fixed upon Gumbinnen. Ney then entered Kowno, accompanied
+only by his aides-de-camp, for all besides had given way, or fallen
+around him. From the time of his leaving Wiazma, this was the fourth
+rear-guard which had been worn out and melted in his hands. But winter
+and famine, still more than the Russians, had destroyed them. For the
+fourth time, he remained alone before the enemy, and still unshaken, he
+sought for a fifth rear-guard.
+
+At Kowno the marshal found a company of artillery, three hundred German
+soldiers who formed its garrison, and General Marchand with four hundred
+men; of these he took the command. He first walked over the town to
+reconnoitre its position, and to rally some additional forces, but he
+found only some sick and wounded, who were endeavouring, in tears, to
+follow our retreat. For the eighth time since we left Moscow, we were
+obliged to abandon these _en masse_ in their hospitals, as they had been
+abandoned singly along the whole march, on all our fields of battle, and
+at all our bivouacs.
+
+Several thousand soldiers covered the marketplace and the neighbouring
+streets; but they were laid out stiff before the magazines of spirits
+which they had broken open, and where they drank the cup of death, from
+which they fancied they were to inhale fresh life. These were the only
+succours which Murat had left him; Ney found himself left alone in
+Russia, with seven hundred foreign recruits. At Kowno, as it had been
+after the disasters of Wiazma, of Smolensk, of the Berezina, and of
+Wilna, it was to him that the honour of our arms and all the peril of
+the last steps of our retreat were again confided.
+
+On the 14th, at daybreak, the Russians commenced their attack. One of
+their columns made a hasty advance from the Wilna road, while another
+crossed the Niemen on the ice above the town, landed on the Prussian
+territory, and, proud of being the first to cross its frontier, marched
+to the bridge of Kowno, to close that outlet upon Ney, and completely
+cut off his retreat.
+
+The first firing was heard at the Wilna gate; Ney ran thither, with a
+view to drive away Platof's artillery with his own; but he found his
+cannon had been already spiked, and that his artillerymen had fled!
+Enraged, he darted forward, and elevating his sword, would have killed
+the officer who commanded them, had it not been for his aide-de-camp,
+who warded off the blow, and enabled this miserable fellow to make his
+escape.
+
+Ney then summoned his infantry, but only one of the two feeble
+battalions of which it was composed had taken up arms; it consisted of
+the three hundred Germans of the garrison. He drew them up, encouraged
+them, and as the enemy was approaching, was just about to give them the
+order to fire, when a Russian cannon ball, grazing the palisade, came
+and broke the thigh of their commanding officer. He fell, and without
+the least hesitation, finding that his wound was mortal, he coolly drew
+out his pistols and blew out his brains before his troop. Terrified at
+this act of despair, his soldiers were completely scared, all of them at
+once threw down their arms, and fled in disorder.
+
+Ney, abandoned by all, neither deserted himself nor his post. After vain
+efforts to detain these fugitives, he collected their muskets, which
+were still loaded, became once more a common soldier, and with only four
+others, kept facing thousands of the Russians. His audacity stopped
+them; it made some of his artillerymen ashamed, who imitated their
+marshal; it gave time to his aide-de-camp Heymčs, and to General Gérard
+to embody thirty soldiers, bring forward two or three light pieces, and
+to Generals Ledru and Marchand to collect the only battalion which
+remained.
+
+But at that moment the second attack of the Russians commenced on the
+other side of the Niemen, and near the bridge of Kowno; it was then
+half-past two o'clock. Ney sent Ludru, Marchand, and their four hundred
+men forward to retake and secure that passage. As to himself, without
+giving way, or disquieting himself farther as to what was passing in his
+rear, he kept on fighting at the head of his thirty men, and maintained
+himself until night at the Wilna gate. He then traversed the town and
+crossed the Niemen, constantly fighting, retreating but never flying,
+marching after all the others, supporting to the last moment the honour
+of our arms, and for the hundredth time during the last forty days and
+forty nights, putting his life and liberty in jeopardy to save a few
+more Frenchmen. Finally, he was the last of the grand army who quitted
+that fatal Russia, exhibiting to the world the impotence of fortune
+against great courage, and proving that with heroes every thing turns to
+glory, even the greatest disasters.
+
+It was eight o'clock at night when he reached the allied bank. Then it
+was, that seeing the completion of the catastrophe, Marchand repulsed to
+the entrance of the bridge, and the road of Wilkowiski which Murat had
+taken, completely covered with the enemy's troops, he darted off to the
+right, plunged into the woods, and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+When Murat reached Gumbinnen, he was exceedingly surprised to find Ney
+already there, and to find, that since it had left Kowno, the army was
+marching without a rear-guard. Fortunately, the pursuit of the Russians,
+after they had reconquered their own territory, became slackened. They
+seemed to hesitate on the Prussian frontier, not knowing whether they
+should enter it as allies or as enemies. Murat took advantage of their
+uncertainty to halt a few days at Gumbinnen, and to direct the remains
+of the different corps to the towns on the borders of the Vistula.
+
+Previous to this dislocation of the army, he assembled the commanders of
+it. I know not what evil genius it was that inspired him at this
+council. One would fain believe that it was the embarrassment he felt
+before these warriors for his precipitate flight, and spite against the
+Emperor, who had left him with the responsibility of it; or it might be
+shame at appearing again, vanquished, in the midst of the nations whom
+our victories had most oppressed; but as his language bore a much more
+mischievous character, which his subsequent actions did not belie, and
+as they were the first symptoms of his defection, history must not pass
+over them in silence.
+
+This warrior, who had been elevated to the throne solely by the right of
+victory, now returned discomfited. From the first step he took upon
+vanquished territory, he fancied he felt it everywhere trembling under
+his feet, and that his crown was tottering on his head. A thousand times
+during the campaign, he had exposed himself to the greatest dangers; but
+he, who, as a king, had shown as little fear of death as the meanest
+soldier of the vanguard, could not bear the apprehension of living
+without a crown. Behold him then, in the midst of the commanders, whom
+his brother had placed under his direction, accusing that brother's
+ambition, which he had shared, in order to free himself from the
+responsibility which its gratification had involved.
+
+He exclaimed, "that it was no longer possible to serve such a madman!
+that there was no safety in supporting his cause; that no monarch in
+Europe could now place any reliance on his word, or in treaties
+concluded with him. He himself was in despair for having rejected the
+propositions of the English; had it not been for that, he would still be
+a great monarch, such as the Emperor of Austria, and the King of
+Prussia."
+
+Davoust abruptly cut him short. "The King of Prussia, the Emperor of
+Austria," said he to him, "are monarchs by the grace of God, of time,
+and the custom of nations. But as to you, you are only a king by the
+grace of Napoleon, and of the blood of Frenchmen; you cannot remain so
+but through Napoleon, and by continuing united to France. You are led
+away by the blackest ingratitude!" And he declared to him that he would
+immediately denounce his treachery to his Emperor; the other marshals
+remained silent. They made allowance for the violence of the king's
+grief, and attributed solely to his inconsiderate heat, the expressions
+which the hatred and suspicious character of Davoust had but too clearly
+comprehended.
+
+Murat was put entirely out of countenance; he felt himself guilty. Thus
+was stifled the first spark of treachery, which at a later period was
+destined to ruin France. It is with regret that history commemorates it,
+as repentance and misfortune have atoned for the crime.
+
+We were soon obliged to carry our humiliation to Königsberg. The grand
+army, which, during the last twenty years, had shown itself successively
+triumphant in all the capitals of Europe, now, for the first time,
+re-appeared mutilated, disarmed, and fugitive, in one of those which had
+been most humiliated by its glory. Its population crowded on our passage
+to count our wounds, and to estimate, by the extent of our disasters,
+that of the hopes they might venture to entertain; we were compelled to
+feast their greedy looks with our miseries, to pass under the yoke of
+their hope, and while dragging our misfortunes through the midst of
+their odious joy, to march under the insupportable weight of hated
+calamity.
+
+The feeble remnant of the grand army did not bend under this burden. Its
+shadow, already almost dethroned, still exhibited itself imposing; it
+preserved its royal air; although vanquished by the elements, it kept
+up, in the presence of men, its victorious and commanding attitude.
+
+On their side, the Germans, either from slowness or fear, received us
+docilely; their hatred restrained itself under an appearance of
+coolness; and as they scarcely ever act from themselves, they were
+obliged to relieve our miseries, during the time that they were looking
+for a signal. Königsberg was soon unable to contain them. Winter, which
+had followed us thither, deserted us there all at once; in one night the
+thermometer fell twenty degrees.
+
+This sudden change was fatal to us. A great number of soldiers and
+generals, whom the tension of the atmosphere had hitherto supported by a
+continued irritation, sunk and fell into decomposition. Lariboissičre,
+general-in-chief of the artillery, fell a sacrifice; Eblé, the pride of
+the army, followed him. Every day and every hour, our consternation was
+increased by fresh deaths.
+
+In the midst of this general mourning, a sudden insurrection, and a
+letter from Macdonald, contributed to convert all these sorrows into
+despair. The sick could no longer cherish the expectation of dying free;
+the friend was either compelled to desert his expiring friend, the
+brother his brother, or to drag them in that state to Elbing. The
+insurrection was only alarming as a symptom; it was put down; but the
+intelligence transmitted by Macdonald was decisive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+On the side where that marshal commanded, the whole of the war had been
+only a rapid march from Tilsit to Mittau, a display of force from the
+mouth of the Aa to Dünaburg, and finally, a long defensive position in
+front of Riga; the composition of that army being almost entirely
+Prussian, its position and Napoleon's orders so willed it.
+
+It was a piece of great audacity in the Emperor to entrust his left
+wing, as well as his right and his retreat, to Prussians and Austrians.
+It was observed, that at the same time he had dispersed the Poles
+throughout the whole army; many persons thought that it would have been
+preferable to collect in one point the zeal of the latter, and to have
+divided the hatred of the former. But we everywhere required natives as
+interpreters, scouts, or guides, and felt the value of their audacious
+ardour on the true points of attack. As to the Prussians and Austrians,
+it is probable that they would not have allowed themselves to be
+dispersed. On the left, Macdonald, with seven thousand Bavarians,
+Westphalians, and Poles, mixed with twenty-two thousand Prussians,
+appeared sufficient to answer for the latter, as well as for the
+Russians.
+
+In the advance march, there had been at first nothing to do, but to
+drive the Russian posts before them, and to carry off some magazines.
+Afterwards there were a few skirmishes between the Aa and Riga. The
+Prussians, after a rather warm affair, took Eckau from the Russian
+General Lewis; after which both sides remained quiet for twenty days.
+Macdonald employed that time in taking possession of Dünaburg, and in
+getting the heavy artillery brought to Mittau, which was necessary for
+the siege of Riga.
+
+On the intelligence of his approach, on the 23d of August, the
+commander-in-chief at Riga made all his troops march out of the place in
+three columns. The two weakest were to make two false attacks; the first
+by proceeding along the coast of the Baltic sea, and the second directly
+on Mittau; the third, which was the strongest, and commanded by Lewis,
+was at the same time to retake Eckau, drive back the Prussians as far as
+the Aa, cross that river, and either capture or destroy the park of
+artillery.
+
+The plan succeeded as far as beyond the Aa, when Grawert, supported
+latterly by Kleist, repulsed Lewis, and following the Russians closely
+as far as Eckau, defeated them there entirely, Lewis fled in disorder as
+far as the Düna, which he recrossed by fording it, leaving behind a
+great number of prisoners.
+
+Thus far Macdonald was satisfied. It is even said, that at Smolensk,
+Napoleon thought of elevating Yorck to the dignity of a marshal of the
+empire, at the same time that at Vienna he caused Schwartzenberg to be
+named field-marshal. The claims of these two commanders to the honour
+were by no means equal.
+
+In both wings, disagreeable symptoms were manifested; with the
+Austrians, it was among the officers that they were fermenting; their
+general kept them firm in their alliance with us; he even apprised us of
+their bad disposition, and pointed out the means of preventing the
+contagion from spreading among the other allied troops which were mixed
+with his.
+
+The case was quite the contrary with our left wing; the Prussian army
+marched without the least after-thought, at the very time that its
+general was conspiring against us. On the right wing, therefore, during
+the time of combat, it was the leader who drew his troops after him in
+spite of themselves, while, on the left wing, the troops pushed forward
+their commander, almost in spite of himself.
+
+Among the latter, the officers, the soldiers, and Grawert himself, a
+loyal old warrior, who had no political feelings, entered frankly into
+the war. They fought like lions on all occasions when their commander
+left them at liberty to do so; they expressed themselves anxious to wash
+out, in the eyes of the French, the shame of their defeat in 1806, to
+reconquer our esteem, to vanquish in the presence of their conquerors,
+to prove that their defeat was only attributable to their government,
+and that they were worthy of a better fate.
+
+Yorck had higher views. He belonged to the society of the _Friends of
+Virtue_, whose principle was hatred of the French, and whose object was
+their complete expulsion from Germany. But Napoleon was still
+victorious, and the Prussian afraid to commit himself. Besides, the
+justice, the mildness, and the military reputation of Macdonald had
+completely gained the affection of his troops. They said "they had never
+been so happy as when under the command of a Frenchman." In fact, as
+they were united with the conquerors, and shared the rights of conquest
+with them, they had allowed themselves to be seduced by the all-powerful
+attraction of being on the side of the victor.
+
+Every thing contributed to it. Their administration was directed by an
+intendant and agents taken from their own army. They lived in abundance.
+It was on that very point, however, that the quarrel between Macdonald
+and Yorck began, and that the hatred of the latter found an opening to
+diffuse itself.
+
+First of all, some complaints were made in the country against their
+administration. Shortly after, a French administrator arrived, and
+either from rivalry or a spirit of justice, he accused the Prussian
+intendant of exhausting the country by enormous requisitions of cattle.
+"He sent them," it was said, "into Prussia, which had been exhausted by
+our passage; the army was deprived of them, and a dearth would very soon
+be felt in it." By his account, Yorck was perfectly aware of the
+manoeuvre. Macdonald believed the accusation, dismissed the accused
+person, and confided the administration to the accuser; Yorck, filled
+with spite, thought henceforward of nothing but revenge.
+
+Napoleon was then at Moscow. The Prussian was on the watch; he joyfully
+foresaw the consequences of that rash enterprise, and it appears as if
+he yielded to the temptation of taking advantage of it, and of getting
+the start of fortune. On the 29th of September, the Russian general
+learned that Yorck had uncovered Mittau; and either from having received
+reinforcements, (two divisions had actually just arrived from Finland,)
+or from confidence of another kind, he adventured himself as far as that
+city, which he retook, and was preparing to push his advantage. The
+grand park of the besiegers' artillery was about to be carried off;
+Yorck, if we are to believe those who were witnesses, had exposed it, he
+remained motionless, he betrayed it.
+
+It is said that the chief of his staff felt indignant at this treachery;
+we are assured that he represented to his general in the warmest terms,
+that he would ruin himself, and destroy the honour of the Prussian arms;
+and that, finally, Yorck, moved by his representations, allowed Kleist
+to put himself in movement. His approach was quite sufficient. But on
+this occasion, although there was a regular battle, there were scarcely
+four hundred men put _hors du combat_ on both sides. As soon as this
+petty warfare was over, each army tranquilly resumed its former
+quarters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+On the receipt of this intelligence, Macdonald became uneasy, and very
+much incensed; he hurried from his right wing, where perhaps he had
+remained too long at a distance from the Prussians. The surprise of
+Mittau, the danger which his park of artillery had run of being
+captured, Yorck's obstinacy in refusing to pursue the enemy, and the
+secret details which reached him from the interior of Yorck's
+head-quarters, were all sufficiently alarming. But the more ground there
+was of suspicion, the more it was necessary to dissemble; for as the
+Prussian army was entirely guiltless of the designs of its leader, and
+had fought readily, and as the enemy had given way, appearances had been
+preserved, and it would have been wise policy in Macdonald if he had
+appeared satisfied.
+
+He did quite the contrary. His quick disposition, or his loyalty, were
+unable to dissemble; he burst out into reproaches against the Prussian
+general, at the very moment when his troops, satisfied with their
+victory, were only looking for praise and rewards. Yorck artfully
+contrived to make his soldiers, whose expectations had been frustrated,
+participators in the disgust of a humiliation which had been reserved
+solely for himself.
+
+We find in Macdonald's letters the real causes of his dissatisfaction.
+He wrote to Yorck, "that it was shameful that his posts were continually
+attacked, and that in return he had never once harassed the enemy; that
+ever since he had been in sight of them, he had done no more than repel
+attacks, and in no one instance had ever acted on the offensive,
+although his officers and troops were filled with the best
+dispositions." This last remark was very true, for in general it was
+remarkable to see the ardour of all these Germans for a cause completely
+foreign to them, and which might to them even appear hostile.
+
+They all rivalled each other in eagerness to rush into the midst of
+danger, in order to acquire the esteem of the grand army, and an
+eulogium from Napoleon. Their princes preferred the plain silver star of
+French honour to their richest orders. At that time the genius of
+Napoleon still appeared to have dazzled or subdued every one. Equally
+munificent to reward as prompt and terrible to punish, he appeared like
+one of those great centres of nature, the dispenser of all good. In many
+of the Germans, there was united with this feeling that of a respectful
+admiration for a life which was so completely stamped with the
+marvellous, which so much affects them.
+
+But their admiration was a consequence of victory, and our fatal retreat
+had already commenced; already, from the north to the south of Europe,
+the Russian cries of vengeance replied to those of Spain. They crossed
+and echoed each other in the countries of Germany, which still remained
+under the yoke; these two great fires, lighted up at the two extremities
+of Europe, were gradually extending towards its centre, where they were
+like the dawn of a new day; they covered sparks which were fanned by
+hearts burning with patriotic hatred, and exalted to fanaticism by
+mystic rites. Gradually, as our disaster approached to Germany, there
+was heard rising from her bosom an indistinct rumour, a general, but
+still trembling, uncertain and confused murmur.
+
+The students of the universities, bred up with ideas of independence,
+inspired by their ancient constitutions, which secure them so many
+privileges, full of exalted recollections of the ancient and chivalrous
+glory of Germany, and for her sake jealous of all foreign glory, had
+always been our enemies. Total strangers to all political calculations,
+they had never bent themselves under our victory. Since it had become
+pale, a similar spirit had caught the politicians and even the military.
+The association of the _Friends of Virtue_ gave this insurrection the
+appearance of an extensive plot; some chiefs did certainly conspire, but
+there was no conspiracy; it was a spontaneous movement, a common and
+universal sensation.
+
+Alexander skilfully increased this disposition by his proclamations, by
+his addresses to the Germans, and by the distinction which he made in
+the treatment of their prisoners. As to the monarchs of Europe, he and
+Bernadotte were as yet the only ones who marched at the head of their
+people. All the others, restrained by policy or feelings of honour,
+allowed themselves to be anticipated by their subjects.
+
+This infection even penetrated to the grand army; after the passage of
+the Berezina, Napoleon had been informed of it. Communications had been
+observed to be going on between the Bavarian, Saxon, and Austrian
+generals. On the left, Yorck's bad disposition increased, and
+communicated itself to a part of his troops; all the enemies of France
+had united, and Macdonald was astonished at having to repel the
+perfidious insinuations of an aide-de-camp of Moreau. The impression
+made by our victories was still however so deep in all the Germans, they
+had been so powerfully kept under, that they required a considerable
+time to raise themselves.
+
+On the 15th of November, Macdonald, seeing that the left of the Russian
+line had extended itself too far from Riga, between him and the Düna,
+made some feigned attacks on their whole front, and pushed a real one
+against their centre, which he broke through rapidly as far as the
+river, near Dahlenkirchen. The whole left of the Russians, Lewis, and
+five thousand men, found themselves cut off from their retreat, and
+thrown back on the Düna. Lewis vainly sought for an outlet; he found his
+enemy every where, and lost at first two battalions and a squadron. He
+would have infallibly been taken with his whole force, had he been
+pressed closer, but he was allowed sufficient space and time to take
+breath; as the cold increased, and the country offered no means of
+escape, he ventured to trust himself to the weak ice which had begun to
+cover the river. He made his troops lay a bed of straw and boards over
+it, in that manner crossed the Düna at two points between Friedrichstadt
+and Lindau, and re-entered Riga, at the very moment his comrades had
+begun to despair of his preservation.
+
+The day after this engagement, Macdonald was informed of the retreat of
+Napoleon on Smolensk, but not of the disorganization of the army. A few
+days after, some sinister reports brought him the news of the capture of
+Minsk. He began to be alarmed, when, on the 4th of December, a letter
+from Maret, magnifying the victory of the Berezina, announced to him the
+capture of nine thousand Russians, nine standards, and twelve cannon.
+The admiral, according to this letter, was reduced to thirteen thousand
+men.
+
+On the third of December the Russians were again repulsed in one of
+their sallies from Riga, by the Prussians. Yorck, either from prudence
+or conscience, restrained himself. Macdonald had become reconciled to
+him. On the 19th of December, fourteen days after the departure of
+Napoleon, eight days after the capture of Wilna by Kutusoff, in short
+when Macdonald commenced his retreat, the Prussian army was still
+faithful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+It was from Wilna, on the 9th of December, that orders were transmitted
+to Macdonald, of which a Prussian officer was the bearer, directing him
+to retreat slowly upon Tilsit. No care was taken to send these
+instructions by different channels. They did not even think of employing
+Lithuanians to carry a message of that importance. In this manner the
+last army, the only one which remained unbroken, was exposed to the risk
+of destruction. An order, which was written at the distance of only four
+days' journey from Macdonald, lingered so long on the road, that it was
+nine days in reaching him.
+
+The marshal directed his retreat on Tilsit, by passing between Telzs and
+Szawlia. Yorck, with the greatest part of the Prussians, forming his
+rear-guard, marched at a day's distance from him, in contact with the
+Russians, and left entirely to themselves. By some this was regarded as
+a great error on the part of Macdonald; but the majority did not venture
+to decide, alleging that in a situation so delicate, confidence and
+suspicion were alike dangerous.
+
+The latter also said that the French marshal did every thing which
+prudence required of him, by retaining with him one of Yorck's
+divisions; the other, which was commanded by Massenbach, was under the
+direction of the French general Bachelu, and formed the vanguard. The
+Prussian army was thus separated into two corps, Macdonald in the
+middle, and the one seemed to be a guarantee to him for the other.
+
+At first every thing went on well, although the danger was every where,
+in the front, in the rear, and on the flanks; for the grand army of
+Kutusoff had already pushed forward three vanguards, on the retreat of
+the Duke of Tarentum. Macdonald encountered the first at Kelm, the
+second at Piklupenen, and the third at Tilsit. The zeal of the black
+hussars and the Prussian dragoons appeared to increase. The Russian
+hussars of Ysum were sabred and overthrown at Kelm. On the 27th of
+December, at the close of a ten hours' march, these Prussians came in
+sight of Piklupenen, and the Russian brigade of Laskow; without stopping
+to take breath, they charged, threw it into disorder, and cut off two of
+its battalions; next day they retook Tilsit from the Russian commander
+Tettenborn.
+
+A letter from Berthier, dated at Antonowo, on the 14th of December, had
+reached Macdonald several days before, in which he was informed that the
+army no longer existed, and that it was necessary that he should arrive
+speedily on the Pregel, in order to cover Königsberg, and to be able to
+retreat upon Elbing and Marienburg. This news the marshal concealed from
+the Prussians. Hitherto the cold and the forced marches had produced no
+complaints from them; there was no symptom of discontent exhibited by
+these allies; brandy and provisions were not deficient.
+
+But on the 28th, when General Bachelu extended to the right, towards
+Regnitz, in order to drive away the Russians, who had taken refuge there
+after their expulsion from Tilsit, the Prussian officers began to
+complain that their troops were fatigued; their vanguard marched
+unwillingly and carelessly, allowed itself to be surprised, and was
+thrown into disorder. Bachelu, however, restored the fortune of the day,
+and entered Regnitz.
+
+During this time, Macdonald, who had arrived at Tilsit, was waiting for
+Yorck and the rest of the Prussian army, which did not make its
+appearance. On the 29th, the officers, and the orders which he sent
+them, were vainly multiplied; no news of Yorck transpired. On the 30th,
+Macdonald's anxiety was redoubled; it was fully exhibited in one of his
+letters of that day's date, in which, however, he did not yet venture to
+appear suspicious of a defection. He wrote "that he could not understand
+the reason of this delay; that he had sent a number of officers and
+emissaries with orders to Yorck to rejoin him, but that he had received
+no answer. In consequence, when the enemy was advancing against him, he
+was compelled to suspend his retreat; for he could not make up his mind
+to desert this corps, to retreat without Yorck; and yet this delay was
+ruinous." This letter concluded thus:--"I am lost in conjectures. If I
+retreat, what would the Emperor say? what would be said by France, by
+the army, by Europe? Would it not be an indelible stain on the tenth
+corps, voluntarily to abandon a part of its troops, and without being
+compelled to it otherwise than by prudence? Oh, no; whatever may be the
+result, I am resigned, and willingly devote myself as a victim, provided
+I am the only one:" and he concluded by wishing the French general "that
+sleep which his melancholy situation had long denied him."
+
+On the same day, he recalled Bachelu and the Prussian cavalry, which was
+still at Regnitz, to Tilsit. It was night when Bachelu received the
+order; he wished to execute it, but the Prussian colonels refused; and
+they covered their refusal under different pretexts. "The roads," they
+said, "were not passable. They were not accustomed to make their men
+march in such dreadful weather, and at so late an hour! They were
+responsible to their king for their regiments." The French general was
+astonished, commanded them to be silent, and ordered them to obey; his
+firmness subdued them, they obeyed, but slowly. A Russian general had
+glided into their ranks, and pressed them to deliver up this Frenchman,
+who was alone in the midst of those who commanded them; but the
+Prussians, although fully prepared to abandon Bachelu, could not resolve
+to betray him: at last they began their march.
+
+At Regnitz, at eight o'clock at night, they had refused to mount their
+horses; at Tilsit, where they arrived at two in the morning, they
+refused to alight from them. At five o'clock in the morning, however,
+they had all gone to their quarters, and as order appeared to be
+restored among them, the general went to take some rest. But the
+obedience had been entirely feigned, for no sooner did the Prussians
+find themselves unobserved, than they resumed their arms, went out with
+Massenbach at their head, and escaped from Tilsit in silence, and by
+favour of the night. The first dawn of the last day of the year 1812,
+informed Macdonald that the Prussian army had deserted him.
+
+It was Yorck, who, instead of rejoining him, deprived him of Massenbach,
+whom he had just recalled. His own defection, which had commenced on the
+26th of December, was just consummated. On the 30th of December, a
+convention between Yorck and the Russian general Dibitch was concluded
+at Taurogen. "The Prussian troops were to be cantoned on their own
+frontiers, and remain neutral during two months, even in the event of
+this armistice being disapproved of by their own government. At the end
+of that time, the roads should be open to them to rejoin the French
+troops, should their sovereign persist in ordering them to do so."
+
+Yorck, but more particularly Massenbach, either from fear of the Polish
+division to which they were united, or from respect for Macdonald,
+showed some delicacy in their defection. They wrote to the marshal.
+Yorck announced to him the convention he had just concluded, which he
+coloured with specious pretexts. "He had been reduced to it by fatigue
+and necessity; but," he added, "that whatever judgment the world might
+form of his conduct, he was not at all uneasy about; that his duty to
+his troops, and the most mature reflexion, had dictated it to him; that,
+finally, whatever might be the appearances, he was actuated by the
+purest motives."
+
+Massenbach excused himself for his clandestine departure. "He had wished
+to spare himself a sensation which his heart felt too painfully. He had
+dreaded, lest the sentiments of respect and esteem which he should
+preserve to the end of his life for Macdonald, should have prevented him
+from doing his duty."
+
+Macdonald saw all at once his force reduced from twenty-nine thousand to
+nine thousand, but in the state of anxiety in which he had been living
+for the last two days, any termination to it was a relief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+Thus commenced the defection of our allies. I shall not venture to set
+myself up as a judge of the morality of this event; posterity will
+decide upon it. As a contemporaneous historian, however, I conceive
+myself bound not only to state the facts, but also the impression they
+have left, and such as it still remains, in the minds of the principal
+leaders of the two corps of the allied army, either as actors or
+sufferers.
+
+The Prussians only waited for an opportunity to break our alliance,
+which was forced upon them; when the moment arrived, they embraced it.
+Not only, however, did they refuse to betray Macdonald, but they did not
+even wish to quit him, until they had, as it may be said, drawn him out
+of Russia and placed him in safety. On his side, when Macdonald became
+sensible that he was abandoned, but without having positive proofs of
+it, he obstinately remained at Tilsit, at the mercy of the Prussians,
+sooner than give them a motive of defection, by too speedy a retreat.
+
+The Prussians did not abuse this noble conduct. There was defection on
+their part, but no treachery; which, in this age, and after the evils
+they had endured, may still appear meritorious; they did not join
+themselves with the Russians. When they arrived on their own frontier,
+they could not resign themselves to aid their conqueror in defending
+their native soil against those who came in the character of their
+deliverers, and who were so; they became neutral, and this was not, I
+must repeat, until Macdonald, disengaged from Russia and the Russians,
+had his retreat free.
+
+This marshal continued it from Königsberg, by Labiau and Tente. His rear
+was protected by Mortier, and Heudelet's division, whose troops, newly
+arrived, still occupied Insterburg, and kept Tchitchakof in check. On
+the 3d of January he effected his junction with Mortier and covered
+Königsberg.
+
+It was, however, a happy circumstance for Yorck's reputation, that
+Macdonald, thus weakened, and whose retreat his defection had
+interrupted, was enabled to rejoin the grand army. The inconceivable
+slowness of Wittgenstein's march saved that marshal; the Russian
+general, however, overtook him at Labiau and Tente; and there, but for
+the efforts of Bachelu and his brigade, the valour of the Polish Colonel
+Kameski, and Captain Ostrowski, and the Bavarian Major Mayer, the corps
+of Macdonald, thus deserted, would have been broken or destroyed; in
+that case Yorck would appear to have betrayed him, and history would,
+with justice, have stigimatized him with the name of traitor. Six
+hundred French, Bavarians, and Poles, remained dead on these two fields
+of battle; their blood accuses the Prussians for not having provided, by
+an additional article, for the safe retreat of the leader whom they had
+deserted.
+
+The King of Prussia disavowed Yorck's conduct. He dismissed him,
+appointed Kleist to succeed him in the command, ordered the latter to
+arrest his late commander, and send him, as well as Massenbach, to
+Berlin, there to undergo their trial. But these generals preserved their
+command in spite of him; the Prussian army did not consider their
+monarch at liberty; this opinion was founded on the presence of Augereau
+and some French troops at Berlin.
+
+Frederick, however, was perfectly aware of the annihilation of our army.
+At Smorgoni, Narbonne refused to accept the mission to that monarch,
+until Napoleon gave him authority to make the most unreserved
+communication. He, Augereau, and several others have declared that
+Frederick was not merely restrained by his position in the midst of the
+remains of the grand army, and by the dread of Napoleon's re-appearance
+at the head of a fresh one, but also by his plighted faith; for every
+thing is of a mixed character in the moral as well as the physical
+world, and even in the most trifling of our actions there is a variety
+of different motives. But, finally, his good faith yielded to necessity,
+and his dread to a greater dread. He saw himself, it was said,
+threatened with a species of forfeiture by his people and by our
+enemies.
+
+It should be remarked that the Prussian nation, which drew its sovereign
+toward Yorck, only ventured to rise successively, as the Russians came
+in sight, and by degrees, as our feeble remains quitted their territory.
+A single fact, which took place during the retreat, will paint the
+dispositions of the people, and show how much, notwithstanding the
+hatred they bore us, they were curbed under the ascendancy of our
+victories.
+
+When Davoust was recalled to France, he passed, with only two
+attendants, through the town of X * * *. The Russians were daily
+expected there; its population were incensed at the sight of these last
+Frenchmen. Murmurs, mutual excitations, and finally, outcries, rapidly
+succeeded each other; the most violent speedily surrounded the carriage
+of the marshal, and were already about to unharness the horses, when
+Davoust made his appearance, rushed upon the most insolent of these
+insurgents, dragged him behind his carriage, and made his servants
+fasten him to it. Frightened at this action, the people stopped short,
+seized with motionless consternation, and then quietly and silently
+opened a passage for the marshal, who passed through the midst of them,
+carrying off his prisoner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+In this sudden manner did our left wing fall. On our right wing, on the
+side of the Austrians, whom a well-cemented alliance retained, a
+phlegmatic people, governed despotically by an united aristocracy, there
+was no sudden explosion to be apprehended. This wing detached itself
+from us insensibly, and with the formalities required by its political
+position.
+
+On the 10th of December, Schwartzenberg was at Slonim, presenting
+successively vanguards towards Minsk, Nowogrodeck, and Bienitza. He was
+still persuaded that the Russians were beaten and fleeing before
+Napoleon, when he was informed at the same moment of the Emperor's
+departure, and of the destruction of the grand army, but in so vague a
+manner that he was for some time without any direction.
+
+In his embarrassment he addressed himself to the French ambassador at
+Warsaw. The answer of that minister authorized him "not to sacrifice
+another man." In consequence, he retreated on the 14th of December from
+Slonim towards Bialystok. The instructions which reached him from Murat
+in the middle of this movement were conformable to it.
+
+About the 21st of December, an order from Alexander suspended
+hostilities on that point, and as the interest of the Russians agreed
+with that of the Austrians, there was very soon a mutual understanding.
+A moveable armistice, which was approved by Murat, was immediately
+concluded. The Russian general and Schwartzenberg were to manoeuvre on
+each other, the Russian on the offensive, and the Austrian on the
+defensive, but without coming to blows.
+
+Regnier's corps, now reduced to ten thousand men, was not included in
+the arrangement; but Schwartzenberg, while he yielded to circumstances,
+persevered in his loyalty. He regularly gave an account of every thing
+to the commander of the army; he covered the whole front of the French
+line with his Austrian troops, and preserved it. This prince was not at
+all complaisant towards the enemy; he believed him not upon his bare
+word; at every position he was about to yield, he would actually satisfy
+himself with his own eyes, that he only yielded it to a superior force,
+ready to combat him. In this manner he arrived upon the Bug and the
+Narew, from Nur to Ostrolenka, where the war terminated.
+
+He was in this manner covering Warsaw, when, on the 22d of January, he
+received instructions from his government to abandon the Grand-duchy, to
+separate his retreat from that of Regnier, and to re-enter Gallicia. To
+these instructions he only yielded a tardy obedience; he resisted the
+pressing solicitations and threatening manoeuvres of Miloradowitch
+until the 25th of January; even then, he effected his retreat upon
+Warsaw so slowly, that the hospitals and a great part of the magazines
+were enabled to be evacuated. Finally, he obtained a more favourable
+capitulation for the Warsavians than they could venture to expect. He
+did more; although that city was to have been delivered up on the 5th,
+he only yielded it on the 8th, and thus gave Regnier the start of three
+days upon the Russians.
+
+Regnier was afterwards, it is true, overtaken and surprised at Kalisch,
+but that was in consequence of halting too long to protect the flight of
+some Polish depôts. In the first disorder occasioned by this unexpected
+attack, a Saxon brigade was separated from the French corps, retreated
+on Schwartzenberg, and was well received by him; Austria allowed it to
+pass through her territory, and restored it to the grand army, when it
+was assembled near Dresden.
+
+On the 1st of January, 1813, however, at Königsberg, where Murat then
+was, the desertion of the Prussians and the intrigues forming by Austria
+were not known, when suddenly Macdonald's despatch, and an insurrection
+of the people of Königsberg, gave information of the beginning of a
+defection, of which it was impossible to foresee the consequences. The
+consternation was excessive. The seditious movement was at first only
+kept down by representations, which Ney very soon changed into threats.
+Murat hastened his departure for Elbing. Königsberg was encumbered with
+ten thousand sick and wounded, most of whom were abandoned to the
+generosity of their enemies. Some of them had no reason to complain of
+it; but prisoners who escaped declared that many of their unfortunate
+companions were massacred and thrown out of the windows into the
+streets; that an hospital which contained several hundred sick was set
+fire to; and they accused the inhabitants of committing these horrid
+deeds.
+
+On another side, at Wilna, more than sixteen thousand of our prisoners
+had already perished. The convent of St. Basil contained the greatest
+number; from the 10th to the 23d of December they had only received some
+biscuits; but not a piece of wood nor a drop of water had been given
+them. The snow collected in the courts, which were covered with dead
+bodies, quenched the burning thirst of the survivors. They threw out of
+the windows such of the dead bodies as could not be kept in the
+passages, on the staircases, or among the heaps of corses which were
+collected in all the apartments. The additional prisoners that were
+every moment discovering were thrown into this horrible place.
+
+The arrival of the Emperor Alexander and his brother was the only thing
+that put a stop to these abominations. They had lasted for thirteen
+days, and if a few escaped out of the twenty thousand of our unfortunate
+comrades who were made prisoners, it was to these two princes they owed
+their preservation. But a most violent epidemic had already arisen from
+the poisonous exhalations of so many corses; it passed from the
+vanquished to the victors, and fully avenged us. The Russians, however,
+were living in plenty; our magazines at Smorgoni and Wilna had not been
+destroyed, and they must have found besides immense quantities of
+provisions in the pursuit of our routed army.
+
+But Wittgenstein, who had been detached to attack Macdonald, descended
+the Niemen; Tchitchakof and Platof had pursued Murat towards Kowno,
+Wilkowiski, and Insterburg; shortly after, the admiral was sent towards
+Thorn. Finally, on the 9th of January, Alexander and Kutusoff arrived on
+the Niemen at Merecz. There, as he was about to cross his own frontier,
+the Russian emperor addressed a proclamation to his troops, completely
+filled with images, comparisons, and eulogiums, which the winter had
+much better deserved than his army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+It was not until the 22d of January, and the following days, that the
+Russians reached the Vistula. During this tardy march, from the 3d to
+the 11th of January, Murat had remained at Elbing. In this situation of
+extremity, that monarch was wavering from one plan to another, at the
+mercy of the elements which were fermenting around him; sometimes they
+raised his hopes to the highest pitch, at others they sunk him into an
+abyss of disquietude.
+
+He had taken flight from Königsberg in a complete state of
+discouragement, when the suspension in the march of the Russians, and
+the junction of Macdonald with Heudelet and Cavaignac, which doubled his
+forces, suddenly inflamed him with vain hopes. He, who had the day
+before believed that all was lost, wished to resume the offensive, and
+began immediately; for he was one of those dispositions who are making
+fresh resolutions every instant. On that day he determined to push
+forward, and the next to flee as far as Posen.
+
+This last determination, however, was not taken without reason. The
+rallying of the army on the Vistula had been completely illusory; the
+old guard had not altogether more than five hundred effective men; the
+young guard scarcely any; the first corps, eighteen hundred; the second,
+one thousand; the third, sixteen hundred; the fourth, seventeen hundred;
+added to which, most of these soldiers, the remains of six hundred
+thousand men, could scarcely handle their arms.
+
+In this state of impotence, with the two wings of the army already
+detached from us, Austria and Prussia failing us together, Poland became
+a snare which might close around us. On the other hand, Napoleon, who
+never consented to any cession, was anxious that Dantzic should be
+defended; it became necessary, therefore, to throw into it all that
+could keep the field.
+
+Besides, if the truth must be told, when Murat, when at Elbing, talked
+of reconstituting the army, and was even dreaming of victories, he found
+that most of the commanders were themselves worn out and disgusted.
+Misfortune, which leads to fear every thing, and to believe readily all
+that one fears, had penetrated into their hearts. Several of them were
+already uneasy about their rank and their grades, about the estates
+which they had acquired in the conquered countries, and the greater part
+only sighed to recross the Rhine.
+
+As to the recruits who arrived, they were a mixture of men from several
+of the German nations. In order to join us they had passed through the
+Prussian states, from whence arose the exhalation of so much hatred. As
+they approached, they encountered our discouragement and our long train
+of disorder; when they entered into line, far from being put into
+companies with, and supported by old soldiers, they found themselves
+left alone, to fight with every kind of scourge, to support a cause
+which was abandoned by those who were most interested in its success;
+the consequence was, that at the very first bivouac, most of these
+Germans disbanded themselves. At sight of the disasters of the army
+returning from Moscow, the tried soldiers of Macdonald were themselves
+shaken. Notwithstanding this corps d'armée, and the completely fresh
+division of Heudelet preserved their unity. All these remains were
+speedily collected into Dantzic; thirty-five thousand soldiers from
+seventeen different nations, were shut up in it. The remainder, in small
+numbers, did not begin rallying until they got to Posen and upon the
+Oder.
+
+Hitherto it was hardly possible for the King of Naples to regulate our
+flight any better; but at the moment he passed through Marienwerder on
+his way to Posen, a letter from Naples again unsettled all his
+resolutions. The impression which it made upon him was so violent, that
+by degrees as he read it, the bile mixed itself with his blood so
+rapidly, that he was found a few minutes after with a complete jaundice.
+
+It appeared that an act of government which the queen had taken upon
+herself had wounded him in one of his strongest passions. He was not at
+all jealous of that princess, notwithstanding her charms, but furiously
+so of his royal authority; and it was particularly of the queen, as
+sister of the Emperor, that he was suspicious.
+
+Persons were astonished at seeing this prince, who had hitherto appeared
+to sacrifice every thing to glory in arms, suffering himself to be
+mastered all at once by a less noble passion; but they forgot that, with
+certain characters, there must be always a ruling passion.
+
+Besides, it was still the same ambition under different forms, and
+always entering completely into each of them; for such are passionate
+characters. At that moment his jealousy of his authority triumphed over
+his love of glory; it made him proceed rapidly to Posen, where, shortly
+after his arrival, he disappeared, and abandoned us.
+
+This defection took place on the 16th of January, twenty-three days
+before Schwartzenberg detached himself from the French army, of which
+Prince Eugene took the command.
+
+Alexander arrested the march of his troops at Kalisch. There, the
+violent and continued war, which had followed us all the way from
+Moscow, slackened: it became only, until the spring, a war of fits, slow
+and intermittent. The strength of the evil appeared to be exhausted; but
+it was merely that of the combatants; a still greater struggle was
+preparing, and this halt was not a time allowed to make peace, but
+merely given to the premeditation of slaughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+Thus did the star of the North triumph over that of Napoleon. Is it then
+the fate of the South to be vanquished by the North? Cannot that subdue
+it in its turn? Is it against nature that that aggression should be
+successful? and is the frightful result of our invasion a fresh proof of
+it?
+
+Certainly the human race does not march in that direction; its
+inclination is towards the south, it turns its back to the north; the
+sun attracts its regards, its wishes, and its steps. We cannot with
+impunity turn back this great current of men; the attempt to make them
+return, to repel them, and confine them within their frozen regions, is
+a gigantic enterprise. The Romans exhausted themselves by it.
+Charlemagne, although he rose when one of these great invasions was
+drawing to a termination, could only check it for a short time; the rest
+of the torrent, driven back to the east of the empire, penetrated it
+through the north, and completed the inundation.
+
+A thousand years have since elapsed; the nations of the north have
+required that time to recover from that great migration, and to acquire
+the knowledge which is now indispensable to a conquering nation. During
+that interval, it was not without reason that the Hanse Towns opposed
+the introduction of the warlike arts into the immense camp of the
+Scandinavians. The event has justified their fears. Scarcely had the
+science of modern war penetrated among them, when Russian armies were
+seen on the Elbe, and shortly after in Italy; they came to reconnoitre
+these countries, some day they will come and settle there.
+
+During the last century, either from philanthropy or vanity, Europe was
+eager in contributing to civilize these men of the north, of whom Peter
+had already made formidable warriors. She acted wisely, in so far as she
+diminished for herself the danger of falling back into fresh barbarism;
+if we allow that a second relapse into the darkness of the middle ages
+is possible, war having become so scientific, that mind predominates in
+it, so that to succeed in it, a degree of instruction is required, which
+nations that still remain barbarous can only acquire by civilization.
+
+But, in hastening the civilization of these Normans, Europe has probably
+hastened the epoch of their next invasion. For let no one believe that
+their pompous cities, their exotic and forced luxury, will be able to
+retain them; that by softening them, they will be kept stationary, or
+rendered less formidable. The luxury and effeminacy which are enjoyed in
+spite of a barbarous climate, can only be the privilege of a few. The
+masses, which are incessantly increasing by an administration which is
+gradually becoming more enlightened, will continue sufferers by their
+climate, barbarous like that, and always more and more envious; and the
+invasion of the south by the north, recommenced by Catherine II. will
+continue.
+
+Who is there that can fancy that the great struggle between the North
+and the South is at an end? Is it not, in its full grandeur, the war of
+privation against enjoyment, the eternal war of the poor against the
+rich, that which devours the interior of every empire?
+
+Comrades, whatever was the motive of our expedition, this was the point
+which made it of importance to Europe. Its object was to wrest Poland
+from Russia, its result would have been to throw the danger of a fresh
+invasion of the men of the north, at a greater distance, to weaken the
+torrent, and oppose a new barrier to it; and was there ever a man, or a
+combination of circumstances, so well calculated to ensure the success
+of so great an enterprise?
+
+After fifteen hundred years of victories, the revolution of the fourth
+century, that of the kings and nobles against the people, was, in its
+turn, vanquished by the revolution of the nineteenth century, that of
+the people against the nobles and kings. Napoleon was born of this
+conflagration; he obtained such complete power over it, that it seemed
+as if that great convulsion had only been that of the bringing into the
+world one man. He commanded the Revolution as if he had been the genius
+of that terrible element. At his voice she became tranquil. Ashamed of
+her excesses, she admired herself in him, and precipitating herself into
+his glory, she had united Europe under his sceptre, and obedient Europe
+rose at his call to drive back Russia within her ancient limits. It
+seemed as if the North was in his turn about to be vanquished, even
+among his own ices.
+
+And yet this great man, with these great circumstances in his favour,
+could not subdue nature! In this powerful effort to re-ascend that rapid
+declivity, so many forces failed him! After reaching these icy regions
+of Europe, he was precipitated from their very summit. The North,
+victorious over the South in her defensive war, as she had been in the
+middle ages in her offensive one, now believes herself invulnerable and
+irresistible.
+
+Comrades, believe it not! Ye might have triumphed over that soil and
+these spaces, that climate, and that rough and gigantic nature, as ye
+had conquered its soldiers.
+
+But some errors were punished by great calamities! I have related both
+the one and the other. On that ocean of evils I have erected a
+melancholy beacon of gloomy and blood-red light; and if my feeble hand
+has been insufficient for the painful task, at least I have exhibited
+the floating wrecks, in order that those who come after us may see the
+peril and avoid it.
+
+Comrades, my task is finished; it is now for you to bear your testimony
+to the truth of the picture. Its colours will no doubt appear pale to
+your eyes and to your hearts, which are still full of these great
+recollections. But which of you is ignorant that an action is always
+more eloquent than its description; and that if great historians are
+produced by great men, the first are still more rare than the last?
+
+
+Volume I
+
+  London: Printed by Thomas Davison,
+  Whitefriars.
+
+Volume II
+
+  London: Printed by C. Roworth.
+  Bell yard, Temple Bar.
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+This was a book of two volumes, written by a Frenchman and printed in
+English by different printers. As a result there was a wide variation in
+spelling.
+
+Original spelling was retained except where noted.
+
+Thus corses for corpses, tressels for trestles, Dantzic for Danzig.
+
+Table of Contents, Volume II, Book IX, Chapter II, Jaroslavetz changed
+to Yaroslawetz to conform to text. Also for Chapters IV and V of same.
+
+Table of Contents, Winkowo changed to Vinkowo to conform to much of
+text.
+
+Table of Contents, Doubrowna changed to Dombrowna.
+
+The use of Chap. and Chapter was retained reflecting the original work.
+
+Book II. Chap. II., Arriere changed to Arričre.
+
+Book V. Chap. I, Dünaburg changed to Dünabourg to match rest of Volume.
+
+Book VIII. Chapter XI, Francaise changed to Française.
+
+Book X. Chapter III, Karsnoë changed to Krasnoë.
+
+One instance each of Yuknow, Yuknof and Yucknow appears in the text
+as does Vilkomir/Wilkomer and Doukhowtchina/Dukhowtchina.
+
+Differences that were retained between Volumes I and II:
+  Volume I              Volume II
+  Saint-Cyr             Saint Cyr(also in Table of Contents for Vol. II)
+  Oudinot               Oudinôt
+  journeys              journies
+  Dubrowna              Dombrowna
+  Dünabourg             Dünaburg
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by 
+Count Philip de Segur
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE EXPEDITION TO ***
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by General Count Philip De Segur.
+    </title>
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by 
+Count Philip de Segur
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History of the Expedition to Russia
+       Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812
+
+Author: Count Philip de Segur
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #18113]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE EXPEDITION TO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs, Graeme Mackreth and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>HISTORY</h1>
+
+<h3>OF THE</h3>
+
+<h1>EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,</h1>
+
+<h3>UNDERTAKEN BY THE</h3>
+
+<h2>EMPEROR NAPOLEON,</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE YEAR 1812.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="The Aenid">
+<tr><td align='left'><small>Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><small>Incipiam&mdash;.</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>VIRGIL.</small></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<h5><i>SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED</i>.</h5>
+
+<h5>IN TWO VOLUMES,</h5>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#vol1">Volume One</a></p>
+<p class="center"><a href="#vol2">Volume Two</a></p>
+
+<h6>WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.</h6>
+
+<h4>VOL. I.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><small>LONDON:</small></p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, <span class="smcap">jun</span>. AND RICHTER,<br />
+30, SOHO-SQUARE.<br />
+1825.</small></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus002.jpg" alt="Napoleon"  />
+<a id="illus002" name="illus002"></a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center"> Portrait of Napoleon</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>TO THE</h4>
+
+<h2>VETERANS OF THE GRAND ARMY.</h2>
+
+
+<p style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><small>COMRADES,</small></p>
+
+<p>I have undertaken the task of tracing the History of the Grand Army and
+its Leader during the year 1812. I address it to such of you as the ices
+of the North have disarmed, and who can no longer serve their country,
+but by the recollections of their misfortunes and their glory. Stopped
+short in your noble career, your existence is much more in the past than
+in the present; but when the recollections are so great, it is allowable
+to live solely on them. I am not afraid, therefore, of troubling that
+repose which you have so dearly purchased, by placing before you the
+most fatal of your deeds of arms. Who is there of us but knows, that
+from the depth of his obscurity the looks of the fallen man are
+involuntarily directed towards the splendor of his past existence&mdash;even
+when its light illuminates the shoal on which the bark of his fortune
+struck, and when it displays the fragments of the greatest of
+shipwrecks?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>For myself, I will own, that an irresistible feeling carries me back
+incessantly to that disastrous epoch of our public and private
+calamities. My memory feels a sort of melancholy pleasure in
+contemplating and renewing the painful traces which so many horrors have
+left in it. Is the soul, also, proud of her deep and numerous wounds?
+Does she delight in displaying them? Are they a property of which she
+has reason to be proud? Is it rather, that after the desire of knowing
+them, her first wish is to impart her sensations? To feel, and to excite
+feeling, are not these the most powerful springs of our soul?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But in short, whatever may be the cause of the sentiment which actuates
+me, I have yielded to the desire of retracing the various sensations
+which I experienced during that fatal war. I have employed my leisure
+hours in separating, arranging, and combining with method my scattered
+and confused recollections. Comrades! I also invoke yours! Suffer not
+such great remembrances, which have been so dearly purchased, to be
+lost; for us they are the only property which the past leaves to the
+future. Single, against so many enemies, ye fell with greater glory than
+they rose. Learn, then, that there was no shame in being vanquished!
+Raise once more those noble fronts, which have been furrowed with all
+the thunders of Europe! Cast not down those eyes, which have seen so
+many subject capitals, so many vanquished kings! Fortune, doubtless,
+owed you a more glorious repose; but, such as it is, it depends on
+yourselves to make a noble use of it. Let history inscribe your
+recollections. The solitude and silence of misfortune are propitious to
+her labours; and let truth, which is always present in the long nights
+of adversity, at last enlighten labours that may not prove unproductive.</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I will avail myself of the privilege, sometimes painful,
+sometimes glorious, of telling what I have seen, and of retracing,
+perhaps with too scrupulous attention, its most minute details; feeling
+that nothing was too minute in that prodigious Genius and those gigantic
+feats, without which we should never have known the extent to which
+human strength, glory, and misfortune, may be carried.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p><small>VOLUME FIRST.</small></p>
+
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_I">BOOK I.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_I"> &mdash;Political relations of France and Russia since 1807</a> </li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_II">&mdash;Prussia.&mdash;Frederick William</a> </li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_III">&mdash;Turkey.&mdash;Sultans Selim&mdash;Mustapha&mdash;Mahmoud</a> </li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IV">&mdash;Sweden.&mdash;Bernadotte</a> </li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_II">BOOK II.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_Ia">&mdash;Feelings of Napoleon's grandees at the approaching
+contest&mdash;their objections, with Napoleon's replies&mdash;real motives which
+urged him to the struggle</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIa">&mdash;Arguments against the war by the Dukes of Frioul and Vicenza and
+the Count de Segur.&mdash;Napoleon's replies</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIa">&mdash;His manner of gaining proselytes to his opinions&mdash;his avowals to
+his own family&mdash;his discussions with Cardinal Fesch&mdash;his declaration to
+Prince Kourakin </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVa">&mdash;Circumstances inclining him to delay the contest&mdash;his proposals to
+England and to Russia&mdash;Russian ultimatum </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Va">&mdash;Preparations for commencement&mdash;Talleyrand&mdash;opinions of the
+military&mdash;of Napoleon's ministers and generals&mdash;fresh obstacles to his
+departure </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_III">BOOK III.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Ib">&mdash;Napoleon's departure from Paris&mdash;dispositions of the
+east of France&mdash;of the Germans&mdash;assemblage of sovereigns at Dresden</a> </li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIb">&mdash;Arrival in Poland&mdash;complaints by the inhabitants of the disorders
+of his troops&mdash;his ineffectual attempts to check them&mdash;meeting with
+Davoust&mdash;quarrel between that officer and Berthier&mdash;unfavourable
+impression of Napoleon against the former&mdash;arrival at K&ouml;nigsberg</a> </li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIb">&mdash;March from the Vistula to the Niemen&mdash;Napoleon's manners with the
+soldiers&mdash;positions of the different corps&mdash;dispositions of the army</a> </li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_IV">BOOK IV.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_Ic"> &mdash;Addresses of Napoleon and Alexander to their
+respective armies&mdash;Position of the Russian forces&mdash;Napoleon's plans in
+consequence&mdash;Sketch of the operations of his left and right wings during
+the campaign </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIc">&mdash;Passage of the Niemen&mdash;Dreadful storm and its fatal
+effects&mdash;Melancholy catastrophe&mdash;Napoleon's arrival at Wilna&mdash;Political
+arrangements </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIc">&mdash;Feelings of the Lithuanians&mdash;Napoleon's answer to the address of
+the Polish confederation&mdash;Coolness of the Lithuanians, and discussion of
+its causes </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVc">&mdash;Distress of the army and its excesses&mdash;Manner in which Napoleon was
+affected by them </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vc">&mdash;Arrival of Balachoff from Alexander&mdash;Quarrel between Napoleon and
+Caulaincourt&mdash;Progress of the invading army to the 10th of July </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIc">&mdash;Operations of the King of Westphalia's and of Davoust's
+divisions&mdash;Perilous situation and narrow escape of Bagration </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIc">&mdash;Napoleon's departure from Wilna&mdash;Retreat of the Russian army from
+Drissa to Witepsk&mdash;Arrival of the different French corps at
+Beszenkowiczi&mdash;Different partial actions near Witepsk </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIc">&mdash;General engagement before Witepsk&mdash;French attack ordered to cease
+in expectation of a decisive battle on the following day&mdash;Retreat of the
+Russians&mdash;Napoleon's disappointment&mdash;Position of his different corps</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_V">BOOK V.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_Id">&mdash;Napoleon's first plans for halting at
+Witepsk&mdash;afterwards abandoned, and his determination to proceed to
+Smolensk </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IId">&mdash;Discussions with the officers of his household&mdash;their reasons for
+dissuading him from advancing further, and his replies&mdash;Feelings of the
+army in general </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIId">&mdash;Operations of Oudinot's corps against that of
+Wittgenstein&mdash;partial successes on both sides&mdash;Napoleon determines to
+change his line of operation </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_VI">BOOK VI.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_Ie">&mdash;Manner in which this man&oelig;uvre was effected&mdash;The
+army crosses the Boristhenes&mdash;Character of the Jewish and native
+population </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIe">&mdash;Surprise of Newerowskoi's corps beyond Krasno&euml;&mdash;Bold retreat of
+that officer </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIe">.&mdash;Movements of the main Russian army&mdash;Plans of Barclay&mdash;his
+dissension with Bagration&mdash;hastens to the relief of Smolensk&mdash;about to
+be surprised by Napoleon&mdash;Unsuccessful attack of the French on Smolensk
+</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVe">&mdash;Retreat of the Russian army, and fresh disappointment of
+Napoleon&mdash;Ineffectual attempts of Murat to dissuade his farther
+advance&mdash;Capture of Smolensk </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Ve">&mdash;Napoleon's reflections on the conduct of the Russians&mdash;Intelligence
+of Regnier's victory over Tormasof&mdash;Opinions of the Emperor's principal
+officers as to the impolicy of proceeding farther </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIe">&mdash;State of the allied army&mdash;its immense losses from various causes,
+independent of the enemy&mdash;Napoleon's professed intention to stop, but
+real determination to proceed </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIe">&mdash;Final evacuation of Smolensk by the Russians after setting it on
+fire&mdash;their army overtaken by Murat and Ney&mdash;Death of General
+Gudin&mdash;Battle of Valoutina&mdash;Narrow escape of the Russians in consequence
+of Junot's irresolution </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIe">&mdash;Results of the battle&mdash;Recompenses and rewards conferred by
+Napoleon&mdash;Enthusiasm of the army&mdash;Melancholy state of the
+wounded&mdash;Animosity of the Russian population </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXe">&mdash;Napoleon's plans of moving the Russian peasantry to
+insurrection&mdash;Conduct of their nobles to ward off the danger&mdash;Napoleon's
+hesitation as to the plan he should pursue </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Xe">&mdash;Saint Cyr's victory over Wittgenstein on the 18th of
+August&mdash;Dissension between Murat and Davoust&mdash;Discord in the Russian
+camp in consequence of Barclay's continued retreat&mdash;Napoleon's advance
+to Dorogobouje </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_VII">BOOK VII.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_If">&mdash;Manner in which the allied army was supplied on its
+march&mdash;Details of the organization of Davoust's corps</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIf">&mdash;Napoleon's bulletin and decrees at Slawkowo&mdash;Fresh quarrels
+between Murat and Davoust&mdash;Description of the Russian mode of retreat
+and of Murat's method of pursuit</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIf">&mdash;Advance to Wiazma and to Gjatz&mdash;Refusal of Davoust to obey
+Murat&mdash;Full development of the Russian plan of destroying their cities
+and towns </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVf">&mdash;Clamours of the Russians against Barclay&mdash;Kutusof sent to supersede
+him&mdash;Great merit of Barclay's plan of retreat </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vf">&mdash;Near prospect of a battle&mdash;Character of Kutusof&mdash;Sanguinary and
+partial action on the 4th of September&mdash;Anecdote of Murat&mdash;Napoleon's
+survey of the ground </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIf">&mdash;Disposition of the Russian army on the field of
+Borodino&mdash;Napoleon's plan of battle </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIf">&mdash;Plan proposed by Davoust rejected by Napoleon&mdash;Feelings of the
+French army&mdash;Proclamation of Napoleon </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIf">&mdash;Preparations of the Russians&mdash;Feelings of their
+soldiery&mdash;Napoleon's anxiety&mdash;his indisposition on the night before the
+battle </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXf">&mdash;Battle of Borodino on the 7th of September </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Xf">&mdash;Battle of Borodino on the 7th of September (Cont.)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIf">&mdash;Battle of Borodino on the 7th of September (Cont.)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIf">&mdash;Results of the battle&mdash;immense loss on both sides&mdash;faults
+committed by Napoleon&mdash;how accounted for&mdash;incompleteness of his victory</a></li>
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIIf">&mdash;Advance to, and skirmish before Mojaisk&mdash;Gallantry of fifty
+voltigeurs of the 33d&mdash;Surprising order in the Russian retreat&mdash;Napoleon's
+distress </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<p><small>VOLUME SECOND.</small></p>
+
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_VIII">BOOK VIII.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Ig">&mdash;The Emperor Alexander's arrival at Moscow after his
+retreat from Drissa&mdash;Description of that city&mdash;Sacrifices voted by the
+nobility and the merchants to meet the threatened danger</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIg">&mdash;Alarm in consequence of the advance of the French
+army&mdash;Determination of the Governor, Count Rostopchin, and his
+preparations for destroying the capital&mdash;Evacuation of Moscow by the
+principal part of the inhabitants on the 3d of September </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIg">&mdash;State of that city just before and after the battle of
+Borodino&mdash;The Governor's departure</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVg">IV.&mdash;Napoleon advances to Moscow on the 14th of September&mdash;Feelings of
+the army on approaching it&mdash;Disappointment at finding it deserted</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vg">&mdash;Murat's entrance into the city</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIg">&mdash;Napoleon's entrance into the Kremlin&mdash;Discovery of the
+conflagration of the city </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIg">&mdash;Danger which he ran in escaping through the flames to
+Petrowsky&mdash;Hesitation as to his future plans </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIg">.&mdash;His return to the Kremlin&mdash;Description of the camps outside the
+city&mdash;System of general plunder&mdash;Reproaches made to the army, and
+vindication of it </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXg">&mdash;Conduct of Kutusof after abandoning Moscow&mdash;Rostopchin sets fire to
+his seat at Woronowo&mdash;Partial actions at Czerikowo and Vinkowo&mdash;Anxiety
+and uneasiness of Napoleon&mdash;consultation with his chief officers&mdash;Sends
+Lauriston to the Emperor </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Xg">&mdash;Conference of Lauriston with Kutusof&mdash;Artful conduct of the
+latter&mdash;Armistice&mdash;Infatuation of Murat&mdash;Distress of the French
+army&mdash;Warnings of the impending danger&mdash;Napoleon's obstinacy in
+remaining </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIg">&mdash;Illusions by which he kept up his own and his army's hopes&mdash;Count
+Daru's advice&mdash;Rupture of the armistice&mdash;Incapacity of Berthier&mdash;Disastrous
+engagement at Vinkowo&mdash;Napoleon determines to leave Moscow </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_IX">BOOK IX.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Ih">&mdash;Departure from Moscow&mdash;Composition of the army</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIh">&mdash;Battle of Malo-Yaroslawetz</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIh">&mdash;Distress of the Emperor&mdash;Danger which he ran from a sudden attack
+of the Cossacks</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVh">&mdash;Field of Malo-Yaroslawetz&mdash;Council held by the Emperor&mdash;Opinions of
+Murat, Bessi&egrave;res, and Davoust&mdash;Napoleon determines to retreat</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vh">&mdash;Kutusof's similar determination to retreat from Malo-Yaroslawetz,
+ineffectually opposed by Sir Robert Wilson&mdash;Napoleon's projected plan of
+retreat </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIh">&mdash;Mortier's proceedings at Moscow after the departure of the main
+army&mdash;Blowing up of the Kremlin&mdash;Devastations committed by both
+armies&mdash;Capture of General Winzingerode&mdash;Napoleon's behaviour to him </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIh">&mdash;Arrival at Mojaisk&mdash;Alarming news of the Russian army&mdash;View of
+the field of Borodino </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIh">&mdash;Abandonment of the wounded in the Abbey of Kolotskoi&mdash;Horrible
+conduct of the suttlers&mdash;Massacre of 2000 Russian prisoners&mdash;Arrival at
+Gjatz </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXh">&mdash;Napoleon's arrival at Wiazma&mdash;Reproaches to Davoust for his tardy
+mode of retreat, and that officer's vindication&mdash;Danger of the latter
+and Eugene&mdash;Arrival of Miloradowitch </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Xh">&mdash;Battle between Eugene and Davoust and Miloradowitch, near Wiazma, on
+the 3d November&mdash;heavy loss of the French </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIh">&mdash;Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November&mdash;its effects upon the
+troops </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIh">&mdash;Arrival of the intelligence of Mallet's conspiracy&mdash;impression
+produced by it upon Napoleon and his officers&mdash;Message from
+Ney&mdash;Perilous situation of that marshal</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIIh">&mdash;Defeat and entire dissolution of the Viceroy's corps at the
+passage of the Wop </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIVh">&mdash;Arrival at Smolensk&mdash;Dreadful sufferings of the troops&mdash;Bad
+arrangements of the administrators&mdash;Reasons assigned by the latter in
+their vindication </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_X">BOOK X.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Im">&mdash;Wittgenstein's attack upon Saint Cyr at
+Polotsk&mdash;Retreat of the latter&mdash;Want of concert in the movements of the
+Russian generals </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIm">&mdash;Junction of the corps of Saint Cyr and Victor at Smoliantzy on the
+31st October&mdash;Opportunity lost by the latter of defeating the
+enemy&mdash;General view of the state of the army&mdash;Errors committed by
+Napoleon and his commanders</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIi">&mdash;Napoleon's departure from Smolensk&mdash;Dispositions of the Russian
+army to interrupt his farther retreat&mdash;Bravery of Excelmans&mdash;Arrival at
+Krasno&euml; </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVi">&mdash;March of Eugene from Smolensk to Krasno&euml; with the remains of his
+corps&mdash;his narrow escape </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vi">&mdash;Successful nocturnal attack by Roguet on the Russian camp at
+Chickowa&mdash;Desperate situation of Napoleon&mdash;Wilson's fruitless efforts to
+induce Kutusof to surround and destroy him&mdash;Battle of Krasno&euml;&mdash;Bravery
+of the guard under Mortier </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIi">&mdash;Napoleon's arrival at Dombrowna&mdash;Nocturnal false alarm&mdash;General
+disorganization of the army&mdash;Davoust's ineffectual efforts to check it
+</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIi">&mdash;Council held at Orcha to determine the farther course of
+retreat&mdash;Opinion of Jomini&mdash;Napoleon decides on Borizof&mdash;Quits Orcha on
+the 20th of November without hearing any thing of Ney&mdash;Re-appearance of
+that Marshal after his departure </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIi">&mdash;Details of Ney's retreat from Smolensk until his arrival at
+Orcha </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXi">&mdash;Details of Ney's retreat from Smolensk until his arrival at
+Orcha (cont.) </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_XI">BOOK XI.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Ik">&mdash;Capture of Minsk by the Russians&mdash;Different opinions
+in the army as to the causes of their disasters&mdash;Rumoured treachery of
+Schwartzenberg&mdash;Napoleon's reproaches to him and Schwartzenberg's reply
+</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIk">&mdash;Details of the loss of Minsk&mdash;Movements of Dombrowski, Oudinot, and
+Victor&mdash;Distress and malady of Napoleon&mdash;Remarkable conversation with
+Count Daru </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIk">&mdash;Passage through the Forest of Minsk&mdash;Junction of the remains of
+the grand army with Victor and Oudinot's corps&mdash;State of the former </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVk">&mdash;Preparations for crossing the Berezina </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vk">&mdash;Preparations for crossing the Berezina (Cont.)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIk">&mdash;Circumstances which led the Russian general, Tchaplitz, into error
+as to the point where Napoleon was to cross the Berezina, and
+consequences of that error&mdash;Napoleon crosses that river at Studzianka on
+the 27th November </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIk">&mdash;Capture and destruction of Partouneaux's division </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIk">&mdash;Attack made by the Russians under Wittgenstein and Platof on the
+left side, and by Tchitchakof on the right side of the Berezina, and
+repelled by the French </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXk">&mdash;The burning of the bridge over the Berezina </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Xk">&mdash;Napoleon's situation during the preceding actions&mdash;Passage over the
+morasses&mdash;His manners to his officers </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIk">&mdash;Napoleon's arrival at Malodeczno&mdash;Announcement on the 3d of
+December of his intention to set out for France </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIk">&mdash;Increased severity of the winter&mdash;Partial actions of Ney and
+Maison with the Russians between Pleszezenitzy and Malodeczno&mdash;Quarrel
+between Ney and Victor </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIIk">&mdash;Napoleon's arrival at Smorgony&mdash;his parting interview with his
+marshals </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h4><a href="#BOOK_XII">BOOK XII.</a></h4>
+<p class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Chap.</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Il">&mdash;Napoleon's journey from Smorgony to Paris&mdash;Impression
+produced in the army by his departure&mdash;Dreadful effects of the increased
+cold </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIl">&mdash;Picture of the sufferings of the army from the cold and the climate
+</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IIIl">&mdash;Arrival at Wilna&mdash;Consternation of the inhabitants&mdash;Fatal effects
+of not distributing the provisions collected among the troops&mdash;State of
+the wounded in the hospitals&mdash;Arrival of the Russians&mdash;Flight of
+Murat&mdash;Evacuation of Wilna&mdash;Immense losses which that occasioned&mdash;Disaster
+at Ponari </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IVl">&mdash;Details of Ney's mode of retreat&mdash;Losses occasioned to the Russians
+by the severity of the winter&mdash;Arrival at Kowno&mdash;Ney's defence and
+evacuation of that place </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Vl">&mdash;First symptoms of Murat's defection&mdash;Arrival at K&ouml;nigsberg </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIl">&mdash;Marshal Macdonald's retreat from Riga&mdash;Details of
+the defection of the Prussian Army under Yorck </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIl">&mdash;Marshal Macdonald's retreat from Riga&mdash;Details of
+the defection of the Prussian Army under Yorck (Cont.)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_VIIIl">&mdash;Marshal Macdonald's retreat from Riga&mdash;Details of
+the defection of the Prussian Army under Yorck (Cont.) </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_IXl">&mdash;Marshal Macdonald's retreat from Riga&mdash;Details of
+the defection of the Prussian Army under Yorck  (Cont.)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_Xl">&mdash;Conduct of Schwartzenberg and defection of the Austrians&mdash;Atrocities
+committed on the French prisoners at Wilna and K&ouml;nigsberg </a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIl">&mdash;Defection of Murat</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="#CHAP_XIIl">&mdash;Conclusion </a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>DIRECTIONS FOR PLACING THE PLATES.</h4>
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><a href="#illus002"> Portrait of Napoleon</a></li>
+<li><a href="#illus001a">  Map of the countries between Paris and Moscow </a>       </li>
+<li> <a href="#illus003">Passage of the Niemen </a>                                 </li>
+<li><a href="#illus004">Portrait of Murat, King of Naples</a>                       </li>
+<li> <a href="#illus005">Portrait of the Emperor Alexander </a></li>
+<li><a href="#illus006">Conflagration of Moscow   </a>                               </li>
+<li><a href="#illus007">Portrait of Marshal Ney </a>                               </li>
+<li><a href="#illus008">Passage of the Berezina </a>                              </li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus001a.jpg" alt="map"  />
+<a id="illus001a" name="illus001a"></a><br />
+
+<img src="images/illus001b.jpg" alt="map"  />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Map of the countries between Paris and Moscow<br />
+(To see this map assembled, click <a href="images/assembled.jpg">here.</a>)</p>
+
+<h3><a id="vol1" name="vol1">HISTORY</a></h3>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION</h3>
+
+<h4>TO</h4>
+
+<h3>RUSSIA.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"></a>BOOK I.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_I" id="CHAP_I"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Ever since 1807, when the space between the Rhine and the Niemen had
+been overrun, the two great empires of which these rivers were the
+boundaries had become rivals. By his concessions at Tilsit, at the
+expense of Prussia, Sweden, and Turkey, Napoleon had only satisfied
+Alexander. That treaty was the result of the defeat of Russia, and the
+date of her submission to the continental system. Among the Russians, it
+was regarded by some as attacking their honour; and by all it was felt
+to be ruinous to their interests.</p>
+
+<p>By the continental system Napoleon had declared eternal war against the
+English; to that system he attached his honour, his political existence,
+and that of the nation under his sway. That system banished from the
+Continent all merchandise which was English, or had paid duty in any
+shape to England. He could not succeed in establishing it but by the
+unanimous consent of the continental nations, and that consent could not
+be hoped for but under a single and universal dominion.</p>
+
+<p>France had besides alienated the nations of Europe from her by her
+conquests, and the monarchs by her revolution and her new dynasty.
+Henceforward she could no longer look forward to have either friends or
+rivals, but merely subjects; for the first would have been false, and
+the second implacable: it followed that all must be subject to her, or
+she to all.</p>
+
+<p>With feelings of this kind, her leader, influenced by his position, and
+urged on by his enterprising character, filled his imagination with the
+vast project of becoming the sole master of Europe, by overwhelming
+Russia, and wresting Poland from her dominion. He had so much difficulty
+in concealing this project, that hints of it began to escape him in all
+directions. The immense preparations which so distant an enterprise
+required, the enormous quantities of provisions and ammunition
+collecting, the noise of arms, of carriages, and the march of such
+numbers of soldiers&mdash;the universal movement the majestic and terrible
+course of all the forces of the West against the East&mdash;every thing
+announced to Europe that her two colossuses were about to measure their
+strength with each other.</p>
+
+<p>But, to get within reach of Russia, it was necessary to go beyond
+Austria, to cross Prussia, and to march between Sweden and Turkey; an
+offensive alliance with these four powers was therefore indispensable.
+Austria was as much subject to the influence of Napoleon as Prussia was
+to his arms: to them he had only to declare his intentions; Austria
+voluntarily and eagerly entered into his plans, and Prussia he easily
+prevailed on to join him.</p>
+
+<p>Austria, however, did not act blindly. Situated between the two great
+colossuses of the North and the West, she was not displeased to see them
+at war: she looked to their mutually weakening each other, and to the
+increase of her own strength by their exhaustion. On the 14th of March,
+1812, she promised France 30,000 men; but she prepared prudent secret
+instructions for them. She obtained a vague promise of an increase of
+territory, as an indemnity for her share of the expenses of the war, and
+the possession of Gallicia was guaranteed to her. She admitted, however,
+the future possibility of a cession of part of that province to the
+kingdom of Poland; but in exchange for that she would have received the
+Illyrian provinces. The sixth article of the secret treaty establishes
+that fact.</p>
+
+<p>The success of the war, therefore, in no degree depended on the cession
+of Gallicia, or the difficulties arising from the Austrian jealousy of
+that possession. Napoleon, consequently, might on his entrance into
+Wilna, have publicly proclaimed the liberation of the whole of Poland,
+instead of betraying the expectations of her people, astonishing and
+rendering them indifferent by expressions of wavering import.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, was one of those prominent points, which in politics as
+well as in war are decisive, with which every thing is connected, and
+from which nothing ought to have made him swerve. But whether it was
+that Napoleon reckoned too much on the ascendancy of his genius, or the
+strength of his army, and the weakness of Alexander; or that,
+considering what he left behind him, he felt it too dangerous to carry
+on so distant a war slowly and methodically; or whether, as we shall
+presently be told by himself, he had doubts of the success of his
+undertaking; certain it is, that he either neglected, or could not yet
+determine to proclaim the liberation of that country whose freedom he
+had come to restore.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he had sent an ambassador to her Diet. When this inconsistency
+was remarked to him, he replied, that "that nomination was an act of
+war, which only bound him during the war, while by his words he would be
+bound both in war and peace." Thus it was, that he made no other reply
+to the enthusiasm of the Lithuanians than evasive expressions, at the
+very time he was following up his attack on Alexander to the very
+capital of his empire.</p>
+
+<p>He even neglected to clear the southern Polish provinces of the feeble
+hostile armies which kept the patriotism of their inhabitants in check,
+and to secure, by strongly organizing their insurrection, a solid basis
+of operation. Accustomed to short methods, and to rapid attacks, he
+wished to imitate himself, in spite of the difference of places and
+circumstances; for such is the weakness of man, that he is always led
+by imitation, either of others, or of himself, which in the latter case,
+that of great men, is habit; for habit is nothing more than the
+imitation of one's self. So true it is, that by their strongest side
+these extraordinary men are undone!</p>
+
+<p>The one in question committed himself to the fortune of battles. Having
+prepared an army of six hundred and fifty thousand men, he fancied that
+that was doing sufficient to secure victory, from which he expected
+every thing. Instead of sacrificing every thing to obtain victory, it
+was by that he looked to obtain every thing; he made use of it as a
+<i>means</i>, when it ought to have been his <i>end</i>. In this manner he made it
+too necessary; it was already rather too much so. But he confided so
+much of futurity to it, he overloaded it with so much responsibility,
+that it became urgent and indispensable to him. Hence his precipitation
+to get within reach of it, in order to extricate himself from so
+critical a position.</p>
+
+<p>But we must not be too hasty in condemning a genius so great and
+universal; we shall shortly hear from himself by what urgent necessity
+he was hurried on; and even admitting that the rapidity of his
+expedition was only equalled by its rashness, success would have
+probably crowned it, if the premature decline of his health had left the
+physical constitution of this great man all the vigour which his mind
+still retained.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_II" id="CHAP_II"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As to Prussia, of which Napoleon was completely master, it is not known
+whether it was from his uncertainty as to the fate which he reserved for
+her, or as to the period at which he should commence the war, that he
+refused, in 1811, to contract the alliance which she herself proposed to
+him, and of which he dictated the conditions, in 1812.</p>
+
+<p>His aversion to Frederick William was remarkable. Napoleon had been
+frequently heard to speak reproachfully of the cabinet of Prussia for
+its treaties with the French republic. He said, "It was a desertion of
+the cause of kings; that the negotiations of the court of Berlin with
+the Directory displayed a timid, selfish, and ignoble policy, which
+sacrificed its dignity, and the general cause of monarchs, to petty
+aggrandizements." Whenever he followed with his finger the traces of the
+Prussian frontiers upon the map, he seemed to be angry at seeing them
+still so extensive, and exclaimed, "Is it possible that I have left this
+man so large a territory?"</p>
+
+<p>This dislike to a mild and pacific monarch was surprising. As there is
+nothing in the character of Napoleon unworthy of historical remembrance,
+it is worth while to examine the cause of it. Some persons trace back
+the origin of it to the rejection which he experienced, when First
+Consul, from Louis XVIII. of the propositions which he made to him
+through the medium of the king of Prussia; and they suppose that
+Napoleon laid the blame of this refusal upon the mediator. Others
+attribute it to the seizure of Rumbold, the English agent at Hamburgh,
+by the orders of Napoleon, and to his being compelled to give him up by
+Frederick, as protector of the neutrality of the north of Germany.
+Before that time, Frederick and Napoleon had carried on a secret
+correspondence, which was of so intimate a nature, that they used to
+confide to each other even the details of their household; that
+circumstance, it is said, put an end to it.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of 1805, however, Russia, Austria, and England, made
+ineffectual attempts to engage Frederick in their third coalition
+against France. The court of Berlin, the queen, the princes, the
+minister Hardenberg, and all the young Prussian military, excited by the
+ardour of displaying the inheritance of glory which had been left them
+by the great Frederick, or by the wish of blotting out the disgrace of
+the campaign of 1792, entered heartily into the views of the allied
+powers; but the pacific policy of the king, and of his minister
+Haugwitz, resisted them, until the violation of the Prussian territory,
+near Anspach, by the march of a corps of French troops, exasperated the
+passions of the Prussians to such a degree, that their cry for immediate
+war prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander was then in Poland; he was invited to Potsdam, and repaired
+thither immediately; and on the 3d of November, 1805, he engaged
+Frederick in the third coalition. The Prussian array was immediately
+withdrawn from the Russian frontiers, and M. de Haugwitz repaired to
+Br&uuml;nn to threaten Napoleon with it. But the battle of Austerlitz shut
+his mouth; and within a fortnight after, the wily minister, having
+quickly turned round to the side of the conqueror, signed with him the
+participation of the fruits of victory.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, however, dissembled his displeasure; for he had his army to
+re-organize, to give the grand duchy of Berg to Murat, his
+brother-in-law, Neufchatel to Berthier, to conquer Naples for his
+brother Joseph, to mediatize Switzerland, to dissolve the Germanic body,
+and to create the Rhenish confederation, of which he declared himself
+protector; to change the republic of Holland into a kingdom, and to give
+it to his brother Louis. These were the reasons which induced him, on
+the 15th of December, to cede Hanover to Prussia, in exchange for
+Anspach, Cleves, and Neufchatel.</p>
+
+<p>The possession of Hanover at first tempted Frederick, but when the
+treaty was to be signed, he appeared to feel ashamed, and to hesitate;
+he wished only to accept it by halves, and to retain it merely as a
+deposit. Napoleon had no idea of such timid policy. "What!" said he,
+"does this monarch dare neither to make peace nor war? Does he prefer
+the English to me? Is there another coalition preparing? Does he despise
+my alliance?" Indignant at the idea, by a fresh treaty, on the 8th of
+March, 1806, he compelled Frederick to declare war against England, to
+take possession of Hanover, and to admit French garrisons into <i>Wesel</i>
+and <i>Hameln</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The king of Prussia alone submitted; his court and his subjects were
+exasperated; they reproached him with allowing himself to be vanquished
+without attempting to fight; and elevating themselves on the remembrance
+of their past glory, they fancied that for them alone was reserved the
+honour of triumphing over the conqueror of Europe. In their impatience
+they insulted the minister of Napoleon; they sharpened their swords on
+the threshold of his gate. Napoleon himself they loaded with abuse. Even
+the queen, so distinguished by her graces and attractions, put on a
+warlike attitude. Their princes, one of them particularly (whose
+carriage and features, spirit and intrepidity, seemed to promise them a
+hero), offered to be their leaders. A chivalrous ardour and fury
+animated the minds of all.</p>
+
+<p>It is asserted, that at the same time there were persons, either
+treacherous or deceived, who persuaded Frederick that Napoleon was
+obliged to show himself pacific, that that warrior was averse to war;
+they added, that he was perfidiously treating for peace with England, on
+the terms of restoring Hanover, which he was to take back from Prussia.
+Drawn in at last by the general feeling, the king allowed all these
+passions to burst forth. His army advanced, and threatened Napoleon;
+fifteen days afterwards he had neither army nor kingdom; he fled alone;
+and Napoleon dated from Berlin his decrees against England.</p>
+
+<p>Humbled and conquered as Prussia thus was, it was impossible for
+Napoleon to abandon his hold of her; she would have immediately rallied,
+under the cannon of the Russians. Finding it impossible to gain her to
+his interests, like Saxony, by a great act of generosity, the next plan
+was to divide her; and yet, either from compassion, or the effect of
+Alexander's presence, he could not resolve to dismember her. This was a
+mistaken policy, like most of those where we stop half-way; and Napoleon
+was not long before he became sensible of it. When he exclaimed,
+therefore, "Is it possible that I have left this man so large a
+territory?" it is probable that he did not forgive Prussia the
+protection of Alexander; he hated her, because he felt that she hated
+him.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the sparks of a jealous and impatient hatred escaped from the
+youth of Prussia, whose ideas were exalted by a system of education,
+national, liberal, and mystical. It was among them that a formidable
+power arose in opposition to that of Napoleon. It included all whom his
+victories had humbled or offended; it had all the strength of the weak
+and the oppressed, the law of nature, mystery, fanaticism, and revenge!
+Wanting support on earth, it looked up for aid to Heaven, and its moral
+forces were wholly out of the reach of the material power of Napoleon.
+Animated by the devoted and indefatigable spirit of an ardent sect, it
+watched the slightest movements and weakest points of its enemy,
+insinuated itself into all the interstices of his power, and holding
+itself ready to strike at every opportunity, it waited quietly with the
+patience and phlegm which are the peculiar characteristics of the
+Germans, which were the causes of their defeat, and against which our
+victory wore itself out.</p>
+
+<p>This vast conspiracy was that of the <i>Tugendbund</i><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>, or <i>Friends of
+Virtue</i>. Its head, in other words, the person who first gave a precise
+and definite direction to its views, was <i>Stein</i>. Napoleon perhaps might
+have gained him over to his interests, but preferred punishing him. His
+plan happened to be discovered by one of those chances to which the
+police owes the best part of its miracles; but when conspiracies enter
+into the interests, passions, and even the consciences of men, it is
+impossible to seize their ramifications: every one understands without
+communicating; or rather, all is communication&mdash;a general and
+simultaneous sympathy.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In 1808, several literary men at K&ouml;nigsberg, afflicted with
+the evils which desolated their country, ascribed it to the general
+corruption of manners. According to these philosophers, it had stifled
+true patriotism in the citizens, discipline in the army, and courage in
+the people. Good men therefore were bound to unite to regenerate the
+nation, by setting the example of every sacrifice. An association was in
+consequence formed by them, which took the title of <i>Moral and
+Scientific Union</i>. The government approved of it, merely interdicting it
+from political discussions. This resolution, noble as it was, would
+probably have been lost, like many others, in the vagueness of German
+metaphysics; but about that time William, Duke of Brunswick, who had
+been stripped of his duchy, had retired to his principality of Oels in
+Silesia. In the bosom of this retreat he is said to have observed the
+first progress of the <i>Moral Union</i> among the Prussians. He became a
+member of it; and his heart swelling with hatred and revenge, he formed
+the idea of another association, which was to consist of men resolved to
+overthrow the confederation of the Rhine, and to drive the French
+entirely out of Germany. This society, whose object was more real and
+positive than that of the first, soon swallowed up the other; and from
+these two was formed that of the <i>Tugendbund</i>, or <i>Friends of Virtue</i>.
+</p><p>
+About the end of May, 1809, three enterprises&mdash;those of Katt, D&ouml;rnberg,
+and Schill&mdash;had already given proofs of its existence. That of Duke
+William began on the 14th of May. He was at first supported by the
+Austrians. After a variety of adventures, this leader, abandoned to his
+own resources in the midst of subjugated Europe, and left with only 2000
+men to combat with the whole power of Napoleon, refused to yield: he
+stood his ground, and threw himself into Saxony and Hanover; but finding
+it impossible to raise them into insurrection, he cut his way through
+several French corps, which he defeated, to Elsfleth, where he found an
+English vessel waiting to receive and to convey him to England, with the
+laurels he had acquired.</p></div>
+
+<p>This focus spread its fires and gained new partizans every day; it
+attacked the power of Napoleon in the opinion of all Germany, extended
+itself into Italy, and threatened its complete overthrow. It was already
+easy to see that, if circumstances became unfavourable to us, there
+would be no want of men to take advantage of them. In 1809, even before
+the disaster of Esslingen, the first who had ventured to raise the
+standard of independence against Napoleon were Prussians. He sent them
+to the galleys; so important did he feel it to smother that cry of
+revolt, which seemed to echo that of the Spaniards, and might become
+general.</p>
+
+<p>Independently of all these causes of hatred, the position of Prussia,
+between France and Russia, compelled Napoleon to remain her master; he
+could not reign there but by force&mdash;he could not be strong there but by
+her weakness.</p>
+
+<p>He ruined the country, although he must have known well that poverty
+creates audacity; that the hope of gain becomes the moving principle of
+those who have nothing more to lose; and finally, that in leaving them
+nothing but the sword, he in a manner obliged them to turn it against
+himself. In consequence, on the approach of the year 1812, and of the
+terrible struggle which it was to produce, Frederick, uneasy and tired
+of his subservient position, was determined to extricate himself from
+it, either by an alliance or by war. In March, 1811, he offered himself
+to Napoleon as an auxiliary in the expedition which he was preparing. In
+the month of May, and again in the month of August, he repeated that
+offer; and as he received no satisfactory answer, he declared, that as
+the great military movements which surrounded, crossed, or drained his
+kingdom, were such as to excite his apprehension that his entire
+destruction was meditated, "he took up arms, because circumstances
+imperiously called upon him to do so, deeming it far preferable to die
+sword in hand than to fall with disgrace."</p>
+
+<p>It was said at the same time, that Frederick secretly offered to
+Alexander to give him possession of Graudentz, and his magazines, and
+to put himself at the head of his insurgent subjects, if the Russian
+army should advance into Silesia. If the same authorities are to be
+believed, Alexander received this proposition, very favourably. He
+immediately sent to Bagration and Wittgenstein sealed marching orders.
+They were instructed not to open them until they received another letter
+from their sovereign, which he never wrote, having changed his
+resolution. A variety of causes might have dictated that change; 1st, a
+wish not to be the first to commence so great a war, and his anxiety to
+have divine justice and the opinion of mankind on his side, by not
+appearing the aggressor; 2d, that Frederick, becoming less uneasy as to
+the plans of Napoleon, had resolved to follow his fortunes. It is
+probable, after all, that the noble sentiments which Alexander expressed
+in his reply to the king were his only motives: we are assured that he
+wrote to him, "That in a war which might begin by reverses, and in which
+perseverance was required, he only felt courageous for himself, and that
+the misfortunes of an ally might shake his resolution; that it would
+grieve him to chain Prussia to his fortune if it was bad; that if it was
+good he should always be ready to share it with her, whatever line of
+conduct necessity might oblige her to pursue."</p>
+
+<p>These details have been certified to us by a witness, although an
+inferior one. However, whether this counsel proceeded from the
+generosity or the policy of Alexander, or Frederick was determined
+solely by the necessity of the case, it is certain that it was high
+time for him to come to a decision; for in February, 1812, these
+communications with Alexander, <i>if there were such</i>, or the hope of
+obtaining better terms from France having made him hesitate in replying
+to the definitive propositions of Napoleon, the latter, becoming
+impatient, sent additional forces to Dantzic, and made Davoust enter
+Pomerania. His orders for this invasion of a Swedish province were
+repeated and pressing; they were grounded on the illicit commerce
+carried on by the Pomeranians with the English, and subsequently on the
+necessity of compelling Prussia to accede to his terms. The Prince of
+Eckm&uuml;hl even received orders to hold himself in readiness to take
+immediate possession of that kingdom, and to seize the person of her
+sovereign, if within eight days from the date of these orders the latter
+had not concluded the offensive alliance dictated to him by France; but
+while the marshal was tracing the few marches necessary for this
+operation, he received intelligence that the treaty of the 21st of
+February, 1812, had been ratified.</p>
+
+<p>This submission did not altogether satisfy Napoleon. To his strength he
+added artifice; his suspicions still led him to covet the occupation of
+the fortresses, which he was ashamed not to leave in Frederick's hands;
+he required the king to keep only 50 or 80 invalids in some, and desired
+that some French officers should be admitted into others; all of whom
+were to send their reports to him, and to follow his orders. His
+solicitude extended to every thing. "Spandau," said he, in his letters
+to Davoust, "is the citadel of Berlin, as Pillau is that of K&ouml;nigsberg;"
+and French troops had orders to be ready to introduce themselves at the
+first signal: the manner he himself pointed out. At Potsdam, which the
+king had reserved for himself, and which our troops were interdicted
+from entering, his orders were, that the French officers should
+frequently show themselves, in order to observe, and to accustom the
+people to the sight of them. He recommended every degree of respect to
+be shown, both to the king and his subjects; but at the same time he
+required that every sort of arms should be taken from the latter, which
+might be of use to them in an insurrection; and he pointed out every
+thing of the kind, even to the smallest weapon. Anticipating the
+possibility of the loss of a battle, and the chances of Prussian
+<i>vespers</i>, he ordered that his troops should be either put into barracks
+or encampments, with a thousand other precautions of the minutest
+description. As a final security, in case of the English making a
+descent between the Elbe and the Vistula, although Victor, and
+subsequently Augereau, were to occupy Prussia with 50,000 men, he
+engaged by treaty the assistance of 10,000 Danes.</p>
+
+<p>All these precautions were still insufficient to remove his distrust;
+when the Prince of Hatzfeld came to require of him a subsidy of 25
+millions of francs to meet the expenses of the war which was preparing,
+his reply to Daru was, "that he would take especial care not to furnish
+an enemy with arms against himself." In this manner did Frederick,
+entangled as it were in a net of iron, which surrounded and held him
+tight in every part, put between 20 and 30,000 of his troops, and his
+principal fortresses and magazines, at the disposal of Napoleon<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> By this treaty, Prussia agreed to furnish two hundred
+thousand quintals of rye, twenty-four thousand of rice, two million
+bottles of beer, four hundred thousand quintals of wheat, six hundred
+and fifty thousand of straw, three hundred and fifty thousand of hay,
+six million bushels of oats, forty-four thousand oxen, fifteen thousand
+horses, three thousand six hundred waggons, with harness and drivers,
+each carrying a load of fifteen hundred weight; and finally, hospitals
+provided with every thing necessary for twenty thousand sick. It is
+true, that all these supplies were to be allowed in deduction of the
+remainder of the taxes imposed by the conquest.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_III" id="CHAP_III"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>These two treaties opened the road to Russia to Napoleon; but in order
+to penetrate into the interior of that empire, it was necessary to make
+sure of Sweden and Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>Military combinations were then so much aggrandized, that in order to
+sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the
+configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course
+of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were
+contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the
+general and relative position of every state with a universal <i>coup
+d'&oelig;il</i>; it was no longer on single maps, but on that of the whole
+globe, that their policy had to trace its plans of hostility.</p>
+
+<p>Russia is mistress of the heights of Europe; her flanks are supported by
+the seas of the north and south. Her government can only with great
+difficulty be driven into a straight, and forced to submit, in a space
+almost beyond the imagination to conceive: the conquest of which would
+require long campaigns, to which her climate is completely opposed. From
+this, it follows, that without the concurrence of Turkey and Sweden,
+Russia is less vulnerable. The assistance of these two powers was
+therefore requisite in order to surprise her, to strike her to the heart
+in her modern capital, and to turn at a distance, in the rear of its
+left, her grand army of the Niemen,&mdash;and not merely to precipitate
+attacks on a part of her front, in plains where the extent of space
+prevented confusion, and left a thousand roads open to the retreat of
+that army.</p>
+
+<p>The meanest soldier in our ranks, therefore, expected to hear of the
+combined march of the Grand Vizir towards Kief, and of Bernadotte
+against Finland. Eight sovereigns were already enlisted under the
+banners of Napoleon; but the two who had the greatest interest in the
+quarrel were still deaf to his call. It was an idea worthy of the great
+emperor to put all the governments and all the religions of Europe in
+motion for the accomplishment of his great designs: their triumph would
+have been then secured; and if the voice of another Homer had been
+wanting to this king of so many kings, the voice of the nineteenth
+century, the great century, would have supplied it; and the cry of
+astonishment of a whole age, penetrating and piercing through futurity,
+would have echoed from generation to generation, to the latest
+posterity!</p>
+
+<p>So much glory was not in reserve for us.</p>
+
+<p>Which of us, in the French army, can ever forget his astonishment, in
+the midst of the Russian plains, on hearing the news of the fatal
+treaties of the Turks and Swedes with Alexander; and how anxiously our
+looks were turned towards our right uncovered, towards our left
+enfeebled, and upon our retreat menaced? <i>Then</i> we only looked at the
+fatal effects of the peace between our allies and our enemy; <i>now</i> we
+feel desirous of knowing the causes of it.</p>
+
+<p>The treaties concluded about the end of the last century, had subjected
+the weak sultan of the Turks to Russia; the Egyptian expedition had
+armed him against us. But ever since Napoleon had assumed the reins of
+power, a well-understood common interest, and the intimacy of a
+mysterious correspondence, had reconciled Selim with the first consul: a
+close connexion was established between these two princes, and they had
+exchanged portraits with each other. Selim attempted to effect a great
+revolution in the Turkish customs. Napoleon encouraged him, and was
+assisting him in introducing the European discipline into the Ottoman
+army, when the victory of Jena, the war of Poland, and the influence of
+Sebastiani, determined the sultan to throw off the yoke of Alexander.
+The English made hasty attempts to oppose this, but they were driven
+from the sea of Constantinople. Then it was that Napoleon wrote the
+following letter to Selim.</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Osterode, April</i> 3, 1807.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"My ambassador informs me of the bravery and good conduct of the
+Mussulmans against our common enemies. Thou hast shown thyself the
+worthy descendant of the Selims and the Solimans. Thou hast asked me for
+some officers; I send them to thee. I regretted that thou hadst not
+required of me some thousand men,&mdash;thou hast only asked for five
+hundred; I have given orders for their immediate departure. It is my
+intention that they shall be paid and clothed at my expense, and that
+thou shalt be reimbursed the expenses which they may occasion thee. I
+have given orders to the commander of my troops in Dalmatia to send thee
+the arms, ammunition, and every thing thou shalt require of me. I have
+given the same orders at Naples; and artillery has been already placed
+at the disposal of the pasha of Janina. Generals, officers, arms of
+every description, even money&mdash;I place all at thy disposal. Thou hast
+only to ask: do so in a distinct manner, and all which thou shalt
+require I will send thee on the instant. Arrange matters with the shah
+of Persia, who is also the enemy of the Russians; encourage him to stand
+fast, and to attack warmly the common enemy. I have beaten the Russians
+in a great battle; I have taken from them seventy-five pieces of cannon,
+sixteen standards, and a great number of prisoners. I am at the distance
+of eighty leagues beyond Warsaw, and am about to take advantage of the
+fifteen days' repose which I have given to my army, to repair thither,
+and there to receive thy ambassador. I am sensible of the want thou hast
+of artillerymen and troops; I have offered both to thy ambassador; but
+he has declined them, from a fear of alarming the delicacy of the
+Mussulmans. Confide to me all thy wants; I am sufficiently powerful, and
+sufficiently interested in thy prosperity, both from friendship and
+policy, to have nothing to refuse thee. Peace has been proposed to me
+here. I have been offered all the advantages which I could desire; but
+they wished that I should ratify the state of things established
+between the Porte and Russia by the treaty of Sistowa, and I refused. My
+answer was, <i>that it was necessary that the Porte should be secured in
+complete independence; and that all the treaties extorted from her,
+during the time that France was asleep, should be revoked</i>."</p>
+
+<p>This letter of Napoleon had been preceded and followed by verbal but
+formal assurances, that he would not sheath the sword, until the Crimea
+was restored to the dominion of the crescent. He had even authorized
+Sebastiani to give the divan a copy of his instructions, which contained
+these promises.</p>
+
+<p>Such were his words, with which his actions at first corresponded.
+Sebastiani demanded a passage through Turkey for an army of 25,000
+French, which he was to command, and which was to join the Ottoman army.
+An unforeseen circumstance, it is true, deranged this plan; but Napoleon
+then made Selim the promise of an auxiliary force of 9000 French,
+including 5000 artillerymen, who were to be conveyed in eleven vessels
+of the line to Constantinople. The Turkish ambassador was at the same
+time treated with the greatest distinction in the French camp; he
+accompanied Napoleon in all his reviews: the most flattering attentions
+were paid to him, and the grand-equerry (Caulaincourt,) was already
+treating with him for an alliance, offensive and defensive, when a
+sudden attack by the Russians interrupted the negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>The ambassador returned to Warsaw, where the same respect continued to
+be shown him, up to the day of the decisive victory of Friedland. But
+on the following day his illusion was dissipated; he saw himself
+neglected; for it was no longer Selim whom he represented. A revolution
+had just hurled from the throne the monarch who had been the friend of
+Napoleon, and with him all hope of giving the Turks a regular army, upon
+which he could depend. Napoleon, therefore, judging that he could no
+longer reckon upon the assistance of these barbarians, changed his
+system. Henceforward it was Alexander whom he wished to gain; and as his
+was a genius which never hesitated, he was already prepared to abandon
+the empire of the East to that monarch, in order that he might be left
+at liberty to possess himself of that of the West.</p>
+
+<p>As his great object was the extension of the continental system, and to
+make it surround Europe, the co-operation of Russia would complete its
+development. Alexander would shut out the English from the North, and
+compel Sweden to go to war with them; the French would expel them from
+the centre, from the south, and from the west of Europe. Napoleon was
+already meditating the expedition to Portugal, if that kingdom would not
+join his coalition. With these ideas floating in his brain, Turkey was
+now only an accessary in his plans, and he agreed to the armistice, and
+to the conferences at Tilsit.</p>
+
+<p>But a deputation had just come from Wilna, soliciting the restoration of
+their national independence, and professing the same devotion to his
+cause as had been shown by Warsaw; Berthier, whose ambition was
+satisfied, and who began to be tired of war, dismissed these envoys
+rudely, styling them traitors to their sovereign. The Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl,
+on the contrary, favoured their object, and presented them to Napoleon,
+who was irritated with Berthier for his treatment of these Lithuanians,
+and received them graciously, without, however, promising them his
+support. In vain did Davoust represent to him that the opportunity was
+favourable, owing to the destruction of the Russian army; Napoleon's
+reply was, "that Sweden had just declared her armistice to him; that
+Austria offered her mediation between France and Russia, which he looked
+upon as a hostile step; that the Prussians, seeing him at such a
+distance from France, might recover from their intimidation; and
+finally, that Selim, his faithful ally, had just been dethroned, and his
+place filled by Mustapha IV., of whose dispositions he knew nothing."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor of France continued, therefore, to negotiate with Russia;
+and the Turkish ambassador, neglected and forgotten, wandered about our
+camp, without being summoned to take any part in the negotiations which
+terminated the war; he returned to Constantinople soon after, in great
+displeasure. Neither the Crimea, nor even Moldavia and Wallachia, were
+restored to that barbarous court by the treaty of Tilsit; the
+restitution of the two latter provinces was only stipulated by an
+armistice, the conditions of which were never meant to be executed. But
+as Napoleon professed to be the mediator between Mustapha and Alexander,
+the ministers of the two powers repaired to Paris. But there, during
+the long continuance of that feigned mediation, the Turkish
+plenipotentiaries were never admitted to his presence.</p>
+
+<p>If we must even tell the whole truth, it is asserted, that at the
+interview at Tilsit, and subsequently, a treaty for the partition of
+Turkey was under discussion. It was proposed to Russia to take
+possession of Wallachia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, and a part of Mount Hemus.
+Austria was to have Servia and a part of Bosnia; France the other part
+of that province, Albania, Macedonia, and all Greece as far as
+Thessalonica: Constantinople, Adrianople, and Thrace, were to be left to
+the Turks.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the conferences respecting this partition were really of a
+serious nature, or merely the communication of a great idea, is
+uncertain; so much is certain, that shortly after the interview at
+Tilsit, Alexander's ambition was very sensibly moderated. The
+suggestions of prudence had shown him the danger of substituting for the
+ignorant, infatuated, and feeble Turkey, an active, powerful, and
+unaccommodating neighbour. In his conversations on the subject at that
+time, he remarked, "that he had already too much desert country; that he
+knew too well, by the occupation of the Crimea, which was still
+depopulated, the value of conquest over foreign and hostile religions
+and manners; that besides, France and Russia were too strong to become
+such near neighbours; that two such powerful bodies coming into
+immediate contact, would be sure to jostle; and that it was much better
+to leave intermediate powers between them."</p>
+
+<p>On the other side, the French emperor urged the matter no further; the
+Spanish insurrection diverted his attention, and imperiously required
+his presence with all his forces. Even previous to the interview at
+Erfurt, after Sebastiani's return from Constantinople, although Napoleon
+still seemed to adhere to the idea of dismembering Turkey in Europe, he
+had admitted the correctness of his ambassador's reasoning: "That in
+this partition, the advantages would be all against him; that Russia and
+Austria would acquire contiguous provinces, which would make their
+dominions more complete, while we should be obliged to keep 80,000 men
+continually in Greece to retain it in subjection; that such an army,
+from the distance and losses it would sustain from long marches, and the
+novelty and unhealthiness of the climate, would require 30,000 recruits
+annually, a number which would quite drain France: that a line of
+operation extending from Athens to Paris, was out of all proportion;
+that besides, it was strangled in its passage at Trieste, at which point
+only two marches would enable the Austrians to place themselves across
+it, and thereby cut off our army of observation in Greece from all
+communication with Italy and France."</p>
+
+<p>Here Napoleon exclaimed, "that Austria certainly complicated every
+thing; that she was there like a dead weight; that she must be got rid
+off; and Europe must be divided into two empires: that the Danube, from
+the Black Sea to Passau, the mountains of Bohemia to K&ouml;nigsgratz, and
+the Elbe to the Baltic, should be their lines of demarcation. Alexander
+should become the emperor of the north, and he of the south of Europe."
+Abandoning, subsequently, these lofty ideas, and reverting to
+Sebastiani's observations on the partition of European Turkey, he
+terminated the conferences, which had lasted three days, with these
+words: "You are right, and no answer can be given to that! I give it up.
+Besides, that accords with my views on Spain, which I am going to unite
+to France."&mdash;"What do I hear?" exclaimed Sebastiani, astonished, "unite
+it! And your brother!"&mdash;"What signifies my brother?" retorted Napoleon;
+"does one give away a kingdom like Spain? I am determined to unite it to
+France. I will give that nation a great national representation. I will
+make the emperor Alexander consent to it, by allowing him to take
+possession of Turkey to the Danube, and I will evacuate Berlin. As to
+Joseph, I will indemnify him."</p>
+
+<p>The congress at Erfurt took place just after this. He could have no
+motive at that time for supporting the rights of the Turks. The French
+army, which had advanced imprudently into the very heart of Spain, had
+met with reverses. The presence of its leader, and that of his armies of
+the Rhine and the Elbe, became there every day more and more necessary,
+and Austria had availed herself of the opportunity to take up arms.
+Uneasy respecting the state of Germany, Napoleon was therefore anxious
+to make sure of the dispositions of Alexander, to conclude an alliance
+offensive and defensive with him, and even to engage him in a war. Such
+were the reasons which induced him to abandon Turkey as far as the
+Danube to that emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The Porte therefore had very soon reason to reproach us for the war
+which was renewed between it and Russia. Notwithstanding, in July, 1808,
+when Mustapha was dethroned, and succeeded by Mahmoud, the latter
+announced his accession to the French emperor; but Napoleon had then to
+keep upon terms with Alexander, and felt too much regret at the death of
+Selim, detestation of the barbarity of the Mussulmans, and contempt for
+their unstable government, to allow him to notice the communication. For
+three years he had returned no reply to the sultan, and his silence
+might be interpreted into a refusal to acknowledge him.</p>
+
+<p>He was in this ambiguous position with the Turks, when all of a sudden,
+on the 21st of March, 1812, only six weeks before the war with Russia
+commenced, he solicited an alliance with Mahmoud: he demanded that,
+within five days from the period of the communication, all negotiation
+between the Turks and Russians should be broken off; and that an army of
+100,000 men, commanded by the sultan himself, should march to the Danube
+within nine days. The return which he proposed to make for this
+assistance was, to put the Porte in possession of the very same Moldavia
+and Wallachia, which, under the circumstances, the Russians were but too
+happy to restore as the price of a speedy peace; and the promise of
+procuring the restoration of the Crimea, which he had made six years
+before to Selim, was again renewed.</p>
+
+<p>We know not whether the time which this despatch would take to arrive at
+Constantinople had been badly calculated, whether Napoleon believed the
+Turkish army to be stronger than it really was, or whether he had
+flattered himself with surprising and captivating the determination of
+the divan by so sudden and advantageous a proposition. It can hardly be
+supposed that he was ignorant of the long invariable custom of the
+Mussulmans, which prevented the grand signor from ever appearing in
+person at the head of his army.</p>
+
+<p>It appears as if the genius of Napoleon could not stoop so low as to
+impute to the divan the brutish ignorance which it exhibited of its real
+interests. After the manner in which he had abandoned the interests of
+Turkey in 1807, perhaps he did not make sufficient allowance for the
+distrust which the Mussulmans were likely to entertain of his new
+promises; he forgot that they were too ignorant to appreciate the change
+which recent circumstances had effected in his political views; and that
+barbarians like them could still less comprehend the feelings of dislike
+with which they had inspired him, by their deposition and murder of
+Selim, to whom he was attached, and in conjunction with whom he had
+hoped to make European Turkey a military power capable of coping with
+Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he might still have gained over Mahmoud to his cause, if he had
+sooner made use of more potent arguments; but, as he has since expressed
+himself, it revolted his pride to make use of corruption. We shall
+besides shortly see him hesitating about beginning a war with Alexander,
+or laying too much stress on the alarm with which his immense
+preparations would inspire that monarch. It is also possible, that the
+last propositions which he made to the Turks, being tantamount to a
+declaration of war against the Russians, were delayed for the express
+purpose of deceiving the Czar as to the period of his invasion. Finally,
+whether it was from all these causes, from a confidence founded on the
+mutual hatred of the two nations, and on his treaty of alliance with
+Austria, which had just guaranteed Moldavia and Wallachia to the Turks,
+he detained the ambassador whom he sent to them on his road, and waited,
+as we have just seen, to the very last moment.</p>
+
+<p>But the divan was surrounded by the Russian, English, Austrian, and
+Swedish envoys, who with one voice represented to it, "that the Turks
+were indebted for their existence in Europe solely to the divisions
+which existed among the Christian monarchs; that the moment these were
+united under one influence, the Mahometans in Europe would be
+overwhelmed; and that as the French emperor was advancing rapidly to the
+attainment of universal empire, it was him whom the Turks had most
+reason to dread."</p>
+
+<p>To these representations were added the intrigues of the two Greek
+princes Morozi. They were of the same religion with Alexander, and they
+looked to him for the possession of Moldavia and Wallachia. Grown rich
+by his favours and by the gold of England, these dragomans enlightened
+the unsuspecting ignorance of the Turks, as to the occupation and
+military surveys of the Ottoman frontiers by the French. They did a
+great deal more; the first of them influenced the dispositions of the
+divan and the capital, and the second those of the grand vizir and the
+army; and as the proud Mahmoud resisted, and would only accept an
+honourable peace, these treacherous Greeks contrived to disband his
+army, and compelled him, by insurrections, to sign the degrading treaty
+of Bucharest with the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the power of intrigue in the seraglio; two Greeks whom the Turks
+despised, there decided the fate of Turkey, in spite of the sultan
+himself. As the latter depended for his existence on the intrigues of
+his palace, he was, like all despots who shut themselves up in them,
+obliged to yield: the Morozi carried the day; but afterwards he had them
+both beheaded.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IV" id="CHAP_IV"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In this manner did we lose the support of Turkey; but Sweden still
+remained to us; her monarch had sprung from our ranks; a soldier of our
+army, it was to that he owed his glory and his throne: was it likely
+that he would desert our cause on the first opportunity he had of
+showing his gratitude? It was impossible to anticipate such ingratitude;
+still less, that he would sacrifice the real and permanent interests of
+Sweden to his former jealousy of Napoleon, and perhaps to a weakness too
+common among the upstart favourites of fortune; unless it be that the
+submission of men who have newly attained to greatness to those who
+boast of a transmitted rank, is a necessity of their position rather
+than an error of their self-love.</p>
+
+<p>In this great contest between aristocracy and democracy, the ranks of
+the former had been joined by one of its most determined enemies.
+Bernadotte being thrown almost singly among the ancient courts and
+nobility, did every thing to merit his adoption by them, and succeeded.
+But his success must have cost him dear, as in order to obtain it, he
+was first obliged to abandon his old companions, and the authors of his
+glory, in the hour of peril. At a later period he did more; he was seen
+marching over their bleeding corses, joining with all their, and
+formerly his, enemies, to overwhelm the country of his birth, and
+thereby lay that of his adoption at the mercy of the first czar who
+should be ambitious of reigning over the Baltic.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it would appear that the character of Bernadotte, and
+the importance of Sweden in the decisive struggle which was about to
+commence, were not sufficiently weighed in the political balance of
+Napoleon. His ardent and exclusive genius hazarded too much; he
+overloaded a solid foundation so much that he sank it. Thus it was, that
+after justly appreciating the Swedish interests as naturally bound up
+with his, the moment he wished to weaken the power of Russia, he fancied
+that he could exact every thing from the Swedes without promising them
+any thing in return: his pride did not make any allowance for theirs,
+judging that they were too much interested in the success of his cause,
+for them ever to think of separating themselves from it.</p>
+
+<p>We must, however, take up the history a little earlier; facts will prove
+that the defection of Sweden was as much attributable to the jealous
+ambition of Bernadotte as to the unbending pride of Napoleon. It will be
+seen that her new monarch assumed to himself a great part of the
+responsibility of the rupture, by offering his alliance at the price of
+an act of treachery.</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon returned from Egypt, he did not become the chief of his
+equals with all their concurrence. Such of them as were already jealous
+of his glory then became still more envious of his power. As they could
+not dispute the first, they attempted to refuse obedience to the second.
+Moreau, and several other generals, either by persuasion or surprise,
+had co-operated in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire: they afterwards
+repented having done so. Bernadotte had refused all participation in it.
+Alone, during the night, in Napoleon's own residence, amidst a thousand
+devoted officers, waiting only for the conqueror's orders, Bernadotte,
+then a strenuous republican, was daring enough to oppose his arguments,
+to refuse the second place in the republic, and to retort upon his anger
+by threats. Napoleon saw him depart, bearing himself proudly, and pass
+through the midst of his partizans, carrying with him his secrets, and
+declaring himself his enemy, and even his denouncer. Either from respect
+to his brother, to whom Bernadotte was allied by marriage, from
+moderation, the usual companion of strength, or from astonishment, he
+suffered him to depart quietly.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the same night, a conventicle, consisting of ten
+deputies of the Council of Five Hundred, met at the house of S&mdash;&mdash;;
+thither Bernadotte repaired. They settled, that at nine o'clock next
+morning the Council should hold a sitting, to which those only should be
+invited who were of the same way of thinking; that there a decree should
+be passed, that in imitation of the Council of Ancients, which had
+prudently named Bonaparte general of its guard, the Council of Five
+Hundred had appointed Bernadotte to command theirs; and that the latter,
+properly armed, should be in readiness to be summoned to it. It was at
+S&mdash;&mdash;'s house that this plan was formed. S&mdash;&mdash; himself immediately
+afterwards ran to Napoleon, and disclosed the whole to him. A threat
+from the latter was quite sufficient to keep the conspirators in order;
+not one of them dared show his face at the Council, and the next day the
+revolution of the 18th Brumaire was completed.</p>
+
+<p>Bernadotte was prudent enough afterwards to feign submission, but
+Napoleon had not forgotten his opposition. He kept a watchful eye on all
+his movements. Not long after, he suspected his being at the head of a
+republican conspiracy which had been forming against him in the west. A
+premature proclamation discovered it; an officer who had been arrested
+for other causes, and an accomplice of Bernadotte, denounced the
+authors. On that occasion Bernadotte's ruin would have been sealed, if
+Napoleon had been able to convict him of it.</p>
+
+<p>He was satisfied with banishing him to America, under the title of
+minister of the Republic. But fortune favoured Bernadotte, who was
+already at Rochefort, by delaying his embarkation until the war with
+England was renewed. He then refused to go, and Napoleon could no longer
+compel him.</p>
+
+<p>All the relations between them had thus been those of hatred; and this
+check only served to aggravate them. Soon after, Napoleon was heard
+reproaching Bernadotte with his envious and treacherous inaction during
+the battle of Auerstadt, and his order of the day at Wagram, in which
+he had assumed the honour of that victory. He also spoke reproachfully
+of his character, as being much more ambitious than patriotic; and
+perhaps of the fascination of his manners,&mdash;all of them things
+considered dangerous to a recently established government; and yet he
+had showered rank, titles, and distinctions upon him, while Bernadotte,
+always ungrateful, seemed to accept them merely as in justice due to his
+merits, or to the want which was felt of him. These complaints of
+Napoleon were not without foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Bernadotte, on his side, abusing the emperor's moderation and desire to
+keep on terms with him, gradually incurred an increase of his
+displeasure, which his ambition was pleased to call enmity. He demanded
+why Napoleon had placed him in such a dangerous and false position at
+Wagram? why the report of that victory had been so unfavourable to him?
+to what was he to attribute the jealous anxiety to weaken his eulogium
+in the journals by artful notes? Up to that time, however, the obscure
+and underhand opposition of this general to his emperor had been of no
+importance; but a much wider field was then opened to their
+misunderstanding.</p>
+
+<p>By the treaty of Tilsit, Sweden, as well as Turkey, had been sacrificed
+to Russia and the continental system. The mistaken or mad politics of
+Gustavus IV. had been the cause of this. Ever since 1804 that monarch
+appeared to have enlisted himself in the pay of England; it was he also
+who had been the first to break the ancient alliance between France and
+Sweden. He had obstinately persevered in that false policy to such an
+extent at first, as to contend against France when she was victorious
+over Russia, and afterwards with Russia and France united. The loss of
+Pomerania, in 1807, and even that of Finland and the islands of Aland,
+which were united to Russia in 1808, were not sufficient to shake his
+obstinacy.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that his irritated subjects resumed that power which had
+been wrested from them, in 1772 and 1788, by Gustavus III., and of which
+his successor made so bad a use. Gustavus Adolphus IV. was imprisoned
+and dethroned; his lineal descendants were excluded from the throne; his
+uncle was put in his place, and the prince of Holstein-Augustenburg
+elected hereditary prince of Sweden. As the war had been the cause of
+this revolution peace was the result of it; it was concluded with Russia
+in 1809; but the newly-elected hereditary prince then died suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of 1810, France restored Pomerania and the Island of
+Rugen to Sweden, as the price of her accession to the continental
+system. The Swedes, worn out, impoverished, and become almost islanders,
+in consequence of the loss of Finland, were very loath to break with
+England, and yet they had no remedy; on the other side they stood in awe
+of the neighbouring and powerful government of Russia. Finding
+themselves weak and isolated, they looked round for support.</p>
+
+<p>Bernadotte had just been appointed to the command of the French army
+which took possession of Pomerania; his military reputation, and still
+more that of his nation and its sovereign, his fascinating mildness, his
+generosity, and his flattering attentions to the Swedes, with whom he
+had to treat, induced several of them to cast their eyes upon him. They
+appeared to know nothing of the misunderstanding between this marshal
+and the emperor; they fancied that by electing him for their prince,
+they should not only obtain an able and experienced general, but also a
+powerful mediator between France and Sweden, and a certain protector in
+the emperor: it happened quite the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>During the intrigues to which this circumstance gave rise, Bernadotte
+fancied that to his previous complaints against Napoleon he had to add
+others. When, in opposition to the king, and the majority of the members
+of the diet, he was proposed as successor to the crown of Sweden; when
+his pretensions were supported by Charles's prime minister, (a man of no
+family, who owed, like him, all his illustration to himself,) and the
+count de Wrede, the only member of the diet who had reserved his vote
+for him; when he came to solicit Napoleon's interference, why did he,
+when Charles XIII. desired to know his wishes, exhibit so much
+indifference? Why did he prefer the union of the three northern crowns
+on the head of a prince of Denmark? If he, Bernadotte, succeeded in the
+enterprise, he was not at all indebted for it to the emperor of France;
+he owed it to the pretensions of the king of Denmark, which
+counteracted those of the duke of Augustenburg<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>, his most dangerous
+rival; to the grateful audacity of the baron de M&oelig;rner, who was the
+first to come to him, and offer to put him on the lists, and to the
+aversion of the Swedes to the Danes; above all he owed it to a passport
+which had been adroitly obtained by his agent from Napoleon's minister.
+It was said that this document was audaciously produced by Bernadotte's
+secret emissary, as a proof of an autograph mission with which he
+pretended to be charged, and of the formal desire of the French emperor
+to see one of his lieutenants, and the relation of his brother, placed
+upon the throne of Sweden.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Brother of the deceased prince of that name.</p></div>
+
+<p>Bernadotte also felt that he owed this crown to the chance, which
+brought him in communication with the Swedes, and made them acquainted
+with his characteristic qualities; to the birth of his son, which
+secured the heredity succession; to the address of his agents, who,
+either with or without his authority, dazzled the poverty of the
+Scandinavians with the promise of fourteen millions with which his
+election was to enrich their treasury; and finally to his flattering
+attentions, which had gained him the voices of several Swedish officers
+who had been his prisoners. But as to Napoleon, what did he owe to him?
+What was his reply to the news of the offer of several Swedes, when he
+himself waited upon him to inform him of it? "I am at too great a
+distance from Sweden, to mix myself up in her affairs. You must not
+reckon upon my support." At the same time it is true, that either from
+necessity, from his dreading the election of the duke of Oldenburg; or
+finally from respect for the wishes of fortune, Napoleon declared that
+he would leave it to her to decide: and Bernadotte was in consequence
+elected crown prince of Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>The newly-elected prince immediately paid his respects to the emperor,
+who received him frankly. "As you are offered the crown of Sweden, I
+permit you to accept it. I had another wish, as you know; but, in short,
+it is your sword which has made you a king, and you are sensible that it
+is not for me to stand in the way of your good fortune." He then entered
+very fully with him into the whole plan of his policy, in which
+Bernadotte appeared entirely to concur; every day he attended the
+emperor's levee together with his son, mixing with the other courtiers.
+By such marks of deference, he completely gained the heart of Napoleon.
+He was about to depart, poor. Unwilling that he should present himself
+to the Swedish throne in that necessitous state, like a mere adventurer,
+the emperor generously gave him two millions out of his own treasury; he
+even granted to his family the dotations which as a foreign prince he
+could no longer retain himself; and they parted on apparent terms of
+mutual satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural that the expectations of Napoleon as to the alliance with
+Sweden should be heightened by this election, and by the favours which
+he had bestowed. At first Bernadotte's correspondence with him was that
+of a grateful inferior, but the very moment he was fairly out of France,
+feeling himself as it were relieved from a state of long and painful
+constraint, it is said that his hatred to Napoleon vented itself in
+threatening expressions, which, whether true or false, were reported to
+the emperor.</p>
+
+<p>On his side, that monarch, forced to be absolute in his continental
+system, cramped the commerce of Sweden; he wished her even to exclude
+American vessels from her ports; and at last he declared that he would
+only regard as friends the enemies of Great Britain. Bernadotte was
+obliged to make his election; the winter and the sea separated him from
+the assistance, or protected him from the attacks, of the English; the
+French were close to his ports; a war with France therefore would be
+real and effective; a war with England would be merely on paper. The
+prince of Sweden adopted the latter alternative.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, however, being as much a conqueror in peace as in war, and
+suspecting the intentions of Bernadotte, had demanded from Sweden
+several supplies of rigging for his Brest fleet, and the despatch of a
+body of troops, which were to be in his pay; in this manner weakening
+his allies to subdue his enemies, so as to allow him to be the master of
+both. He also required that colonial produce should be subjected in
+Sweden, the same as in France, to a duty of five per cent. It is even
+affirmed that he applied to Bernadotte to allow French custom-house
+officers to be placed at Gottenburg. These demands were eluded.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, Napoleon proposed an alliance between Sweden, Denmark, and
+the grand duchy of Warsaw; a northern confederation, of which he would
+have declared himself protector, like that of the Rhine. The answer of
+Bernadotte, without being absolutely negative, had the same effect; it
+was the same with the offensive and defensive treaty which Napoleon
+again proposed to him. Bernadotte has since declared, that in four
+successive letters written with his own hand, he had frankly stated the
+impossibility he was under of complying with his wishes, and repeated
+his protestations of attachment to his former sovereign, but that the
+latter never deigned to give him any reply. This impolitic silence (if
+the fact be true,) can only be attributed to the pride of Napoleon,
+which was piqued at Bernadotte's refusals. No doubt he considered his
+protestations as too false to deserve any answer.</p>
+
+<p>The irritation increased; the communications became disagreeable; they
+were interrupted by the recall of Alquier, the French minister in
+Sweden. As the pretended declaration of war by Bernadotte against
+England remained a dead letter, Napoleon, who was not to be denied or
+deceived with impunity, carried on a sharp war against the Swedish
+commerce by means of his privateers. By them, and the invasion of
+Swedish Pomerania on the 27th of January, 1812, he punished Bernadotte
+for his deviations from the continental system, and obtained as
+prisoners several thousand Swedish soldiers and sailors, whom he had in
+vain demanded as auxiliaries.</p>
+
+<p>Then also our communications with Russia were broken off. Napoleon
+immediately addressed himself to the prince of Sweden; his notes were
+couched in the style of a lord paramount who fancies he speaks in the
+interest of his vassal, who feels the claims he has upon his gratitude
+or submission, and who calculates upon his obedience. He demanded that
+Bernadotte should declare a real war against England, shut her out from
+the Baltic, and send an army of 40,000 Swedes against Russia. In return
+for this, he promised him his protection, the restoration of Finland,
+and twenty millions, in return for an equal amount of colonial produce,
+which the Swedes were first to deliver. Austria undertook to support
+this proposition; but Bernadotte, already feeling himself settled on the
+throne, answered like an independent monarch. Ostensibly he declared
+himself neutral, opened his ports to all nations, proclaimed his rights
+and his grievances, appealed to humanity, recommended peace, and offered
+himself as a mediator; secretly, he offered himself to Napoleon at the
+price of Norway, Finland, and a subsidy.</p>
+
+<p>At the reading of a letter conceived in this new and unexpected style,
+Bonaparte was seized with rage and astonishment. He saw in it, and not
+without reason, a premeditated defection on the part of Bernadotte, a
+secret agreement with his enemies! He was filled with indignation; he
+exclaimed, striking violently on the letter, and the table on which it
+lay open: "He! the rascal! he presume to give me advice! to dictate the
+law to me! to dare propose such an infamous act<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> to me! And this from
+a man who owes every thing to my bounty! What ingratitude!" Then, pacing
+the room with rapid strides, at intervals he gave vent to such
+expressions as these: "I ought to have expected it! he has always
+sacrificed every thing to his interests! This is the same man, who,
+during his short ministry, attempted the resurrection of the infamous
+Jacobins! When he looked only to gain by disorder, he opposed the 18th
+Brumaire! He it was who was conspiring in the west against the
+re-establishment of law and religion! Has not his envious and perfidious
+inaction already betrayed the French army at Auerstadt? How many times,
+from regard to Joseph, have I pardoned his intrigues and concealed his
+faults! And yet I have made him general-in-chief, marshal, duke, prince,
+and finally king! But see how all these favours and the pardon of so
+many injuries, are thrown away on a man like this! If Sweden, half
+devoured by Russia, for a century past, has retained her independence,
+she owes it to the support of France. But it matters not; Bernadotte
+requires the baptism of the ancient aristocracy! a baptism of blood, and
+of French blood! and you will soon see, that to satisfy his envy and
+ambition, he will betray both his native and adopted country."</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Napoleon no doubt spoke of the proposal which Bernadotte
+made to him to take Norway from Denmark, his faithful ally, in order by
+this act of treachery to purchase the assistance of Sweden.</p></div>
+
+<p>In vain did they attempt to calm him. They represented the difficulties
+which Bernadotte's new situation had imposed on him; that the cession of
+Finland to Russia had separated Sweden from the continent, almost made
+an island of that country, and thereby enlisted her in the English
+system.&mdash;In such critical circumstances, all the need which he had of
+this ally was unable to vanquish his pride, which revolted at a
+proposition which he regarded as insulting; perhaps also in the new
+prince of Sweden he still saw the same Bernadotte who was lately his
+subject, and his military inferior, and who at last affected to have cut
+out for himself a destiny independent of his. From that moment his
+instructions to his minister bore the impress of that disposition; the
+latter, it is true, softened the bitterness of them, but a rupture
+became inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>It is uncertain which contributed most to it, the pride of Napoleon, or
+the ancient jealousy of Bernadotte; it is certain that on the part of
+the former the motives of it were honourable. "Denmark" he said, "was
+his most faithful ally; her attachment to France had cost her the loss
+of her fleet and the burning of her capital. Must he repay a fidelity
+which had been so cruelly tried, by an act of treachery such as that of
+taking Norway from her to give to Sweden?"</p>
+
+<p>As to the subsidy which Sweden required of him, he answered, as he had
+done to Turkey, "that if the war was to be carried on with money,
+England would always be sure to outbid him;" and above all, "that there
+was weakness and baseness in triumphing by corruption." Reverting by
+this to his wounded pride, he terminated the conference by exclaiming,
+"Bernadotte impose conditions on me! Does he fancy then that I have need
+of him? I will soon bind him to my victorious career, and compel him to
+follow my sovereign impulse."</p>
+
+<p>But the active and speculative English, who were out of his reach, made
+a judicious estimate of the weak points of his system, and found the
+Russians ready to act upon their suggestions. They it was who had been
+endeavouring for the last three years to draw the forces of Napoleon
+into the defiles of Spain, and to exhaust them; it was they also who
+were on the watch to take advantage of the vindictive enmity of the
+prince of Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing that the active and restless vanity of men newly risen from
+obscurity is always uneasy and susceptible, in the presence of ancient
+<i>parvenus</i>, George and Alexander were lavish of their promises and
+flattery, in order to cajole Bernadotte. It was thus that they caressed
+him, at the time that the irritated Napoleon was threatening him; they
+promised him Norway and a subsidy, when the other, forced to refuse him
+that province of a faithful ally, took possession of Pomerania. While
+Napoleon, a monarch deriving his elevation from himself, relying on the
+faith of treaties, on the remembrance of past benefits, and on the real
+interests of Sweden, required succours from Bernadotte, the hereditary
+monarchs of London and Petersburgh required his opinion with deference,
+and submitted themselves by anticipation to the counsels of his
+experience. Finally, while the genius of Napoleon, the grandeur of his
+elevation, the importance of his enterprise, and the habit of their
+former relations, still classed Bernadotte as his lieutenant, these
+monarchs appeared already to treat him as their general. How was it
+possible for him not to seek to escape on the one hand from this sense
+of inferiority, and on the other to resist a mode of treatment, and
+promises so seductive? Thus the future prospects of Sweden were
+sacrificed, and her independence for ever laid at the mercy of Russian
+faith by the treaty of Petersburgh, which Bernadotte signed on the 24th
+of March, 1812. That of Bucharest, between Alexander and Mahmoud, was
+concluded on the 28th of May.&mdash;Thus did we lose the support of our two
+wings.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the emperor of the French, at the head of more than six
+hundred thousand men, and already too far advanced to think of
+retreating, flattered himself that his strength would decide every
+thing; that a victory on the Niemen would cut the knot of all these
+diplomatic difficulties, which he despised, probably too much; that
+then all the monarchs of Europe, compelled to acknowledge his
+ascendancy, would be eager to return into his system, and that all those
+satellites would be drawn into its vortex.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"></a>BOOK II.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Ia" id="CHAPTER_Ia"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Napoleon meanwhile was still at Paris, in the midst of his great
+officers, who were alarmed by the terrible encounter which was
+preparing. The latter had nothing more to acquire, but much to preserve;
+their personal interest, therefore, was united with the general desire
+of nations, which were fatigued with war; and without disputing the
+utility of this expedition, they dreaded its approach. But they only
+confessed this to each other in secret, either from fear of giving
+umbrage, of impairing the confidence of nations, or of being proved
+wrong by the result. For that reason, in Napoleon's presence they
+remained silent, and even appeared to be uninformed as to a war, which
+for a considerable time had furnished a subject of conversation to the
+whole of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But at length this respectful taciturnity, which he himself had taken
+pains to impose, became disagreeable; he suspected that it proceeded
+more from disapprobation than reserve. Obedience was not sufficient for
+him; it was his wish to combine it with conviction: that was like
+another conquest. Besides, no one was more convinced than himself of
+the power of public opinion, which, according to him, <i>created or
+destroyed sovereigns</i>. In short, whether through policy or self-love, it
+was his desire to persuade.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the dispositions of Napoleon and of the grandees who
+surrounded him, when the veil being about to be rent, and war evident,
+their silence towards him assumed a greater appearance of indiscretion
+than hazarding a few timely words. Some of them, therefore, commenced
+the task, and the emperor anticipated the others.</p>
+
+<p>A show was made<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> at first of comprehending all the emergencies of his
+position. "It was necessary to complete what had been begun; it was
+impossible to stop in the midst of so rapid an acclivity, and so near
+the summit. The empire of Europe was adapted to his genius; France would
+become its centre and its base; great and entire, she would perceive
+around her none but states so feeble and so divided, that all coalition
+among them would become contemptible or impossible; but with such an
+object why did he not commence the task by subjecting and partitioning
+the states immediately around him?"</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The arch-chancellor.</p></div>
+
+<p>To this objection Napoleon replied, "That such had been his project in
+1809, in the war with Austria, but that the misfortune of Esslingen had
+deranged his plan; that that event, and the doubtful dispositions which
+Russia had since exhibited, had led him to marry an Austrian princess,
+and strengthen himself by an alliance with the Austrian against the
+Russian emperor.</p>
+
+<p>"That he did not create circumstances, but that he would not allow them
+to escape him; that he comprehended them all, and held himself in as
+much readiness as possible for their appearance; that in order to
+accomplish his designs, he was fully aware that twelve years were
+necessary, but that he could not afford to wait so long.</p>
+
+<p>"That besides, he had not provoked this war; that he had been faithful
+to his engagements with Alexander; proofs of which were to be found in
+the coldness of his relations with Turkey and Sweden, which had been
+delivered up to Russia, one almost entirely, the other shorn of Finland,
+and even of the Isle of Aland, which was so near Stockholm. That he had
+only replied to the distressed appeal of the Swedes, by advising them to
+make the cession.</p>
+
+<p>"That, nevertheless, since 1809, the Russian army destined to act in
+concert with Poniatowski in Austrian Gallicia had come forward too late,
+was too weak, and had acted perfidiously; that since that time,
+Alexander, by his ukase of the 31st of December, 1810, had abandoned the
+continental system, and by his prohibitions declared an actual war
+against French commerce; that he was quite aware that the interest and
+national spirit of the Russians might have compelled him to that, but
+that he had then communicated to their emperor that he was aware of his
+position, and would enter into every kind of arrangement which his
+repose required; in spite of which, Alexander, instead of modifying his
+ukase, had assembled 80,000 men, under pretence of supporting his
+custom-house officers; that he had suffered himself to be seduced by
+England; that, lastly, he even now refused to recognize the
+thirty-second military division, and demanded the evacuation of Prussia
+by the French; which was equivalent to a declaration of war."</p>
+
+<p>Through all these complaints, some persons thought they perceived that
+the pride of Napoleon was wounded by the independent attitude which
+Russia was daily resuming. The dispossession of the Russian Princess of
+Oldenburg of her duchy led to other conjectures; it was said that hints
+had been given both at Tilsit and Erfurt about a divorce, after which a
+closer alliance might be contracted with Russia; that these hints had
+not been encouraged, and that Napoleon retained a resentful remembrance
+of it. This fact is affirmed by some, and denied by others.</p>
+
+<p>But all those passions which so despotically govern other men, possessed
+but a feeble influence over a genius so firm and vast as his: at the
+utmost, they may have imparted the first momentum which impelled him
+into action earlier than he would have wished; but without penetrating
+so deeply beneath the folds of his great mind, a single idea, an obvious
+fact, was enough to hurry him, sooner or later, into that decisive
+struggle,&mdash;that was, the existence of an empire, which rivalled his own
+in greatness, but was still young, like its prince, and growing every
+day; while the French empire, already mature, like its emperor, could
+scarcely anticipate any thing but its decrease.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever was the height to which Napoleon had raised the throne of the
+south and west of Europe, he perceived the northern throne of Alexander
+ever ready to overshadow him by its eternally menacing position. On
+those icy summits of Europe, whence, in former times, so many floods of
+barbarians had rushed forth, he perceived all the elements of a new
+inundation collecting and maturing. Till then, Austria and Prussia had
+opposed sufficient barriers; but these he himself had humbled and
+overthrown: he stood, therefore, single, front to front with what he
+feared; he alone remained the champion of the civilization, the riches,
+and the enjoyments of the nations of the south, against the rude
+ignorance, and the fierce cupidity, of the poorer people of the north,
+and against the ambition of their emperor and his nobility.</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious, that war alone could decide this great
+arbitrament,&mdash;this great and eternal struggle between the poor and the
+rich; and, nevertheless, this war, with reference to us, was neither
+European, nor even national. Europe entered into it against her
+inclination, because the object of the expedition was to add to the
+strength of her conqueror. France was exhausted, and anxious for repose;
+her grandees, who formed the court of Napoleon, were alarmed at the
+double-headed character of the war, at the dispersion of our armies from
+Cadiz to Moscow; and even when admitting the <i>eventual</i> necessity of the
+struggle, its <i>immediate</i> urgency did not appear to them so
+legitimately proved.</p>
+
+<p>They knew that it was more especially by an appeal to his political
+interest that they had any chance of shaking the resolution of a prince,
+whose principle was, "that there exist individuals whose conduct can but
+rarely be regulated by their private sentiments, but always by
+surrounding circumstances." In this persuasion, one of his ministers<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
+said to him, "that his finances required tranquillity;" but he replied,
+"On the contrary, they are embarrassed, and require war." Another<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+added, "that the state of his revenues never, in fact, had been more
+flourishing; that, independent of a furnished account of from three to
+four millions, it was really wonderful to find France unencumbered with
+any urgent debts; but that this prosperous condition was approaching its
+termination, since it appeared that with the year 1812 a ruinous
+campaign was to commence; that hitherto, war had been made to support
+the expense of war; that we had every where found the table laid out;
+but that, in future, we could no longer live at the expense of Germany,
+since she had become our ally; but, on the contrary, it would be
+necessary to support her contingents, and that without any hope of
+remuneration, whatever the result might be; that we should have to pay
+at Paris for every ration of bread which would be consumed at Moscow, as
+the new scenes of action offered us no harvest to reap, independent of
+glory, but cordage, pitch, and shipping-tackle, which would certainly go
+but a small way towards the discharge of the expenses of a continental
+war. That France was not in a condition to subsidize all Europe in this
+manner, especially at a moment when her resources were drained by the
+war in Spain; that it was like lighting a fire at both ends at once,
+which, gaining ground upon the centre, exhausted by so many
+efforts,&mdash;would probably end in consuming ourselves."</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Count Mollien.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The Duke of Gaeta.</p></div>
+
+<p>This minister was listened to; the emperor surveyed him with a smiling
+air, accompanied with one of his familiar caresses. He imagined that he
+had secured conviction, but Napoleon said to him,&mdash;"So you think that I
+shall not be able to find a paymaster to discharge the expenses of the
+war?" The duke endeavoured to learn upon whom the burden was to fall,
+when the emperor, by a single word, disclosing all the grandeur of his
+designs, closed the lips of his astonished minister.</p>
+
+<p>He estimated, however, but too accurately all the difficulties of his
+enterprise. It was that, perhaps, which drew upon him the reproach of
+availing himself of a method which he had rejected in the Austrian war,
+and of which the celebrated Pitt had set the example in 1793.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1811, the prefect of police at Paris learnt, it was
+said, that a printer was secretly counterfeiting Russian bank-bills; he
+ordered him to be arrested; the printer resisted; but in the result his
+house was broken into, and himself taken before the magistrate, whom he
+astonished by his assurance, and still more by his appeal from the
+minister of police. This printer was instantly released: it has even
+been added, that he continued his counterfeiting employment; and that,
+from the moment of our first advance into Lithuania, we propagated the
+report that we had gained possession at Wilna of several millions of
+Russian bank-bills in the military chests of the hostile army.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been the origin of this counterfeit money, Napoleon
+contemplated it with extreme repugnance; it is even unknown whether he
+resolved on making any use of it; at least, it is certain that during
+the period of our retreat, and when we abandoned Wilna, the greater part
+of these bills were found there untouched, and burnt by his orders.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIa" id="CHAP_IIa"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Prince Poniatowski, however, to whom this expedition appeared to hold
+out the prospect of a throne, generously united his exertions with those
+of the emperor's ministers in the attempt to demonstrate its danger.
+Love of country was in this Polish prince a great and noble passion; his
+life and death have proved it; but it never infatuated him. He depicted
+Lithuania as an impracticable desert; its nobility as already become
+half Russian; the character of its inhabitants as cold and backward:
+but the impatient emperor interrupted him; he required information for
+the sake of conducting the enterprise, and not to be deterred from it.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the greater part of these objections were but a feeble
+repetition of all those which, for a long time past, had presented
+themselves to his own mind. People were not aware of the extent to which
+he had appreciated the danger; of his multiplied exertions, from the
+30th of December 1810, to ascertain the nature of the territory which,
+sooner or later, was destined to become the theatre of a decisive war;
+how many emissaries he had despatched for the purpose of survey; the
+multitude of memorials which he caused to be prepared for him respecting
+the roads to Petersburgh and Moscow; respecting the dispositions of the
+inhabitants, especially of the mercantile class; and, finally, the
+resources of every kind which the country was enabled to supply. If he
+persevered, it was because, far from deceiving himself as to the extent
+of his force, he did not share in that confidence which, perhaps,
+precluded others from perceiving of how much consequence the humiliation
+of Russia was to the future existence of the great French empire.</p>
+
+<p>In this spirit, he once more addressed himself to three<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> of his great
+officers, whose well-known services and attachment authorized a tone of
+frankness. All three, in the capacity of ministers, envoys, and
+ambassadors, had become acquainted with Russia at different epochs. He
+exerted himself to convince them of the utility, justice, and necessity
+of this war; but one<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> of them, in particular, often interrupted him
+with impatience; for when a discussion had once commenced, Napoleon
+submitted to all its little breaches of decorum.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The Duke of Frioul, the Count de Segur, (the author's
+father,) the Duke of Vicenza.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The Duke of Vicenza.</p></div>
+
+<p>That great officer, yielding to the inflexible and impetuous frankness
+which he derived from his character, from his military education, and,
+perhaps, from the province which gave him birth, exclaimed, "That it was
+useless to deceive himself, or pretend to deceive others; that after
+possessing himself of the Continent, and even of the states belonging to
+the family of his ally, that ally could not be accused of abandoning the
+continental system. While the French armies covered all Europe, how
+could the Russians be reproached for increasing their army? Did it
+become the ambition of Napoleon to denounce the ambition of Alexander?</p>
+
+<p>"That, in addition to this, the determination of that prince was made
+up; that, Russia once invaded, no peace could be expected, while a
+single Frenchman remained upon her soil; that, in that respect, the
+national and obstinate pride of the Russians was in perfect harmony with
+that of their emperor.</p>
+
+<p>"That, it was true, his subjects accused Alexander of weakness, but very
+erroneously; that he was not to be judged of by the complacency which,
+at Tilsit and at Erfurt, his admiration, his inexperience, and some
+tincture of ambition, had extorted from him. That this prince loved
+justice; that he was anxious to have right on his side, and he might,
+indeed, hesitate till he thought it was so, but then he became
+inflexible; that, finally, looking to his position with reference to his
+subjects, he incurred more danger by making a disgraceful peace, than by
+sustaining an unfortunate war.</p>
+
+<p>"How was it possible, moreover, to avoid seeing that in this war every
+thing was to be feared, even our allies? Did not Napoleon hear their
+discontented kings murmuring that they were only his prefects? When
+they, all of them, only waited a suitable occasion in order to turn
+against him, why run the risk of giving that occasion birth?"</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, supported by his two colleagues, the duke added, "that
+since 1805 a system of war which compelled the most disciplined soldier
+to plunder, had sown the seeds of hatred throughout the whole of that
+Germany, which the emperor now designed to traverse. Was he then going
+to precipitate himself and his army beyond all those nations whose
+wounds, for which they were indebted to us, were not yet healed? What an
+accumulation of enmity and revenge would he not, by so doing, interpose
+between himself and France!</p>
+
+<p>"And upon whom did he call, to be his <i>points d'appui</i>?&mdash;on Prussia,
+whom for five years we had been devouring, and whose alliance was hollow
+and compulsive? He was about, therefore, to trace the longest line of
+military operations ever drawn, through countries whose fear was
+taciturn, supple, and perfidious, and which, like the ashes of
+volcanoes, hid terrific flames, the eruption of which might be provoked
+by the smallest collision<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The Duke of Vicenza, the Count de Segur.</p></div>
+
+<p>"To sum up all<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>, what would be the result of so many conquests? To
+substitute lieutenants for kings, who, more ambitious than those of
+Alexander, would, perhaps, imitate their example, without, like them,
+waiting for the death of their sovereign,&mdash;a death, moreover, which he
+would inevitably meet among so many fields of battle; and that, before
+the consolidation of his labours, each war reviving in the interior of
+France the hopes of all kinds of parties, and reviving discussions which
+had been regarded as at an end.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The Count de Segur.</p></div>
+
+<p>"Did he wish to know the opinion of the army? That opinion pronounced
+that his best soldiers were then in Spain; that the regiments, being too
+often recruited, wanted unity; that they were not reciprocally
+acquainted; that each was uncertain whether, in case of danger, it could
+depend upon the other; that the front rank vainly concealed the weakness
+of the two others; that already, from youth and weakness, many of them
+sank in their first march beneath the single burden of their knapsacks
+and their arms.</p>
+
+<p>"And, nevertheless, in this expedition, it was not so much the war
+which was disliked, as the country where it was to be carried on<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>.
+The Lithuanians, it was said, desired our presence; but on what a soil?
+in what a climate? in the midst of what peculiar manners? The campaign
+of 1806 had made those circumstances too well known! Where could they
+ever halt, in the midst of these level plains, divested of every species
+of position fortified by nature or by art?</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The Duke of Frioul, the Count de Segur, the Duke of
+Vicenza.</p></div>
+
+<p>"Was it not notorious, that all the elements protected these countries
+from the first of October to the first of June? that, at any other time
+than the short interval comprised between these two epochs, an army
+engaged in those deserts of mud and ice might perish there entirely, and
+ingloriously?" And, they added, "that Lithuania was much more Asiatic
+than Spain was African; and that the French army, already all but
+banished from France by a perpetual war, wished at least to preserve its
+European character.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, when face to face with the enemy in these deserts, what
+different motives must actuate the different armies! On the side of the
+Russians were country, independence, every description of interest,
+private and public, even to the secret good wishes of our allies! On our
+side, and in the teeth of so many obstacles, glory alone, unassociated
+even with that desire of gain, to which the frightful poverty of these
+countries offered no attraction.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is the end of so many exertions? The French already no longer
+recognized each other, in the midst of a country now uncircumscribed by
+any natural frontier; and in which the diversity was so great in
+manners, persons, and languages." On this particular point, the
+eldest<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> of these great officers added, "That such an extension was
+never made without proportionate exhaustion; that it was blotting out
+France to merge it in Europe; for, in fact, when France should become
+Europe, it would be France no longer. Would not the meditated departure
+leave her solitary, deserted, without a ruler, without an army,
+accessible to every diversion? Who then was there to defend her?" "<i>My
+renown!</i>" exclaimed the emperor: "<i>I leave my name behind me, and the
+fear inspired by a nation in arms.</i>"</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> M. de Segur.</p></div>
+
+<p>And, without appearing in the least shaken by so many objections, he
+announced "that he was about to organize the empire into cohorts of
+<i>Ban</i> and <i>Arri&egrave;re Ban</i>; and without mistrust to leave to Frenchmen the
+protection of France, of his crown, and of his glory.</p>
+
+<p>"That as to Prussia, he had secured her tranquillity by the
+impossibility in which he had placed her of moving, even in case of his
+defeat, or of a descent of the English on the coasts of the North Sea,
+and in our rear; that he held in his hands the civil and military power
+of that kingdom; that he was master of Stettin, Custrin, Glogau, Torgau,
+Spandau, and Magdeburg; that he would post some clear-sighted officers
+at Colberg, and an army at Berlin; and that with these means, and
+supported by the fidelity of Saxony, he had nothing to fear from
+Prussian hatred.</p>
+
+<p>"That as for the rest of Germany, an ancient system of policy, as well
+as the recent intermarriages with Baden, Bavaria, and Austria, attached
+her to the interest of France; that he made sure of such of her kings as
+were indebted to him for their new titles: that after having suppressed
+anarchy, and ranged himself on the side of kings, strong as he was, the
+latter could not attack him without inciting their people by the
+principles of democracy; but that it was scarcely probable that
+sovereigns would ally themselves with that natural enemy of thrones&mdash;an
+enemy, which, had it not been for him, would have overthrown them, and
+against which he alone was capable of defending them.</p>
+
+<p>"That, besides, the Germans were a tardy and methodical people, and that
+in dealing with them he should always have time on his side; that he
+commanded all the fortresses of Prussia; that Dantzic was a second
+Gibraltar." This was incorrect, especially in winter. "That Russia ought
+to excite the apprehension of all Europe, by her military and conquering
+government, as well as by her savage population, already so numerous,
+and which augmented annually in the proportion of half a million. Had
+not her armies been seen in all parts of Italy, in Germany, and even on
+the Rhine? That by demanding the evacuation of Prussia, she required an
+impossible concession; since to abandon Prussia, morally ulcerated as
+she was, was to surrender her into the hands of Russia, in order to be
+turned against ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Proceeding afterwards with more animation, he exclaimed, "Why menace my
+absence with the different parties still alleged to exist in the
+interior of the empire? Where are they? I see but a single one against
+me; that of a few royalists, the principal part of the ancient
+<i>noblesse</i>, superannuated and inexperienced. But they dread my downfall
+more than they desire it. This is what I told them in Normandy. I am
+cried up as a great captain, as an able politician, but I am scarcely
+mentioned as an administrator: that which I have, however, accomplished,
+of the most difficult and most beneficial description, is the stemming
+the revolutionary torrent; it would have swallowed up every thing,
+Europe and yourselves. I have united the most opposite parties,
+amalgamated rival classes, and yet there exist among you some obstinate
+nobles who resist; they refuse my places! Very well! what is that to me?
+It is for your advantage, for your security, that I offer them to you.
+What would you do singly by yourselves, and without me? You are a mere
+handful opposed to masses. Do you not see that it is necessary to put an
+end to the struggle between the <i>tiers-&eacute;tat</i> and the <i>noblesse</i>, by a
+complete fusion of all that is best worth preservation in the two
+classes? I offer you the hand of amity, and you reject it! but what need
+have I of you? While I support you, I do myself an injury in the eyes of
+the people; for what am I but the king of the <i>tiers-&eacute;tat</i>: is not that
+sufficient?"</p>
+
+<p>Passing more calmly to another question: "He was quite aware," he said,
+"of the ambition of his generals; but it was diverted by war, and would
+never be sanctioned in its excesses by French soldiers, who were too
+proud of, and too much attached to their country. That if war was
+dangerous, peace had also its dangers: that in bringing back his armies
+into the interior, it would enclose and concentrate there too many
+daring interests and passions, which repose and their association would
+tend to ferment, and which he should no longer be able to keep within
+bounds: that it was necessary to give free vent to all such aspirations;
+and that, after all, he dreaded them less without the empire than within
+it."</p>
+
+<p>He concluded thus: "Do you dread the war, as endangering my life? It was
+thus that, in the times of conspiracy, attempts were made to frighten me
+about Georges; he was said to be every where upon my track: that
+wretched being was to fire at me. Well! suppose he had! He would at the
+utmost have killed my <i>aide-de-camp</i>: but to kill me was impossible! Had
+I at that time accomplished the decrees of fate? I feel myself impelled
+towards a goal of which I am ignorant. As soon as I shall have reached
+it, so soon shall I no longer be of service,&mdash;an atom will then suffice
+to put me down; but till then, all human efforts can avail nothing
+against me. Whether I am in Paris, or with the army, is, therefore,
+quite indifferent. When my hour comes, a fever, or a fall from my horse
+in hunting, will kill me as effectually as a bullet: our days are
+numbered."</p>
+
+<p>This opinion, useful as it may be in the moment of danger, is too apt to
+blind conquerors to the price at which the great results which they
+obtain are purchased. They indulge a belief in pre-destination, either
+because they have experienced, more than other men, whatever is most
+unexpected in human destiny, or because it relieves their consciences of
+too heavy a load of responsibility. It was like a return to the times of
+the crusades, when these words, <i>it is the will of God</i>, were considered
+a sufficient answer to all the objections of a prudent and pacific
+policy.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the expedition of Napoleon into Russia bears a mournful
+resemblance to that of St. Louis into Egypt and Africa. These invasions,
+the one undertaken for the interests of Heaven, the other for those of
+the earth, terminated in a similar manner; and these two great examples
+admonish the world, that the vast and profound calculations of this age
+of intelligence may be followed by the same results as the irregular
+impulses of religious frenzy in ages of ignorance and superstition.</p>
+
+<p>In these two expeditions, however, there can be no comparison between
+their opportunities or their chances of success. The last was
+indispensable to the completion of a great design on the point of being
+accomplished: its object was not out of reach; the means for reaching it
+were not inadequate. It may be, that the moment for its execution was
+ill chosen; that the progress of it was sometimes too precipitate, at
+other times unsteady; but on these points facts will speak sufficiently:
+it is for them to decide.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIa" id="CHAP_IIIa"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In this manner did Napoleon reply to all objections. His skilful hand
+was able to comprehend and turn to his purpose every disposition; and,
+in fact, when he wanted to persuade, there was a kind of charm in his
+deportment which it was impossible to resist. One felt overpowered by
+his superior strength, and compelled, as it were, to submit to his
+influence. It was, if it may be so expressed, a kind of magnetic
+influence; for his ardent and variable genius infused itself entirely
+into all his desires, the least as well as the greatest: whatever he
+willed, all his energies and all his faculties united to effect: they
+appeared at his beck; they hastened forward; and, obedient to his
+dictation, simultaneously assumed the forms which he desired.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that the greater part of those whom he wished to gain over
+found themselves, as it were, fascinated by him in spite of themselves.
+It was flattering to your vanity to see the master of Europe appearing
+to have no other ambition, no other desire than that of convincing you;
+to behold those features, so formidable to multitudes, expressing
+towards you no other feeling but a mild and affecting benevolence; to
+hear that mysterious man, whose every word was historical, yielding, as
+if for your sake alone, to the irresistible impulse of the most frank
+and confiding disclosure; and that voice, so caressing while it
+addressed you, was it not the same, whose lowest whisper rang throughout
+all Europe, announced wars, decided battles, settled the fate of
+empires, raised or destroyed reputations? What vanity could resist a
+charm of so great potency? Any defensive position was forced on all
+points; his eloquence was so much more persuasive, as he himself
+appeared to be persuaded.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion, there was no variety of tints with which his brilliant
+and fertile imagination did not adorn his project, in order to convince
+and allure. The same text supplied him with a thousand different
+commentaries, with which the character and position of each of his
+interlocutors inspired him; he enlisted each in his undertaking, by
+presenting it to him under the form and colour, and point of view, most
+likely to gratify him.</p>
+
+<p>We have just seen in what way he silenced the one who felt alarmed at
+the expenses of the conquest of Russia, which he wished him to approve,
+by holding out the perspective, that another would be made to defray
+them.</p>
+
+<p>He told the military man, who was astonished by the hazard of the
+expedition, but likely to be easily seduced by the grandeur of ambitious
+ideas, that peace was to be conquered at Constantinople; that is to say,
+at the extremity of Europe; the individual was thus free to anticipate,
+that it was not merely to the staff of a marshal, but to a royal
+sceptre, that he might elevate his pretensions.</p>
+
+<p>To a minister<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> of high rank under the ancient <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, whom the idea
+of shedding so much blood, to gratify ambition, filled with dismay, he
+declared "that it was a war of policy exclusively; that it was the
+English alone whom he meant to attack through Russia; that the campaign
+would be short; that afterwards France would be at rest; that it was the
+fifth act of the drama&mdash;the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>."</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Count Mol&eacute;.</p></div>
+
+<p>To others, he pleaded the ambition of Russia, and the force of
+circumstances, which dragged him into the war in spite of himself. With
+superficial and inexperienced individuals, to whom he neither wished to
+explain nor dissemble, he cut matters short, by saying, "You understand
+nothing of all this; you are ignorant of its antecedents and its
+consequents."</p>
+
+<p>But to the princes of his own family he had long revealed the state of
+his thoughts; he complained that they did not sufficiently appreciate
+his position. "Can you not see," said he to them, "that as I was not
+born upon a throne, I must support myself on it, as I ascended it, by
+my renown? that it is necessary for it to go on increasing; that a
+private individual, become a sovereign like myself, can no longer stop;
+that he must be continually ascending, and that to remain stationary
+will be his ruin?"</p>
+
+<p>He then depicted to them all the ancient dynasties armed against his,
+devising plots, preparing wars, and seeking to destroy, in his person,
+the dangerous example of a <i>roi parvenu</i>. It was on that account that
+every peace appeared in his eyes a conspiracy of the weak against the
+strong, of the vanquished against the victor; and especially of the
+great by birth against the great by their own exertions. So many
+successive coalitions had confirmed him in that apprehension! Indeed, he
+often thought of no longer tolerating an ancient power in Europe, of
+constituting himself into an epoch, of becoming a new era for thrones;
+in short, of making every thing take its date from him.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this manner that he disclosed his inmost thoughts to his
+family by those vivid pictures of his political position, which, at the
+present day, will probably appear neither false nor over-coloured: and
+yet the gentle Josephine, always occupied with the task of restraining
+and calming him, often gave him to understand "that, along with the
+consciousness of his superior genius, he never seemed to possess
+sufficient consciousness of his own power: that, like all jealous
+characters, he incessantly required fresh proofs of its existence. How
+came it, amidst the noisy acclamations of Europe, that his anxious ear
+could hear the few solitary voices which disputed his legitimacy? that
+in this manner his troubled spirit was always seeking agitation as its
+element: that strong as he was to desire, but feeble to enjoy, he
+himself, therefore, would be the only one whom he could never conquer."</p>
+
+<p>But in 1811 Josephine was separated from Napoleon, and although he still
+continued to visit her in her seclusion, the voice of that empress had
+lost the influence which continual intercourse, familiar habits of
+affection, and the desire of mutual confidence, impart.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, fresh disagreements with the pope complicated the relations
+of France. Napoleon then addressed himself to cardinal Fesch. Fesch was
+a zealous churchman, and overflowing with Italian vivacity: he defended
+the papal pretensions with obstinate ardour; and such was the warmth of
+his discussions with the emperor, on a former occasion, that the latter
+got into a passion, and told him, "that he would compel him to obey."
+"And who contests your power?" returned the cardinal: "but force is not
+argument; for if I am right, not all your power can make me wrong.
+Besides, your majesty knows that I do not fear martyrdom."&mdash;"Martyrdom!"
+replied Buonaparte, with a transition from violence to laughter; "do not
+reckon on that, I beseech you, M. le Cardinal: martyrdom is an affair in
+which there must be two persons concerned; and as to myself, I have no
+desire to make a martyr of any individual."</p>
+
+<p>It is said that these discussions assumed a more serious character
+towards the end of 1811. An eye-witness asserts that the cardinal, till
+that time a stranger to politics, then began to mix them up with his
+religious controversies; that he conjured Napoleon not thus to fly in
+the face of men, the elements, religion, earth and heaven, at the same
+time; and that, at last, he expressed his apprehension of seeing him
+sink under such a weight of enmity.</p>
+
+<p>The only reply which the emperor made to this vehement attack was to
+take him by the hand, and leading him to the window, to open it, and
+inquire, "Do you see that star above us?"&mdash;"No, sire."&mdash;"Look
+again."&mdash;"Sire, I do not see it."&mdash;"Very well! <i>I</i> see it!" replied
+Napoleon. The cardinal, seized with astonishment, remained silent,
+concluding that there was no human voice sufficiently loud to make
+itself heard by an ambition so gigantic, that it already reached the
+heavens.</p>
+
+<p>As to the witness of this singular scene, he understood in quite a
+different sense these words of his sovereign. They did not appear to him
+like the expression of an overweening confidence in his destiny, but
+rather of the great distinction which Napoleon meant to infer as
+existing between the grasp of his genius and that of the cardinal's
+policy.</p>
+
+<p>But granting even that Napoleon's soul was not exempt from a tendency to
+superstition, his intellect was both too strong and too enlightened to
+permit such vast events to depend upon a weakness. One great inquietude
+possessed him; it was the idea of that same death, which he appeared so
+much to brave. He felt his strength decaying; and he dreaded that when
+he should be no more, the French empire, that sublime trophy of so many
+labours and victories, would fall a prey to dismemberment.</p>
+
+<p>"The Russian emperor," he said, "was the only sovereign who pressed upon
+the summit of that colossal edifice. Replete with youth and animation,
+the strength of his rival was constantly augmenting, while his was
+already on the decline." It seemed to him that Alexander, on the banks
+of the Niemen, only waited the intelligence of his death, to possess
+himself of the sceptre of Europe, and snatch it from the hands of his
+feeble successor. "While all Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, and
+the whole of Germany, were marching under his banners, why should he
+delay to anticipate the danger, and consolidate the fabric of the great
+empire, by driving back Alexander and the Russian power, enfeebled as
+they would be by the loss of all Poland, beyond the Boristhenes?"</p>
+
+<p>Such were his sentiments, pronounced in secret confidence; they,
+doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his
+precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the
+instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his
+blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which,"
+added he, "battles are not to be gained,") undermined his constitution.</p>
+
+<p>A profound knowledge of the organization and mysteries of the human
+frame would probably enable us to decide whether this concealed malady
+was not one of the causes of that restless activity which hurried on the
+course of events, and in which originated both his elevation and his
+fall.</p>
+
+<p>This internal enemy testified its presence, more and more, by an
+internal pain, and by the violent spasms of the stomach which it
+inflicted. Even in 1806, at Warsaw, during one of its agonizing crises,
+Napoleon was<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> heard to exclaim, "that he carried about with him the
+germ of premature dissolution; and that he should die of the same malady
+as his father."</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> By the count Lobau.</p></div>
+
+<p>Short rides in hunting, even the most gentle gallop of his horse,
+already began to fatigue him: how then was he to support the long
+journeys, and the rapid and violent movements preparatory to battles?
+Thus it was, that while the greater part of those who surrounded him
+concluded him to be impelled into Russia by his vast ambition, by his
+restless spirit and his love of war, he in solitude, and almost
+unobserved, was poising the fearful responsibilities of the enterprise,
+and urged by necessity, he only made up his mind to it after a course of
+painful hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>At length, on the 3d of August, 1811, at an audience in the midst of all
+the ambassadors of Europe, he declared himself; but the burst of
+indignation which was the presage of war, was an additional proof of his
+repugnance to commence it. It might be that the defeat which the
+Russians had just sustained at Routschouk had inflated his hopes;
+perhaps he imagined that he might, by menace, arrest the preparations of
+Alexander.</p>
+
+<p>It was prince Kourakin whom he addressed. That ambassador having just
+made protestations of the pacific intentions of his master, he
+interrupted him: "No," exclaimed he, "your master desires war; I know,
+through my generals, that the Russian army is hurrying towards the
+Niemen! The emperor Alexander deludes, and gains all my envoys!" Then,
+perceiving Caulaincourt, he rapidly traversed the hall, and violently
+appealing to him, said: "Yes, and you too have become a Russian: you
+have been seduced by the emperor Alexander." The duke firmly replied,
+"Yes, sire; because, in this question, I consider him to be a
+Frenchman." Napoleon was silent; but from that moment, he treated that
+great dignitary coldly, without, however, absolutely repelling him:
+several times he even essayed, by fresh arguments, intermixed with
+familiar caresses, to win him over to his opinion, but ineffectually; he
+always found him inflexible; ready to serve him, but without approving
+the nature of the service.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVa" id="CHAP_IVa"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>While Napoleon, prompted by his natural character, by his position, and
+by circumstances, thus appeared to wish for, and to accelerate the
+period of conflict, he preserved the secret of his embarrassment. The
+year 1811 was wasted in parleys about peace, and preparations for war.
+1812 had just begun, and the horizon was already obscured. Our armies in
+Spain had given way; Ciudad Rodrigo was taken by the English (on the
+19th of January, 1812); the discussions of Napoleon with the Pope
+increased in bitterness; Kutusof had destroyed the Turkish army on the
+Danube (on the 8th of December, 1811); France even became alarmed about
+her means of subsistence; every thing, in short, appeared to divert the
+attention of Napoleon from Russia; to recall it to France, and fix it
+there; while he, far from blinding his judgment, recognized in these
+contrarieties the indications of his ever-faithful fortune.</p>
+
+<p>It was, especially in the midst of those long winter nights, when
+individuals are left more than usually to their own reflections, that
+his star seemed to enlighten him with its most brilliant illumination:
+it exhibited to him the different ruling genii of the vanquished
+nations, in silence awaiting the moment for avenging their wrongs; the
+dangers which he was about to confront, those which he left behind him,
+even in his own family: it showed him, that like the returns of his
+army, the census of the population of his empire was delusive, not so
+much in respect to its numerical as to its real strength; scarcely any
+men were included in it but those who were old in years, or worn out in
+the service, and children&mdash;few men in the prime of life. Where were
+they? The tears of wives, the cries of mothers answered! bowed in
+sadness to the earth, which, but for them, would remain uncultivated,
+they cursed the scourge of war as identified in his person.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he was about to attack Russia, without having subjected
+Spain; forgetting the principle of which he himself so often supplied
+both the precept and example, "never to strike at two points at once;
+but on one only, and always in mass." Wherefore, in fact, should he
+abandon a brilliant, though uncertain position, in order to throw
+himself into so critical a situation, that the slightest check might
+ruin every thing; and where every reverse would be decisive?</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, no necessity of position, no sentiment of self-love,
+could prompt Napoleon to combat his own arguments, and prevent him from
+listening to himself. Hence he became thoughtful and agitated. He
+collected accounts of the actual condition of the different powers of
+Europe; he ordered an exact and complete summary of them to be made; and
+buried himself in the perusal: his anxiety increased; to him of all men,
+irresolution was a punishment.</p>
+
+<p>Frequently was he discovered half reclined on a sofa, where he remained
+for hours, plunged in profound meditation; then he would start up,
+convulsively, and with an ejaculation, fancying he heard his name, he
+would exclaim, "Who calls me?" Then rising, and walking about with
+hurried steps, he at length added, "No! beyond a doubt, nothing is yet
+sufficiently matured round me, even in my own family, to admit of so
+distant a war. It must be delayed for three years!" And he gave orders
+that the summary which reminded him of the dangers of his position
+should be constantly left on his table. It was his frequent subject of
+consultation, and every time he did so, he approved and repeated his
+first conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>It is not known what dictated so salutary an inspiration; but it is
+certain, that about that epoch (the 25th of March, 1812), Czernicheff
+was the bearer of new proposals to his sovereign. Napoleon offered to
+make a declaration that he would contribute, neither directly nor
+indirectly, to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Poland; and to
+come to an understanding about the other subjects in dispute.</p>
+
+<p>At a later period, (on the 17th of April,) the Duke of Bassano proposed
+to Lord Castlereagh an arrangement relative to the Peninsula, and the
+kingdom of the Two Sicilies; and in other respects offered to negotiate
+on the basis, that each of the two powers should keep all that war could
+not wrest from it. But Castlereagh replied, that the engagements of good
+faith would not permit England to treat without making the recognition
+of Ferdinand VII. as king of Spain a preliminary of the negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th of April, Maret, in apprising Count Romanzoff of this
+communication, recapitulated a portion of the complaints which Napoleon
+made against Russia;&mdash;firstly, the ukase of the 31st of December, 1810,
+which prohibited the entry into Russia of the greater part of French
+productions, and destroyed the continental system; secondly, the protest
+of Alexander against the union of the duchy of Oldenburg; and thirdly,
+the armaments of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>This minister referred to the fact of Napoleon having offered to grant
+an indemnity to the Duke of Oldenburg, and to enter into a formal
+engagement not to concur in any undertaking for the re-establishment of
+Poland; that, in 1811, he had proposed to Alexander, to give Prince
+Kourakin the requisite powers to treat with the duke of Bassano
+respecting all matters in dispute; but that the Russian emperor had
+eluded the overture, by promising to send Nesselrode to Paris; a promise
+which was never fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian ambassador, almost at the same time, transmitted the emperor
+Alexander's ultimatum, which required the entire evacuation of Prussia;
+that of Swedish Pomerania; a reduction of the garrison of Dantzic. On
+the other hand, he offered to accept an indemnity for the duchy of
+Oldenburg; he was willing to enter into commercial arrangements with
+France; and finally promised empty modifications of the ukase of the
+31st December, 1810.</p>
+
+<p>But it was too late: besides, at the point to which both parties were
+now arrived, that ultimatum necessarily led to war. Napoleon was too
+proud, both of himself and of France, he was too much overruled by his
+position, to yield to a menacing negotiator, to leave Prussia at liberty
+to throw herself into the open arms of Russia, and thus to abandon
+Poland. He was too far advanced; he would be obliged to retrograde, in
+order to find a resting point; and in his situation, Napoleon considered
+every retrograde step as the incipient point of a complete downfall.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Va" id="CHAP_Va"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>His wishes for delay being thus frustrated, he surveyed the enormous
+volume of his military strength; the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt
+were revived; he received with complacency delusive information
+respecting the character of his rival. At one time, he hoped that
+Alexander would give way at the approach of so menacing an invasion; at
+another, he gave the reins to his conquering imagination; he indulgently
+allowed it to deploy its masses from Cadiz to Cazan, and to cover the
+whole of Europe. In the next moment his fancy rioted in the pleasure of
+being at Moscow. That city was eight hundred leagues from him, and
+already he was collecting information with respect to it, as if he was
+on the eve of occupying it. A French physician having recently arrived
+from that capital, he sent for, and interrogated him as to the diseases
+there prevalent; he even went back to the plague which had formerly
+desolated it; he was anxious to learn its origin, progress, and
+termination. The answers of this physician were so satisfactory, that
+he immediately attached him to his service.</p>
+
+<p>Fully impressed, however, with a sense of the peril in which he was
+about to embark, he sought to surround himself with all his friends.
+Even Talleyrand was recalled; he was to have been sent to Warsaw, but
+the jealousy of a rival and an intrigue again involved him in disgrace;
+Napoleon, deluded by a calumny, adroitly circulated, believed that he
+had been betrayed by him. His anger was extreme; its expression
+terrible. Savary made vain efforts to undeceive him, which were
+prolonged up to the epoch of our entry into Wilna; there that minister
+again sent a letter of Talleyrand to the emperor; it depicted the
+influence of Turkey and Sweden on the Russian war, and made an offer of
+employing his most zealous efforts in negotiating with those two powers.</p>
+
+<p>But Napoleon only replied to it by an exclamation of contempt: "Does
+that man believe himself to be so necessary? Does he expect to teach
+me?" He then compelled his secretary to send that letter to the very
+minister who stood most in dread of Talleyrand's influence.</p>
+
+<p>It would not be correct to say, that all those about Napoleon beheld the
+war with an anxious eye. Inside the palace, as well as without it, many
+military men were found who entered with ardour into the policy of their
+chief. The greater part agreed as to the possibility of the conquest of
+Russia, either because their hopes discerned in it a means of acquiring
+something, according to their position, from the lowest distinction up
+to a throne; or that they suffered themselves to participate in the
+enthusiasm of the Poles; or that the expedition, if conducted with
+prudence, might fairly look to success; or, to sum up all, because they
+conceived every thing possible to Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ministers of the emperor, several disapproved it; the greater
+number preserved silence: one alone was accused of flattery, and that
+without any ground. It is true he was heard to repeat, "That the emperor
+was not sufficiently great; that it was necessary for him to become
+greater still, in order to be able to stop." But that minister was, in
+reality, what so many courtiers wished to appear; he had a real and
+absolute faith in the genius and fortune of his sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects, it is wrong to impute to his counsels a large portion
+of our misfortunes. Napoleon was not a man to be influenced. So soon as
+his object was marked out, and he had made advances towards its
+acquisition, he admitted of no farther contradiction. He then appeared
+as if he would hear nothing but what flattered his determination; he
+repelled with ill-humour, and even with apparent incredulity, all
+disagreeable intelligence, as if he feared to be shaken by it. This mode
+of acting changed its name according to his fortune; when fortunate, it
+was called force of character; when unfortunate, it was designated as
+infatuation.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of such a disposition induced some subalterns to make
+false reports to him. Even a minister himself felt occasionally
+compelled to maintain a dangerous silence. The former inflated his hopes
+of success, in order to imitate the proud confidence of their chief, and
+in order, by their countenance, to stamp upon his mind the impression of
+a happy omen; the second sometimes declined communicating bad news, in
+order, as he said, to avoid the harsh rebuffs which he had then to
+encounter.</p>
+
+<p>But this fear, which did not restrain Caulaincourt and several others,
+had as little influence upon Duroc, Daru, Lobau, Rapp, Lauriston, and
+sometimes even Berthier. These ministers and generals, each in his
+sphere, did not spare the emperor when the truth was to be told. If it
+so happened that he was enraged by it, Duroc, without yielding, assumed
+an air of indifference; Lobau resisted with roughness; Berthier sighed,
+and retired with tears in his eyes; Caulaincourt and Daru, the one
+turning pale, the other reddening with anger, repelled the vehement
+contradictions of the emperor; the first with impetuous obstinacy, and
+the second with short and dry determination.</p>
+
+<p>It should, however, be added here, that these warm discussions were
+never productive of bad consequences; good temper was restored
+immediately after, apparently without leaving any other impression than
+redoubled esteem on the part of Napoleon, for the noble frankness which
+they had displayed.</p>
+
+<p>I have entered into these details, because they are either not known, or
+imperfectly known; because Napoleon in his closet was quite different
+from the emperor in public; and because this portion of the palace has
+hitherto remained secret; for, in that new and serious court, there was
+little conversation: all were rigorously classed, so that one <i>salon</i>
+knew not what passed in another; finally, because it is difficult to
+comprehend the great events of history, without a perfect knowledge of
+the character and manners of the principal personages.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime a famine threatened France. The universal panic quickly
+aggravated the evil, by the precautions which it suggested. Avarice,
+always prompt in seizing the means of enriching itself, monopolized the
+corn while at a low price, and waited till hunger should repurchase it
+at an exorbitant rate. The alarm then became general. Napoleon was
+compelled to suspend his departure; he impatiently urged his council;
+but the steps to be taken were important, his presence necessary; and
+that war, in which the loss of every hour was irreparable, was delayed
+for two months longer.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor did not give way to this obstacle; the delay, besides, gave
+the new harvests of the Russians time to grow. These would supply his
+cavalry; his army would require fewer transports in its train: its
+progress being lightened, would be more rapid; he would sooner reach the
+enemy; and this great expedition, like so many others, would be
+terminated by a battle.</p>
+
+<p>Such were his anticipations; for, without deceiving himself as to his
+good fortune, he reckoned on its influence upon others; it entered into
+his estimate of his forces. It was for this reason that he always
+pushed it forward where other things failed, making up by that whatever
+was deficient in his means, without fearing to wear it out by constant
+use, in the conviction that his enemies would place even more faith in
+it than himself. However, it will be seen in the sequel of this
+expedition, that he placed too much reliance on its power, and that
+Alexander was able to evade it.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Napoleon! Superior to the passions of men by his native
+greatness, and also by the circumstance of being controlled by a still
+greater passion! for when, indeed, are these masters of the world ever
+entirely masters of themselves? Meantime blood was again about to flow;
+and thus, in their great career, the founders of empires press forward
+to their object, like Fate, whose ministers they seem, (and whose march
+neither wars nor earthquakes, nor all the scourges which Providence
+permits, ever arrest,) without deigning to make the utility of their
+purposes comprehensible to their victims.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_III" id="BOOK_III"></a>BOOK III.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Ib" id="CHAP_Ib"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The time for deliberation had passed, and that for action at last
+arrived. On the 9th of May, 1812, Napoleon, hitherto always triumphant,
+quitted a palace which he was destined never again to enter victorious.</p>
+
+<p>From Paris to Dresden his march was a continued triumph. The east of
+France, which he first traversed, was a part of the empire entirely
+devoted to him; very different from the west and the south, she was only
+acquainted with him by means of benefits and victories. Numerous and
+brilliant armies, attracted by the fertility of Germany, and which
+imagined themselves marching to a prompt and certain glory, proudly
+traversed those countries, scattering their money among them, and
+consuming their productions. War, in that quarter, always bore the
+semblance of justice.</p>
+
+<p>At a later period, when our victorious bulletins reached them, the
+imagination, astonished to see itself surpassed by the reality, caught
+fire; enthusiasm possessed these people, as in the times of Austerlitz
+and Jena; numerous groups collected round the couriers, whose tidings
+were listened to with avidity; and the inhabitants, in a transport of
+joy, never separated without exclamations of "Long live the emperor!
+Long live our brave army!"</p>
+
+<p>It is, besides, well known, that this portion of France has been warlike
+from time immemorial. It is frontier ground; its inhabitants are nursed
+amidst the din of arms; and arms are, consequently, held there in
+honour. It was the common conversation in that quarter, that this war
+would liberate Poland, so much attached to France; that the barbarians
+of Asia, with whom Europe was threatened, would be driven back into
+their native deserts; that Napoleon would once more return, loaded with
+all the fruits of victory. Would not the eastern departments profit most
+by that event? Up to that time, were they not indebted for their wealth
+to war, which caused all the commerce of France with Europe to pass
+through their hands? Blockaded, in fact, in every other quarter, the
+empire only breathed and received its supplies through its eastern
+provinces.</p>
+
+<p>For ten years, their roads had been covered with travellers of all
+ranks, hastening to admire the great nation, its daily embellished
+metropolis, the <i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of all the arts, and of all ages,
+which victory had there assembled; and especially that extraordinary man
+who seemed destined to carry the national glory beyond every degree of
+glory hitherto known. Gratified in their interests, flattered in their
+vanity, the people of the east of France owed every thing to victory.
+Neither were they ungrateful; they followed the emperor with their
+warmest wishes: on all sides were acclamations and triumphal arches; on
+all sides the same intensity of devotion.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, there was less affection, but, perhaps, more homage.
+Conquered and subjected, the Germans, either as soothing to their
+vanity, or from habitual inclination for the marvellous, were tempted to
+consider Napoleon as a supernatural being. Astonished, beside
+themselves, and carried along by the universal impulse, these worthy
+people exerted themselves to <i>be</i>, sincerely, all that it was requisite
+to <i>seem</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They hurried forward to line both sides of the long road by which the
+emperor passed. Their princes quitted their capitals, and thronged the
+towns, where the great arbiter of their destiny was to pass a few short
+moments of his journey. The empress, and a numerous court, followed
+Napoleon; he proceeded to confront the terrible risks of a distant and
+perilous war, as if he were returning victorious and triumphant. This
+was not the mode in which he was formerly accustomed to meet a conflict.</p>
+
+<p>He had expressed a wish that the Emperor of Austria, several kings, and
+a crowd of princes, should meet him at Dresden on his way: his desire
+was fulfilled; all thronged to meet him&mdash;some led by hope, others
+prompted by fear: for himself, his motives were to make sure of his
+power, to exhibit and to enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p>In this approximation with the ancient house of Austria, his ambition
+delighted in exhibiting to Germany a family meeting. He imagined that
+so brilliant an assemblage of sovereigns would advantageously contrast
+with the isolated state of the Russian monarch; and that he would
+probably be alarmed by so general a desertion. In fact, this assembly of
+coalesced monarchs seemed to announce that this war with Russia was
+European.</p>
+
+<p>He was then in the centre of Germany, exhibiting to it his consort, the
+daughter of its emperors, sitting by his side. Whole nations had quitted
+their homes to throng his path; rich and poor, nobles and plebeians,
+friends and enemies, all hurried to the scene. Their curious and anxious
+groups were seen crowding together in the streets, the roads, and the
+public places; they passed whole days and nights with their eyes fixed
+on the door and windows of his palace. It was not his crown, his rank,
+the luxury of his court, but him only, on whom they desired to feast
+their eyes; it was a memento of his features which they were anxious to
+obtain: they wished to be able to tell their less fortunate countrymen
+and posterity, that they had seen Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>On the stage, poets so far degraded themselves as to make him a
+divinity. It was in this manner that whole nations became his
+flatterers.</p>
+
+<p>There was, in fact, little difference between kings and people in the
+homage of admiration; no one waited for the example of imitation; the
+agreement was unanimous. Nevertheless, the inward sentiments were very
+different.</p>
+
+<p>At this important interview, we were attentive in observing the
+different degrees of zeal which these princes exhibited, and the various
+shades of our chieftain's pride. We had hoped that his prudence, or the
+worn-out feeling of displaying his power, would prevent him from abusing
+it; but was it to be expected that he, who, while yet an inferior, never
+spoke, even to his superiors, but in the language of command, now that
+he was the conqueror and master of them all, could submit to tedious and
+minute details of ceremony? He, however, displayed moderation, and even
+tried to make himself agreeable; but it was obviously an effort, and not
+without allowing the fatigue it gave him to be perceived. Among these
+princes, he had rather the air of receiving them, than of being by them
+received.</p>
+
+<p>As to them, it might be said, that, knowing his pride, and become
+hopeless of subduing him, except by means of himself, these monarchs and
+their people only humbled themselves before him, in order to aggravate
+the disproportion of his elevation, and by so doing, to dazzle his moral
+vision. In their assemblies, their attitude, their words, even the tone
+of their voice, attested his ascendancy over them. All were assembled
+there for his sake alone! They scarcely hazarded an objection, so
+impressed were they with the full conviction of that superiority, of
+which he was himself too well aware. A feudal lord could not have
+exacted more of his vassal chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>His levee presented a still more remarkable spectacle! Sovereign princes
+came to it in order to wait for an audience of the conqueror of Europe.
+They were so intermingled with his officers, that the latter were
+frequently warning each other to take care, and not to crowd upon these
+new courtiers, who were confounded with them. It was thus that the
+presence of Napoleon made distinctions disappear; he was as much their
+chief as ours. This common dependency appeared to put all around him on
+a level. It is probable that, even then, the ill-disguised military
+pride of several French generals gave offence to these princes, with
+whom they conceived themselves raised to an equality; and, in fact,
+whatever may be the noble blood and rank of the vanquished, his victor
+becomes his equal.</p>
+
+<p>The more prudent among us, however, began to be alarmed; they said, but
+in an under-tone, that a man must fancy himself more than human to
+denaturalize and displace every thing in this manner, without fearing to
+involve himself in the universal confusion. They saw these monarchs
+quitting the palace of Napoleon with their eyes inflamed, and their
+bosoms swoln with the most poignant resentment. They pictured them,
+during the night, when alone with their ministers, giving vent to the
+heartfelt chagrin by which they were devoured. Every thing was
+calculated to render their suffering more acute! How importunate was the
+crowd which it was necessary to pass through, in order to reach the gate
+of their proud master, while their own remained deserted! Indeed, all
+things, even their own people, appeared to betray them. While boasting
+of his good fortune, was it not evident that he was insulting their
+misfortunes? They had, therefore, come to Dresden in order to swell the
+pomp of Napoleon's triumph&mdash;for it was over them that he thus triumphed:
+each cry of admiration offered to him was a cry of reproach to them; his
+grandeur was their humiliation, his victory their defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless they, in this manner, gave vent to their bitter feelings; and
+hatred, day after day, sank more deeply into their hearts. One prince
+was first observed to withdraw precipitately from this painful position.
+The Empress of Austria, whose ancestors General Buonaparte had
+dispossessed in Italy, made herself remarked by her aversion, which she
+vainly endeavoured to disguise; it escaped from her by an involuntary
+impulse, which Napoleon instantly detected, and subdued by a smile: but
+she employed her understanding and attraction in gently winning hearts
+to her opinion, in order to sow them afterwards with the seeds of her
+hatred.</p>
+
+<p>The Empress of France unintentionally aggravated this fatal disposition.
+She was observed to eclipse her mother-in-law by the superior
+magnificence of her costume: if Napoleon required more reserve, she
+resisted, and even wept, till the emperor, either through affection,
+fatigue, or absence of mind, was induced to give way. It is also
+asserted that notwithstanding her origin, remarks calculated to wound
+German pride escaped that princess, in extravagant comparisons between
+her native and her adopted country. Napoleon rebuked her for this, but
+gently; he was pleased with a patriotism which he had himself inspired;
+and he fancied he repaired her imprudent language by the munificence of
+his presents.</p>
+
+<p>This assemblage, therefore, could not fail of irritating a variety of
+feelings: the vanity of many was wounded by the collision. Napoleon,
+however, having exerted himself to please, thought that he had given
+general satisfaction: while waiting at Dresden the result of the marches
+of his army, the numerous columns of which were still traversing the
+territories of his allies, he more especially occupied himself with his
+political arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>General Lauriston, ambassador from France at Petersburgh, received
+orders to apply for the Russian emperor's permission to proceed to
+Wilna, in order to communicate definitive proposals to him. General
+Narbonne, aid-de-camp of Napoleon, departed for the imperial
+head-quarters of Alexander, in order to assure that prince of the
+pacific intentions of France, and to invite him to Dresden. The
+archbishop of Malines was despatched in order to direct the impulses of
+Polish patriotism. The King of Saxony made up his mind to the loss of
+the grand duchy; but he was flattered with the hope of a more
+substantial indemnity.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, ever since the first days of meeting, surprise was expressed
+at the absence of the King of Prussia from the imperial court; but it
+was soon understood that he was prohibited from coming. This prince was
+the more alarmed in proportion as he had less deserved such treatment.
+His presence would have been embarrassing. Nevertheless, encouraged by
+Narbonne, he resolved on making his appearance. When his arrival was
+announced to the emperor, the latter grew angry, and at first refused to
+see him:&mdash;"What did this prince want of him? Was not the constant
+importunity of his letters, and his continual solicitations sufficient?
+Why did he come again to persecute him with his presence? What need had
+he of him?" But Duroc insisted; he reminded Napoleon of the want that he
+would experience of Prussia, in a war with Russia; and the doors of the
+emperor were opened to the monarch. He was received with the respect due
+to his superior rank. His renewed assurances of fidelity, of which he
+gave numerous proofs, were accepted.</p>
+
+<p>It was reported at that time, that this monarch was led to expect the
+possession of the Russo-German provinces, which his troops were to be
+commissioned to invade. It is even affirmed that, after their conquest,
+he demanded their investiture from Napoleon. It has been added, but in
+vague terms, that Napoleon allowed the Prince-Royal of Prussia to aspire
+to the hand of one of his nieces. This was to be the remuneration for
+the services which Prussia was to render him in this new war. He
+promised, so he expressed himself, that he would go and sound her. It
+was thus that Frederick, by becoming the relation of Napoleon, would be
+enabled to preserve his diminished power; but proofs are wanting, to
+show that the idea of this marriage seduced the King of Prussia, as the
+hope of a similar alliance had seduced the Prince of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Such at that time was the submission of sovereigns to the power of
+Napoleon. It offers a striking example of the empire of necessity over
+all persons, and shows to what lengths the prospect of gain and the fear
+of loss will lead princes as well as private persons.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Napoleon still waited the result of the negotiations of
+Lauriston and of Narbonne. He hoped to vanquish Alexander by the mere
+aspect of his united army, and, above all, by the menacing splendour of
+his residence at Dresden. He himself expressed this opinion, when, some
+days after, at Posen, he said to General Dessolles, "The assemblage at
+Dresden not having persuaded Alexander to make peace, it was now solely
+to be expected from war."</p>
+
+<p>On that day he talked of nothing but his former victories. It seemed as
+if, doubtful of the future, he recurred to the past, and that he found
+it necessary to arm himself with all his most glorious recollections, in
+order to confront a peril of so great a magnitude. In fact, then, as
+since, he felt the necessity of deluding himself with the alleged
+weakness of his rival's character. As the period of so great an invasion
+approached, he hesitated in considering it as certain; for he no longer
+possessed the consciousness of his infallibility, nor that warlike
+assurance which the fire and energy of youth impart, nor that feeling of
+success which makes it certain.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects, these parleys were not only attempts to preserve
+peace, but an additional <i>ruse de guerre</i>. By them he hoped to render
+the Russians either sufficiently negligent, to let themselves be
+surprised, dispersed, or, if united, sufficiently presumptuous to
+venture to wait his approach. In either case, the war would be finished
+by a <i>coup-de-main</i>, or by a victory. But Lauriston was not received.
+Narbonne, when he returned, stated, "that he had found the Russians in a
+state of mind as remote from dejection as from boasting. From their
+emperor's reply to him, it appeared that they preferred war to a
+dishonourable peace; that they would take care not to expose themselves
+to the hazards of a battle against too formidable an enemy; and that, in
+short, they were resolved on making every sacrifice, in order to spin
+out the war, and to baffle Napoleon."</p>
+
+<p>This answer, which reached the emperor in the midst of the greatest
+display of his glory, was treated with contempt. To say the truth, I
+must add, that a great Russian nobleman had contributed to deceive him:
+either from mistaken views, or from artifice, this Muscovite had
+persuaded him, that his own sovereign would recede at the sight of
+difficulties, and be easily discouraged by reverses. Unfortunately, the
+remembrance of Alexander's obsequiousness to him at Tilsit and at Erfurt
+confirmed the French emperor in that fallacious opinion.</p>
+
+<p>He remained till the 29th of May at Dresden, proud of the homage which
+he knew how to appreciate, exhibiting to Europe princes and kings,
+sprung from the most ancient families of Germany, forming a numerous
+court round a prince deriving all distinction from himself. He appeared
+to take a pleasure in multiplying the chances of the great game of
+fortune, as if to encircle with them, and render less extraordinary,
+that which placed him on the throne, and thus to accustom others as well
+as himself to them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIb" id="CHAP_IIb"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At length, impatient to conquer the Russians, and escape from the homage
+of the Germans, Napoleon quitted Dresden. He only remained at Posen long
+enough to satisfy the Poles. He neglected Warsaw, whither the war did
+not imperiously call him, and where he would have again been involved in
+politics. He stopped at Thorn, in order to inspect his fortifications,
+his magazines, and his troops. There the complaints of the Poles, whom
+our allies pillaged without mercy, and insulted, reached him. Napoleon
+addressed severe reproaches, and even threats, to the King of
+Westphalia: but it is well known that these were thrown away; that their
+effect was lost in the midst of too rapid a movement; that, besides, his
+fits of anger, like all other fits, were followed by exhaustion; that
+then, with the return of his natural good humour, he regretted, and
+frequently tried, to soften the pain he had occasioned; that, finally,
+he might reproach himself as the cause of the disorders which provoked
+him; for, from the Oder to the Vistula, and even to the Niemen, if
+provisions were abundant and properly stationed, the less portable
+foraging supplies were deficient. Our cavalry were already forced to cut
+the green rye, and to strip the houses of their thatch, in order to feed
+their horses. It is true, that all did not stop at that; but when one
+disorder is authorized, how can others be forbidden?</p>
+
+<p>The evil augmented on the other side of the Niemen. The emperor had
+calculated upon a multitude of light cars and heavy waggons, each
+destined to carry several thousand pounds weight, through a sandy
+region, which carts, with no greater weight than some quintals, with
+difficulty traversed. These conveyances were organized in battalions and
+squadrons. Each battalion of light cars, called <i>comtoises</i>, consisted
+of six hundred, and might carry six thousand quintals of flour. The
+battalion of heavy vehicles, drawn by oxen, carried four thousand eight
+hundred quintals. There were besides twenty-six squadrons of waggons,
+loaded with military equipages; a great quantity of waggons with tools
+of all kinds, as well as thousands of artillery and hospital waggons,
+one siege and six bridge equipages.</p>
+
+<p>The provision-waggons were to take in their loading at the magazines
+established on the Vistula. When the army passed that river, it was
+ordered to provide itself, without halting, with provisions for
+twenty-five days, but not to use them till they were beyond the Niemen.
+In conclusion, the greater part of these means of transport failed,
+either because the organization of soldiers, to act as conductors of
+military convoys, was essentially vicious, the motives of honour and
+ambition not being called into action to maintain proper discipline; or
+chiefly because these vehicles were too heavy for the soil, the
+distances too considerable, and the privations and fatigues too great;
+certain it is that the greater number of them scarcely reached the
+Vistula.</p>
+
+<p>The army, therefore, provisioned itself on its match. The country being
+fertile, waggons, cattle, and provisions of all kinds, were swept off;
+every thing was taken, even to such of the inhabitants as were necessary
+to conduct these convoys. Some days after, at the Niemen, the
+embarrassment of the passage, and the celerity of the first hostile
+marches, caused all the fruits of these requisitions to be abandoned
+with an indifference only equalled by the violence with which they had
+been seized.</p>
+
+<p>The importance of the object, however, was such as might excuse the
+irregularity of these proceedings. That object was to surprise the
+Russian army, either collected or dispersed; in short, to make a
+<i>coup-de-main</i> with 400,000 men. War, the worst of all scourges, would
+thus have been shortened in its duration. Our long and heavy
+baggage-waggons would have encumbered our march. It was much more
+convenient to live on the supplies of the country, as we should be able
+to indemnify the loss afterwards. But superfluous wrong was committed as
+well as necessary wrong, for who can stop midway in the commission of
+evil? What chief could be responsible for the crowd of officers and
+soldiers who were scattered through the country in order to collect its
+resources? To whom were complaints to be addressed? Who was to punish?
+All was done in the course of a rapid march; there was neither time to
+try, nor even to find out the guilty. Between the affair of the day
+before, and that of the following day, how many others had sprung up!
+for at that time the business of a month was crowded into a single day.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, some of the leaders set the example; there was a positive
+emulation in evil. In that respect, many of our allies surpassed the
+French. We were their teachers in every thing; but in copying our
+qualities, they caricatured our defects. Their gross and brutal plunder
+was perfectly revolting.</p>
+
+<p>But the emperor was desirous to have order kept in the middle of
+disorder. Pressed by the accusing reproaches of two allied nations, two
+names were more especially distinguished by his indignation. In his
+letters are found these words; "I have suspended generals &mdash;&mdash; and &mdash;&mdash;. I
+have suppressed the brigade &mdash;&mdash;; I have cashiered it in the face of the
+army, that is to say, of Europe.&mdash;I have written to &mdash;&mdash;, informing him
+that he ran great risks of being broke, if he did not take care." Some
+days after he met this &mdash;&mdash;, at the head of his troops, and still
+indignant, he called to him, "You disgrace yourself; you set the example
+of plunder. Be silent, or go back to your father; I do not want your
+services any further."</p>
+
+<p>From Thorn, Napoleon descended the Vistula. Graudentz belonged to
+Prussia; he avoided passing it; but as that fortress was important to
+the safety of the army, an officer of artillery and some fireworkers
+were sent thither, with the ostensible motive of making cartridges; the
+real motive remained a secret; the Prussian garrison, however, was
+numerous, and stood on its guard, and the emperor, who had proceeded
+onward, thought no more of it.</p>
+
+<p>It was at Marienburg that the emperor again met Davoust. That marshal,
+whether through pride, natural or acquired, was not well pleased to
+recognize as his leader any other individual than the master of Europe.
+His character, besides, was despotic, obstinate, and tenacious; and as
+little inclined to yield to circumstances as to men. In 1809, Berthier
+was his commander for some days, during which Davoust gained a battle,
+and saved the army, by disobeying him. Hence arose a terrible hatred
+between them: during the peace it augmented, but secretly; for they
+lived at a wide distance from each other, Berthier at Paris, Davoust at
+Hamburgh; but this Russian war again brought them together.</p>
+
+<p>Berthier was getting enfeebled. Ever since 1805, war had become
+completely odious to him. His talent especially lay in his activity and
+his memory. He could receive and transmit, at all hours of the day and
+night, the most multiplied intelligence and orders; but on this occasion
+he had conceived himself entitled to give orders himself. These orders
+displeased Davoust. Their first interview was a scene of violent
+altercation; it occurred at Marienburg, where the emperor had just
+arrived, and in his presence.</p>
+
+<p>Davoust expressed himself harshly, and even went so far as to accuse
+Berthier of incapacity or treachery. They both threatened each other,
+and when Berthier was gone, Napoleon, influenced by the naturally
+suspicious character of the marshal, exclaimed, "It sometimes happens
+that I entertain doubts of the fidelity of my oldest companions in arms;
+but at such times my head turns round with chagrin, and I do my utmost
+to banish so heart-rending a suspicion."</p>
+
+<p>While Davoust was probably enjoying the dangerous pleasure of having
+humbled his enemy, the emperor proceeded to Dantzic, and Berthier, stung
+by resentment, followed him there. From that time, the zeal, the glory
+of Davoust, the exertions he had made for this new expedition, all that
+ought to have availed him, began to be looked upon unfavourably. The
+emperor had written to him "that as the war was about to be carried into
+a barren territory, where the enemy would destroy every thing, it was
+requisite to prepare for such a state of things, by providing every
+thing within ourselves:" Davoust had replied to this by an enumeration
+of his preparations&mdash;"He had 70,000 men, who were completely organized;
+they carried with them twenty-five days' provisions. Each company
+comprised swimmers, masons, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, armourers, and
+workmen of every class. They carried every thing they required with
+them; his army was like a colony; hand-mills followed. He had
+anticipated every want; all means of supplying them were ready."</p>
+
+<p>Such great exertions ought to have pleased; they, however, displeased;
+they were misrepresented. Insidious observations were overheard by the
+emperor. "This marshal," said they to him, "wishes to have it thought
+that he has foreseen, arranged, and executed every thing. Is the
+emperor, then, to be no more than a spectator of this expedition? Must
+the glory of it devolve on Davoust?"&mdash;"In fact," exclaimed the emperor,
+"one would think it was he that commanded the army."</p>
+
+<p>They even went further, and awakened some of his dormant fears: "Was it
+not Davoust who, after the victory of Jena, drew the emperor into
+Poland? Is it not he who is now anxious for this new Polish war?&mdash;He who
+already possesses such large property in that country, whose accurate
+and severe probity has won over the Poles, and who is suspected of
+aspiring to their throne?"</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to say whether the pride of Napoleon was shocked by
+seeing that of his lieutenants encroaching so much on his own; or
+whether, in the course of this irregular war, he felt himself thwarted
+more and more by the methodical genius of Davoust; certain it is, the
+unfavourable impression against him struck deeper; it was productive of
+fatal consequences; it removed from his confidence a bold, tenacious and
+prudent warrior, and favoured his predilection for Murat, whose rashness
+was much more flattering to his ambitious hopes. In other respects,
+these dissensions between his great officers did not displease Napoleon;
+they gave him information; their harmony would have made him uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>From Dantzic the emperor proceeded, on the 12th of June, to K&ouml;nigsberg.
+At that place ended the inspection of his immense magazines, and of the
+second resting-point and pivot of his line of operations. Immense
+quantities of provisions, adequate to the immensity of the undertaking,
+were there accumulated. No detail had been neglected. The active and
+impassioned genius of Napoleon was then entirely directed towards that
+most important and difficult department of his expedition. In that he
+was profuse of exhortations, orders, and even money, of which his
+letters are a proof. His days were occupied in dictating instructions on
+that subject; at night he frequently rose to repeat them again. One
+general received, on a single day, six despatches from him, all
+distinguished by the same solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>In one, these words were remarked, "For masses like these, if
+precautions be not taken, the grain of no country can suffice." In
+another, "It will be requisite for all the provision-waggons to be
+loaded with flour, bread, rice, vegetables, and brandy, besides what is
+necessary for the hospital service. The result of all my movements will
+assemble 400,000 men on a single point. There will be nothing then to
+expect from the country, and it will be necessary to have every thing
+within ourselves." But, on the one hand, the means of transport were
+badly calculated; and, on the other, he allowed himself to be hurried on
+as soon as he was put in motion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIb" id="CHAP_IIIb"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>From K&ouml;nigsberg to Gumbinnen, he reviewed several of his armies;
+conversing with the soldiers in a gay, frank, and often abrupt style;
+well aware that, with such unsophisticated and hardy characters,
+abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness
+as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers
+bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than
+weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign
+language, which they do not understand, and the accents of which strike
+them as ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>According to his usual custom, he promenaded before the ranks. Knowing
+in which of his wars each regiment had been with him, at the sight of
+the oldest soldiers he occasionally halted; to one he recalled the
+battle of the Pyramids; another he reminded of Marengo, Austerlitz,
+Jena, or Friedland, and always by a single word, accompanied by a
+familiar caress. The veteran who believed himself personally recognized
+by his emperor, rose in consequence in the estimation of his junior
+companions, who regarded him as an object of envy.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, in this manner, continued his inspection; he overlooked not
+even the youngest soldiers: it seemed as if every thing which concerned
+them was to him matter of deep interest; their least wants seemed known
+to him. He interrogated them: Did their captains take care of them? had
+they received their pay? were they in want of any requisite? he wished
+to see their knapsacks.</p>
+
+<p>At length he stopped at the centre of the regiment; there being apprised
+of the places that were vacant, he required aloud the names of the most
+meritorious in the ranks; he called those who were so designated before
+him, and questioned them. How many years' service? how many campaigns?
+what wounds? what exploits? He then appointed them officers, and caused
+them to be immediately installed, himself prescribing the forms;&mdash;all
+particularities which delighted the soldier! They told each other how
+this great emperor, the judge of nations in the mass, occupied himself
+with them in their minutest details; that they composed his oldest and
+his real family! Thus it was that he instilled into them the love of
+war, of glory and himself.</p>
+
+<p>The army, meantime, marched from the Vistula to the Niemen. This last
+river, from Grodno as far as Kowno, runs parallel with the Vistula. The
+river Pregel, which unites the two, was loaded with provisions: 220,000
+men repaired thither from four different points; there they found bread
+and some foraging provisions. These provisions ascended that river with
+them, as far as its direction would allow.</p>
+
+<p>When the army was obliged to quit the flotilla, its select corps took
+with them sufficient provisions to reach and cross the Niemen, to
+prepare for a victory, and to arrive at Wilna. There, the emperor
+calculated on the magazines of the inhabitants, on those of the enemy
+and on his own, which he had ordered to be brought from Dantzic, by the
+Frischhaff, the Pregel, the Deine, the canal Frederic, and the Vilia.</p>
+
+<p>We were upon the verge of the Russian frontier; from right to left, or
+from south to north, the army was disposed in the following manner, in
+front of the Niemen. In the first place, on the extreme right, and
+issuing from Gallicia, on Drogiczin, Prince Schwartzenberg and 34,000
+Austrians; on their left, coming from Warsaw, and marching on Bialystok
+and Grodno, the King of Westphalia, at the head of 79,200 Westphalians,
+Saxons, and Poles; by the side of them was the Viceroy of Italy, who had
+just effected the junction, near Marienpol and Pilony, of 79,500
+Bavarians, Italians and French; next, the emperor, with 220,000 men,
+commanded by the King of Naples, the Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl, the Dukes of
+Dantzic, Istria, Reggio, and Elchingen. They advanced from Thorn,
+Marienwerder, and Elbing, and, on the 23d of June, had assembled in a
+single mass near Nogarisky, a league above Kowno. Finally, in front of
+Tilsit, was Macdonald, and 32,500 Prussians, Bavarians, and Poles,
+composing the extreme left of the grand army.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing was now ready. From the banks of the Guadalquivir, and the
+shores of the Calabrian sea, to the Vistula, were assembled 617,000 men,
+of whom 480,000 were already present; one siege and six bridge
+equipages, thousands of provision-waggons, innumerable herds of oxen,
+1372 pieces of cannon, and thousands of artillery and hospital-waggons,
+had been directed, assembled, and stationed at a short distance from the
+Russian frontier river. The greatest part of the provision-waggons were
+alone behind.</p>
+
+<p>Sixty thousand Austrians, Prussians, and Spaniards, were preparing to
+shed their blood for the conqueror of Wagram, of Jena, and of Madrid;
+for the man who had four times beaten down the power of Austria, who had
+humbled Prussia, and invaded Spain. And yet all were faithful to him.
+When it was considered that one-third of the army of Napoleon was either
+foreign to him or hostile, one hardly knew at which most to be
+astonished,&mdash;the audacity of one party, or the resignation of the other.
+It was in this manner that Rome made her conquests contribute to her
+future means for conquering.</p>
+
+<p>As to us Frenchmen, he found us all full of ardour. Habit, curiosity,
+and the pleasure of exhibiting themselves in the character of masters in
+new countries, actuated the soldiers; vanity was the great stimulant of
+the younger ones, who thirsted to acquire some glory which they might
+recount, with the attractive quackery peculiar to soldiers; these
+inflated and pompous narratives of their exploits being moreover
+indispensable to their relaxation when no longer under arms. To this
+must certainly be added, the hope of plunder; for the exacting ambition
+of Napoleon had as often disgusted his soldiers, as the disorders of the
+latter tarnished his glory. A compromise was necessary: ever since 1805,
+there was a sort of mutual understanding, on his part to wink at their
+plunder&mdash;on theirs, to suffer his ambition.</p>
+
+<p>This plunder, however, or rather, this marauding system, was generally
+confined to provisions, which, in default of supplies, were exacted of
+the inhabitants, but often too extravagantly. The most culpable
+plunderers were the stragglers, who are always numerous in frequent
+forced marches. These disorders, indeed, were never tolerated. In order
+to repress them, Napoleon left <i>gendarmes</i> and flying columns on the
+track of the army; and when these stragglers subsequently rejoined their
+corps, their knapsacks were examined by their officers; or, as was the
+case at Austerlitz, by their comrades; and strict justice was then
+executed among themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The last levies were certainly too young and too feeble; but the army
+had still a stock of brave and experienced men, used to critical
+situations, and whom nothing could intimidate. They were recognizable at
+the first glance by their martial countenances, and by their
+conversation; they had no other past nor future but war; and they could
+talk of nothing else. Their officers were worthy of them, or at least
+were becoming so; for, in order to preserve the due authority of their
+rank over such men, it was necessary for them to have wounds to show,
+and to be able to appeal to their own exploits.</p>
+
+<p>Such was, at that period, the life of those men; all was action within
+its sphere, even to words. They often boasted too much, but even that
+had its advantage; for as they were incessantly put to the proof, it was
+then necessary for them to be what they wished to appear. Such
+especially is the character of the Poles; they boast in the first
+instance of being more than they have been, but not more than they are
+capable of being. Poland in fact is a nation of heroes! pawning their
+words for exploits beyond the truth, but subsequently redeeming them
+with honour, in order to verify what at first was neither true nor even
+probable.</p>
+
+<p>As to the old generals, some of them were no longer the hardy and simple
+warriors of the republic; honours, hard service, age, and the emperor
+particularly, had contributed to soften many of them down. Napoleon
+compelled them to adopt a luxurious style of living by his example and
+his orders; according to him, it was a means of influencing the
+multitude. It might be also, that such habits prevented them from
+accumulating property, which might have made them independent; for,
+being himself the source of riches, he was glad to to keep up the
+necessity of repairing to it, and in this manner to bring them back
+within his influence. He had, therefore, pushed his generals into a
+circle from which it was difficult to escape; forcing them to pass
+incessantly from want to prodigality, and from prodigality to want,
+which he alone was able to relieve.</p>
+
+<p>Several had nothing but their appointments, which accustomed them to an
+ease of living with which they could no longer dispense. If he made them
+grants of land, it was out of his conquests, which were exposed to
+insecurity by war, and which war only could preserve.</p>
+
+<p>But in order to retain them in dependence, glory, which with some was a
+habit, with others a passion, with all a want, was the all-sufficient
+stimulant; and Napoleon, absolute master as he was of his own century,
+and even dictating to history, was the distributor of that glory. Though
+he fixed it at a high price, there was no rejecting his conditions; one
+would have felt ashamed to confess one's weakness in presence of his
+strength, and to stop short before a man whose ambition was still
+mounting, great as was the elevation which he had already attained.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, the renown of so great an expedition was full of charm; its
+success seemed certain; it promised to be nothing but a military march
+to Petersburgh and Moscow. With this last effort his wars would probably
+be terminated. It was a last opportunity, which one would repent to have
+let escape; one would be annoyed by the glorious narratives which others
+would give of it. The victory of to-day would make that of yesterday so
+old! And who would wish to grow old with it?</p>
+
+<p>And then, when war was kindled in all quarters, how was it possible to
+avoid it? The scenes of action were not indifferent; here Napoleon would
+command in person; elsewhere, though the cause might be the same, the
+contest would be carried on under a different commander. The renown
+shared with the latter would be foreign to Napoleon, on whom,
+nevertheless, depended glory, fortune, every thing; and it was well
+known, whether from preference or policy, that he was only profuse in
+his favours to those whose glory was identified with his glory; and that
+he rewarded less generously such exploits as were not his. It was
+requisite, therefore, to serve in the army which he commanded; hence the
+anxiety of young and old to fill its ranks. What chief had ever before
+so many means of power? There was no hope which he could not flatter,
+excite, or satiate.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, we loved him as the companion of our labours; as the chief who
+had conducted us to renown. The astonishment and admiration which he
+inspired flattered our self-love; for all these we shared in common with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to that youthful <i>&eacute;lite</i>, which in those times of glory
+filled our camps, its enthusiasm was natural. Who is there amongst us
+who, in his early years, has not been fired by the perusal of the
+warlike exploits of the ancients and of our ancestors? Should we not
+have all desired, at that time, to be the heroes whose real or
+fictitious history we were perusing? During that state of enthusiasm, if
+those recollections had been suddenly realized before us; if our eyes,
+instead of reading, had witnessed the performance of those wonders; if
+we had felt their sphere of action within our reach, and if employments
+had been offered to us by the side of those brave paladins, whose
+adventurous lives and brilliant renown our young and vivid imaginations
+had so much envied; which of us would have hesitated? Who is there that
+would not have rushed forward, replete with joy and hope, and disdaining
+an odious and scandalous repose?</p>
+
+<p>Such were the rising generations of that day. At that period every one
+was free to be ambitious! a period of intoxication and prosperity,
+during which the French soldier, lord of all things by victory,
+considered himself greater than the nobleman, or even the sovereign,
+whose states he traversed! To him it appeared as if the kings of Europe
+only reigned by permission of his chief and of his arms.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that habit attracted some, disgust at camp service others;
+novelty prompted the greater part, and especially the thirst of glory:
+but all were stimulated by emulation. In fine, confidence in a chief who
+had been always fortunate, and hope of an early victory, which would
+terminate the war at a blow, and restore us to our firesides; for a war,
+to the entire army of Napoleon (as it was to some volunteers of the
+court of Louis XIV.) was often no more than a single battle, or a short
+and brilliant journey.</p>
+
+<p>We were now about to reach the extremity of Europe, where never European
+army had been before! We were about to erect new columns of Hercules.
+The grandeur of the enterprise; the agitation of co-operating Europe;
+the imposing spectacle of an army of 400,000 foot and 80,000 horse: so
+many warlike reports and martial clamours, kindled the minds of veterans
+themselves. It was impossible for the coldest to remain unmoved amid the
+general impulse; to escape from the universal attraction.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion;&mdash;independent of all these motives for animation, the
+composition of the army was good, and every good army is desirous of
+war.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_IV" id="BOOK_IV"></a>BOOK IV.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Ic" id="CHAPTER_Ic"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Napoleon, satisfied with his preparations, at length declared himself.
+"Soldiers," said he, "the second Polish war is commenced. The first was
+concluded at Friedland and at Tilsit. At Tilsit, Russia swore eternal
+alliance with France, and war with England. She now violates her oaths.
+She will give no explanation of her capricious conduct, until the French
+eagles have repassed the Rhine; by that means leaving our allies at her
+mercy. Russia is hurried away by fatality; her destiny must be
+accomplished. Does she then believe us to be degenerated? Are we not
+still the soldiers of Austerlitz? She places us between war and
+dishonour; the choice cannot be doubtful. Let us advance, then; let us
+pass the Niemen, and carry the war into her territory! The second Polish
+war will be as glorious for the French arms as the first; but the peace
+we shall this time conclude will carry with it its own guarantee; it
+will put an end to the fatal influence which Russia for the last fifty
+years has exercised over the affairs of Europe."</p>
+
+<p>This tone, which was at that time deemed prophetic, befitted an
+expedition of an almost fabulous character. It was quite necessary to
+invoke Destiny, and give credit to its empire, when the fate of so many
+human beings, and so much glory, were about to be consigned to its
+mercy.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor Alexander also harangued his army, but in a very different
+manner. The difference between the two nations, the two sovereigns, and
+their reciprocal position, were remarked in these proclamations. In
+fact, the one which was defensive was unadorned and moderate; the other,
+offensive, was replete with audacity and the confidence of victory. The
+first sought support in religion, the other in fatality; the one in love
+of country, the other in love of glory; but neither of them referred to
+the liberation of Poland, which was the real cause of contention.</p>
+
+<p>We marched towards the east, with our left towards the north, and our
+right towards the south. On our right, Volhynia invoked us with all her
+prayers; in the centre, were Wilna, Minsk, and the whole of Lithuania,
+and Samogitia; in front of our left, Courland and Livonia awaited their
+fate in silence.</p>
+
+<p>The army of Alexander, composed of 300,000 men, kept those provinces in
+awe. From the banks of the Vistula, from Dresden, from Paris itself,
+Napoleon had critically surveyed it. He had ascertained that its centre,
+commanded by Barclay, extended from Wilna and Kowno to Lida and Grodno,
+resting its right on Vilia, and its left on the Niemen.</p>
+
+<p>That river protected the Russian front by the deviation which it makes
+from Grodno to Kowno; for it was only in the interval between these two
+cities, that the Niemen, running toward the north, intersected the line
+of our attack, and served as a frontier to Lithuania. Before reaching
+Grodno, and on quitting Kowno, it flows westward.</p>
+
+<p>To the south of Grodno was Bagration, with 65,000 men, in the direction
+of Wolkowisk; to the north of Kowno, at Rossiana and Keydani,
+Wittgenstein, with 26,000 men, substituted their bayonets for that
+natural frontier.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, another army of 50,000 men, called the reserve, was
+assembled at Lutsk, in Volhynia, in order to keep that province in
+check, and observe Schwartzenberg; it was confided to Tormasof, till the
+treaty about to be signed at Bucharest permitted Tchitchakof, and the
+greater part of the army in Moldavia, to unite with it.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander, and, under him, his minister of war, Barclay de Tolly,
+directed all these forces. They were divided into three armies, called,
+the first western army, under Barclay; the second western army, under
+Bagration; and the army of reserve, under Tormasof. Two other corps were
+forming; one at Mozyr, in the environs of Bobruisk; and the other at
+Riga and D&uuml;nabourg. The reserves were at Wilna and Swentziany. In
+conclusion, a vast entrenched camp was erected before Drissa, within an
+elbow of the D&uuml;na.</p>
+
+<p>The French emperor's opinion was, that this position behind the Niemen
+was neither offensive nor defensive, and that the Russian army was no
+better off for the purpose of effecting a retreat; that this army, being
+so much scattered over a line of sixty leagues, might be surprised and
+dispersed, as actually happened to it; that, with still more certainty,
+the left of Barclay, and the entire army of Bagration, being stationed
+at Lida and at Wolkowisk, in front of the marshes of the Berezina, which
+they covered, instead of being covered by them, might be thrown back on
+them and taken; or, at least, that an abrupt and direct attack on Kowno
+and Wilna would cut them off from their line of operation, indicated by
+Swentziany and the entrenched camp at Drissa.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Doctorof and Bagration were already separated from that line;
+for, instead of remaining in mass with Alexander, in front of the roads
+leading to the D&uuml;na, to defend them and profit by them, they were
+stationed forty leagues to the right.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason it was that Napoleon separated his forces into five
+armies. While Schwartzenberg, advancing from Gallicia with his 30,000
+Austrians, (whose numbers he had orders to exaggerate,) would keep
+Tormasof in check, and draw the attention of Bagration towards the
+south; while the King of Westphalia, with his 80,000 men, would employ
+that general in front, towards Grodno, without pressing him too
+vehemently at first; and while the Viceroy of Italy, in the direction of
+Pilony, would be in readiness to interpose between the same Bagration
+and Barclay; in fine, while at the extreme left, Macdonald, debouching
+from Tilsit, would invade the north of Lithuania, and fall on the right
+of Wittgenstein; Napoleon himself, with his 200,000 men, was to
+precipitate himself on Kowno, on Wilna, and on his rival, and destroy
+him at the first shock.</p>
+
+<p>Should the Emperor of Russia give way, he would press him hard, and
+throw him back upon Drissa, and as far as the commencement of his line
+of operations; then, all at once, propelling his detachments to the
+right, he would surround Bagration, and the whole of the corps of the
+Russian left, which, by this rapid irruption, would be separated from
+their right.</p>
+
+<p>I will shortly sketch a brief and rapid summary of the history of our
+two wings, being anxious to return to the centre, and to be enabled
+uninterruptedly to exhibit the great scenes which were enacted there.
+Macdonald commanded the left wing; his invasion, supported by the
+Baltic, overcame the right wing of the Russians; it threatened Revel
+first, next Riga, and even Petersburgh. He soon reached Riga. The war
+became stationary under its walls; although of little importance, it was
+conducted by Macdonald with prudence, science, and glory, even in his
+retreat, to which he was neither compelled by the winter nor by the
+enemy, but solely by Napoleon's orders.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to his right wing, the emperor had counted on the support of
+Turkey, which failed him. He had inferred that the Russian army of
+Volhynia would follow the general movement of Alexander's retreat; but,
+on the contrary, Tormasof advanced upon our rear. The French army was
+thus uncovered, and menaced with being turned on those vast plains.
+Nature not supplying it in that quarter with any support, as she did on
+the left wing, it was necessarily compelled to rely entirely on itself.
+Forty thousand Saxons, Austrians, and Poles, remained there in
+observation.</p>
+
+<p>Tormasof was beaten; but another army, rendered available by the treaty
+of Bucharest, arrived and formed a junction with the remnant of the
+first. From that moment, the war upon that point became defensive. It
+was carried on feebly, as was to be expected, notwithstanding some
+Polish troops and a French general were left with the Austrian army.
+That general had been long and strenuously cried up for ability,
+although he had met with reverses, and his reputation was not
+undeserved.</p>
+
+<p>No decisive advantage was gained on either side. But the position of
+this corps, almost entirely Austrian, became more and more important, as
+the grand army retreated upon it. It will be seen whether Schwartzenberg
+deceived its confidence,&mdash;whether he left us to be surrounded on the
+Berezina,&mdash;and whether it be true, that he seemed on that occasion to
+aspire to no other character than that of an armed witness to the great
+dispute.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIc" id="CHAP_IIc"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Between these two wings, the grand army marched to the Niemen, in three
+separate masses. The king of Westphalia, with 80,000 men, moved upon
+Grodno; the viceroy of Italy, with 75,000 men, upon Pilony; Napoleon,
+with 220,000 men, upon Nogaraiski, a farm situated three leagues beyond
+Kowno. The 23d of June, before daylight, the imperial column reached the
+Niemen, but without seeing it. The borders of the great Prussian forest
+of Pilwisky, and the hills which line the river, concealed the great
+army, which was about to cross it.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, who had travelled in a carriage as far as that, mounted his
+horse at two o'clock in the morning. He reconnoitred the Russian river,
+without disguising himself, as has been falsely asserted, but under
+cover of the night crossing this frontier, which five months afterwards
+he was only enabled to repass under cover of the same obscurity. When he
+came up to the bank, his horse suddenly stumbled, and threw him on the
+sand. A voice exclaimed, "This is a bad omen; a Roman would recoil!" It
+is not known whether it was himself, or one of his retinue, who
+pronounced these words.</p>
+
+<p>His task of reconnoitring concluded, he gave orders that, at the close
+of the following day, three bridges should be thrown over the river,
+near the village of Poni&eacute;men; he then retired to his head-quarters,
+where he passed the whole day, sometimes in his tent, sometimes in a
+Polish house, listlessly reclined, in the midst of a breathless
+atmosphere, and a suffocating heat, vainly courting repose.</p>
+
+<p>On the return of night, he again made his approaches to the river. The
+first who crossed it were a few sappers in a small boat. They approached
+the Russian side with some degree of apprehension, but found no obstacle
+to oppose their landing. There they found peace; the war was entirely on
+their own side; all was tranquil on that foreign soil, which had been
+described to them as so menacing. A single officer of cossacks, however,
+on patrole, presented himself to their view. He was alone, and appeared
+to consider himself in full peace, and to be ignorant that the whole of
+Europe in arms was at hand. He inquired of the strangers who they
+were?&mdash;"Frenchmen!" they replied.&mdash;"What do you want?" rejoined the
+officer; "and wherefore do you come into Russia?"&mdash;A sapper briskly
+replied, "To make war upon you; to take Wilna; to deliver Poland."&mdash;The
+cossack then withdrew; he disappeared in the woods, into which three of
+our soldiers, giving vent to their ardour, and with a view to sound the
+forest, discharged their fire-arms.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, that the feeble report of three muskets, to which there was
+no reply, apprised us of the opening of a new campaign, and the
+commencement of a great invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Either from a feeling of prudence, or from presentiment, this first
+signal of war threw the emperor into a state of violent irritation.
+Three hundred voltigeurs immediately passed the river, in order to cover
+the erection of the bridges.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of the French columns then began to issue from the valleys and
+the forest. They advanced in silence to the river, under cover of thick
+darkness. It was necessary to touch them in order to recognize their
+presence. Fires, even to sparks, were forbidden; they slept with arms in
+their hands, as if in the presence of an enemy. The crops of green rye,
+moistened with a profuse dew, served as beds to the men, and provender
+to the horses.</p>
+
+<p>The night, its coolness preventing sleep, its obscurity prolonging the
+hours, and augmenting wants; finally, the dangers of the following day,
+every thing combined to give solemnity to this position. But the
+expectation of a great battle supported our spirits. The proclamation of
+Napoleon had just been read; the most remarkable passages of it were
+repeated in a whisper, and the genius of conquest kindled our
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Before us was the Russian frontier. Our ardent gaze already sought to
+invade the promised land of our glory athwart the shades of night. We
+seemed to hear the joyful acclamations of the Lithuanians, at the
+approach of their deliverers. We pictured to ourselves the banks of the
+river lined with their supplicating hands. Here, we were in want of
+every thing; there, every thing would be lavished upon us! The
+Lithuanians would hasten to supply our wants; we were about to be
+encircled by love and gratitude. What signified one unpleasant night?
+The day would shortly appear, and with it its warmth and all its
+illusions. The day did appear! and it revealed to us dry and desert
+sands, and dark and gloomy forests. Our eyes then reverted sadly upon
+ourselves, and we were again inspired by pride and hope, on observing
+the imposing spectacle of our united army.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus003.jpg" alt="Niemen"  />
+<a id="illus003" name="illus003"></a>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Passage of the Niemen</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred yards from the river, on the most elevated height, the
+tent of the emperor was visible. Around it the hills, their slopes, and
+the subjacent valleys, were covered with men and horses. As soon as the
+earth exhibited to the sun those moving masses, clothed with glittering
+arms, the signal was given, and instantly the multitude began to defile
+off in three columns, towards the three bridges. They were observed to
+take a winding direction, as they descended the narrow plain which
+separated them from the Niemen, to approach it, to reach the three
+passages, to compress and prolong their columns, in order to traverse
+them, and at last reach that foreign soil, which they were about to
+devastate, and which they were soon destined to cover with their own
+enormous fragments.</p>
+
+<p>So great was their ardour, that two divisions of the advanced guard
+disputed for the honour of being the first to pass, and were near coming
+to blows; and some exertions were necessary to quiet them. Napoleon
+hastened to plant his foot on the Russian territory. He took this first
+step towards his ruin without hesitation. At first, he stationed
+himself near the bridge, encouraging the soldiers with his looks. The
+latter all saluted him with their accustomed acclamations. They
+appeared, indeed, more animated than he was; whether it was that he felt
+oppressed by the weight of so great an aggression, or that his enfeebled
+frame could not support the effect of the excessive heat, or that he was
+already intimidated by finding nothing to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>At length he became impatient; all at once he dashed across the country
+into the forest which girt the sides of the river. He put his horse to
+the extremity of his speed; he appeared on fire to come singly in
+contact with the enemy. He rode more than a league in the same
+direction, surrounded throughout by the same solitude; upon which he
+found it necessary to return in the vicinity of the bridges, whence he
+re-descended the river with his guard towards Kowno.</p>
+
+<p>Some thought they heard the distant report of cannon. As we marched, we
+endeavoured to distinguish on which side the battle was going on. But,
+with the exception of some troops of cossacks on that, as well as the
+ensuing days, the atmosphere alone displayed itself in the character of
+an enemy. In fact, the emperor had scarcely passed the river, when a
+rumbling sound began to agitate the air. In a short time the day became
+overcast, the wind rose, and brought with it the inauspicious mutterings
+of a thunder-storm. That menacing sky and unsheltered country filled us
+with melancholy impressions. There were even some amongst us, who,
+enthusiastic as they had lately been, were terrified at what they
+conceived to be a fatal presage. To them it appeared that those
+combustible vapours were collecting over our heads, and that they would
+descend upon the territory we approached, in order to prevent us from
+entering it.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite certain, that the storm in question was as great as the
+enterprise in which we were engaged. During several hours, its black and
+heavy masses accumulated and hung upon the whole army: from right to
+left, over a space of fifty leagues, it was completely threatened by its
+lightnings, and overwhelmed by its torrents: the roads and fields were
+inundated; the insupportable heat of the atmosphere was suddenly changed
+to a disagreeable chillness. Ten thousand horses perished on the march,
+and more especially in the bivouacs which followed. A large quantity of
+equipages remained abandoned on the sands; and great numbers of men
+subsequently died.</p>
+
+<p>A convent served to shelter the emperor against the first fury of the
+tempest. From hence he shortly departed for Kowno, where the greatest
+disorder prevailed. The claps of thunder were no longer noticed; those
+menacing reports, which still murmured over our heads, appeared
+forgotten. For, though this common phenomenon of the season might have
+shaken the firmness of some few minds, with the majority the time of
+omens had passed away. A scepticism, ingenious on the part of some,
+thoughtless or coarse on the part of others, earth-born passions and
+imperious wants, have diverted the souls of men from that heaven whence
+they are derived, and to which they should return. The army, therefore,
+recognized nothing but a natural and unseasonable accident in this
+disaster; and far from interpreting it as the voice of reprobation
+against so great an aggression, for which, moreover, it was not
+responsible, found in it nothing but a motive of indignation against
+fortune or the skies, which whether by chance, or otherwise, offered it
+so terrible a presage.</p>
+
+<p>That very day, a particular calamity was added to this general disaster.
+At Kowno, Napoleon was exasperated, because the bridge over the Vilia
+had been thrown down by the cossacks, and opposed the passage of
+Oudinot. He affected to despise it, like every thing else that opposed
+him, and ordered a squadron of his Polish guard to swim the river. These
+fine fellows threw themselves into it without hesitation. At first, they
+proceeded in good order, and when out of their depth redoubled their
+exertions. They soon reached the middle of the river by swimming. But
+there, the increased rapidity of the current broke their order. Their
+horses then became frightened, quitted their ranks, and were carried
+away by the violence of the waves. They no longer swam, but floated
+about in scattered groups. Their riders struggled, and made vain
+efforts; their strength gave way, and they, at last, resigned themselves
+to their fate. Their destruction was certain; but it was for their
+country; it was in her presence, and for the sake of their deliverer,
+that they had devoted themselves; and even when on the point of being
+engulphed for ever, they suspended their unavailing struggles, turned
+their faces toward Napoleon, and exclaimed, "<i>Vive l'Empereur!</i>" Three
+of them were especially remarked, who, with their heads still above the
+billows, repeated this cry and perished instantly. The army was struck
+with mingled horror and admiration.</p>
+
+<p>As to Napoleon, he prescribed with anxiety and precision the measures
+necessary to save the greater number, but without appearing affected:
+either from the habit of subduing his feelings; from considering the
+ordinary emotions of the heart as weaknesses in times of war, of which
+it was not for him to set the example, and therefore necessary to
+suppress; or finally, that he anticipated much greater misfortunes,
+compared with which the present was a mere trifle.</p>
+
+<p>A bridge thrown over this river conveyed Marshal Oudinot and the second
+corps to Keydani. During that time, the rest of the army was still
+passing the Niemen. The passage took up three entire days. The army of
+Italy did not pass it till the 29th, in front of Pilony. The army of the
+king of Westphalia did not enter Grodno till the 30th.</p>
+
+<p>From Kowno Napoleon proceeded in two days as far as the defiles which
+defend the plain of Wilna. He waited, in order to make his appearance
+there, for news from his advanced posts. He was in hopes that Alexander
+would contest with him the possession of that capital. The report,
+indeed, of some musketry, encouraged him in that hope; when intelligence
+was brought him that the city was undefended. Thither he advanced,
+ruminating and dissatisfied. He accused his generals of the advanced
+guard of suffering the Russian army to escape. It was the most active of
+them, Montbrun, whom he reproached, and against whom his anger rose to
+the point of menace. A menace without effect, a violence without result!
+and less blameable than remarkable, in a warrior, because they
+contributed to prove all the importance which he attached to an
+immediate victory.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his anger, he displayed address in his dispositions for
+entering Wilna. He caused himself to be preceded and followed by Polish
+regiments. But more occupied by the retreat of the Russians than the
+grateful and admiring acclamations of the Lithuanians, he rapidly passed
+through the city, and hurried to the advanced posts. Several of the best
+hussars of the 8th, having ventured themselves in a wood, without proper
+support, had just perished in an action with the Russian guard;
+Segur<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>, who commanded them, after a desperate defence, had fallen,
+covered with wounds.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Brother of the Author.</p></div>
+
+<p>The enemy had burnt his bridges and his magazines, and was flying by
+different roads, but all in the direction of Drissa. Napoleon ordered
+all which the fire had spared to be collected, and restored the
+communications. He sent forward Murat and his cavalry, to follow the
+track of Alexander: and after throwing Ney upon his left, in order to
+support Oudinot, who had that day driven back the lines of
+Wittgenstein, from Deweltowo as far as Wilkomir, he returned to occupy
+the place of Alexander at Wilna. There, his unfolded maps, military
+reports, and a crowd of officers requiring his orders, awaited his
+arrival. He was now on the theatre of war, and at the moment of its most
+animated operations; he had prompt and urgent decisions to make; orders
+of march to give; hospitals, magazines, and lines of operations, to
+establish.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary to interrogate, to read, and then compare; and at last
+to discover and grasp the truth, which always appeared to fly and
+conceal itself in the midst of a thousand contradictory answers and
+reports.</p>
+
+<p>This was not all: Napoleon, at Wilna, had a new empire to organize; the
+politics of Europe, the war of Spain, and the government of France, to
+direct. His political, military, and administrative correspondence,
+which he had suffered to accumulate for some days, imperiously demanded
+his attention. Such, indeed, was his custom, on the eve of a great
+event, as that would necessarily decide the character of many of his
+replies, and impart a colouring to all. He therefore established himself
+at his quarters, and in the first instance threw himself on a bed, less
+for the sake of sleep than of quiet meditation; whence, abruptly
+starting up shortly after, he rapidly dictated the orders which he had
+conceived.</p>
+
+<p>Intelligence was just then brought him from Warsaw and the Austrian
+army. The discourse at the opening of the Polish diet displeased the
+emperor; and he exclaimed, as he threw it from him, "This is French! It
+ought to be Polish!" As to the Austrians, it was never dissembled to him
+that, in their whole army, there was no one on whom he could depend but
+its commander. The certainty of that seemed sufficient for him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIc" id="CHAP_IIIc"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meantime, every thing was rekindling at the bottom of the hearts of the
+Lithuanians a patriotism which was still burning, though almost
+extinguished. On one side, the precipitate retreat of the Russians, and
+the presence of Napoleon; on the other, the cry of independence emitted
+by Warsaw, and more especially the sight of those Polish heroes, who
+returned with liberty to the soil whence they had been expelled along
+with her. The first days, therefore, were entirely devoted to joy: the
+happiness appeared general&mdash;the display of feeling universal.</p>
+
+<p>The same sentiments were thought to be traceable everywhere; in the
+interior of the houses, as well as at the windows, and in the public
+places. The people congratulated and embraced each other on the
+high-roads; the old men once more resumed their ancient costume,
+reviving ideas of glory and independence. They wept with joy at the
+sight of the national banners which had been just re-erected; an
+immense crowd followed them, rending the air with their acclamations.
+But this enthusiasm, unreflecting in some, and the mere effect of
+excitement in others, was but of short duration.</p>
+
+<p>On their side, the Poles of the grand duchy were always animated by the
+noblest enthusiasm: they were worthy of liberty, and sacrificed to it
+that property for which liberty is sacrificed by the greater part of
+mankind. Nor did they belie themselves on this occasion: the diet of
+Warsaw constituted itself into a general confederation, and declared the
+kingdom of Poland restored; it convened the dietins; invited all Poland
+to unite; summoned all the Poles in the Russian army to quit Russia;
+caused itself to be represented by a general council; maintained the
+established order; and, finally, sent a deputation to the king of
+Saxony, and an address to Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>The senator Wibicki presented this address to him at Wilna. He told him
+"that the Poles had neither been subjected by peace nor by war, but by
+treason; that they were therefore free <i>de jure</i>, before God and man;
+that being so now <i>de facto</i>, that right became a duty; that they
+claimed the independence of their brethren, the Lithuanians, who were
+still slaves; that they offered themselves to the entire Polish nation
+as the centre of a general union; but that it was to him who dictated
+his history to the age, in whom resided the force of Providence, they
+looked to support the efforts which he could not but approve; that on
+that account they came to solicit Napoleon the Great to pronounce these
+few words, "<i>Let the kingdom of Poland exist!</i>" and that it then would
+exist; that all the Poles would devote themselves to the orders of the
+founder of the fourth French dynasty, to whom ages were but as a moment,
+and space no more than a point."</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon replied: "Gentlemen deputies of the confederation of Poland, I
+have listened with deep interest to what you have just told me. Were I a
+Pole, I should think and act like you; I should have voted with you in
+the assembly of Warsaw: the love of his country is the first duty of
+civilized man.</p>
+
+<p>"In my position, I have many interests to reconcile, and many duties to
+fulfil. Had I reigned during the first, second, or third partition of
+Poland, I would have armed my people in her defence. When victory
+supplied me with the means of re-establishing your ancient laws, in your
+capital, and a portion of your provinces, I did so without seeking to
+prolong the war, which might have continued to waste the blood of my
+subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"I love your nation! For sixteen years I have found your soldiers by my
+side on the plains of Italy and Spain. I applaud what you have done; I
+authorize your future efforts; I will do all which depends on me to
+second your resolutions. If your efforts be unanimous, you may cherish
+the hope of compelling your enemies to recognize your rights; but in
+countries so distant and extensive, it must be entirely on the exertions
+of the population which inhabits them, that you can justly ground hopes
+of success.</p>
+
+<p>"From the first moment of my entering Poland, I have used the same
+language to you. To this it is my duty to add, that I have guaranteed to
+the emperor of Austria the integrity of his dominions, and that I cannot
+sanction any man&oelig;uvre, or the least movement, tending to disturb the
+peaceable possession of what remains to him of the Polish provinces.</p>
+
+<p>"Only provide that Lithuania, Samogitia, Witepsk, Polotsk, Mohilef,
+Volhynia, the Ukraine, Podolia, be animated by the same spirit which I
+have witnessed in the Greater Poland; and Providence will crown your
+good cause with success. I will recompense that devotion of your
+provinces which renders you so interesting, and has acquired you so many
+claims to my esteem and protection, by every means that can, under the
+circumstances, depend upon me."</p>
+
+<p>The Poles had imagined that they were addressing the sovereign arbiter
+of the world, whose every word was a law, and whom no political
+compromise was capable of arresting. They were unable to comprehend the
+cause of the circumspection of this reply. They began to doubt the
+intentions of Napoleon; the zeal of some was cooled; the lukewarmness of
+others confirmed; all were intimidated. Even those around him asked each
+other what could be the motives of a prudence which appeared so
+unseasonable, and with him so unusual. "What, then, was the object of
+this war? Was he afraid of Austria? Had the retreat of the Russians
+disconcerted him? Did he doubt his good fortune, or was he unwilling to
+contract, in the face of Europe, engagements which he was not sure of
+being able to fulfil?</p>
+
+<p>"Had the coldness of the Lithuanians infected him? or rather, did he
+dread the explosion of a patriotism which he might not be able to
+master? Was he still undecided as to the destiny he should bestow upon
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>Whatever were his motives, it was obviously his wish that the
+Lithuanians should appear to liberate themselves; but as, at the same
+time, he created a government for them, and gave a direction to their
+public feeling, that circumstance placed him, as well as them, in a
+false position, wherein every thing terminated in errors,
+contradictions, and half measures. There was no reciprocal understanding
+between the parties; a mutual distrust was the result. The Poles desired
+some positive guarantees in return for the many sacrifices they were
+called upon to make. But their union in a single kingdom not having been
+pronounced, the alarm which is common at the moment of great decisions
+increased, and the confidence which they had just lost in him, they also
+lost in themselves. It was then that he nominated seven Lithuanians to
+the task of composing the new government. This choice was unlucky in
+some points; it displeased the jealous pride of an aristocracy at all
+times difficult to satisfy.</p>
+
+<p>The four Lithuanian provinces of Wilna, Minsk, Grodno, and Bialystok,
+had each a government commission and national sub-prefects. Each commune
+was to have its municipality; but Lithuania was, in reality, governed by
+an imperial commissioner, and by four French auditors, with the title of
+intendants.</p>
+
+<p>In short, from these, perhaps inevitable, faults, and from the disorders
+of an army placed between the alternative of famishing, or plundering
+its allies, there resulted a universal coolness. The emperor could not
+remain blind to it; he had calculated on four millions of Lithuanians; a
+few thousands were all that joined him! Their pospolite, which he had
+estimated at more than 100,000 men, had decreed him a guard of honour;
+only three horsemen attended him! The population of Volhynia remained
+immoveable, and Napoleon again appealed from them to victory. When
+fortunate, this coolness did not disturb him sufficiently; when
+unfortunate, whether through pride or justice, he did not complain of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>As for us, ever confident in him and in ourselves, the disposition of
+the Lithuanians at first affected us very little; but when our forces
+diminished, we looked about us, and our attention was awakened by our
+danger. Three Lithuanian generals, distinguished by their names, their
+property, and their sentiments, followed the emperor. The French
+generals at last reproached them with the coolness of their countrymen.
+The ardour of the people of Warsaw, in 1806, was held out to them as an
+example. The warm discussion which ensued, passed, like several others
+similar, which it is necessary to record, at Napoleon's quarters, near
+the spot where he was employed; and as there was truth on both sides;
+as, in these conversations, the opposite allegations contended without
+destroying each other; and as the first and last causes of the coolness
+of the Lithuanians were therein revealed, it is impossible to omit them.</p>
+
+<p>These generals then replied, "That they considered they had received
+becomingly the liberty which we brought them; that, moreover, every one
+expressed regard according to his habitual character; that the
+Lithuanians were more cold in their manner than the Poles, and
+consequently less communicative; that, after all, the sentiment might be
+the same, though the expression was different.</p>
+
+<p>"That, besides, there was no similarity in the cases; that in 1806, it
+was after having conquered the Prussians, that the French had delivered
+Poland; that now, on the contrary, if they delivered Lithuania from the
+Russian yoke, it was before they had subjugated Russia. That, in this
+manner, it was natural for the first to receive a victorious and certain
+freedom with transport; and equally natural for the last to receive an
+uncertain and dangerous liberty with gravity; that a benefit was not
+purchased with the same air as if it were gratuitously accepted; that
+six years back, at Warsaw, there was nothing to be done but to prepare
+festivals; while at Wilna, where the whole power of Russia had just been
+exhibited, where its army was known to be untouched, and the motives of
+its retreat understood, it was for battles that preparation was to be
+made.</p>
+
+<p>"And with what means? Why was not that liberty offered to them in 1807?
+Lithuania was then rich and populous. Since that time the continental
+system, by sealing up the only vent for its productions, had
+impoverished it, while Russian foresight had depopulated it of recruits,
+and more recently of a multitude of nobles, peasants, waggons, and
+cattle, which the Russian army had carried away with it."</p>
+
+<p>To these causes they added "the famine resulting from the severity of
+the season in 1811, and the damage to which the over-rich wheats of
+those countries are subject. But why not make an appeal to the provinces
+of the south? In that quarter there were men, horses, and provisions of
+all kinds. They had nothing to do but to drive away Tormasof and his
+army from them. Schwartzenberg was, perhaps, marching in that direction;
+but was it to the Austrians, the uneasy usurpers of Gallicia, that they
+ought to confide the liberation of Volhynia? Would they station liberty
+so near slavery? Why did not they send Frenchmen and Poles there? But
+then it would be necessary to halt, to carry on a more methodical war,
+and allow time for organization; while Napoleon, doubtless urged by his
+distance from his own territory, by the daily expense of provisioning
+his immense army, depending on that alone, and hurrying after victory,
+sacrificed every thing to the hope of finishing the war at a single
+blow."</p>
+
+<p>Here the speakers were interrupted: these reasons, though true,
+appeared insufficient excuses. "They concealed the most powerful cause
+of the immobility of their countrymen; it was to be discovered in the
+interested attachment of their grandees to the crafty policy of Russia,
+which flattered their self-love, respected their customs, and secured
+their right over the peasants, whom the French came to set free.
+Doubtless, national independence appeared too dear a purchase at such a
+price."</p>
+
+<p>This reproach was well founded, and although it was not personal, the
+Lithuanian generals became irritated at it. One of them exclaimed, "You
+talk of our independence; but it must be in great peril, since you, at
+the head of 400,000 men, are afraid to commit yourselves by its
+recognition; indeed, you have not recognized it either by your words or
+actions. You have placed auditors, men quite new, at the head of an
+administration equally new, to govern our provinces. They levy heavy
+contributions, but they forget to inform us for whom it is that we make
+such sacrifices, as are only made for our country. They exhibit to us
+the emperor everywhere, but the republic hitherto nowhere. You have held
+out no object to set us in motion, and you complain of our being
+unsteady. Persons whom we do not respect as our countrymen, you set over
+us as our chiefs. Notwithstanding our entreaties, Wilna remains
+separated from Warsaw; disunited as we thus are, you require of us that
+confidence in our strength which union alone can give. The soldiers you
+expect from us are offered you; 30,000 would be now ready; but you have
+refused them arms, clothing, and the money in which we are deficient."</p>
+
+<p>All these imputations might still have been combated; but he added:
+"True, we do not market for liberty, but we find that in fact it is not
+disinterestedly offered. Wherever you go, the report of your disorders
+precedes your march; nor are they partial, since your army marches upon
+a line of fifty leagues in front. Even at Wilna, notwithstanding the
+multiplied orders of your emperor, the suburbs have been pillaged, and
+it is natural that a liberty which brings such licence with it should be
+mistrusted.</p>
+
+<p>"What then do you expect from our zeal? A happy countenance,
+acclamations of joy, accents of gratitude?&mdash;when every day each of us is
+apprised that his villages and granaries are devastated; for the little
+which the Russians did not carry away with them, your famishing columns
+have devoured. In their rapid marches, a multitude of marauders of all
+nations, against whom it is necessary to keep on the watch, detach
+themselves from their wings.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you require more? that our countrymen should throng your
+passage; bring you their grain and cattle; that they should offer
+themselves completely armed and ready to follow you? Alas! what have
+they to give you? Your pillagers take all; there is not even time for
+them to make you the offer. Turn your eyes round towards the entrance of
+the imperial head-quarters. Do you see that man? He is all but naked; he
+groans and extends towards you a hand of supplication. That unhappy man
+who excites your pity, is one of those very nobles whose assistance you
+look for: yesterday, he was hurrying to meet you, full of ardour, with
+his daughter, his vassals, and his wealth; he was coming to present
+himself to your emperor; but he met with some Wurtemberg pillagers on
+his way, and was robbed of every thing; he is no longer a father,&mdash;he is
+scarcely a man."</p>
+
+<p>Every one shuddered, and hurried to assist him; Frenchmen, Germans,
+Lithuanians, all agreed in deploring those disorders, for which no one
+could suggest a remedy. How, in fact, was it possible to restore
+discipline among such immense masses, so precipitately propelled,
+conducted by so many leaders of different manners, characters, and
+countries, and forced to resort to plunder for subsistence?</p>
+
+<p>In Prussia, the emperor had only caused the army to supply itself with
+provisions for twenty days. This was as much as was necessary for the
+purpose of gaining Wilna by a battle. Victory was to have done the rest,
+but that victory was postponed by the retreat of the enemy. The emperor
+might have waited for his convoys; but as by surprising the Russians he
+had separated them, he did not wish to forego his grasp and lose his
+advantage. He, therefore, pushed forward on their track 400,000 men,
+with twenty days' provisions, into a country which was incapable of
+feeding the 20,000 Swedes of Charles XII.</p>
+
+<p>It was not for want of foresight; for immense convoys of oxen followed
+the army, either in herds, or attached to the provision cars. Their
+drivers had been organized into battalions. It is true that the latter,
+wearied with the slow pace of these heavy animals, either slaughtered
+them, or suffered them to die of want. A great number, however, got as
+far as Wilna and Minsk; some reached Smolensk, but too late; they could
+only be of service to the recruits and reinforcements which followed us.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Dantzic contained so much corn, that she alone might
+have fed the whole army; she also supplied K&ouml;nigsberg. Its provisions
+had ascended the Pregel in large barges up to Vehlau, and in lighter
+craft as far as Insterburg. The other convoys went by land-carriage from
+K&ouml;nigsberg to Labiau, and from thence, by means of the Niemen and the
+Vilia, to Kowno and Wilna. But the water of the Vilia having shrunk so
+much through drought as to be incapable of floating these transports, it
+became necessary to find other means of conveyance.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon hated jobbers. It was his wish that the administration of the
+army should organize the Lithuanian waggons; 500 were assembled, but the
+appearance of them disgusted him. He then permitted contracts to be made
+with the Jews, who are the only traders in the country; and the
+provisions stopped at Kowno at last arrived at Wilna, but the army had
+already left it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVc" id="CHAP_IVc"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was the largest column, that of the centre, which suffered most; it
+followed the road which the Russians had ruined, and of which the French
+advanced guard had just completed the spoliation. The columns which
+proceeded by lateral routes found necessaries there, but were not
+sufficiently careful in collecting and in economizing them.</p>
+
+<p>The responsibility of the calamities which this rapid march occasioned
+ought not, therefore, to be laid entirely on Napoleon, for order and
+discipline were maintained in the army of Davoust; it suffered less from
+dearth: it was nearly the same with that of Prince Eugene. When pillage
+was resorted to in these two corps, it was always with method, and
+nothing but necessary injury was inflicted; the soldiers were obliged to
+carry several days' provisions, and prevented from wasting them. The
+same precautions should have been taken elsewhere; but, whether it was
+owing to the habit of making war in fertile countries, or to habitual
+ardour of constitution, many of the other chiefs thought much less of
+administering than of fighting.</p>
+
+<p>On that account, Napoleon was frequently compelled to shut his eyes to a
+system of plunder which he vainly prohibited: too well aware, also, of
+the attraction which that mode of subsistence had for the soldier; that
+it made him love war, because it enriched him; that it pleased him, in
+consequence of the authority which it frequently gave him over classes
+superior to his own; that in his eyes it had all the charm of a war of
+the poor against the rich; finally, that the pleasure of being, and
+proving that he was the strongest, was under such circumstances
+incessantly repeated and brought home to him.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, however, grew indignant at the intelligence of these excesses.
+He issued a threatening proclamation, and he directed moveable columns
+of French and Lithuanians to see to its execution. We, who were
+irritated at the sight of the pillagers, were eager to pursue and punish
+them; but when we had stripped them of the bread, or of the cattle which
+they had been robbing, and when we saw them, slowly retiring, sometimes
+eyeing us with a look of condensed despair, sometimes bursting into
+tears; and when we heard them murmuring, that, "not content with giving
+them nothing, we wrested every thing from them, and that, consequently,
+our intention must be to let them perish of hunger;" We, then, in our
+turn, accusing ourselves of barbarity to our own people, called them
+back, and restored their prey to them. Indeed, it was imperious
+necessity which impelled to plunder. The officers themselves had no
+other means of subsistence than the share which the soldiers allowed
+them.</p>
+
+<p>A position of so much excess engendered fresh excesses. These rude men,
+with arms in their hands, when assailed by so many immoderate wants,
+could not remain moderate. When they arrived near any habitations, they
+were famished; at first they asked, but, either for want of being
+understood, or from the refusal or impossibility of the inhabitants to
+satisfy their demands, and of their inability to wait, altercations
+generally arose; then, as they became more and more exasperated with
+hunger, they became furious, and after tumbling either cottage or palace
+topsy-turvy, without finding the subsistence they were in quest of,
+they, in the violence of their despair, accused the inhabitants of being
+their enemies, and revenged themselves on the proprietors by destroying
+their property.</p>
+
+<p>There were some who actually destroyed themselves, rather than proceed
+to such extremities; others did the same after having done so: these
+were the youngest. They placed their foreheads on their muskets, and
+blew out their brains in the middle of the high-road. But many became
+hardened; one excess led them to another, as people often grow angry
+with the blows which they inflict. Among the latter, some vagabonds took
+vengeance of their distresses upon persons; in the midst of so
+inauspicious an aspect of nature, they became denaturalized; abandoned
+to themselves at so great a distance from home, they imagined that every
+thing was allowed them, and that their own sufferings authorized them in
+making others suffer.</p>
+
+<p>In an army so numerous, and composed of so many nations, it was natural
+also to find more malefactors than in smaller ones: the causes of so
+many evils induced fresh ones; already enfeebled by famine, it was
+necessary to make forced marches in order to escape from it, and to
+reach the enemy. At night when they halted, the soldiers thronged into
+the houses; there, worn out with fatigue and want, they threw themselves
+upon the first dirty straw they met with.</p>
+
+<p>The most robust had barely spirits left to knead the flour which they
+found, and to light the ovens with which all those wooden houses were
+supplied; others had scarcely strength to go a few paces in order to
+make the fires necessary to cook some food; their officers, exhausted
+like themselves, feebly gave orders to take more care, and neglected to
+see that their orders were obeyed. A piece of burnt wood, at such times
+escaping from an oven, or a spark from the fire of the bivouacs, was
+sufficient to set fire to a castle or a whole village, and to cause the
+deaths of many unfortunate soldiers who had taken refuge in them. In
+other respects, these disorders were very rare in Lithuania.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor was not ignorant of these details, but he had committed
+himself too far. Even at Wilna, all these disorders had taken place; the
+Duke of Treviso, among others, informed him, "that he had seen, from the
+Niemen to the Vilia, nothing but ruined habitations, and baggage and
+provision-waggons abandoned; they were found dispersed on the highways
+and in the fields, overturned, broke open, and their contents scattered
+here and there, and pillaged, as if they had been taken by the enemy: he
+should have imagined himself following a defeated army. Ten thousand
+horses had been killed by the cold rains of the great storm, and by the
+unripe rye, which had become their new and only food. Their carcases
+were lying encumbering the road: they sent forth a mephitic smell
+impossible to breathe: it was a new scourge, which some compared to
+famine, but much more terrible: several soldiers of the young guard had
+already perished of hunger."</p>
+
+<p>Up to that point Napoleon listened with calmness, but here he abruptly
+interrupted the speaker. Wishing to escape from distress by incredulity,
+he exclaimed, "It is impossible! where are their twenty days'
+provisions? Soldiers well commanded never die of hunger."</p>
+
+<p>A general, the author of this last report, was present. Napoleon turned
+towards him; appealed to him, and pressed him with questions; and that
+general, either from weakness or uncertainty, replied, "that the
+individuals referred to had not died of hunger, but of intoxication."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor then remained convinced that the privations of the soldiers
+had been exaggerated to him. As to the rest, he exclaimed, "The loss of
+the horses must be borne with; of some equipages, and even some
+habitations; it was a torrent that rolled away: it was the worst side of
+the picture of war; an evil exchanged for a good; to misery her share
+must be given; his treasures, his benefits would repair the loss: one
+great result would make amends for all; he only required a single
+victory; if sufficient means remained for accomplishing that, he should
+be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>The duke remarked, that a victory might be overtaken by a more
+methodical march, followed by the magazines; but he was not listened to.
+Those to whom this marshal (who had just returned from Spain,)
+complained, replied to him, "That, in fact the emperor grew angry at the
+account of evils, which he considered irremediable, his policy imposing
+on him the necessity of a prompt and decisive victory."</p>
+
+<p>They added, "that they saw too clearly that the health of their leader
+was impaired; and that being compelled, notwithstanding, to throw
+himself into positions more and more critical, he could not survey,
+without ill temper, the difficulties which he passed by, and suffered to
+accumulate behind him; difficulties which he then affected to treat with
+contempt, in order to disguise their importance, and preserve the energy
+of mind which he himself required to surmount them. This was the reason
+that, being already disturbed and fatigued by the new and critical
+situation into which he had thrown himself, and impatient to escape from
+it, he kept marching on, always pushing his army forward, in order to
+bring matters sooner to a termination."</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that Napoleon was constrained to shut his eyes to facts. It
+is well known that the greater part of his ministers were not
+flatterers. Both facts and men spoke sufficiently; but what could they
+teach him? Of what was he ignorant? Had not all his preparations been
+dictated by the most clear-sighted foresight? What could be said to him,
+which he had not himself said and written a hundred times? It was after
+having anticipated the minutest details; having prepared for every
+inconvenience, having provided every thing for a slow and methodical
+war, that he divested himself of all these precautions, that he
+abandoned all these preparations, and suffered himself to be hurried
+away by habit, by the necessity of short wars, of rapid victories, and
+sudden treaties of peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vc" id="CHAP_Vc"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was in the midst of these grave circumstances that Balachoff, a
+minister of the Russian emperor, presented himself with a flag of truce
+at the French advanced posts. He was received, and the army, now become
+less ardent, indulged anticipations of peace.</p>
+
+<p>He brought this message from Alexander to Napoleon, "That it was not yet
+too late to negotiate; a war which the soil, the climate, and the
+character of Russia, rendered interminable, was begun; but all
+reconciliation was not become impossible, and from one bank of the
+Niemen to the other they might yet come to an understanding." He,
+moreover, added, "that his master declared, in the face of Europe, that
+he was not the aggressor; that his ambassador at Paris, in demanding his
+passports, did not consider himself as having broken the peace; that
+thus, the French had entered Russia without a declaration of war." There
+were, however, no fresh overtures, either verbal or written, presented
+by Balachoff.</p>
+
+<p>The choice of this flag of truce had been remarked; he was the minister
+of the Russian police; that office required an observant spirit, and it
+was thought that he was sent to exercise it amongst us. What rendered us
+more mistrustful of the character of the negotiator was, that the
+negotiation appeared to have no character, unless it were that of great
+moderation, which, under the actual circumstances, was taken for
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon did not hesitate. He would not stop at Paris; how could he then
+retreat at Wilna? What would Europe think? What result could he exhibit
+to the French and allied armies as a motive for so many fatigues; for
+such vast movements; for such enormous individual and national
+expenditure: it would be confessing himself vanquished. Besides, his
+language before so many princes, since his departure from Paris, had
+pledged him as much as his actions; so that, in fact, he found himself
+as much compromised on the score of his allies as of his enemies. Even
+then, it is said, the warmth of conversation with Balachoff hurried him
+away. "What had brought him to Wilna? What did the Emperor of Russia
+want with him? Did he pretend to resist him? He was only a parade
+general. As to himself, his head was his counsellor; from that every
+thing proceeded. But as to Alexander,&mdash;who was there to counsel him?
+Whom had he to oppose to him? He had only three generals,&mdash;Kutusof, whom
+he did not like, because he was a Russian; Beningsen, superannuated six
+years ago, and now in his second childhood; and Barclay: the last could
+certainly man&oelig;uvre; he was brave; he understood war; but he was a
+general only good for a retreat." And he added, "You all believe
+yourselves to understand the art of war, because you have read Jomini;
+but if his book could have taught it you, do you think that I should
+have allowed it to be published?" In this conversation, of which the
+above is the Russian version, it is certain that he added, "that,
+however, the Emperor Alexander had friends even in the imperial
+head-quarters." Then, pointing out Caulaincourt to the Russian minister,
+"There," said he, "is a knight of your emperor; he is a Russian in the
+French camp."</p>
+
+<p>Probably Caulaincourt did not sufficiently comprehend, that by that
+expression Napoleon only wished to point him out as a negotiator who
+would be agreeable to Alexander; for as soon as Balachoff was gone, he
+advanced towards the emperor, and in an angry tone, asked him why he had
+insulted him? exclaiming, "that he was a Frenchman! a true Frenchman!
+that he had proved it already; and would prove it again by repeating,
+that this war was impolitic and dangerous; that it would destroy his
+army, France, and himself. That, as to the rest, as he had just insulted
+him, he should quit him; that all that he asked of him was a division in
+Spain, where nobody wished to serve, and the furthest from his presence
+possible." The emperor attempted to appease him; but not being able to
+obtain a hearing, he withdrew, Caulaincourt still pursuing him with his
+reproaches. Berthier, who was present at this scene, interposed without
+effect. Bessi&egrave;res, more in the back-ground, had vainly tried to detain
+Caulaincourt by holding him by the coat.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Napoleon was unable to bring his grand equerry into his
+presence, without formal and repeated orders. At length he appeased him
+by caresses, and by the expression of an esteem and attachment which
+Caulaincourt well deserved. But he dismissed Balachoff with verbal and
+inadmissible proposals.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander made no reply to them; the full importance of the step he had
+just taken was not at the time properly comprehended. It was his
+determination neither to address nor even answer Napoleon any more. It
+was a last word before an irreparable breach; and that circumstance
+rendered it remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Murat pursued the flying steps of that victory which was so
+much coveted; he commanded the cavalry of the advanced guard; he at last
+reached the enemy on the road to Swentziani, and drove him in the
+direction of Dru&iuml;a. Every morning, the Russian rear-guard appeared to
+have escaped him; every evening he overtook it again, and attacked it,
+but always in a strong position, after a long march, too late, and
+before his men had taken any refreshment; there were, consequently,
+every day fresh combats, producing no important results.</p>
+
+<p>Other chiefs, by other routes, followed the same direction. Oudinot had
+passed the Vilia beyond Kowno, and already in Samogitia, to the north of
+Wilna, at Deweltowo, and at Vilkomir, had fallen in with the enemy, whom
+he drove before him towards D&uuml;nabourg. In this manner he marched on, to
+the left of Ney and the King of Naples, whose right was flanked by
+Nansouty. From the 15th of July, the river D&uuml;na, from Disna to
+D&uuml;nabourg, had been approached by Murat, Montbrun, Sebastiani, and
+Nansouty, by Oudinot and Ney, and by three divisions of the 1st corps,
+placed under the orders of the Count de Lobau.</p>
+
+<p>It was Oudinot who presented himself before D&uuml;nabourg: he made an
+attempt on that town, which the Russians had vainly attempted to
+fortify. This too eccentric march of Oudinot displeased Napoleon. The
+river separated the two armies. Oudinot re-ascended it in order to put
+himself in communication with Murat; and Wittgenstein, in order to form
+a junction with Barclay. D&uuml;nabourg remained without assailants and
+without defenders.</p>
+
+<p>On his march, Wittgenstein had a view, from the right bank, of Dru&iuml;a,
+and a vanguard of French cavalry, which occupied that town with too
+negligent a security. Encouraged by the approach of night, he made one
+of his corps pass the river, and on the 15th, in the morning, the
+advanced posts of one of our brigades were surprised, sabred, and
+carried off. After this, Wittgenstein recalled his people to the right
+bank, and pursued his way with his prisoners, among whom was a French
+general. This <i>coup-de-main</i> gave Napoleon reason to hope for a battle:
+believing that Barclay was resuming the offensive, he suspended, for a
+short time, his march upon Witepsk, in order to concentrate his troops
+and direct them according to circumstances. This hope, however, was of
+short duration.</p>
+
+<p>During these events, Davoust, at Osmiana, to the south of Wilna, had got
+sight of some scouts of Bagration, who was already anxiously seeking an
+outlet towards the north. Up to that time, short of a victory, the plan
+of the campaign adopted at Paris had completely succeeded. Aware that
+the enemy was extended over too long a defensive line, Napoleon had
+broken it by briskly attacking it in one direction, and by so doing had
+thrown it back and pursued its largest mass upon the D&uuml;na; while
+Bagration, whom he had not brought into contact till five days later,
+was still upon the Niemen. During an interval of several days, and over
+a front of eighty leagues, the man&oelig;uvre was the same as that which
+Frederic the Second had often employed upon a line of two leagues, and
+during an interval of some few hours.</p>
+
+<p>Already Doctorof, and several scattered divisions of each of these two
+separated masses had only escaped by favour of the extent of the
+country, of chance, and of the usual causes of that ignorance, which
+always exists during war, as to what passes close at hand in the ranks
+of an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Several persons have pretended that there was too much circumspection or
+too much negligence in the first operations of the invasion; that from
+the Vistula, the assailing army had received orders to march with all
+the precaution of one attacked; that the aggression once commenced, and
+Alexander having fled, the advanced guard of Napoleon ought to have
+re-ascended the two banks of the Vilia with more celerity and more in
+advance, and that the army of Italy should have followed this movement
+more closely. Perhaps Doctorof, who commanded the left wing of Barclay,
+being forced to cross our line of attack, in order to fly from Lida
+toward Swentziany, might then have been made prisoner. Pajol repulsed
+him at Osmiana; but he escaped by Smorgony. Nothing but his baggage was
+taken; and Napoleon laid the blame of his escape on Prince Eugene,
+although he had himself prescribed to him every one of his movements.</p>
+
+<p>But the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, the 1st corps and the guard,
+very soon occupied and surrounded Wilna. There it was that, stretched
+out over his maps (which he was obliged to examine in that manner, on
+account of his short sight, which he shared with Alexander the Great and
+Frederic the Second), Napoleon followed the course of the Russian army;
+it was divided into two unequal masses: one with its emperor towards
+Drissa, the other with Bagration, who was still in the direction of Myr.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty leagues in front of Wilna, the D&uuml;na and the Boristhenes separate
+Lithuania from old Russia. At first, these two rivers run parallel to
+each other from east to west, leaving between them an interval of about
+twenty-five leagues of an unequal, woody, and marshy soil. They arrive
+in that manner from the interior of Russia, on its frontiers; at this
+point, at the same time, and as if in concert, they turn off; the one
+abruptly at Orcha towards the south; the other, near Witepsk, towards
+the north-west. It is in that new direction that their course traces the
+frontiers of Lithuania and old Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The narrow space which these two rivers leave between them before taking
+this opposite direction seems to constitute the entrance, and as it were
+the gates of Muscovy. It is the focus of the roads which lead to the two
+capitals of that empire.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's whole attention was directed to that point. By the retreat of
+Alexander upon Drissa, he foresaw that which Bagration would attempt to
+make from Grodno towards Witepsk, through Osmiana, Minsk, and
+Docktzitzy, or by Borizof; he determined to prevent it, and instantly
+pushed forward Davoust towards Minsk, between these two hostile bodies,
+with two divisions of infantry, the cuirassiers of Valence, and several
+brigades of light cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>On his right, the king of Westphalia was to drive Bagration on Davoust,
+who would cut off his communication with Alexander, make him surrender,
+and get possession of the course of the Boristhenes; on his left, Murat,
+Oudinot, and Ney, already before Drissa, were directed to keep Barclay
+and his emperor in their front; he himself with the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of his army,
+the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, and three divisions detached from
+Davoust, was to march upon Witepsk between Davoust and Murat, ready to
+join one or the other of them; in this manner penetrating and
+interposing between the two hostile armies, forcing himself between them
+and beyond them; finally, keeping them separate, not only by that
+central position, but by the uncertainty which it would create in
+Alexander as to which of his two capitals it would be requisite for him
+to defend. Circumstances would decide the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Napoleon's plan on the 10th of July at Wilna; it was written in
+this form on that very day under his dictation, and corrected by his own
+hand, for one of his chiefs, the individual who was most concerned in
+its execution. Immediately, the movement, which was already begun,
+became general.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIc" id="CHAP_VIc"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The king of Westphalia then went along the Niemen at Grodno, with a view
+to repass it at Bielitza, to overpower the right of Bagration, put it to
+the rout, and pursue it.</p>
+
+<p>This Saxon, Westphalian, and Polish army had in front of it a general
+and a country both difficult to conquer. It fell to its lot to invade
+the elevated plain of Lithuania: there are the sources of the rivers
+which empty their waters into the Black and Baltic seas. But the soil
+there is slow in determining their inclination and their current, so
+that the waters stagnate and overflow the country to a great extent.
+Some narrow causeways had been thrown over those woody and marshy
+plains; they formed there long defiles, which Bagration was easily
+enabled to defend against the king of Westphalia. The latter attacked
+him carelessly; his advanced guard only three times encountered the
+enemy, at Nowogrodeck, at Myr, and at Romanof. The first rencontre was
+entirely to the advantage of the Russians; in the two others,
+Latour-Maubourg remained master of a sanguinary and contested field of
+battle.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Davoust, proceeding from Osmiana, extended his force
+towards Minsk and Ygumen, behind the Russian general, and made himself
+master of the outlet of the defiles, in which the king of Westphalia was
+compelling Bagration to engage himself.</p>
+
+<p>Between this general and his retreat was a river which takes its source
+in an infectious marsh; its uncertain, slow, and languid current, across
+a rotten soil, does not belie its origin; its muddy waters flow towards
+the south-east; its name possesses a fatal celebrity, for which it is
+indebted to our misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>The wooden bridges, and long causeways, which, in order to approach it,
+had been thrown over the adjacent marshes, abut upon a town named
+Borizof, situated on its left bank, on the Russian side. This bank is
+generally higher than the right; a remark applicable to all the rivers
+which in this country run in the direction of one pole to the other,
+their eastern bank commanding their western bank, as Asia does Europe.</p>
+
+<p>This passage was important; Davoust anticipated Bagration there by
+taking possession of Minsk on the 8th of July, as well as the entire
+country from the Vilia to the Berezina; accordingly when the Russian
+prince and his army, summoned by Alexander, to the north, pushed forward
+their piquets, in the first instance upon Lida, and afterwards
+successively upon Olzania, Vieznowo, Troki, Bolzo&iuml;, and Sobsnicki, they
+came in contact with Davoust, and were forced to fall back upon their
+main body. They then bent their course a little more in the rear and to
+the right, and made a new attempt on Minsk, but there again they found
+Davoust. A scanty platoon of that marshal's vanguard was entering by one
+gate, when the advanced guard of Bagration presented itself at another;
+on which, the Russian retreated once more into his marshes, towards the
+south.</p>
+
+<p>At this intelligence, observing Bagration and 40,000 Russians cut off
+from the army of Alexander, and enveloped by two rivers and two armies,
+Napoleon exclaimed, "I have them!" In fact, it only required three
+marches more to have hemmed in Bagration completely. But Napoleon, who
+since accused Davoust of suffering the escape of the left wing of the
+Russians by remaining four days in Minsk, and afterwards, with more
+justice, the king of Westphalia, had just then placed that monarch under
+the orders of the marshal. It was this change, which was made too late,
+and in the midst of an operation, which destroyed the unity of it.</p>
+
+<p>This order arrived at the very moment when Bagration, repulsed from
+Minsk, had no other retreat open to him than a long and narrow causeway.
+It occurs on the marshes of Nieswig, Shlutz, Glusck, and Bobruisk.
+Davoust wrote to the king to push the Russians briskly into this defile,
+the outlet of which at Glusck he was about to occupy. Bagration would
+never have been able to get out of it. But the king, already irritated
+by the reproaches which the uncertainty and dilatoriness of his first
+operations had brought upon him, could not suffer a subject to be his
+commander; he quitted his army, without leaving any one to replace him,
+or without even communicating, if we are to credit Davoust, to any of
+his generals, the order which he had just received. He was permitted to
+retire into Westphalia without his guard; which he accordingly did.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Davoust vainly waited for Bagration at Glusck. That general,
+not being sufficiently pressed by the Westphalian army, had the option
+of making a new <i>detour</i> towards the south, to get to Bobruisk, and
+there cross the Berezina, and reach the Boristhenes near Bickof. There
+again, if the Westphalian army had had a commander, if that commander
+had pressed the Russian leader more closely, if he had replaced him at
+Bickof, when he came in collision with Davoust at Mohilef, it is certain
+that in that case Bagration, enclosed between the Westphalians, Davoust,
+the Boristhenes, and the Berezina, would have been compelled to conquer
+or to surrender We have seen that the Russian prince could not pass the
+Berezina but at Bobruisk, nor reach the Boristhenes, except in the
+direction of Novo&iuml;-Bikof, forty leagues to the south of Orcha, and sixty
+leagues from Witepsk, which it was his object to reach.</p>
+
+<p>Finding himself driven so far out of his track, he hastened to regain it
+by reascending the Boristhenes, to Mohilef. But there again he found
+Davoust, who had anticipated him at Lida by passing the Berezina at the
+very point at which Charles XII. had formerly done so.</p>
+
+<p>This marshal, however, had not expected to find the Russian prince on
+the road to Mohilef. He believed him to be already on the left bank of
+the Boristhenes. Their mutual surprise turned in the first instance to
+the advantage of Bagration, who cut off a whole regiment of his light
+cavalry. At that time Bagration had with him 35,000 men, Davoust 12,000.
+On the 23d of July, the latter chose an elevated ground, defended by a
+ravine, and flanked by two woods. The Russians had no means of extending
+themselves on this field of battle; they, nevertheless, accepted the
+challenge. Their numbers were there useless; they attacked like men sure
+of victory; they did not even think of profiting by the woods, in order
+to turn Davoust's right.</p>
+
+<p>The Muscovites say that, in the middle of the contest they were seized
+with a panic at the idea of finding themselves in the presence of
+Napoleon; for each of the enemy's generals imagined him to be opposed
+to them, Bagration at Mohilef; and Barclay at Drissa. He was believed to
+be in all places at once: so greatly does renown magnify the man of
+genius! so strangely does it fill the world with its fame! and convert
+him into an omnipresent and supernatural being!</p>
+
+<p>The attack was violent and obstinate on the part of the Russians, but
+without scientific combination. Bagration was roughly repulsed, and
+again compelled to retrace his steps. He finally crossed the Boristhenes
+at Novo&iuml;-Bikof, where he re-entered the Russian interior, in order
+finally to unite with Barclay, beyond Smolensk.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon disdained to attribute this disappointment to the ability of
+the enemy's general; he referred it to the incapacity of his own. He
+already discovered that his presence was necessary every where, which
+rendered it every where impossible. The circle of his operations was so
+much enlarged, that, being compelled to remain in the centre, his
+presence was wanting on the whole of the circumference. His generals,
+exhausted like himself, too independent of each other, too much
+separated, and at the same time too dependent upon him, ventured to do
+less of themselves, and frequently waited for his orders. His influence
+was weakened over so great an extent. It required too great a soul for
+so great a body; his, vast as it was, was not sufficient for the
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But at length, on the 16th of July, the whole army was in motion. While
+all were hurrying and exerting themselves in this manner, he was still
+at Wilna, which he caused to be fortified. He there ordered a levy of
+eleven Lithuanian regiments. He established the duke of Bassano as
+governor of Lithuania, and as the centre of administrative, political,
+and even military communication between him, Europe, and the generals
+commanding the <i>corps de arm&eacute;e</i> which were not to follow him to Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>This ostensible inactivity of Napoleon at Wilna lasted twenty days. Some
+thought that, finding himself in the centre of his operations with a
+strong reserve, he awaited the event, in readiness to direct his motions
+either towards Davoust, Murat, or Macdonald; others thought that the
+organization of Lithuania, and the politics of Europe, to which he was
+more proximate at Wilna, retained him in that city; or that he did not
+anticipate any obstacles worthy of him till he reached the D&uuml;na; a
+circumstance in which he was not deceived, but by which he was too much
+flattered. The precipitate evacuation of Lithuania by the Russians
+seemed to dazzle his judgment; of this Europe will be the best judge;
+his bulletins repeated his words.</p>
+
+<p>"Here then is that Russian empire, so formidable at a distance! It is a
+desert, for which its scattered population is wholly insufficient. They
+will be vanquished by its very extent, which ought to defend them. They
+are barbarians. They are scarcely possessed of arms. They have no
+recruits in readiness. Alexander will require more time to collect them
+than he will take to reach Moscow. It is true that, from the moment of
+the passage of the Niemen, the atmosphere has been incessantly deluging
+or drying up the unsheltered soil; but this calamity is less an obstacle
+to the rapidity of our advance, than an impediment to the flight of the
+Russians. They are conquered without a combat by their weakness alone;
+by the memory of our victories; by the remorse which dictates the
+restitution of that Lithuania, which they have acquired neither by peace
+nor war, but solely by treachery."</p>
+
+<p>To these motives of the stay, perhaps too protracted, which Napoleon
+made at Wilna, those who were nearest to his person have added another.
+They remarked to each other, "that a genius so vast as his, and always
+increasing in activity and audacity, was not now seconded as it had been
+formerly by a vigorous constitution. They were alarmed at finding their
+chief no longer insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they
+remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to
+corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished; the sure sign of a
+premature debility of system."</p>
+
+<p>Some of them attributed this to his frequent use of the bath. They were
+ignorant, that, far from being a habit of luxury, this had become to him
+an indispensable relief from a bodily ailment of a serious and alarming
+character<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>, which his policy carefully concealed, in order not to
+excite cruel expectations in his adversaries.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The <i>dysuria</i>, or retention of urine.</p></div>
+
+<p>Such is the inevitable and unhappy influence of the most trivial causes
+over the destiny of nations. It will be shortly seen, when the
+profoundest combinations, which ought to have secured the success of the
+boldest, and perhaps the most useful enterprise in a European point of
+view, come to be developed;&mdash;how, at the decisive moment, on the plains
+of the Moskwa, nature paralysed the genius, and the man was wanting to
+the hero. The numerous battalions of Russia could not have defended her;
+a stormy day, a sudden attack of fever, were her salvation.</p>
+
+<p>It will be only just and proper to revert to this observation, when, in
+examining the picture which I shall be forced to trace of the battle of
+the Moskwa, I shall be found repeating all the complaints, and even the
+reproaches, which an unusual inactivity and languor extorted from the
+most devoted friends and constant admirers of this great man. Most of
+them, as well as those who have subsequently given an account of the
+battle, were unaware of the bodily sufferings of a chief, who, in the
+midst of his depression, exerted himself to conceal their cause. That
+which was eminently a misfortune, these narrators have designated as a
+fault.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, at 800 leagues' distance from one's home, after so many
+fatigues and sacrifices, at the instant when they saw the victory escape
+from their grasp, and a frightful prospect revealed itself, it was
+natural for them to be severe; and they had suffered too much, to be
+quite impartial.</p>
+
+<p>As for myself, I shall not conceal what I witnessed, in the persuasion
+that truth is of all tributes that which is alone worthy of a great
+man; of that illustrious captain, who had so often contrived to extract
+prodigious advantages from every occurrence, not excepting his reverses;
+of that man who raised himself to so great an eminence, that posterity
+will scarcely be enabled to distinguish the clouds scattered over a
+glory so brilliant.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIc" id="CHAP_VIIc"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meantime, he was apprised that his orders were fulfilled, his army
+united, and that a battle claimed his presence. He at length departed
+from Wilna on the 16th of July, at half-past eleven at night; he stopped
+at Swentziani, while the heat of the 17th was most oppressive; on the
+18th he was at Klubokoe: taking up his residence at a monastery, whence
+he observed that the village which it commanded bore more resemblance to
+an assemblage of savage huts than to European habitations.</p>
+
+<p>An address of the Russians to the French soldiers had just been
+dispersed throughout his army. He found in it some idle abuse, coupled
+with a nugatory and unskilful invitation to desert. His anger was
+excited at its perusal; in his first agitation, he dictated a reply,
+which he tore; then a second, which experienced the same fate; at length
+a third, with which he expressed himself satisfied. It was that which
+was, at the time, read in the journals, under the signature of a French
+grenadier. In this manner he dictated even the most trivial letters,
+which issued from his cabinet or from his staff; he perpetually reduced
+his ministers and Berthier to the condition of being mere secretaries;
+his mind still retained its activity, notwithstanding his sinking frame;
+their union, however, began to fail; and this was one cause of our
+misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this occupation, he learned that Barclay had, on the
+18th, abandoned his camp at Drissa, and that he was marching towards
+Witepsk. This movement opened his eyes. Detained by the check which
+Sebastiani had received near Dru&iuml;a, and more especially by the rains and
+bad state of the roads, he found (though perhaps too late) that the
+occupation of Witepsk was urgent and decisive; that that city alone was
+eminently aggressive, inasmuch as it separated the two hostile rivers
+and armies. From that position, he would be enabled to turn the broken
+army of his rival, cut him off from his southern provinces, and crush
+his weakness with superior force. He concluded that, if Barclay had
+anticipated him in reaching that capital, he would doubtless defend it:
+and there, perhaps, he was to expect that so-much-coveted victory which
+had escaped him on the Vilia. He, therefore, instantly directed all his
+corps on Beszenkowiczi; thither he summoned Murat and Ney, who were then
+near Polotsk, where he left Oudinot. For himself, he proceeded from
+Klubokoe (where he was surrounded by his guard, the Italian army, and
+three divisions detached from Davoust), to Kamen, always in a carriage,
+except during the night, either from necessity, or, perhaps, with a view
+to keep his soldiers in ignorance of the inability of their chief to
+share their fatigues.</p>
+
+<p>Till that time, the greater part of the army had proceeded with
+astonishment, at finding no enemy; they had now become habituated to the
+circumstance. By day the novelty of the places, and impatience to get to
+their journey's end, occupied their attention; at night the necessity of
+choosing or making for themselves a place of shelter; of finding food,
+and dressing it. The soldiers were so much engaged by so many cares,
+that they considered themselves less employed in making war than a
+troublesome journey; but if the war and the enemy were to fall back
+always thus, how much farther should they have to go in search of them?
+At length, on the 25th, the report of cannon was heard, and the army, as
+well as the emperor, indulged their hopes of a victory and peace.</p>
+
+<p>This was in the direction of Beszenkowiczi, Prince Eugene had there
+encountered Doctorof, who commanded Barclay's rear-guard. In following
+his leader from Polotsk to Witepsk, he cleared his way on the left bank
+of the D&uuml;na to Beszenkowiczi, the bridge of which he burnt as he
+retired. The viceroy, on capturing this town, came in sight of the D&uuml;na,
+and re-established the passage; the few Russian troops left in
+observation on the other side feebly opposed the operation. When
+Napoleon contemplated, for the first time, this river, his new
+conquest, he censured sharply, and not unjustly, the defective
+construction of the bridge which made him master of the two banks.</p>
+
+<p>It was no puerile vanity which induced him then to cross that river, but
+anxiety to see with his own eyes how far the Russian army had proceeded
+on its march from Drissa to Witepsk, and whether he might not attack it
+on its passage, or anticipate its arrival at the latter city. But the
+direction taken by the enemy's rear-guard, and the information obtained
+from some prisoners, convinced him that Barclay had been beforehand with
+him; that he had left Wittgenstein in front of Oudinot, and that the
+Russian general-in-chief was in Witepsk. He was, indeed, already
+prepared to dispute the possession of the defiles which cover that
+capital with Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon having observed on the right bank of the river nothing but the
+remains of a rear-guard, returned to Beszenkowiczi. His various
+divisions arrived there at the same time by the northern and western
+roads. His orders of march had been executed with so much precision,
+that all the corps which had left the Niemen, at different epochs, and
+by different routes, notwithstanding obstacles of every description,
+after a month of separation, and at a hundred leagues' distance from the
+point of their departure, found themselves all reunited at
+Beszenkowiczi, where they arrived on the same day, and nearly at the
+same hour.</p>
+
+<p>Great disorder was naturally the result; numerous columns of cavalry,
+infantry, and artillery presented themselves on all sides; contests
+took place for precedence; and each corps, exasperated with fatigue and
+hunger, was impatient to get to its destination. Meanwhile, the streets
+were blocked up with a crowd of orderlies, staff-officers, valets,
+saddle-horses, and baggage. They ran through the city in tumultuous
+groups; some looking for provisions, others for forage, and a few for
+lodgings; there was a constant crossing and jostling; and as the influx
+augmented every instant, chaos in a short time reigned throughout.</p>
+
+<p>In one quarter, <i>aides-de-camp</i>, the bearers of urgent orders, vainly
+sought to force a passage; the soldiers were deaf to their
+remonstrances, and even to their orders: hence arose quarrels and
+outcries; the noise of which, united with the beating of drums, the
+oaths of the waggoners, the rumbling of the baggage-carts and cannon,
+the commands of the officers, and, finally, with the tumult of the
+regular contests which took place in the houses, the entrances of which,
+while one party attempted to force, others, already established there,
+prepared to defend.</p>
+
+<p>At length, towards midnight, all these masses, which were nearly
+confounded together, got disentangled; the accumulation of troops
+gradually moved off in the direction of Ostrowno, or were distributed in
+Beszenkowiczi; and the most profound silence succeeded the most
+frightful tumult.</p>
+
+<p>This great concentration, the multiplied orders which came from all
+parts, the rapidity with which the various corps were pushed forward,
+even during the night&mdash;all announced the expectation of a battle on the
+following day. In fact, Napoleon not having been able to anticipate the
+Russians in the possession of Witepsk, was determined to force them from
+that position; but the latter, after having entered by the right bank of
+the D&uuml;na, had passed through that city, and were now come to meet him,
+in order to defend the long defiles which protect it.</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th of July, Murat proceeded towards Ostrowno with his cavalry.
+At the distance of two leagues from that village, Domon, Du Co&euml;tlosquet,
+Carignan, and the 8th hussars, were advancing in column upon a broad
+road, lined by a double row of large birch trees. These hussars were
+near reaching the summit of a hill, on which they could only get a
+glimpse of the weakest portion of a corps, composed of three regiments
+of cavalry of the Russian guard, and six pieces of cannon. There was not
+a single rifleman to cover their line.</p>
+
+<p>The colonels of the 8th imagined themselves preceded by two regiments of
+their division, which had marched across the fields on the right and
+left of the road, and from the view of which they were precluded by the
+bordering trees. But these corps had halted; and the 8th, already
+considerably in advance of them, still kept marching on, persuaded that
+what it perceived through the trees, at 150 paces' distance, in its
+front, were these two regiments, of which, without being aware of it, it
+had got the start.</p>
+
+<p>The immobility of the Russians completed the error into which the
+chiefs of the 8th had fallen. The order to charge seemed to them to be a
+mistake; they sent an officer to reconnoitre the troop which was before
+them, and still marched on without any distrust. Suddenly they beheld
+their officer sabred, knocked down, made prisoner, and the enemy's
+cannon bringing down their hussars. They now hesitated no longer, and
+without losing time to extend their line under the enemy's fire, they
+dashed through the trees, and rushed forward to extinguish it. At the
+first onset they seized the cannon, dispersed the regiment that was in
+the centre of the enemy's line, and destroyed it. During the disorder of
+this first success, they observed the Russian regiment on the right,
+which they had passed, remaining motionless with astonishment; upon this
+they returned, and attacking it in the rear dispersed it. In the midst
+of this second victory, they perceived the third regiment on the enemy's
+left, which was giving way in confusion, and seeking to retreat; towards
+this third enemy they briskly returned, with all the men they could
+muster, and attacked and dispersed it in the midst of its retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Animated by this success, Murat drove the enemy into the wood of
+Ostrowno, where he seemed to conceal himself. That monarch endeavoured
+to penetrate the wood, but a strong resistance obstructed the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>The position of Ostrowno was well chosen and commanding; those posted
+there could see without being seen; it intersected the main road; it had
+the D&uuml;na on the right, a ravine in front, and thick woods on its
+surface and on the left. It was, moreover, in communication with
+magazines; it covered them, as well as Witepsk, the capital of these
+regions, which Ostermann had hurried to defend.</p>
+
+<p>On his side, Murat, always as prodigal of his life, which was now that
+of a victorious king, as he had formerly been when only an obscure
+soldier, persisted in attacks upon these woods, notwithstanding the
+heavy fire which proceeded from them. But he was soon made sensible that
+a furious onset was fruitless here. The ground carried by the hussars of
+the 8th was disputed with him, and his advance-column, composed of the
+divisions Bruy&egrave;res and Saint Germain, and of the 8th corps of infantry,
+was compelled to maintain itself there against an army.</p>
+
+<p>They defended themselves as victors always do, by attacking. Each
+hostile corps, as it presented itself to assail our flanks, was in turn
+assaulted. Their cavalry were driven back into the woods, and their
+infantry broken at the point of the sabre. Our troops, nevertheless,
+were getting fatigued with victory, when the division Delzons arrived;
+the king promptly pushed it forward on the right, toward the line of the
+enemy's retreat, who now became uneasy, and no longer disputed the
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>These defiles are several leagues in length. The same evening the
+viceroy rejoined Murat, and the next day they found the Russians in a
+new position. Pahlen and Konownitzin had united with Ostermann. After
+having repulsed the Russian left, the two French princes were pointing
+out to the troops of their right wing the position which was to serve
+them as a <i>point d'appui</i>, from which they were to make the attack, when
+suddenly a great clamour arose on their left: their eyes were instantly
+turned that way; the cavalry and infantry of that wing had twice
+attacked the enemy, and been twice repulsed; the Russians, emboldened by
+this success, were issuing in multitudes, and with frightful cries, from
+their woods. The audacity and fervour of attack had passed over to them,
+while the French exhibited the uncertainty and timidity of defence.</p>
+
+<p>A battalion of Croats, and the 84th regiment, vainly attempted to make a
+stand; their line gradually decreased; the ground in front of them was
+strewed with their dead; behind them, the plain was covered with their
+wounded, who had retired from the battle, with those who carried them,
+and with many others, who, under the plea of supporting the wounded, or
+being wounded themselves, successively abandoned their ranks. A rout
+accordingly began. Already the artillery corps, who are always picked
+men, perceiving themselves no longer supported, began retiring with
+their pieces; a few minutes longer, and the troops of all arms, in their
+flight towards the same defile, would have there met each other; thence
+would have resulted a confusion, in which the voices and the efforts of
+their officers would have been lost, where all the elements of
+resistance would have been confounded and rendered useless.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that Murat, on seeing this, darted forward in front of a
+regiment of Polish lancers; and that the latter, excited by the presence
+of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage
+at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only
+wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no
+intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in
+which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish
+lances were ready couched and condensed behind him; they covered the
+whole width of the ground; and they pushed him before them with all the
+rapidity of their steeds; he could neither detach himself from them nor
+stop; he had no resource but to charge in front of the regiment, just
+where he had stationed himself in order to harangue it; a resource to
+which, like a true soldier, he submitted with the best possible grace.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, general Anthouard ran to his artillerymen, and general
+Girardin to the 106th regiment, which he halted, rallied, and led back
+against the Russian right wing, whose position he carried, as well as
+two pieces of cannon and the victory; on his side, general Pir&eacute;
+encountered and turned the left of the enemy. Fortune having again
+changed sides, the Russians withdrew into their forests.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, they persevered on the left in defending a thick wood, the
+advanced position of which broke our line. The 92d regiment,
+intimidated by the heavy fire which issued from it, and bewildered by a
+shower of balls, remained immoveable, neither daring to advance nor
+retreat, restrained by two opposite fears&mdash;the dread of danger and the
+dread of shame&mdash;and escaping neither; but general Belliard hastened to
+reanimate them by his words, and general Roussel by his example; and the
+wood was carried.</p>
+
+<p>By this success, a strong column which had advanced on our right, in
+order to turn it, was itself turned; Murat perceived this, and instantly
+drawing his sword, exclaimed, "Let the bravest follow me!" But this
+territory is intersected with ravines which protected the retreat of the
+Russians, who all plunged into a forest of two leagues in depth, which
+was the last natural curtain which concealed Witepsk from our view.</p>
+
+<p>After so warm a contest, the king of Naples and the viceroy were
+hesitating about committing themselves to so covered a country, when the
+emperor came up: both hastened to his presence, in order to show him
+what had been done, and what still remained to be done. Napoleon
+immediately ascended the highest rising ground, which was nearest to the
+enemy. From thence his genius, soaring over every obstacle, soon
+penetrated the mystery of the forests, and the depths of the mountains
+before him; he gave his orders without hesitation; and the same woods
+which had arrested the audacity of the two princes, were traversed from
+end to end. In short, that very evening, Witepsk might have discerned
+from the summit of her double eminence our light troops emerging into
+the plain by which she is surrounded.</p>
+
+<p>Here, every thing contributed to stop the emperor; the night, the
+multitude of hostile fires which covered the plain, an unknown country,
+which it was necessary to reconnoitre, in order to direct his divisions
+across it, and especially the time requisite to enable the crowd of
+soldiers to disengage themselves from the long and narrow defile through
+which they had to pass. A halt was therefore ordered, for the purpose of
+taking breath, reconnoitring, rallying, refreshing, and getting their
+arms ready for the next day. Napoleon slept in his tent, on an eminence
+to the left of the main road, and behind the village of Kukowiaczi.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIc" id="CHAP_VIIIc"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 27th, the emperor appeared at the advanced posts before daylight;
+its first rays exhibited to him at last the Russian army encamped on an
+elevated plain, which commands all the avenues of Witepsk. The river
+Luczissa, which has worn itself a deep channel, marked the foot of this
+position. In advance of it 10,000 horse and some infantry made a show of
+defending its approaches; the infantry was in the centre, on the main
+road; its left in woody uplands; all the cavalry to the right in double
+lines, supported by the D&uuml;na.</p>
+
+<p>The front of the Russians was no longer opposite to our column, but upon
+our left; it had changed its direction with that of the river, which a
+winding had removed from us. The French column, after having crossed, by
+means of a narrow bridge, the ravine which divided it from the new field
+of battle, was obliged to deploy by a change of front to the left, with
+the right wing foremost, in order to preserve the support of the river
+on that side, and so confront the enemy: on the banks of this ravine,
+near the bridge, and to the left of the main-road, there was an isolated
+hillock which had already attracted the notice of the emperor. From that
+point he could see both armies, being stationed on the flank of the
+field of battle, like the second in a duel.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred Parisian <i>voltigeurs</i> of the 9th regiment of the line were
+the first to debouch; they were immediately pushed forward to the left,
+in front of the whole Russian cavalry, like them supporting themselves
+by the D&uuml;na, and marking the left of the new line; the 16th horse
+chasseurs followed, and then some light pieces. The Russians coolly
+allowed us to defile before them, and mature our attack.</p>
+
+<p>Their inactivity was favourable to us; but the king of Naples, whose
+brain was intoxicated by the general notice he attracted, yielding to
+his usual impetuosity, urged the chasseurs of the 16th on the whole body
+of the Russian cavalry. All eyes beheld with terror that feeble French
+line, broken on its march by the deep ravines which intersected the
+ground, advance to attack the enemy's masses. These unfortunate men,
+feeling themselves sacrificed, proceeded with hesitating steps to
+certain destruction. In consequence, at the first movement made by the
+lancers of the Russian guard, they took to flight; but the ravine, which
+it was necessary to pass, obstructed their flight; they were overtaken,
+and precipitated into these shoals, where many of them perished.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of this, Murat, grieved beyond measure, precipitated himself,
+sabre in hand, in the midst of this medley, with the sixty officers and
+horsemen surrounding him. His audacity so astonished the Russian
+lancers, that they halted. While this prince was engaged, and the
+<i>piqueur</i> who followed him saved his life by striking down an enemy
+whose arm was raised over his head, the remains of the 16th rallied, and
+went to seek shelter close to the 53d regiment, which protected them.</p>
+
+<p>This successful charge of the lancers of the Russian guard had carried
+them as far as the foot of the hillock from which Napoleon was directing
+the different corps. Some chasseurs of the French guard had just
+dismounted from their horses, according to custom, in order to form a
+circle around him; a few discharges from their carabines drove off the
+assailant lancers. The latter, being thus repulsed, encountered on their
+return the two hundred Parisian <i>voltigeurs</i>, whom the flight of the
+16th horse chasseurs had left alone between the two armies. These they
+attacked, and all eyes were instantly fixed on the engagement.</p>
+
+<p>Both armies concluded these foot soldiers to be lost; but though
+single-handed, they did not despair of themselves. In the first
+instance, their captains, by dint of hard fighting, obtained possession
+of a ground intersected by cavities and thickets which bordered on the
+D&uuml;na; there the whole party instantly united, urged by their warlike
+habits, by the desire of mutual support, and by the danger which stared
+them in the face. In this emergency, as always happens in imminent
+dangers, each looked to his neighbour; the young to their elders, and
+all of them to their chiefs, in order to read in their countenances what
+they had to hope, to fear, or to perform; each aspect was replete with
+confidence, and all, relying on their comrades, relied at the same time
+more upon themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The ground was skilfully turned to account. The Russian lancers,
+entangled in the bushes, and obstructed by the crevices, couched their
+long lances in vain; they were struck by our people's balls while they
+were endeavouring to penetrate their ranks, and fell, wounded, to the
+earth; their bodies, and those of their horses, added to the
+difficulties of the ground. At length they became discouraged, and took
+to flight. The joyful shouts of our army, the crosses of honour, which
+the emperor instantly sent to the bravest of the group, his words,
+afterwards perused by all Europe,&mdash;all taught these valiant soldiers the
+extent of a glory, which they had not yet estimated; noble actions
+generally appearing quite ordinary to those who perform them. They
+imagined themselves on the point of being killed or taken; and found
+themselves almost at the same instant victorious and rewarded.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the army of Italy and the cavalry of Murat, followed by three
+divisions of the first corps, which had been confided, since they left
+Wilna, to count Lobau, attacked the main-road and the woods which formed
+the support of the enemy's left. The engagement was, in the first
+instance, very animated; but it terminated abruptly. The Russian
+vanguard retreated precipitately behind the ravine of the Luczissa, to
+escape being thrown into it. The enemy's army was then entirely
+collected on the opposite bank, and presented a united body of 80,000
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Their determined countenance, in a strong position, and in front of a
+capital, deceived Napoleon; he conceived that they would regard it as a
+point of honour to maintain their ground. It was only eleven o'clock; he
+ordered the attack to cease, in order to have an opportunity of
+exploring the whole front of the line, and preparing for a decisive
+battle on the following day. In the first instance, he proceeded to post
+himself on a rising ground among the light troops, in the midst of whom
+he breakfasted. Thence he observed the enemy's army, a ball from which
+wounded an officer very near him. The subsequent hours he spent in
+reconnoitring the ground, and in waiting for the arrival of the other
+corps.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon announced a battle for the following day. His parting words to
+Murat were these:&mdash;"To-morrow at five o'clock, the sun of Austerlitz!"
+They explain the cause of that suspension of hostilities in the middle
+of the day, in the midst of a success which filled the army with
+enthusiasm. They were astonished at this inactivity at the moment of
+overtaking an army, the pursuit of which had completely exhausted them.
+Murat, who had been daily deluded by a similar expectation, remarked to
+the emperor that Barclay only made a demonstration of boldness at that
+hour, in order to be enabled more tranquilly to effect his retreat
+during the night. Finding himself unable to convince his chief, he
+rashly proceeded to pitch his tent on the banks of the Luczissa, almost
+in the midst of the enemy. It was a position which gratified his desire
+of hearing the first symptoms of their retreat, his hope of disturbing
+it, and his adventurous character.</p>
+
+<p>Murat was deceived, and yet he appeared to have been most clear-sighted;
+Napoleon was in the right, and yet, the event placed him in the wrong;
+such are the freaks of fortune! The emperor of the French had correctly
+appreciated the designs of Barclay. The Russian general, believing
+Bagration to be still near Orcha, had resolved upon fighting, in order
+to give him time to rejoin him. It was the intelligence which he
+received that very evening, of the retreat of Bagration by Novo&iuml;-Bikof
+towards Smolensk, which suddenly changed his determination.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, by daybreak on the 28th, Murat sent word to the emperor that he
+was about to pursue the Russians, who had already disappeared. Napoleon
+still persisted in his opinion, obstinately affirming that the whole
+enemy's army was in front of him, and that it was necessary to advance
+with circumspection; this occasioned a considerable delay. At length he
+mounted his horse; every step he took destroyed his illusion; and he
+soon found himself in the midst of the camp which Barclay had just
+deserted.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing about it exhibited the science of war; its advantageous
+site; the symmetry of all its parts; the exact and exclusive nicety in
+the use to which each of them had been destined; the order and neatness
+which thence resulted; in fine, nothing left behind, not one weapon, nor
+a single valuable; no trace, nothing in short, in this sudden nocturnal
+march, which could demonstrate, beyond the bounds of the camp, the route
+which the Russians had taken; there appeared more order in their defeat,
+than in our victory! Though conquered, their flight left us lessons by
+which conquerors never profit; whether it be that good fortune is
+contemptuous, or that it waits for misfortune to correct it.</p>
+
+<p>A Russian soldier, who was surprised asleep under a bush, was the
+solitary result of that day, which was expected to be so decisive. We
+entered Witepsk, which was found equally deserted with the camp of the
+Russians. Some filthy Jews, and some Jesuits, were all that remained;
+they were interrogated, but without effect. All the roads were
+abortively reconnoitred. Were the Russians gone to Smolensk? Had they
+re-ascended the D&uuml;na? At length, a band of irregular cossacks attracted
+us in the latter direction, while Ney explored the former. We marched
+six leagues over a deep sand, through a thick dust, and a suffocating
+heat. Night arrested our march in the neighbourhood of Aghaponovcht-china.</p>
+
+<p>While parched, fevered, and exhausted by fatigue and hunger, the army
+met with nothing there but muddy water. Napoleon, the King of Naples,
+the Viceroy, and the Prince of Neufchatel, held a council in the
+imperial tents, which were pitched in the court-yard of a castle,
+situated upon an eminence to the left of the main road.</p>
+
+<p>"That victory which was so fervently desired, so rapidly pursued, and
+rendered more necessary by the lapse of every succeeding day, had, it
+seemed, just escaped from our grasp, as it had at Wilna. True, we had
+come up with the Russian rear-guard; but was it that of their army? Was
+it not more likely that Barclay had fled towards Smolensk by way of
+Rudnia? Whither, then, must we pursue the Russians, in order to compel
+them to fight? Did not the necessity of organizing reconquered
+Lithuania, of establishing magazines and hospitals, of fixing a new
+centre of repose, of defence, and departure for a line of operations
+which prolonged itself in so alarming a manner;&mdash;did not every thing,
+in short, decidedly prove the necessity of halting on the borders of old
+Russia?"</p>
+
+<p>An affray had just happened, not far from that, respecting which Murat
+was silent. Our vanguard had been repulsed; some of the cavalry had been
+obliged to dismount, in order to effect their retreat; others had been
+unable to bring off their extenuated horses, otherwise than by dragging
+them by the bridle. The emperor having interrogated Belliard on the
+subject, that general frankly declared, that the regiments were already
+very much weakened, that they were harassed to death, and stood in
+absolute need of rest; and that if they continued to march for six days
+longer, there would be no cavalry remaining, and that it was high time
+to halt.</p>
+
+<p>To these motives were added, the effects of a consuming sun reflected
+from burning sands. Exhausted as he was, the emperor now decided; the
+course of the D&uuml;na and of the Boristhenes marked out the French line.
+The army was thus quartered on the banks of these two rivers, and in the
+interval between them; Poniatowski and his Poles at Mohilef; Davoust and
+the first corps at Orcha, Dubrowna, and Luibowiczi; Murat, Ney, the army
+of Italy and the guard, from Orcha and Dubrowna to Witepsk and Suraij.
+The advanced posts at Lyadi, Vinkowo, and Velij, opposite to those of
+Barclay and Bagration; for these two hostile armies, the one flying from
+Napoleon, across the D&uuml;na, by Drissa and Witepsk, the other, escaping
+Davoust across the Berezina and the Boristhenes, by way of Bobruisk,
+Bickof, and Smolensk, succeeded in forming a junction in the interval
+bounded by these two rivers.</p>
+
+<p>The great divisions of the army detached from the central body were then
+stationed as follows: To the right, Dombrowski, in front of Bobruisk and
+opposed to the corps of 12,000 men commanded by the Russian general
+Hoertel.</p>
+
+<p>To the left, the Duke of Reggio, and St. Cyr, at Polotsk and at Bielo&eacute;,
+on the Petersburgh road, which was defended by Wittgenstein and 30,000
+men.</p>
+
+<p>At the extreme left were Macdonald and 38,000 Prussians and Poles,
+before Riga. They extended their line towards the right upon the Aa, and
+in the direction of D&uuml;nabourg.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Schwartzenberg and Regnier, at the head of the Saxon
+and Austrian corps, occupied, towards Slonim, the interval between the
+Niemen and the Bug, covering Warsaw and the rear of the grand army,
+which was menaced by Tormasof. The Duke of Belluno was on the Vistula
+with a reserve of 40,000 men; while Augereau assembled an eleventh army
+at Stettin.</p>
+
+<p>As to Wilna, the Duke of Bassano remained there, surrounded by the
+envoys of several courts. That minister governed Lithuania, communicated
+with all the chiefs, sent them the instructions which he received from
+Napoleon, and forwarded the provisions, recruits, and stragglers, as
+fast as they arrived.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the emperor had made up his mind, he returned to Witepsk
+with his guard: there, on the 28th of July, in entering the imperial
+head-quarters, he laid down his sword, and abruptly depositing it on his
+maps, with which his tables were covered, he exclaimed; "Here I stop!
+here I must look round me; rally; refresh my army, and organize Poland.
+The campaign of 1812 is finished; that of 1813 will do the rest."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_V" id="BOOK_V"></a>BOOK V.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Id" id="CHAPTER_Id"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>With the conquest of Lithuania, the object of the war was attained, and,
+yet, the war appeared scarcely to have commenced; for places only had
+been vanquished, and not men. The Russian army was unbroken; its two
+wings, which had been separated by the vivacity of the first onset, had
+now united. We were in the finest season of the year. It was in this
+situation that Napoleon believed himself irrevocably decided to halt on
+the banks of the Boristhenes and the D&uuml;na. At that time, he could much
+more easily deceive others as to his intentions, as he actually deceived
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>His line of defence was already traced upon his maps; the siege-equipage
+was proceeding towards Riga; the left of the army would rest on that
+strong place; hence, proceeding to D&uuml;nabourg and Polotsk, it would
+maintain a menacing defensive. Witepsk, so easy to fortify, and its
+woody heights, would serve as an entrenched camp for the centre. Thence,
+towards the south, the Berezina and its marshes, covered by the
+Boristhenes, supply no other passage but a few defiles; a very few
+troops would be sufficient to guard them. Further on, Bobruisk marked
+out the right of this great line, and orders were given to obtain
+possession of that fortress. In addition, an insurrection of the
+populous provinces of the south was calculated on; they would assist
+Schwartzenberg in expelling Tormasof, and the army would be increased by
+their numerous cossacks. One of the greatest proprietors of these
+provinces, a nobleman in whom every thing was distinguished, even to his
+external appearance, hastened to join the liberators of his country. He
+it was whom the emperor intended for the leader of this insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>In this position nothing would be wanting. Courland would support
+Macdonald; Samogitia, Oudinot; the fertile plains of Klubokoe, the
+emperor; the southern provinces would effect the rest. In addition, the
+grand magazine of the army was at Dantzic; its intermediate ones at
+Wilna and Minsk. In this manner the army would be connected with the
+country which it had just set free; and all things appertaining to that
+country&mdash;its rivers, marshes, productions, and inhabitants, would be
+united with us: all things would be agreed for the purposes of defence.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Napoleon's plan. He was at that time seen exploring Witepsk and
+its environs, as if to reconnoitre places where he was likely to make a
+long residence. Establishments of all kinds were formed there.
+Thirty-six ovens, capable of baking at once 29,000 pounds of bread, were
+constructed. Neither was utility alone attended to; embellishment was
+also considered. Some stone houses spoiled the appearance of the square
+of the palace; the emperor ordered his guard to pull them down, and to
+clear away the rubbish. Indeed, he was already anticipating the
+pleasures of winter; Parisian actors must come to Witepsk; and as that
+city was abandoned, fair spectators must be attracted from Warsaw and
+Wilna.</p>
+
+<p>His star at that time enlightened his path: happy had it been for him,
+if he had not afterwards mistaken the movements of his impatience for
+the inspirations of genius. But, whatever may be said, it was by himself
+alone that he suffered himself to be hurried on; for in him every thing
+proceeded from himself; and it was a vain attempt to seduce his
+prudence. In vain did one of his marshals then promise him an
+insurrection of the Russians, in consequence of the proclamations which
+the officers of his advanced guard had been instructed to disseminate.
+Some Poles had intoxicated that general with inconsiderate promises,
+dictated by the delusive hope common to all exiles, with which they
+flatter the ambition of the leaders who rely upon them.</p>
+
+<p>But Murat was the individual whose incitements were most frequent and
+animated. Tired of repose, and insatiable of glory, that monarch, who
+considered the enemy to be within his grasp, was unable to repress his
+emotions. He quitted the advanced guard, went to Witepsk, and in a
+private interview with the emperor, gave way to his impetuosity. "He
+accused the Russian army of cowardice; according to him it had failed
+in the <i>rendezvous</i> before Witepsk, as if it had been an affair of a
+duel. It was a panic-struck army, which his light cavalry alone was
+sufficient to put to flight." This ebullition extorted a smile from
+Napoleon; but in order to moderate his fervour, he said to him, "Murat!
+the first campaign in Russia is finished; let us here plant our eagles.
+Two great rivers mark out our position; let us raise block-houses on
+that line; let our fires cross each other on all sides; let us form in
+square battalion; cannons at the angles and the exterior; let the
+interior contain our quarters and our magazines: 1813 will see us at
+Moscow&mdash;1814 at Petersburgh. The Russian war is a war of three years!"</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that his genius conceived every thing in masses, and his eye
+expatiated over an army of 400,000 men as if it were a regiment.</p>
+
+<p>That very day he loudly addressed an administrator in the following
+words: "As for you, sir, you must take care to provide subsistence for
+us in these quarters; for," added he, in a loud voice, and addressing
+himself to some of his officers, "we shall not repeat the folly of
+Charles the Twelfth." But his actions in a short time belied his words;
+and there was a general astonishment at his indifference to giving the
+necessary orders for so great an establishment. To the left no
+instructions were sent to Macdonald, nor was he supplied with the means
+of obtaining possession of Riga. To the right, it was Bobruisk which it
+was necessary to capture; this fortress stands in the midst of an
+extensive and deep marsh; and it was to a body of cavalry that the task
+of besieging it was committed.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, in former times, scarcely ever gave orders without the
+possibility of being obeyed; but the prodigies of the war of Prussia had
+since occurred, and from that time the idea of impossibility was not
+admitted. His orders were always, that every thing must be attempted,
+because up to that time every thing had succeeded. This at first gave
+birth to great exertions, all of which, however, were not equally
+fortunate. Persons got discouraged; but their chief persevered; he had
+become accustomed to command every thing; those whom he commanded got
+accustomed not to execute every thing.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Dombrowski was left before that fortress with his Polish
+division, which Napoleon stated at 8000 men, although he knew very well
+that it did not at that time amount to more than 1200; but such was his
+custom; either because he calculated on his words being repeated, and
+that they would deceive the enemy; or that he wished, by this
+exaggerated estimate, to make his generals feel all that he expected
+from them.</p>
+
+<p>Witepsk remained for survey. From the windows of its houses the eye
+looked down perpendicularly into the D&uuml;na, or to the very bottom of the
+precipices by which its walls are surrounded. In these countries the
+snow remains long upon the ground; it filters through its least solid
+parts, which it penetrates to a great depth, and which it dilutes and
+breaks down. Hence those deep and unexpected ravines, which no
+declination of the soil gives reason to foresee, which are imperceptible
+at some paces from their edge, and which on those vast plains surprised
+and suddenly arrested the charges of cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>The French would not have required more than a month to render that city
+sufficiently strong as even to stand a regular siege: the natural
+strength of the place was such as to require little assistance from art,
+but that little was denied it. At the same time a few millions, which
+were indispensable to effect the levy of the Lithuanian troops, were
+refused to them. Prince Sangutsko was to have gone and commanded the
+insurrection in the South, but he was retained in the imperial
+head-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>But the moderation of the first discourses of Napoleon had not deceived
+the members of his household. They recollected that, at the first view
+of the deserted camp of Barclay, and of Witepsk abandoned, when he heard
+them congratulating each other on this conquest, he turned sharply round
+to them and exclaimed, "Do you think then that I have come so far to
+conquer these huts?" They also knew perfectly, that when he had a great
+object in view, he never devised any other than a vague plan, preferring
+to take counsel of opportunity; a system more conformable to the
+promptitude of his genius.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects, the whole army was loaded with the favours of its
+commander. If he happened to meet with convoys of wounded, he stopped
+them, informed himself of their condition, of their sufferings, of the
+actions in which they had been wounded, and never quitted them without
+consoling them by his words, or making them partakers of his bounty.</p>
+
+<p>He bestowed particular attention on his guard; he himself daily reviewed
+some part of them, lavishing commendation, and sometimes blame; but the
+latter seldom fell on any but the administrators; which pleased the
+soldiers, and diverted their complaints.</p>
+
+<p>Every day he went and visited the ovens, tasted the bread, and satisfied
+himself of the regularity of all the distributions. He frequently sent
+wine from his table to the sentinel who was nearest to him. One day he
+assembled the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of his guards for the purpose of giving them a new
+leader; he made them a speech, and with his own hand and sword
+introduced him to them; afterwards he embraced him in their presence. So
+many attentions were ascribed by some, to his gratitude for the past; by
+others, to his exigency for the future.</p>
+
+<p>The latter saw clearly that Napoleon had at first flattered himself with
+the hope of receiving fresh overtures of peace from Alexander, and that
+the misery and debility of his army had occupied his attention. It was
+requisite to allow the long train of stragglers and sick sufficient
+time, the one for joining their corps, and the latter for reaching the
+hospitals. Finally, to establish these hospitals, to collect provisions,
+recruit the horses, and wait for the hospital-waggons, the artillery,
+and the pontoons, which were still laboriously dragging after us across
+the Lithuanian sands. His correspondence with Europe must also have
+been a source of occupation to him. To conclude, a destructive
+atmosphere stopped his progress! Such, in fact, is that climate; the
+atmosphere is always in the extreme&mdash;always excessive; it either parches
+or inundates, burns up or freezes, the soil and its inhabitants, for
+whose protection it appears expressly framed; a perfidious climate, the
+heat of which debilitated our bodies, in order to render them more
+accessible to the frosts by which they were shortly to be pierced.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor was not the least sensible of its effects; but when he found
+himself somewhat refreshed by repose, when no envoy from Alexander made
+his appearance, and his first dispositions were completed, he was seized
+with impatience. He was observed to grow restless; whether it was that
+inactivity annoyed him, as it does all men of active habits, and that he
+preferred danger to the weariness of expectation, or that he was
+agitated by that desire of acquisition, which, with the greater part of
+mankind, has stronger efficacy than the pleasure of preserving, or the
+fear of losing.</p>
+
+<p>It was then especially that the image of captive Moscow besieged him; it
+was the boundary of his fears, the object of his hopes: possessed of
+that, he would possess every thing. From that time it was foreseen that
+an ardent and restless genius, like his, and accustomed to short cuts,
+would not wait eight months, when he felt his object within his reach,
+and when twenty days were sufficient to attain it.</p>
+
+<p>We must not, however, be too hasty in judging this extraordinary man by
+the weaknesses common to all men. We shall presently hear from
+himself;&mdash;we shall see how much his political position tended to
+complicate his military position. At a later period, we shall be less
+tempted to blame the resolution he was now about to take, when it is
+seen that the fate of Russia depended upon only one more day's health,
+which failed Napoleon, even on the very field of the Moskwa.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, he at first appeared hardly bold enough to confess to himself
+a project of such great temerity. But by degrees, he assumed courage to
+look it in the face. He then began to deliberate, and the state of great
+irresolution which tormented his mind affected his whole frame. He was
+observed to wander about his apartments, as if pursued by some dangerous
+temptation. Nothing could rivet his attention; he every moment began,
+quitted, and resumed his labour; he walked about without any object;
+inquired the hour, and looked at his watch; completely absorbed, he
+stopped, hummed a tune with an absent air, and again began walking
+about.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his perplexity, he occasionally addressed the persons
+whom he met with such half sentences as "Well! what shall we do? Shall
+we stay where we are, or advance? How is it possible to stop short in
+the midst of so glorious a career?" He did not wait for their reply; but
+still kept wandering about, as if he was looking for something or
+somebody to terminate his indecision.</p>
+
+<p>At length, quite overwhelmed with the weight of such an important
+consideration, and oppressed with so great an uncertainty, he would
+throw himself on one of the beds which he had caused to be laid on the
+floor of his apartments. His frame, exhausted by the heat, and the
+struggles of his mind, could only bear a covering of the slightest
+texture; it was in that state that he passed a portion of his days at
+Witepsk.</p>
+
+<p>But when his body was at rest, his spirit was only the more active. "How
+many motives urged him towards Moscow! How support at Witepsk the
+<i>ennui</i> of seven winter months?&mdash;he, who till then had always been the
+assailant, was about to be reduced to a defensive position; a part
+unworthy of him, of which he had no experience, and adverse to his
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, at Witepsk, nothing had been decided, and yet, at what a
+distance was he already from France! Europe, then, would at length
+behold him stopped, whom nothing had been able to stop. Would not the
+duration of the enterprise augment its danger? Ought he to allow Russia
+time to arm herself entirely? How long could he protract this uncertain
+condition without impairing the charm of his infallibility, (which the
+resistance of Spain had already enfeebled) and without engendering
+dangerous hopes in Europe? What would be thought, if it were known that
+a third of his army, dispersed or sick, were no longer in the ranks? It
+was indispensable, therefore, to dazzle the world speedily by the &eacute;clat
+of a great victory, and hide so many sacrifices under a heap of
+laurels."</p>
+
+<p>Then, if he remained at Witepsk, he considered that he should have the
+<i>ennui</i>, the whole expense, all the inconveniences and anxieties of a
+defensive position to bear; while at Moscow there would be peace,
+abundance, a reimbursement of the expenses of the war, and immortal
+glory. He persuaded himself that audacity for him was henceforth the
+greatest prudence; that it is the same with all hazardous undertakings,
+as with faults, in which there is always risk at the beginning, but
+frequently gain at the conclusion; that the more inexcusable they are,
+the more they require to be successful. That it was indispensable,
+therefore, to consummate this undertaking, to push it to the utmost,
+astonish the universe, beat down Alexander by his audacity, and carry
+off a prize which should be a compensation for so many losses.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, that the same danger which perhaps ought to have recalled
+him to the Niemen, or kept him stationary on the D&uuml;na, urged him towards
+Moscow! Such is the nature of false positions; every thing in them is
+perilous; temerity is prudence; there is no choice left but of errors;
+there is no hope but in the errors of the enemy, and in chance.</p>
+
+<p>Having at last determined, he hastily arose, as if not to allow time to
+his own reflections to renew so painful a state of uncertainty; and
+already quite full of the plan which was to secure his conquest, he
+hastened to his maps; they presented to his view the cities of Smolensk
+and Moscow; "the great Moscow, the holy city;" names which he repeated
+with complacency, and which served to add new fuel to his ambitious
+flame. Fired with this prospect, his spirit, replete with the energy of
+his mighty conception, appears possessed by the genius of war. His voice
+deepens; his eye flashes fire; and his countenance darkens; his
+attendants retreat from his presence, struck with mingled awe and
+respect; but at length his plan is fixed; his determination taken; his
+order of march traced out. Instantly, the internal struggle by which he
+had been agitated subsided; and no sooner was he delivered of his
+terrible conception, than his countenance resumed its usual mild and
+tranquil character.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IId" id="CHAP_IId"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>His resolution once taken, he was anxious that it should satisfy his
+friends; he conceived that by persuading them, they would be actuated by
+greater zeal, than by commanding their obedience. It was, moreover, by
+their sentiments that he was enabled to judge of those of the rest of
+his army; in short, like all other men, the silent discontent of his
+household disturbed him. Surrounded by disapproving countenances, and
+opinions contrary to his own, he felt himself uncomfortable. And,
+besides, to obtain their assent to his plan, was in some degree to make
+them share the responsibility which possibly weighed upon his mind.</p>
+
+<p>But all the officers of his household opposed his plan, each in the way
+that marked his peculiar character; Berthier, by a melancholy
+countenance, by lamentations, and even tears; Lobau and Caulaincourt, by
+a frankness, which in the first was stamped by a cold and haughty
+roughness, excusable in so brave a warrior; and which in the second was
+persevering even to obstinacy, and impetuous even to violence. The
+emperor repelled their observations with some ill-humour; he exclaimed,
+addressing himself more especially to his aid-de-camp, as well as to
+Berthier, "that he had enriched his generals too much; that all they now
+aspired to was to follow the pleasures of the chase, and to display
+their brilliant equipages in Paris: and that, doubtless, they had become
+disgusted with war." When their honour was thus attacked, there was no
+longer any reply to be made; they merely bowed and remained silent.
+During one of his impatient fits, he told one of the generals of his
+guard, "you were born in a <i>bivouac</i>, and in a <i>bivouac</i> you will die."</p>
+
+<p>As to Duroc, he first signified his disapprobation by a chilling
+silence, and afterwards by terse replies, reference to accurate reports,
+and brief remarks. To him the emperor replied, "that he saw clearly
+enough that the Russians wanted to draw him on; but that, nevertheless,
+he must proceed as far as Smolensk; that there he would establish his
+head-quarters; and that in the spring of 1813, if Russia did not
+previously make peace, she would be ruined; that Smolensk was the key
+of the two roads to Petersburgh and Moscow; that he must get possession
+of it; and that he would then be able to march on both those capitals at
+the same time, in order to destroy every thing in the one, and preserve
+every thing in the other."</p>
+
+<p>Here the grand marshal observed to him, that he was not more likely to
+make peace at Smolensk, or even at Moscow, than he was at Witepsk; and
+that in removing to such a distance from France, the Prussians
+constituted an intermediate body, on whom little reliance could be
+placed. But the emperor replied, that on that supposition, as the
+Russian war no longer offered him any advantageous result, he ought to
+renounce it; and if so, he must turn his arms against Prussia, and
+compel her to pay the expenses of the war.</p>
+
+<p>It was now Daru's turn. This minister is straightforward even to
+stiffness, and possesses immoveable firmness. The great question of the
+march upon Moscow produced a discussion which lasted during eight
+successive hours, and at which only Berthier was present. The emperor
+having desired his minister's opinion of the war, "It is not a national
+war," replied Daru; "the introduction of some English merchandize into
+Russia, and even the restoration of the kingdom of Poland, are not
+sufficient reasons for engaging in so distant a war; neither your troops
+nor ourselves understand its necessity or its objects, and to say the
+least, all things recommend the policy of stopping where we now are."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor rejoined, "Did they take him for a madman? Did they imagine
+he made war from inclination? Had they not heard him say that the wars
+of Spain and Russia were two ulcers which ate into the vitals of France,
+and that she could not bear them both at once?</p>
+
+<p>"He was anxious for peace; but in order to negotiate, two persons were
+necessary, and he was only one. Had a single letter from Alexander yet
+reached him?</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, should he wait for at Witepsk? Two rivers, it was true,
+traced out the line of position; but, during the winter, there were no
+longer any rivers in this country. It was, therefore, a visionary line
+which they traced out; it was rather a line of demarcation than of
+separation. It was requisite, therefore, to constitute an artificial
+line; to construct towns and fortresses capable of defying the elements,
+and every species of scourge; to create every thing, land and
+atmosphere; for every thing was deficient, even provisions, unless,
+indeed, he chose to drain Lithuania, and render her hostile, or ruin
+ourselves; that if they were at Moscow, they might take what they
+pleased; here it was necessary to purchase every thing. Consequently,"
+continued he, "you cannot enable me to live at Witepsk, nor shall I be
+able to defend you here: both of us, therefore, are here out of our
+proper element.</p>
+
+<p>"That if he returned to Wilna, he might there indeed, be more easily
+supplied, but that he should not be in a better condition to defend
+himself; that in that case it would be necessary for him to fall back to
+the Vistula, and lose Lithuania. Whereas at Smolensk, he would be sure
+to gain either a decisive battle, or at least, a fortress and a position
+on the Dnieper.</p>
+
+<p>"That he perceived clearly that their thoughts were dwelling on Charles
+the Twelfth; but that if the expedition to Moscow wanted a fortunate
+precedent, it was because it was deficient in a man capable of making it
+succeed; that in war, fortune went for one-half in every thing; that if
+people always waited for a complete assemblage of favourable
+circumstances, nothing would ever be undertaken; that we must begin, in
+order to finish; that there was no enterprise in which every thing
+concurred, and that, in all human projects, chance had its share; that,
+in short, it was not the rule which created the success, but the success
+the rule; and that, if he succeeded by new means, that success would
+create new principles.</p>
+
+<p>"Blood has not yet been spilled," he added, "and Russia is too great to
+yield without fighting. Alexander can only negotiate after a great
+battle. If it is necessary, I will even proceed to the holy city in
+search of that battle, and I will gain it. Peace waits for me at the
+gates of Moscow. But with his honour thus saved, if Alexander still
+persists, I will negotiate with the Boyards, or even with the population
+of that capital; it is numerous, united, and consequently enlightened.
+It will understand its own interests, and comprehend the value of
+liberty." He concluded by saying, that "Moscow hated Petersburgh; that
+he would take advantage of their rivalry; that the results of such a
+jealousy were incalculable."</p>
+
+<p>It was in this manner that the emperor, when animated by conversation
+and the banquet, revealed the nature of his hopes. Daru replied, "That
+war was a game which he played well, in which he was always the winner,
+and that it was natural to infer, that he took a pleasure in playing it.
+But that, in this case, it was not so much men as nature which it was
+necessary to conquer; that already the army was diminished one-third by
+desertion, sickness, or famine.</p>
+
+<p>"If provisions failed at Witepsk, what would be the case farther on? The
+officers whom he had sent to procure them, either never re-appeared, or
+returned with empty hands. That the small quantity of flour, or the few
+cattle which they had succeeded in collecting, were immediately consumed
+by the imperial guard; that the other divisions of the army were heard
+to murmur, that it exacted and absorbed every thing, that it
+constituted, as it were, a privileged class. The hospital and
+provision-waggons, as well as the droves of cattle, were not able to
+come up. The hospitals were insufficient for the sick; provisions, room,
+and medicines, were all wanting in them.</p>
+
+<p>"All things consequently admonished them to halt, and with so much the
+more effect, as they could not calculate on the favourable disposition
+of the inhabitants beyond Witepsk. In conformity with his secret orders,
+they had been sounded, but without effect. How could men be roused to
+insurrection, for the sake of a liberty whose very name they did not
+understand? What influence could be obtained over a people almost
+savages, without property, and without wants? What could be taken from
+them? With what could they be tempted? Their only property was their
+life, which they carried with them into regions of almost infinite
+space."</p>
+
+<p>Berthier added, "That if we were to proceed forward, the Russians would
+have in their favour our too-much elongated flanks, famine, and
+especially their formidable winter; while in staying where he was, the
+emperor would enlist the latter on his side, and render himself master
+of the war; that he would fix it within his reach, instead of following
+its deceitful, wandering, and undecided flight."</p>
+
+<p>Such were the replies of Berthier and Daru. The emperor mildly listened
+to their observations, but oftener interrupted them by subtile
+arguments; begging the question, according to his wishes, or shifting
+it, when it became too pressing. But however disagreeable might be the
+truths which he was obliged to hear, he listened to them patiently, and
+replied with equal patience. Throughout this discussion, his
+conversation and whole deportment were remarkable for affability,
+simplicity, and good-humour, which, indeed, he almost always preserved
+in his own family; a circumstance which sufficiently explains why,
+notwithstanding so many misfortunes, he was so much beloved by those who
+lived on terms of intimacy with him.</p>
+
+<p>Still dissatisfied, the emperor summoned successively several of the
+generals of his army; but his questions were such as indicated their
+answers; and many of these chiefs, born in the capacity of soldiers, and
+accustomed to obey his voice, were as submissive in these conversations
+as upon the field of battle.</p>
+
+<p>Others waited the issue, in order to give their opinion; concealing
+their dread of a reverse, in the presence of a man who had always been
+fortunate, as well as their opinion, lest success might on some future
+day reproach them for it.</p>
+
+<p>The greater part signified their approbation, being perfectly convinced
+that were they even to incur his displeasure by recommending him to
+stop, he would not be the less certain to advance. As it was necessary
+to incur fresh dangers, they preferred meeting them with an appearance
+of good-will. They found it more convenient to be wrong with him, than
+right against him.</p>
+
+<p>But there was one individual, who, not content with approving his
+design, encouraged it. Prompted by a culpable ambition, he increased
+Napoleon's confidence, by exaggerating the force of his division. For
+after incurring so many fatigues, unaccompanied by danger, it was a
+great merit in those chiefs who preserved the greatest number of men
+around their eagles. The emperor was thus gratified on his weak side,
+and the time for rewards was approaching. In order to make himself more
+agreeable, the individual in question boldly took upon himself to vouch
+for the ardour of his soldiers, whose emaciated countenances but ill
+accorded with the flattery of their leader. The emperor gave credit to
+this ardour, because it pleased him, and because he only saw the
+soldiers at reviews; occasions when his presence, the military pomp, the
+mutual excitation produced by great assemblages, imparted fervor to the
+mind; when, in short, all things, even to the secret orders of the
+chiefs, dictated an appearance of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>But in fact it was only with his guard that he thus occupied his
+attention. In the army, the soldiers complained of his non-appearance.
+"They no longer saw him," they said, "except in days of battle, when
+they had to die for him, but never to supply them with the means of
+existence. They were all there to serve him, but he seemed no longer
+there to serve them."</p>
+
+<p>In this manner did they suffer and complain, but without sufficiently
+considering that what they complained of was one of the inseparable
+evils of the campaign. The dispersion of the various corps d'arm&eacute;e being
+indispensable for the sake of procuring subsistence in these deserts,
+that necessity kept Napoleon at a distance from his soldiers. His guard
+could hardly find subsistence and shelter in his immediate
+neighbourhood; the rest were out of his sight. It is true that many
+imprudent acts had recently been committed; several convoys of
+provisions belonging to other corps were on their passage daringly
+retained at the imperial head-quarters, for the use of the guard, by
+whose order is not known. This violence, added to the jealousy which
+such bodies of men always inspire, created discontent in the army.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor was ignorant of these complaints; but another cause of
+anxiety had occurred to torment him. He knew that at Witepsk alone,
+there were 3000 of his soldiers attacked by the dysentery, which was
+extending its ravages over his whole army. The rye which they were
+eating in soup was its principal cause. Their stomachs, accustomed to
+bread, rejected this cold and indigestible food, and the emperor was
+urging his physicians to find a remedy for its effects. One day he
+appeared less anxious. "Davoust," said he, "has found out what the
+medical men could not discover; he has just sent to inform me of it; all
+that is required is to roast the rye before preparing it;" and his eyes
+sparkled with hope as he questioned his physician, who declined giving
+any opinion until the experiment was tried. The emperor instantly called
+two grenadiers of his guard; he seated them at table, close to him, and
+made them begin the trial of this nourishment so prepared. It did not
+succeed with them, although he added to it some of his own wine, which
+he himself poured out for them.</p>
+
+<p>Respect, however, for the conqueror of Europe, and the necessity of
+circumstances, supported them in the midst of their numerous privations.
+They saw that they were too deeply embarked; that a victory was
+necessary for their speedy deliverance; and that he alone could give it
+them. Misfortune, moreover, had purified the army; all that remained of
+it could not fail to be its <i>&eacute;lite</i> both in mind and body. In order to
+have got so far as they had done, what trials had they not withstood!
+Suspense, and disgust with miserable cantonments, were sufficient to
+agitate such men. To remain, appeared to them insupportable; to retreat,
+impossible; it was, therefore, imperative to advance.</p>
+
+<p>The great names of Smolensk and Moscow inspired no alarm. In ordinary
+times, and with ordinary men, that unknown region, that unvisited
+people, and the distance which magnifies all things, would have been
+sufficient to discourage. But these were the very circumstances which,
+in this case, were most attractive. The soldiers' chief pleasure was in
+hazardous situations, which were rendered more interesting by the
+greater proportion of danger they involved, and on which new dangers
+conferred a more striking air of singularity; emotions full of charm for
+active spirits, which had exhausted their taste for old things, and
+which, therefore, required new.</p>
+
+<p>Ambition was, at that time, completely unshackled; every thing inspired
+the passion for glory; they had been launched into a boundless career.
+How was it possible to measure the ascendancy, which a powerful emperor
+must have acquired, or the strong impulse which he had given them?&mdash;an
+emperor, capable of telling his soldiers after the victory of
+Austerlitz, "I will allow you to name your children after me; and if
+among them there should prove one worthy of us, I will leave him every
+thing I possess, and name him my successor."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIId" id="CHAP_IIId"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The junction of the two wings of the Russian army, in the direction of
+Smolensk, had compelled Napoleon also to approximate his various
+divisions. No signal of attack had yet been given, but the war involved
+him on all sides; it seemed to tempt his genius by success, and to
+stimulate it by reverses. On his left, Wittgenstein, equally in dread of
+Oudinot and Macdonald, remained between the two roads from Polotsk and
+D&uuml;nabourg, which meet at Sebez. The Duke of Reggio's orders had been to
+keep on the defensive. But neither at Polotsk nor at Witepsk was there
+any thing found in the country, which disclosed the position of the
+Russians. Tired of feeling nothing of them on any side, the marshal
+determined to go in quest of them himself. On the 1st of August,
+therefore, he left general Merle and his division on the Drissa, to
+protect his baggage, his great park of artillery, and his retreat; he
+pushed Verdier towards Sebez, and made him take a position on the
+high-road, in order to mask the movement which he was meditating. He
+himself, turning to the left with Legrand's infantry, Castex's cavalry,
+and Aubrey's light artillery, advanced as far as Yakoubowo, on the road
+to Oswe&iuml;a.</p>
+
+<p>As chance would have it, Wittgenstein, at the same moment, was marching
+from Oswe&iuml;a to Yakoubowo; the hostile armies unexpectedly met each
+other in front of that village. It was late in the day; the shock was
+violent, but of short duration: night put an end to the combat, and
+postponed its decision.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal found himself engaged, with a single division, in a deep and
+narrow pass, surrounded with woods and hills, all the declivities of
+which were opposed to us. He was hesitating, however, whether he should
+quit that contracted position, on which all the enemy's fire was about
+to be concentrated, when a young Russian staff-officer, scarcely emerged
+from boyhood, came dashing heedlessly into our posts, and allowed
+himself to be taken, with the despatches of which he was the bearer. We
+learned from them, that Wittgenstein was marching with all his forces to
+attack and destroy our bridges over the D&uuml;na. Oudinot felt it necessary
+to retreat, in order to rally and concentrate his forces in a less
+unfavourable position; in consequence, as frequently happens in
+retrograde marches, some stragglers and baggage fell into the hands of
+the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>Wittgenstein, elated by this easy success, pushed it beyond all bounds.
+In the first transport of what he regarded as a victory, he ordered
+Koulnief, and 12,000 men, to pass the Drissa, in order to pursue
+d'Albert and Legrand. The latter had made a halt; Albert hastened to
+inform the marshal. They covered their detachment by a rising ground,
+watched all the movements of the Russian general, and observing him
+rashly venturing himself into a defile between them and the river, they
+rushed suddenly upon him, overthrew and killed him; taking from him also
+eight pieces of cannon, and 2000 men.</p>
+
+<p>Koulnief, it was said, died like a hero; a cannon ball broke both his
+legs, and threw him prostrate on his own cannon; where, observing the
+French approaching, he tore off his decorations, and, in a transport of
+anger at his own temerity, condemned himself to die on the very spot
+where his error was committed, commanding his soldiers to leave him to
+his fate. The whole Russian army regretted him; it imputed this
+misfortune to one of those individuals whom the caprice of Paul had made
+into generals, at the period when that emperor was quite new to power,
+and conceived the idea of entering his peaceable inheritance in the
+character of a triumphant conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>Rashness passed over with the victory from the Russian to the French
+camp; this unexpected success elated Casa-Bianca and his Corsican
+battalions; they forgot the error to which they were indebted for it,
+they neglected the recommendation of their general, and without
+reflecting that they were imitating the imprudence by which they had
+just profited, they precipitated themselves upon the flying footsteps of
+the Russians. They proceeded, headlong, in this manner for two leagues,
+and were only reminded of their temerity by finding themselves alone in
+presence of the Russian army. Verdier, forced to engage in order to
+support them, was already compromising the rest of his division, when
+the Duke of Reggio hurried up, relieved his troops from this peril, led
+them back behind the Drissa, and on the following day resumed his first
+position under the walls of Polotsk. There he found Saint-Cyr and the
+Bavarians, who increased the force of his corps to 35,000 men. As to
+Wittgenstein, he tranquilly took up his first position at Oswe&iuml;a. The
+result of these four days was very unsatisfactory to the emperor.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly about the same time intelligence was brought to Witepsk that the
+advanced guard of the viceroy had gained some advantages near Suraij;
+but that, in the centre, near the Dnieper, at Inkowo, Sebastiani had
+been surprised by superior numbers, and defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was then writing to the Duke of Bassano 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 passages 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+man&oelig;uvre 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 mass of
+185,000 men on the left flank and rear of that enemy, which but just
+before had presumed to think of surprising him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 Eckm&uuml;hl, 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 assembling 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."</p>
+
+<p>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 assembled 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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_VI" id="BOOK_VI"></a>BOOK VI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Ie" id="CHAPTER_Ie"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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 D&uuml;na and the Dnieper, and that it was marching against the
+centre of his cantonments: this was actually the fact.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As we marched from Orcha to Liady, the French army formed a long column
+on the left bank of the Dnieper. In this mass, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor traversed in a day the hilly and woody tract which separates
+the D&uuml;na from the Boristhenes; it was in front of Rassasna 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.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor slept in his tent in advance of Rassasna; 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 passed them
+in all possible haste and in disorder.</p>
+
+<p>The streams were crossed by fords which were soon spoiled; the regiments
+which came afterwards passed 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
+<i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>The army every where left stragglers behind it, and men who had lost
+their way, whom the officers passed 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 pronunciation, their
+voluble and hasty way of speaking, the vivacity of their motions, and
+their complexion, animated by the base passion 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.</p>
+
+<p>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-worship, while the Muscovites carry their adoration of images to
+idolatry. Finally, whether from superstition 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIe" id="CHAP_IIe"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 15th of August, at three o'clock, we came in sight of Krasno&euml;, 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.</p>
+
+<p>The ground was unequal, but bare, and suitable for cavalry. Murat took
+possession of it; but the bridges of Krasno&euml; 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 passage
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 harassed 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 mass.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Newerowskoi hastened to reach a defile, where Grouchy was ordered to
+anticipate 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 chasseurs 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 mass, 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 assistance 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 attitude
+was dictated by honour; the multitude has imputed it to flattery.</p>
+
+<p>Newerowskoi, almost crushed, hastened to shut himself up in Smolensk. He
+left behind him some cossacks to burn the forage; the houses were
+spared.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIe" id="CHAP_IIIe"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>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 circumstances, and to await our
+attack, in order to regulate their defence by it.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;terrible in battle, but
+acquainted with no other book than nature, no other instructor than
+memory, no other counsels than his own inspirations.</p>
+
+<p>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
+nobles, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Barclay alone was against fighting. His plan, erroneously attributed to
+England, had been formed in his mind so far back as the year 1807; but
+he had to combat his own army as well as ours; and though
+commander-in-chief and minister, he was neither Russian enough, nor
+victorious enough, to win the confidence of the Russians. He possessed
+that of Alexander alone.</p>
+
+<p>Bagration and his officers hesitated to obey him. The point was to
+defend their native land, to devote themselves for the salvation of all:
+it was the affair of each, and all imagined that they had a right to
+examine. Thus their ill fortune distrusted the prudence of their
+general; whilst, with the exception of a few chiefs, our good fortune
+trusted implicitly to the boldness, hitherto always prosperous of ours;
+for in success to command is easy; no one inquires whether it is
+prudence or fortune that guides. Such is the situation of military
+chiefs; when successful, they are blindly obeyed by all; when
+unfortunate, they are criticized by all.</p>
+
+<p>Hurried away notwithstanding, by the general impulse, Barclay had just
+yielded to it for a moment, collected his forces near Rudnia, and
+attempted to surprise the French army, dispersed as it was. But the
+feeble blow which his advanced guard had just struck at Inkowo had
+alarmed him. He trembled, paused, and imagining every moment that he saw
+Napoleon approaching in front of him, on his right and every where
+excepting on his left, which was covered as he thought by the Dnieper,
+he lost several days in marches and counter-marches. He was thus
+hesitating, when all at once Newerowskoi's cries of distress resounded
+in his camp. To attack was now entirely out of the question: his troops
+ran to arms, and hurried towards Smolensk for the purpose of defending
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Murat and Ney were already attacking that city: the former with his
+cavalry, at the place where the Boristhenes enters its walls; the
+latter, with his infantry, where it issues from them, and on woody
+ground intersected by deep ravines. The marshal's left was supported by
+the river, and his right by Murat, whom Poniatowski, coming direct from
+Mohilef, arrived to reinforce.</p>
+
+<p>In this place two steep hills contract the channel of the Boristhenes;
+on these hills Smolensk is built. That city has the appearance of two
+towns, separated by the river and connected by two bridges. That on the
+right bank, the most modern, is wholly occupied by traders; it is open,
+but overlooks the other, of which it is nevertheless but a dependency.</p>
+
+<p>The old town, occupying the plateau and slopes of the left bank, is
+surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high, eighteen thick, three
+thousand fathoms in length, and defended by twenty-nine massive towers,
+a miserable earthen citadel of five bastions, which commands the Orcha
+road, and a wide ditch, which serves as a covered way. Some outworks and
+the suburbs intercept the view of the approaches to the Mohilef and
+Dnieper gates; they are defended by a ravine, which, after encompassing
+a great part of the town, becomes deeper and steeper as it approaches
+the Dnieper, on the side next to the citadel.</p>
+
+<p>The deluded inhabitants were quitting the temples, where they had been
+praising God for the victories of their troops, when they saw them
+hastening up, bloody, vanquished, and flying before the victorious
+French army. Their disaster was unexpected, and their consternation so
+much the greater.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the sight of Smolensk inflamed the impatient ardour of
+Marshal Ney: we know not whether he unseasonably called to mind the
+wonders of the Prussian war, when citadels fell before the sabres of our
+cavalry, or whether he at first designed only to reconnoitre this first
+Russian fortress: at any rate he approached too near; a ball struck him
+on the neck; incensed, he despatched a battalion against the citadel,
+through a shower of balls, which swept away two-thirds of his men; the
+remainder proceeded; nothing could stop them but the Russian walls; a
+few only returned. Little notice was taken of the heroic attempt which
+they had made, because it was a fault of their general's, and useless
+into the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>Cooled by this check, Marshal Ney retired to a sandy and wooded height
+bordering the river. He was surveying the city and its environs, when he
+imagined that he could discern troops in motion on the other side of the
+river: he ran to fetch the emperor, and conducted him through coppices
+and dingles to avoid the fire of the place.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, on reaching the height, beheld a cloud of dust enveloping long
+black columns, glistening with a multitude of arms: these masses
+approached so rapidly that they seemed to run. It was Barclay,
+Bagration, nearly 120,000 men: in short, the whole Russian army.</p>
+
+<p>Transported with joy at this sight, Napoleon clapped his hands,
+exclaiming, "At last I have them!" There could be no doubt of it; this
+surprised army was hastening up to throw itself into Smolensk, to pass
+through it, to deploy under its walls, and at length to offer us that
+battle which was so ardently desired. The moment that was to decide the
+fate of Russia had at last arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor immediately went through the whole line, and allotted to
+each his place. Davoust, and next to him Count Lobau, were to deploy on
+the right of Ney: the guard in the centre, as a reserve, and farther
+off the army of Italy. The place of Junot and the Westphalians was
+indicated; but a false movement had carried them out of the way. Murat
+and Poniatowski formed the right of the army; those two chiefs already
+threatened the city: he made them draw back to the margin of a coppice,
+and leave vacant before them a spacious plain, extending from this wood
+as far as the Dnieper. It was a field of battle which he offered to the
+enemy. The French army, thus posted, had defiles and precipices at its
+back; but Napoleon concerned himself little about retreat; he thought
+only of victory.</p>
+
+<p>Bagration and Barclay were meanwhile returning at full speed towards
+Smolensk; the first to save it by a battle, the other to cover the
+flight of its inhabitants and the evacuation of its magazines: he was
+determined to leave us nothing but its ashes. The two Russian generals
+arrived panting on the heights on the right bank; nor did they again
+take breath till they saw that they were still masters of the bridges
+which connect the two towns.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon then caused the enemy to be harassed by a host of riflemen, for
+the purpose of drawing him to the left bank of the river, and ensuring a
+battle for the following day. It is asserted that Bagration would have
+fallen in with his views, but that Barclay did not expose him to the
+temptation. He despatched him to Elnia, and took upon himself the
+defence of Smolensk.</p>
+
+<p>Barclay had imagined that the greatest part of our army was marching
+upon Elnia, to get between Moscow and the Russian army. He deceived
+himself by the disposition, so common in war, of imputing to one's enemy
+designs contrary to those which he demonstrates. For the defensive,
+being uneasy in its nature, frequently magnifies the offensive, and
+fear, heating the imagination, causes it to attribute to the enemy a
+thousand projects of which he never dreamt. It is possible too that
+Barclay, having to cope with a colossal foe, felt authorized to expect
+from him gigantic movements.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians themselves have since reproached Napoleon with not having
+adopted that man&oelig;uvre; but have they considered, that to proceed thus
+to place himself beyond a river, a fortified town and a hostile army, to
+cut off the Russians from the road to their capital, would have been
+cutting off himself from all communication with his reinforcements, his
+other armies, and Europe? Those are not capable of appreciating the
+difficulties of such a movement who are astonished that it was not made,
+without preparation, in two days, across a river and a country both
+unknown, with such masses, and amidst another combination the execution
+of which was not yet completed.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, in the evening of the 16th, Bagration commenced his
+march for Elnia. Napoleon had just had his tent pitched in the middle of
+his first line, almost within reach of the guns of Smolensk, and on the
+brink of the ravine which encircles the city. He called Murat and
+Davoust: the former had just observed among the Russians movements
+indicative of a retreat. Every day since the passage of the Niemen, he
+had been accustomed to see them thus escape him; he did not therefore
+believe that there would be any battle the following day. Davoust was of
+a contrary opinion. As for the emperor, he had no hesitation in
+believing what he wished.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVe" id="CHAP_IVe"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 17th, by daybreak, the hope of seeing the Russian army drawn up
+before him awoke Napoleon; but the field which he had prepared for it
+remained empty: he persisted, nevertheless, in his illusion, in which
+Davoust participated; it was to his side that he proceeded. Dalton, one
+of the generals of that marshal, had seen some hostile battalions quit
+the city and range themselves in order of battle. The emperor seized
+this hope, which Ney, jointly with Murat, combated in vain.</p>
+
+<p>But while he was still full of hopes and expectations, Belliard, tired
+of this uncertainty, ordered a few horse to follow him; he drove a band
+of Cossacks into the Dnieper, above the town, and saw on the opposite
+bank the road from Smolensk to Moscow covered with artillery, and troops
+on the march. There was no longer any doubt that the Russians were in
+full retreat. The emperor was apprised that he must renounce all hopes
+of a battle, but that his cannon might, from the opposite bank, annoy
+the retrograde march of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Belliard even proposed to send part of the army across the river, to cut
+off the retreat of the Russian rear-guard, which was entrusted with the
+defence of Smolensk; but the party of cavalry sent to discover a ford
+went two leagues without finding one, and drowned several horses. There
+was nevertheless a wide and commodious crossing about a league above the
+city. Napoleon himself, in his agitation, turned his horse that way. He
+proceeded several wersts in that direction, tired himself, and returned.</p>
+
+<p>From that moment he seemed to consider Smolensk as a mere place of
+passage, of which it was absolutely necessary to gain possession by main
+force, and without loss of time. But Murat, prudent when not heated by
+the presence of the enemy, and who, with his cavalry, had nothing to do
+in an assault, disapproved of this resolution.</p>
+
+<p>To him so violent an effort appeared useless, when the Russians were
+retiring of their own accord; and in regard to the plan of overtaking
+them, he observed that, "since they would not fight, we had followed
+them far enough, and it was high time to stop."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor replied: but the rest of their conversation was not
+overheard. As, however, the king afterwards declared that "he had thrown
+himself at the knees of his brother, and conjured him to stop, but that
+Napoleon saw nothing but Moscow; that honour, glory, rest, every thing
+for him was there; that this Moscow would be our ruin!"&mdash;it was obvious
+what had been the cause of their disagreement.</p>
+
+<p>So much is certain, that when Murat quitted his brother-in-law, his face
+wore the expression of deep chagrin; his motions were abrupt; a gloomy
+and concentrated vehemence agitated him; and the name of Moscow several
+times escaped his lips.</p>
+
+<p>Not far off, on the left bank of the Dnieper, a formidable battery had
+been placed, at the spot whence Belliard had perceived the retreat of
+the enemy. The Russians had opposed to us two still more formidable.
+Every moment our guns were shattered, and our ammunition-waggons blown
+up. It was into the midst of this volcano that the king urged his horse:
+there he stopped, alighted, and remained motionless. Belliard warned him
+that he was sacrificing his life to no purpose, and without glory. The
+king answered only by pushing on still farther. Those around him no
+longer doubted, that despairing of the issue of the war, and foreseeing
+future disasters, he was seeking death in order to escape them.
+Belliard, however, insisted, and observed to him, that his temerity
+would be the destruction of those about him. "Well then," replied Murat,
+"do you retire, and leave me here by myself." All refused to leave him;
+when the king angrily turning about, tore himself from this scene of
+carnage, like a man who is suffering violence.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a general assault had been ordered. Ney had to attack the
+citadel, and Davoust and Lobau the suburbs, which cover the walls of
+the city. Poniatowski, already on the banks of the Dnieper, with sixty
+pieces of cannon, was again to descend that river to the suburb which
+borders it, to destroy the enemy's bridges, and to intercept the retreat
+of the garrison. Napoleon gave orders, that, at the same time, the
+artillery of the guard should batter the great wall with its
+twelve-pounders, which were ineffective against so thick a mass. It
+disobeyed, and directed its fire into the covered way, which it cleared.</p>
+
+<p>Every man&oelig;uvre succeeded at once, excepting Ney's attack, the only
+one which ought to have been decisive, but which was neglected. The
+enemy was driven back precipitately within his walls; all who had not
+time to regain them perished; but, in mounting to the assault, our
+attacking columns left a long and wide track of blood, of wounded and
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>It was remarked, that one battalion, which presented itself in flank to
+the Russian batteries, lost a whole rank of one of its platoons by a
+single bullet; twenty-two men were felled by the same blow.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the army, from an amphitheatre of heights, contemplated with
+silent anxiety the conduct of its brave comrades; but when it saw them
+darting through a shower of balls and grape shot, and persisting with an
+ardour, a firmness, and a regularity, quite admirable; then it was that
+the soldiers, warmed with enthusiasm, began clapping their hands. The
+noise of this glorious applause was such as even to reach the attacking
+columns. It rewarded the devotion of those warriors; and although in
+Dalton's single brigade, and in the artillery of Reindre, five chiefs of
+battalion, 1500 men, and the general himself fell, the survivors still
+say, that the enthusiastic homage which they excited, was a sufficient
+compensation to them for all their sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the walls of the place, they screened themselves from its
+fire, by means of the outworks and buildings, of which they had gained
+possession. The fire of musketry continued; and from the report,
+redoubled by the echo of the walls, it seemed to become more and more
+brisk. The emperor grew tired of this; he would have withdrawn his
+troops. Thus, the same blunder which Ney had made a battalion commit the
+preceding day, was repeated by the whole army; the one had cost 300 or
+400 men, the other 5000 or 6000; but Davoust persuaded the emperor to
+persevere in his attack.</p>
+
+<p>Night came on. Napoleon retired to his tent, which had been placed more
+prudently than the day before; and the Count Lobau, who had made himself
+master of the ditch, but could no longer maintain his ground there,
+ordered shells to be thrown into the city to dislodge the enemy. Thick
+black columns of smoke were presently seen rising from several points;
+these were soon lighted at intervals by flickering flashes, then by
+sparks, and at last, long spires of flame burst from all parts. It was
+like a great number of distinct fires. It was not long before they
+united and formed but one vast blaze, which whirling about as it rose,
+covered Smolensk, and entirely consumed it, with a dismal roaring.</p>
+
+<p>Count Lobau was dismayed by so great a disaster, which he believed to be
+his own work. The emperor, seated in front of his tent, contemplated in
+silence this awful spectacle. It was as yet impossible to ascertain
+either the cause or the result, and the night was passed under arms.</p>
+
+<p>About three in the morning, one of Davoust's subalterns ventured to the
+foot of the wall, which he scaled without noise. Emboldened by the
+silence which reigned around him, he penetrated into the city; all at
+once several voices and the Sclavonian accent were heard, and the
+Frenchman, surprised and surrounded, thought that he had nothing to do
+but to sell his life dearly, or surrender. The first rays of the dawn,
+however, showed him, in those whom he mistook for enemies, some of
+Poniatowski's Poles. They had been the first to enter the city, which
+Barclay had just evacuated.</p>
+
+<p>After Smolensk had been reconnoitred and its approaches cleared, the
+army entered the walls: it traversed the reeking and blood-stained ruins
+with its accustomed order, pomp, and martial music, triumphing over the
+deserted wreck, and having no other witness of its glory but itself. A
+show without spectators, an almost fruitless victory, a sanguinary
+glory, of which the smoke that surrounded us, and seemed to be our only
+conquest, was but too faithful an emblem.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Ve" id="CHAP_Ve"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When the emperor knew that Smolensk was entirely occupied, and its fires
+almost extinguished, and when day and the different reports had
+sufficiently instructed him; when, in short, he saw that there, as at
+the Niemen, at Wilna, at Witepsk, the phantom of victory, which allured
+him forward, and which he always imagined himself to be on the point of
+seizing, had once more eluded his grasp, he proceeded slowly towards his
+barren conquest. He inspected the field of battle, according to his
+custom, in order to appreciate the value of the attack, the merit of the
+resistance, and the loss on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>He found it strewed with a great number of Russian dead, and very few of
+ours. Most of them, especially the French, had been stripped; they might
+be known by the whiteness of their skin, and by their forms less bony
+and muscular than those of the Russians. Melancholy review of the dead
+and dying! dismal account to make up and to render! The pain felt by the
+emperor might be inferred from the contraction of his features and his
+irritation; but in him policy was a second nature, which soon imposed
+silence on the first.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, this calculation of the dead the day after an engagement
+was as delusive as it was disagreeable; for most of ours had been
+previously removed, but those of the enemy left in sight; an expedient
+adopted with a view to prevent unpleasant impressions being made on our
+own troops, as well as from that natural impulse, which causes us to
+collect and assist our own dying, and to pay the last duties to our own
+dead, before we think of those belonging to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor, nevertheless, asserted in his bulletin, that his loss on
+the preceding day was much smaller than that of the Muscovites; that the
+conquest of Smolensk made him master of the Russian salt works, and that
+his minister of finance might reckon upon twenty-four additional
+millions. It is neither probable nor true, that he suffered himself to
+be the dupe of such illusions: yet it was believed, that he was then
+turning against himself that faculty of imposing upon others, of which
+he knew how to make so important a use.</p>
+
+<p>Continuing his reconnoissance, he came to one of the gates of the
+citadel, near the Boristhenes, facing the suburb on the right bank,
+which was still occupied by the Russians. There, surrounded by Marshals
+Ney, Davoust, Mortier, the Grand-marshal Duroc, Count Lobau, and another
+general, he sat down on some mats before a hut, not so much to observe
+the enemy, as to relieve his heart from the load which oppressed it, and
+to seek, in the flattery or in the ardour of his generals, encouragement
+against facts and against his own reflections.</p>
+
+<p>He talked long, vehemently, and without interruption. "What a disgrace
+for Barclay, to have given up, without fighting, the key of old Russia!
+and yet what a field of honour he had offered to him! how advantageous
+it was for him! a fortified town to support and take part in his
+efforts! the same town and a river to receive and cover the wreck of his
+army, if defeated!</p>
+
+<p>"And what would he have had to fight? an army, numerous indeed, but
+straitened for want of room, and having nothing but precipices for its
+retreat. It had given itself up, in a manner, to his blows. Barclay had
+wanted nothing but resolution. It was therefore, all over with Russia.
+She had no army but to witness the fall of her cities, and not to defend
+them. For, in fact, on what more favourable ground could Barclay make a
+stand? what position would he determine to dispute? he, who had forsaken
+that Smolensk, called by him Smolensk the holy, Smolensk the strong, the
+key of Moscow, the Bulwark of Russia, which, as it had been given out,
+was to prove the grave of the French! We should presently see the effect
+of this loss on the Russians; we should see their Lithuanian soldiers,
+nay even those of Smolensk, deserting their ranks, indignant at the
+surrender of their capital without a struggle."</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon added, that "authentic reports had made him acquainted with the
+weakness of the Russian divisions; that most of them were already much
+reduced; that they suffered themselves to be destroyed in detail, and
+that Alexander would soon cease to have an army. The rabble of peasants
+armed with pikes, whom we had just seen in the train of their
+battalions, sufficiently demonstrated to what shifts their generals were
+reduced."</p>
+
+<p>While the emperor was thus talking, the balls of the Russian riflemen
+were whizzing about his ears; but he was worked up by his subject. He
+launched out against the enemy's general and army, as if he could have
+destroyed it by his reasoning, because he could not by victory. No one
+answered him; it was evident that he was not asking advice, but that he
+had been talking all this time to himself; that he was contending
+against his own reflections, and that, by this torrent of conjectures,
+he was seeking to impose upon himself, and endeavouring to make others
+participators in the same illusions.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, he did not give any one time to interrupt him. As to the
+weakness and disorganization of the Russian army, nobody believed it;
+but what could be urged in reply? He appealed to positive documents,
+those which had been sent to him by Lauriston; they had been altered,
+under the idea of correcting them: for the estimate of the Russian
+forces by Lauriston, the French minister in Russia, was correct; but,
+according to accounts less deserving of credit, though more flattering,
+this estimate had been diminished one-third.</p>
+
+<p>After talking to himself for an hour, the emperor, looking at the
+heights on the right bank, which were nearly abandoned by the enemy,
+concluded with exclaiming, that "the Russians were women, and that they
+acknowledged themselves vanquished!" He strove to persuade himself that
+these people had, from their contact with Europe, lost their rude and
+savage valour. But their preceding wars had instructed them, and they
+had arrived at that point, at which nations still possess all their
+primitive virtues, in addition to those they have acquired.</p>
+
+<p>At length, he again mounted his horse. It was then the Grand-marshal
+observed to one of us, that "if Barclay had committed so very great a
+blunder in refusing battle, the emperor would not have been so extremely
+anxious to convince us of it." A few paces farther, an officer, sent not
+long before to Prince Schwartzenberg, presented himself: he reported
+that Tormasof and his army had appeared in the north, between Minsk and
+Warsaw, and that they had marched upon our line of operation. A Saxon
+brigade taken at Kobrynn, the grand-duchy overrun, and Warsaw alarmed,
+had been the first results of this aggression; but Regnier had summoned
+Schwartzenberg to his aid. Tormasof had then retreated to Gorodeczna,
+where he halted on the 12th of August, between two defiles, in a plain
+surrounded by woods and marshes, but accessible in the rear of his left
+flank.</p>
+
+<p>Regnier, skilful before an action, and an excellent judge of ground,
+knew how to prepare battles; but when the field became animated, when it
+was covered with men and horses, he lost his self-possession, and rapid
+movements seemed to dazzle him. At first, therefore, that general
+perceived at a glance the weak side of the Russians; he bore down upon
+it, but instead of breaking into it by masses and with impetuosity, he
+merely made successive attacks.</p>
+
+<p>Tormasof, forewarned by these, had time to oppose, at first, regiments
+to regiments, then brigades to brigades, and lastly divisions to
+divisions. By favour of this prolonged contest, he gained the night, and
+withdrew his army from the field of battle, where a rapid and
+simultaneous effort might have destroyed it. Still, he lost some pieces
+of cannon, a great quantity of baggage, and four thousand men, and
+retired behind the Styr, where he was joined by Tchitchakof, who was
+hastening with the army of the Danube to his succour.</p>
+
+<p>This battle, though far from decisive, preserved the grand-duchy: it
+confined the Russians, in this quarter, to the defensive, and gave the
+emperor time to win a battle.</p>
+
+<p>During this recital, the tenacious genius of Napoleon was less struck
+with these advantages in themselves, than with the support they gave to
+the illusion which he had just been holding forth to us: accordingly,
+still adhering to his original idea, and without questioning the
+aid-de-camp, he turned round to his auditory, and, as if continuing his
+former conversation, he exclaimed: "There you see, the poltroons! they
+allow themselves to be beaten even by Austrians!" Then, casting around
+him a look of apprehension, "I hope," added he, "that none but Frenchmen
+hear me." He then asked if he might rely on the good faith of Prince
+Schwartzenberg, for which the aid-de-camp pledged himself; nor was he
+mistaken, though the event seemed to belie his confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Every word which the emperor had uttered merely proved his
+disappointment, and that a great hesitation had again taken possession
+of his mind; for in him success was less communicative, and decision
+less verbose. At length he entered Smolensk. In the passage through its
+massive walls, Count Lobau exclaimed, "What a fine head for
+cantonments!" This was the same thing as advising him to stop there; but
+the emperor returned no other answer to this counsel than a stern look.</p>
+
+<p>This look, however, soon changed its expression, when it had nothing to
+rest upon but ruins, among which our wounded were crawling, and heaps of
+smoking ashes, where lay human skeletons, dried and blackened by the
+fire. This great destruction confounded him. What a harvest of victory!
+That city where his troops were at length to find shelter, provisions, a
+rich booty, the promised reward for so many hardships, was but a ruin on
+which he should be obliged to bivouac! No doubt his influence over his
+men was great, but could it extend beyond nature? What would they think?</p>
+
+<p>Here, it is right to observe, that the sufferings of the army did not
+want for an interpreter. He knew that his soldiers asked one another
+"for what purpose they had been marched eight hundred leagues, to find
+nothing but muddy water, famine, and bivouacs on heaps of ashes: for
+such were all their conquests; they possessed nothing but what they had
+brought with them. If it was necessary to drag every thing along with
+them, to transport France into Russia, wherefore had they been required
+to quit France?"</p>
+
+<p>Several of the generals themselves began to tire: some stopped on
+account of illness, others murmured: "What better were they for his
+having enriched them, if they could not enjoy their wealth? for his
+having given them wives, if he made them widowers by a continual
+absence? for his having bestowed on them palaces, if he forced them to
+lie abroad incessantly on the bare ground, amidst frost and snow?&mdash;for
+every year the hardships of war increased; fresh conquests compelling
+them to go farther in quest of fresh enemies. Europe would soon be
+insufficient: he would want Asia too."</p>
+
+<p>Several, especially of our allies, ventured to think, that we should
+lose less by a defeat than by a victory: a reverse would perhaps disgust
+the emperor with the war; at least it would place him more upon a level
+with us.</p>
+
+<p>The generals who were nearest to Napoleon were astonished at his
+confidence. "Had he not already in some measure quitted Europe? and if
+Europe were to rise against him, he would have no subjects but his
+soldiers, no empire but his camp: even then, one-third of them, being
+foreigners, would become his enemies." Such was the language of Murat
+and Berthier. Napoleon, irritated at finding in his two chief
+lieutenants, and at the very moment of action, the same uneasiness with
+which he was himself struggling, vented his ill-humour against them: he
+overwhelmed them with it, as frequently happens in the household of
+princes, who are least sparing of those of whose attachment they are
+most sure; an inconvenience attending favour, which counterbalances its
+advantages.</p>
+
+<p>After his spleen had vented itself in a torrent of words, he summoned
+them back; but this time, dissatisfied with such treatment, they kept
+aloof. The emperor then made amends for his hastiness by caresses,
+calling Berthier "his wife," and his fits of passion, "domestic
+bickerings."</p>
+
+<p>Murat and Ney left him with minds full of sinister presentiments
+relative to this war, which at the first sight of the Russians they were
+themselves for carrying on with fury. For in them, whose character was
+entirely made up of action, inspiration, and first movements, there was
+no consistency: every thing was unexpected; the occasion hurried them
+away; impetuous, they varied in language, plans, and dispositions, at
+every step, just as the ground is incessantly varying in appearance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIe" id="CHAP_VIe"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>About the same time, Rapp and Lauriston presented themselves: the latter
+came from Petersburgh. Napoleon did not ask a single question of this
+officer on his arrival from the capital of his enemy. Aware, no doubt,
+of the frankness of his former aid-de-camp, and of his opinion
+respecting this war, he was apprehensive of receiving from him
+unsatisfactory intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>But Rapp, who had followed our track, could not keep silence. "The army
+had advanced but a hundred leagues from the Niemen, and already it was
+completely altered. The officers who travelled post from the interior of
+France to join it, arrived dismayed. They could not conceive how it
+happened that a victorious army, without fighting, should leave behind
+it more wrecks than a defeated one.</p>
+
+<p>"They had met with all who were marching to join the masses, and all who
+had separated from them; lastly, all who were not excited either by the
+presence of the chiefs, or by example, or by the war. The appearance of
+each troop, according to its distance from home, excited hope, anxiety,
+or pity.</p>
+
+<p>"In Germany, as far as the Oder, where a thousand objects were
+incessantly reminding them of France, these recruits imagined themselves
+not wholly cut off from it; they were ardent and jovial; but beyond the
+Oder, in Poland, where the soil, productions, inhabitants, costumes,
+manners, in short every thing, to the very habitations, wore a foreign
+aspect; where nothing, in short, resembled a country which they
+regretted; they began to be dismayed at the distance they had traversed,
+and their faces already bore the stamp of fatigue and lassitude.</p>
+
+<p>"By what an extraordinary distance must they then be separated from
+France, since they had already reached unknown regions, where every
+thing presented to them an aspect of such gloomy novelty! how many steps
+they had taken, and how many more they had yet to take! The very idea of
+return was disheartening; and yet they were obliged to march on, to keep
+constantly marching! and they complained that ever since they left
+France, their fatigues had been gradually increasing, and the means of
+supporting them continually diminishing."</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, that wine first failed them, then beer, even spirits; and,
+lastly, they were reduced to water, which in its turn was frequently
+wanting. The same was the case with dry provisions, and also with every
+necessary of life; and in this gradual destitution, depression of mind
+kept pace with the successive debilitation of the body. Agitated by a
+vague inquietude, they marched on amid the dull uniformity of the vast
+and silent forests of dark pines. They crept along these large trees,
+bare and stripped to their very tops, and were affrighted at their
+weakness amid this immensity. They then conceived gloomy and absurd
+notions respecting the geography of these unknown regions; and, overcome
+by a secret horror, they hesitated to penetrate farther into such vast
+deserts.</p>
+
+<p>From these sufferings, physical and moral, from these privations, from
+these continual bivouacs, as dangerous near the pole as under the
+equator, and from the infection of the air by the putrified carcases of
+men and horses that strewed the roads, sprang two dreadful
+epidemics&mdash;the dysentery and the typhus fever. The Germans first felt
+their ravages; they are less nervous and less sober than the French; and
+they were less interested in a cause which they regarded as foreign to
+them. Out of 22,000 Bavarians who had crossed the Oder, 11,000 only
+reached the D&uuml;na; and yet they had never been in action. This military
+march cost the French one-fourth, and the allies half of their army.</p>
+
+<p>Every morning the regiments started in order from their bivouacs; but
+scarcely had they proceeded a few steps, before their widening ranks
+became lengthened out into small and broken files; the weakest, being
+unable to follow, dropped behind: these unfortunate wretches beheld
+their comrades and their eagles getting farther and farther from them:
+they still strove to overtake, but at length lost sight of them, and
+then sank disheartened. The roads and the margins of the woods were
+studded with them: some were seen plucking the ears of rye to devour the
+grain; and they would then attempt, frequently in vain, to reach the
+hospital, or the nearest village. Great numbers thus perished.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the sick only that separated from the army: many
+soldiers, disgusted and dispirited on the one hand, and impelled by a
+love of independence and plunder on the other, voluntarily deserted
+their colours; and these were not the least resolute: their numbers soon
+increased, as evil begets evil by example. They formed bands, and fixed
+their quarters in the mansions and villages adjacent to the military
+road. There they lived in abundance. Among them there were fewer French
+than Germans; but it was remarked, that the leader of each of these
+little independent bodies, composed of men of several nations, was
+invariably a Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p>Rapp had witnessed all these disorders: on his arrival, his blunt
+honesty kept back none of these details from his chief; but the emperor
+merely replied, "I am going to strike a great blow, and all the
+stragglers will then rally."</p>
+
+<p>With Sebastiani he was more explicit. The latter reminded him of his own
+words, when he had declared to him, at Wilna, that "he would not cross
+the D&uuml;na, for to proceed farther this year, would be hurrying to
+infallible destruction."</p>
+
+<p>Sebastiani, like the others, laid great stress on the state of the army.
+"It is dreadful, I know," replied the emperor: "from Wilna, half of it
+consisted of stragglers; now they form two-thirds; there is, therefore,
+no time to be lost: we must extort peace; it is at Moscow. Besides, this
+army cannot now stop: with its composition, and in its disorganization,
+motion alone keeps it together. One may advance at the head of it, but
+not stop or go back. It is an army of attack, not of defence; an army of
+operation, not of position."</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that he spoke to those immediately about him; but to the
+generals commanding his divisions, he held a different language. Before
+the former, he manifested the motives which urged him forward, from the
+latter he carefully concealed them, and seemed to agree with them as to
+the necessity of stopping. This may serve to explain the contradictions
+which were remarked in his own language.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the very same day, in the streets of Smolensk, surrounded by
+Davoust and his generals, whose corps had suffered most in the assault
+of the preceding day, he said, that in the capture of Smolensk he was
+indebted to them for an important success, and that he considered that
+city as an excellent head of cantonments.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," continued he, "my line is well covered; we will stop here: behind
+this rampart, I can rally my troops, let them rest, receive
+reinforcements, and our supplies from Dantzic. Thus the whole of Poland
+is conquered and defended; this is a sufficient result; it is gathering,
+in two months, the fruit that might be expected only from two years of
+war: it is therefore sufficient. Betwixt this and the spring, we must
+organize Lithuania, and recompose an invincible army; then, if peace
+should not come to seek us in our winter quarters, we will go and
+conquer it at Moscow."</p>
+
+<p>He then told the marshal in confidence, that his motive for ordering him
+to proceed beyond Smolensk, was only to drive off the Russians to the
+distance of a few marches; but he strictly forbade him to involve
+himself in any serious affair. At the same time, it is true, he
+committed the vanguard to Murat and to Ney, the two rashest of his
+officers; and, unknown to Davoust, he placed that prudent and
+methodical marshal under the command of the impetuous king of Naples.
+Thus his mind seemed to be wavering between two great resolutions, and
+the contradictions in his words were communicated to his actions. In
+this internal conflict, however, it was remarked, what an ascendence his
+enterprising genius had over his prudence, and how the former so
+disposed matters as to give birth to circumstances which must
+necessarily hurry him away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIe" id="CHAP_VIIe"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Russians still defended the suburb on the right bank of
+the Dnieper. On our side, the 18th, and the night of the 19th, were
+employed in rebuilding the bridges. On the 19th of August, before day,
+Ney crossed the river by the light of the suburb, which was on fire. At
+first, he saw there no enemies but the flames, and he began to climb the
+long and rugged declivity on which it stands. His troops proceeded
+slowly and with caution, making a thousand circuits to avoid the fire.
+The Russians had managed it with skill: it met our men at every point,
+and obstructed the principal avenues.</p>
+
+<p>Ney, and the foremost of his soldiers, advanced in silence into this
+labyrinth of flames, with anxious eye and attentive ear, not knowing but
+that the Russians might be waiting on the summit of the steep, to pour
+suddenly upon them, to overthrow and drive them back into the flames and
+the river. But they breathed more freely, relieved from the weight of a
+great apprehension, when they perceived on the crest of the ravine, at
+the branching-off of the roads to Petersburgh and Moscow, nothing but a
+band of cossacks, who immediately fled by those two roads. Having
+neither prisoners nor inhabitants, nor spies, the ground was, as at
+Witepsk, the only thing they could interrogate. But the enemy had left
+as many traces in one direction as in the other, so that the marshal
+paused in uncertainty between the two until mid-day.</p>
+
+<p>During this interval, a passage had been effected across the Boristhenes
+at several points; the roads to the two hostile capitals were
+reconnoitred to the distance of a league, and the Russian infantry was
+discovered in that leading to Moscow. Ney would soon have overtaken it;
+but as that road skirted the Dnieper, he had to cross the streams which
+fall into it. Each of them having scooped out its own bed, marked the
+bottom of a valley, the opposite side of which was a position where the
+enemy posted himself, and which it was necessary to carry: the first,
+that of the Stubna, did not detain him long; but the hill of Valoutina,
+at the foot of which runs the Kolowdnia, became the scene of an
+obstinate conflict.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of this resistance has been attributed to an ancient tradition
+of national glory, which represented this field of battle as ground
+consecrated by victory. But this superstition, worthy even still of the
+Russian soldier, is far from the more enlightened patriotism of their
+generals. It was necessity that here compelled them to fight: we have
+seen that the Moscow road, on leaving Smolensk, skirted the Dnieper, and
+that the French artillery, on the other bank, traversed it with its
+fire. Barclay durst not take this road at night, for fear of risking his
+artillery, baggage, and the waggons with the wounded, the rolling of
+which would have betrayed his retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The Petersburgh road quitted the river more abruptly: two marshy
+cross-roads branched off from it on the right, one at the distance of
+two leagues from Smolensk, the other at four; they ran through woods,
+and rejoined the high-road to Moscow, after a long circuit; the one at
+Bredichino, two leagues beyond Valoutina, the other farther off at
+Slobpnewa.</p>
+
+<p>Into these defiles Barclay was bold enough to commit himself with so
+many horses and vehicles; so that this long and heavy column had thus to
+traverse two large arcs of a circle, of which the high-road from
+Smolensk to Moscow, which Ney soon attacked, was the chord. Every
+moment, as always happens in such cases, the overturning of a carriage,
+the sticking fast of a wheel, or of a single horse, in the mud, or the
+breaking of a trace, stopped the whole. The sound of the French cannon,
+meanwhile, drew nearer, and seemed to have already got before the
+Russian column, and to be on the point of reaching and closing the
+outlet which it was striving to gain.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after an arduous march, the head of the enemy's convoy came
+in sight of the high-road at the moment when the French had only to
+force the height of Valoutina and the passage of Kolowdnia, in order to
+reach that outlet. Ney had furiously carried that of the Stubna; but
+Korf, driven back upon Valoutina, had summoned to his aid the column
+which preceded him. It is asserted that the latter, without order, and
+badly officered, hesitated to comply; but that Woronzof, aware of the
+importance of that position, prevailed upon its commander to turn back.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians defended themselves to defend every thing, cannon, wounded,
+baggage: the French attacked in order to take every thing. Napoleon had
+halted a league and a half behind Ney. Conceiving that it was but an
+affair between his advanced guard and the rear of the enemy, he sent
+Gudin to the assistance of the marshal, rallied the other divisions, and
+returned to Smolensk. But this fight became a serious battle; 30,000 men
+were successively engaged in it on both sides: soldiers, officers,
+generals, encountered each other; the action was long, the struggle
+terrible; even night did not suspend it. At length, in possession of the
+plateau, exhausted by the loss of strength and blood, Ney finding
+himself surrounded only by dead, dying, and obscurity, became fatigued;
+he ordered his troops to cease firing, to keep silence, and present
+bayonets. The Russians hearing nothing more, were silent also, and
+availed themselves of the darkness to effect their retreat.</p>
+
+<p>There was almost as much glory in their defeat as in our victory: the
+two chiefs carried their point, the one in conquering, the other in not
+being conquered till he had saved the Russian artillery, baggage, and
+wounded. One of the enemy's generals, the only one left unhurt on this
+field of carnage, endeavoured to escape from among our soldiers, by
+repeating the French word of command; he was recognized by the flashes
+of their fire-arms, and secured. Other Russian generals had perished,
+but the grand army sustained a still greater loss.</p>
+
+<p>At the passage of the bridge over the Kolowdnia, which had been badly
+repaired, General Gudin, whose well-regulated valour loved to confront
+none but useful dangers, and who besides was not a bold rider, had
+alighted from his horse to cross the stream, when, at that moment, a
+cannon-ball skimming the surface of the ground, broke both his legs.
+When the tidings of this misfortune reached the emperor, they put a stop
+to every thing&mdash;to discussion and action. Every one was thunderstruck;
+the victory of Valoutina seemed no longer to be a success.</p>
+
+<p>Gudin was conveyed to Smolensk, and there received the unavailing
+attentions of the emperor; but he soon expired. His remains were
+interred in the citadel of the city, which they honour: a worthy tomb
+for a soldier, who was a good citizen, a good husband, a good father, an
+intrepid general, just and mild, a man both of principle and talent; a
+rare assemblage of qualities in an age when virtuous men are too
+frequently devoid of abilities, and men of abilities without virtue. It
+was a fortunate chance that he was worthily replaced; G&eacute;rard, the oldest
+general of brigade of the division, took the command of it, and the
+enemy, who knew nothing of our loss, gained nothing by the dreadful blow
+he had dealt us.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians, astonished at having been attacked only in front,
+conceived that all the military combinations of Murat were confined to
+following them on the high-road. They therefore styled him in derision,
+"<i>the general of the high roads</i>," characterizing him thus from the
+event, which tends more commonly to deceive than to enlighten.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, while Ney was attacking, Murat scoured his flanks with his
+cavalry, without being able to bring it into action; woods on the left,
+and morasses on the right, obstructed his movements. But while they were
+fighting in front, both were anticipating the effect of a flanking march
+of the Westphalians, commanded by Junot.</p>
+
+<p>From the Stubna, the high-road, in order to avoid the marshes formed by
+the various tributary streams of the Dnieper, turned off to the left,
+ascended the heights, and went farther from the basin of the river, to
+which it afterwards returned in a more favourable situation. It had been
+remarked that a by-road, bolder and shorter, as they all are, ran
+straight across these low marshy grounds, between the Dnieper and the
+high-road, which it rejoined behind the plateau of Valoutina.</p>
+
+<p>It was this cross-road which Junot pursued after crossing the river at
+Prudiszy. It soon led him into the rear of the left of the Russians,
+upon the flank of the columns which were returning to the assistance of
+their rear-guard. His attack was all that was wanted to render the
+victory decisive. Those who were engaged in front with Marshal Ney would
+have been daunted at hearing an attack in their rear; while the
+uncertainty and disorder into which, in the midst of an action, it would
+have thrown the multitude of men, horses, and carriages, crowded
+together in one road, would have been irreparable; but Junot, though
+personally brave, was irresolute as a general. His responsibility
+alarmed him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Murat, judging that he must have come up, was astonished at
+not hearing his attack. The firmness of the Russians opposed to Ney led
+him to suspect the truth. He left his cavalry, and crossing the woods
+and marshes almost alone, he hastened to Junot, and upbraided him with
+his inaction. Junot alleged in excuse, that "He had no orders to attack;
+his Wurtemberg cavalry was shy, its efforts feigned, and it would never
+be brought to charge the enemy's battalions."</p>
+
+<p>These words Murat answered by actions. He rushed on at the head of that
+cavalry, which, with a different leader, were quite different troops; he
+urged them on, launched them against the Russians, overthrew their
+tirailleurs, returned to Junot and said to him, "Now finish the
+business: your glory and your marshal's staff are still before you!" He
+then left him to rejoin his own troops, and Junot, confounded, remained
+motionless. Too long about Napoleon, whose active genius directed every
+thing, both the plan and the details, he had learned only to obey: he
+wanted experience in command; besides, fatigue and wounds had made him
+an old man before his time.</p>
+
+<p>That such a general should have been selected for so important a
+movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor
+was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp)
+and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed
+up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he
+disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it
+flattered his vanity, to see men who were his pupils commanding his
+armies; and it was moreover natural that he should have a firmer
+alliance on their attachment, than on that of any others.</p>
+
+<p>When, however, on the following day he inspected the places themselves,
+and, at the sight of the bridge where Gudin fell, made the remark, that
+it was not there he ought to have debouched; when afterwards gazing,
+with an angry look, on the position which Junot had occupied, he
+exclaimed: "It was there, no doubt, that the Westphalians should have
+attacked! all the battle was there! what was Junot about?" his
+irritation became so violent, that nothing could at first allay it. He
+called Rapp, and told him to take the command from the Duke of
+Abrantes:&mdash;he would dismiss him from the army! he had lost his
+marshal's staff without retrieve! this blunder would probably block the
+road to Moscow against them; that to him, Rapp, he should intrust the
+Westphalians; that he would speak to them in their own language, and he
+would know how to make them fight. But Rapp refused the place of his
+old companion in arms; he appeased the emperor, whose anger always
+subsided quickly, as soon as it had vented itself in words.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not merely on his left that the enemy had a narrow escape
+from being conquered; on his right he had run a still greater risk.
+Morand, one of Davoust's generals, had been despatched from that side
+through the forests; he marched along woody heights, and was, from the
+commencement of the action, on the flank of the Russians. A few paces
+more, and he would have debouched in the rear of their right. His sudden
+appearance would have infallibly decided the victory, and rendered it
+complete; but Napoleon, unacquainted with the localities, ordered him to
+be recalled to the spot where Davoust and himself had stopped.</p>
+
+<p>In the army, we could not help asking ourselves, why the emperor, in
+making three officers, independent of one another, combine for the same
+object, had not made a point of being on the spot, to give their
+movements the unity indispensable, and without him impossible. He, on
+the contrary, had returned to Smolensk, either from fatigue, or chiefly
+from not expecting so serious an affair; or finally, because, from the
+necessity of attending to every thing at once, he could not be in time,
+or completely any where. In fact, the business of his empire and of
+Europe, having been suspended by the preceding days of activity, had
+accumulated. It was necessary to clear out his portfolios, and to give
+circulation to both civil and political affairs, which began to clog; it
+was, besides, urgent and glorious to date from Smolensk.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, Borelli, second in command of Murat's staff, came to
+inform him of the battle of Valoutina, he hesitated about receiving him;
+and so deeply was he engaged in the business before him, that a minister
+had to interfere to procure that officer admittance. The report of this
+officer agitated Napoleon. "What say you?" he exclaimed: "what! you are
+not enough! the enemy shows 60,000 men! Then it is a battle!" and he
+began storming at the disobedience and inactivity of Junot. When Borelli
+informed him of Gudin's mortal wound, Napoleon's grief was violent; he
+gave vent to it in repeated questions and expressions of regret; then
+with that strength of mind which was peculiar to him, he subdued his
+uneasiness, postponed his anger, suspended his chagrin, and giving
+himself up wholly to his occupation, he deferred until the morrow the
+charge of battles, for night had come on; but afterwards the hopes of a
+battle roused him, and he appeared next morning with the day on the
+fields of Valoutina.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIe" id="CHAP_VIIIe"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Ney's troops, and those of Gudin's division, deprived of their general,
+had drawn up there on the corses of their companions and of the
+Russians, amidst the stumps of broken trees, on ground trampled by the
+feet of the combatants, furrowed with balls, strewed with the fragments
+of weapons, tattered garments, military utensils, carriages overthrown,
+and scattered limbs; for such are the trophies of war, such the beauties
+of a field of victory!</p>
+
+<p>Gudin's battalions appeared to be melted down to platoons; the more they
+were reduced, the prouder they seemed to be: close to them, one still
+breathed the smell of burnt cartridges and gunpowder, with which the
+ground and their apparel were impregnated, and their faces yet quite
+begrimed. The emperor could not pass along their front without having to
+avoid, to step over, or to tread upon carcases, and bayonets twisted by
+the violence of the shock. But over all these horrors he threw a veil of
+glory. His gratitude transformed this field of death into a field of
+triumph, where, for some hours, satisfied honour and ambition held
+exclusive sway.</p>
+
+<p>He was sensible that it was high time to encourage his soldiers by
+commendations and rewards. Never, therefore, were his looks more kind;
+and as to his language, "this battle was the most glorious achievement
+in our military history; the soldiers who heard him were men with whom
+one might conquer the world; the slain, warriors who had died an
+immortal death." He spoke thus, well aware that it is more especially
+amid such destruction that men think of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>He was profuse in his rewards; on the 12th, 21st, 127th of the line, and
+the 17th light, he conferred eighty-seven decorations and promotions;
+these were Gudin's regiments. The 127th had, before this, marched
+without an eagle; for at that time it was necessary for a regiment to
+earn its colours in a field of battle, to prove, that in the sequel it
+would know how to preserve them there.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor delivered the eagle to it with his own hands; he also
+satisfied Ney's corps. His favours were as great in themselves as they
+were in their form. The value of the gift was enhanced by the manner in
+which he bestowed it. He was successively surrounded by each regiment as
+by a family. There he appealed in a loud voice to the officers,
+subalterns, and privates, inquiring who were the bravest of all those
+brave men, or the most successful, and recompensing them on the spot.
+The officers named, the soldiers confirmed, the emperor approved: thus,
+as he himself observed, the elections were made instantaneously, in a
+circle, in his presence, and confirmed with acclamations by the troops.</p>
+
+<p>These paternal manners, which made the private soldier the military
+comrade of the ruler of Europe; these forms, which revived the
+still-regretted usages of the republic, delighted the troops. He was a
+monarch, but the monarch of the Revolution; and they could not but love
+a fortunate sovereign who led them on to fortune; in him there was every
+thing to excite, and nothing to reproach them.</p>
+
+<p>Never did field of victory exhibit a spectacle more capable of exalting;
+the presentation of that eagle so richly merited, the pomp of these
+promotions, the shouts of joy, the glory of those warriors, recompensed
+on the very spot where it had just been acquired; their valour
+proclaimed by a voice, every accent of which rung throughout attentive
+Europe; by that great captain whose bulletins would carry their names
+over the whole world, and more especially among their countrymen, and
+into the bosoms of their families, which they would at once cheer and
+make proud: how many favours at once! they were absolutely intoxicated
+with them: he himself seemed at first to allow himself to share their
+transports.</p>
+
+<p>But when he was out of sight of his troops, the attitude of Ney and
+Murat, and the words of Poniatowski, who was as frank and judicious in
+council as he was intrepid in the field, tranquillized him; and when the
+close heat of the day began to overpower him, and he learned from the
+reports that his men had proceeded eight leagues without overtaking the
+enemy, the spell was entirely dissolved. On his return to Smolensk, the
+jolting of his carriage over the relics of the fight, the stoppages
+caused on the road by the long file of the wounded who were crawling or
+being carried back, and in Smolensk itself by the tumbrels of amputated
+limbs about to be thrown away at a distance; in a word, all that is
+horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed him.
+Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which issued
+from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised on the
+fields of Valoutina.</p>
+
+<p>The reports of the surgeons were frightful: in that country a spirit
+distilled from grain is used instead of wine and brandy made from
+grapes. Narcotic plants are mixed with it. Our young soldiers, exhausted
+with hunger and fatigue, conceived that this liquor would cheer them;
+but its perfidious heat caused them to throw out at once all the fire
+that was yet left in them, after which they sank exhausted, and became
+the victims of disease.</p>
+
+<p>Others, less sober, or more debilitated, were seized with dizziness,
+stupefaction, and torpor; they squatted into the ditches and on the
+roads. Their half-open, watery, and lack-lustre eyes seemed to watch,
+with insensibility, death gradually seizing their whole frame; they
+expired sullenly and without a groan.</p>
+
+<p>At Wilna, it had not been possible to establish hospitals for more than
+six thousand sick: convents, churches, synagogues, and barns, served to
+receive the suffering multitude. In these dismal places, which were
+sometimes unhealthy, but still too few, and too crowded, the sick were
+frequently without food, without beds, without covering, and without
+even straw and medicines. The surgeons were inadequate to the duty, so
+that every thing, even to the very hospitals, contributed to create
+disease, and nothing to cure.</p>
+
+<p>At Witepsk, 400 wounded Russians were left on the field of battle: 300
+more were abandoned in the town by their army; and as the inhabitants
+had been taken away, these unfortunate wretches remained three days
+before they were discovered, without assistance, huddled together
+pell-mell, dead and dying, amidst the most horrible filth and infection:
+they were at length collected together and mixed with our own wounded,
+who, like those of the Russians, amounted to 700. Our surgeons tore up
+their very shirts, and those of these poor creatures, to dress them; for
+there already began to be a scarcity of linen.</p>
+
+<p>When at length the wounds of these unfortunate men were healed, and they
+required nothing but wholesome food to complete their cure, they
+perished for want of sustenance: few either of the French or Russians
+escaped. Those who were prevented from going in quest of food by the
+loss of a limb, or by debility, were the first to sink. These disasters
+occurred wherever the emperor was not in person; his presence bringing,
+and his departure carrying, every thing along with it; and his orders,
+in fact, not being scrupulously obeyed but within the circle of his own
+observation.</p>
+
+<p>At Smolensk, there was no want of hospitals; fifteen spacious brick
+buildings were rescued from the flames: there were even found some wine,
+brandy, and a few medical stores; and our reserve waggons for the
+wounded at length rejoined us: but every thing ran short. The surgeons
+were at work night and day, but the very second night, all the materials
+for dressing the wounded were exhausted: there was no more linen, and
+they were forced to use paper, found in the archives, in its stead.
+Parchment served for splinters, and coarse cloth for compresses; and
+they had no other substitute for lint than tow and birch down (<i>coton du
+bouleau</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Our surgeons were overwhelmed with dismay: for three days an hospital of
+a hundred wounded had been forgotten; an accident led to its discovery:
+Rapp penetrated into that abode of despair. I will spare my reader the
+horror of a description. Wherefore communicate those terrible
+impressions which harrow up the soul? Rapp did not spare them to
+Napoleon, who instantly caused his own wine, and a sum of money, to be
+distributed among such of those unfortunate men as a tenacious life
+still animated, or whom a disgusting food had supported.</p>
+
+<p>But to the vehement emotion which these reports excited in the bosom of
+the emperor, was superadded an alarming consideration. The conflagration
+of Smolensk was no longer, he saw, the effect of a fatal and unforeseen
+accident of war, nor even the result of an act of despair: it was the
+result of cool determination. The Russians had studied the time and
+means, and taken as great pains to destroy, as are usually taken to
+preserve.</p>
+
+<p>The same day the courageous answers of one of their popes (the only one
+found in Smolensk,) enlightened him still more in regard to the blind
+fury which had been excited in the whole Russian nation. His
+interpreter, alarmed by this animosity, conducted the pope to the
+emperor. The venerable priest first reproached him, with firmness, for
+his alleged sacrilegious acts: he knew not that it was the Russian
+general himself who had caused the storehouses and churches to be set on
+fire, and who had accused us of these outrages, in order that the
+mercantile class and the peasantry might not separate their cause from
+that of the nobility.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor listened attentively. "But," said he to him at last, "has
+your church been burned?"&mdash;"No, sire," replied the pope; "God will be
+more powerful than you; he will protect it, for I have opened it to all
+the unfortunate people whom the destruction of the city has deprived of
+a home!"&mdash;"You are right," rejoined Napoleon, with emotion, "yes, God
+will watch over the innocent victims of war; he will reward you for your
+courage. Go, worthy priest, return to your post. Had all your popes
+followed your example, they had not basely betrayed the mission of peace
+which they received from heaven; if they had not abandoned the temples
+which their presence alone renders sacred, my soldiers would have spared
+your holy edifices; for we are all Christians, and your God is our God."</p>
+
+<p>With these words, Napoleon sent back the priest to his temple with an
+escort and some succours. A heart-rending shriek arose at the sight of
+the soldiers penetrating into this asylum. A crowd of terrified women
+and children thronged about the altar; but the pope, raising his voice,
+cried; "be of good cheer: I have seen Napoleon; I have spoken to him.
+Oh! how have we been deceived, my children! the emperor of France is not
+the man that he has been represented to you. Learn that he and his
+soldiers worship the same God as we do. The war which he wages is not
+religious, it is a political quarrel with our emperor. His soldiers
+fight only our soldiers. They do not slaughter, as we have been assured,
+old men, women, and children. Cheer up, then, and let us thank God for
+being relieved from the painful duty of hating them as heathen, impious
+wretches, and incendiaries!" The pope then commenced a hymn of thanks,
+in which they all joined with tearful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But these very words demonstrated how much the nation had been deceived.
+The rest of the inhabitants had fled. Henceforward, then, it was not
+their army alone, it was the population, it was all Russia, that fled
+before us. The emperor felt that, with this population, one of his most
+powerful engines of conquest was escaping from his hands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXe" id="CHAP_IXe"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Ever since our arrival at Witepsk, Napoleon had in fact employed two of
+his officers to sound the sentiments of these people. The object was,
+to instil into them notions of liberty, and to compromise them in our
+cause by an insurrection more or less general. But there had been
+nothing to work upon excepting a few straggling savage boors, whom the
+Russians had perhaps left as spies amongst us. This attempt had only
+served to betray his plan, and to put the Russians on their guard
+against it.</p>
+
+<p>This expedient, moreover, was repugnant to Napoleon, whose nature
+inclined him much more to the cause of kings than to that of nations. He
+employed it but carelessly. Subsequently, at Moscow, he received several
+addresses from different heads of families. They complained that they
+were treated by the nobility like herds of cattle, which they might sell
+or barter away at pleasure. They solicited Napoleon to proclaim the
+abolition of slavery, and in the event of his doing so, they offered to
+head partial insurrections, which they promised speedily to render
+general.</p>
+
+<p>These offers were rejected. We should have seen, among a barbarous
+people, a barbarous liberty, an ungovernable, a horrible licentiousness:
+a few partial revolts had formerly furnished the standard of them. The
+Russian nobles, like the planters of St. Domingo, would have been
+ruined. The fear of this prevailed in the mind of Napoleon, and was
+confessed by him; it induced him to give up, for a time, all attempts to
+excite a movement which he could not have regulated.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, these masters had conceived a distrust of their slaves. Amidst
+so many dangers, they distinguished this as the most urgent. They first
+wrought upon the minds of their unfortunate serfs, debased by all sorts
+of servitude. Their priests, whom they are accustomed to believe,
+imposed upon them by delusive language; they persuaded these peasants
+that we were legions of devils, commanded by Antichrist, infernal
+spirits, whose very look would excite horror, and whose touch would
+contaminate. Such of our prisoners as fell into their hands, remarked
+that these poor creatures would not again make use of the vessels which
+they had used, and that they reserved them for the most filthy animals.</p>
+
+<p>As we advanced, however, our presence would have refuted all these
+clumsy fables. But behold! these nobles fell back with their serfs into
+the interior of the country, as at the approach of a dire contagion.
+Property, habitations, all that could detain them, and be serviceable to
+us, were sacrificed. They interposed famine, fire, and the desert,
+between them and us; for it was as much against their serfs as against
+Napoleon that this mighty resolution was executed. It was no longer,
+therefore, a war of kings that was to be prosecuted, but a war of class,
+a war of party, a war of religion, a national war, a combination of all
+sorts of war.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor then first perceived the enormous magnitude of his
+enterprise; the farther he advanced, the more it became magnified. So
+long as he only encountered kings, to him, who was greater than all of
+them, their defeats were but sport; but the kings being conquered, he
+had now to do with people; and it was another Spain, but remote, barren,
+infinite, that he had found at the opposite extremity of Europe. He was
+daunted, hesitated, and paused.</p>
+
+<p>At Witepsk, whatever resolution he might have taken, he wanted Smolensk,
+and till he should be at Smolensk, he seemed to have deferred coming to
+any determination. For this reason he was again seized with the same
+perplexity: it was now more embarrassing, as the flames, the prevalent
+epidemic, and the victims which surrounded him, had aggravated every
+thing; a fever of hesitation attacked him; his eyes turned towards Kief,
+Petersburgh, and Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>At Kief he should envelop Tchitchakof and his army; he should rid the
+right flank and the rear of the grand army, of annoyance; he should
+cover the Polish provinces most productive of men, provisions, and
+horses; while fortified cantonments at Mohilef, Smolensk, Witepsk,
+Polotsk, D&uuml;nabourg, and Riga, would defend the rest. Behind this line,
+and during the winter, he might raise and organize all ancient Poland,
+and hurl it in the spring upon Russia, oppose nation to nation, and
+render the war equal.</p>
+
+<p>At Smolensk, however, he was at the point where the Petersburgh and
+Moscow roads meet, 29 marches from the first of these capitals, and 15
+from the other. In Petersburgh, the centre of the government, the knot
+to which all the threads of the administration were united, the brain of
+Russia, were her military and naval arsenals; in short, it was the only
+point of communication between Russia and England, of which he should
+possess himself. The victory of Polotsk, of which he had just received
+intelligence, seemed to urge him in that direction. By marching in
+concert with Saint-Cyr upon Petersburgh, he should envelop Wittgenstein,
+and cause Riga to fall before Macdonald.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, in Moscow, it was the nobility, as well as the
+nation, that he should attack in its property, in its ancient honour;
+the road to that capital was shorter; it presented fewer obstacles and
+more resources; the Russian main army, which he could not neglect, and
+which he must destroy, was there, together with the chances of a battle,
+and the hope of giving a shock to the nation, by striking at its heart
+in this national war.</p>
+
+<p>Of these three plans the latter appeared to him the only one
+practicable, in spite of the advancing season. The history of Charles
+XII. was, nevertheless, before his eyes; not that of Voltaire, which he
+had just thrown aside with impatience, judging it to be romantic and
+inaccurate, but the journal of Adlerfield, which he read, but which did
+not stop him. On comparing that expedition with his own, he found a
+thousand differences between them, on which he laid great stress; for
+who can be a judge in his own cause? and of what use is the example of
+the past, in a world where there never were two men, two things, or two
+situations exactly alike?</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, about this period the name of Charles XII. was frequently
+heard to drop from his lips.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Xe" id="CHAP_Xe"></a>CHAP. X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>But the news which arrived from all quarters excited his ardour quite as
+much as it had been at Witepsk. His lieutenants seemed to have done more
+than himself: the actions of Mohilef, Molodeczna, and Valoutina, were
+regular battles, in which Davoust, Schwartzenberg, and Ney, were
+conquerors; on his right, his line of operation seemed to be covered;
+the enemy's army was flying before him; on his left, the Duke of Reggio,
+after drawing Wittgenstein upon Polotsk, was attacked at Slowna, on the
+17th of August. The attack of Wittgenstein was furious and obstinate; it
+failed; but he retained his offensive position, and Marshal Oudinot had
+been wounded. Saint-Cyr succeeded him in the command of that army,
+composed of about 30,000 French, Swiss, and Bavarians. The very next day
+this general, who disliked any command unless when he exercised it alone
+and in chief, availed himself of it, to give his measure to his own
+troops and to the enemy; but coolly, according to his character, and
+combining every thing.</p>
+
+<p>From daybreak till five in the evening, he contrived to amuse the enemy
+by the proposal of an agreement to withdraw the wounded, and more
+especially by demonstrations of retreat. At the same time he silently
+rallied all his combatants, drew them up into three columns of attack,
+and concealed them behind the village of Spas and rising grounds.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock, all being ready, and Wittgenstein's vigilance asleep,
+Saint-Cyr gave the signal: his artillery immediately began firing, and
+his columns rushed forward. The Russians, being taken by surprise,
+resisted in vain; their right was first broken, and their centre soon
+fled in disorder: they abandoned 1000 prisoners, 20 pieces of cannon, a
+field of battle covered with slain, and the offensive, which Saint-Cyr,
+being too weak, could only affect to resume, for the purpose of better
+defending himself.</p>
+
+<p>In this short but severe and sanguinary conflict, the right wing of the
+Russians, which was supported by the D&uuml;na, made an obstinate resistance.
+It was necessary to charge it with the bayonet, amidst a thick fire of
+grape-shot; every thing succeeded, but when it was supposed that there
+was no more to do but to pursue, all was nearly lost; some Russian
+dragoons, according to some, and horse-guards, according to others,
+risked a charge on a battery of Saint-Cyr's; a French brigade placed to
+support it advanced, then suddenly turned its back and fled through the
+midst of our cannon, which it prevented from being fired. The Russians
+reached them pell-mell with our men; they sabred the gunners, upset the
+pieces, and pursued our horse so closely, that the latter, more and more
+terrified, ran in disorder upon their commander-in-chief and his staff,
+whom they overthrew. General Saint-Cyr was obliged to fly on foot. He
+threw himself into the bottom of a ravine, which sheltered him from the
+squall. The Russian dragoons were already close to Polotsk, when a
+prompt and skilful man&oelig;uvre of Berkheim and the 4th French
+cuirassiers put an end to this warm affair. The Russians betook
+themselves to the woods.</p>
+
+<p>The following day Saint-Cyr sent a body of men in pursuit of them, but
+merely to observe their retreat, to mark the victory, and to reap some
+more of its fruits. During the two succeeding months, up to the 18th of
+October, Wittgenstein kept at a respectful distance. The French general,
+on his part, confined his attention to observing the enemy, keeping up
+his communications with Macdonald, with Witepsk, and Smolensk,
+fortifying himself in his position of Polotsk, and, above all, finding
+there means of subsistence.</p>
+
+<p>In this action of the 18th, four generals, four colonels, and many
+officers, were wounded. Among them the army remarked the Bavarian
+Generals Deroy and Liben. They expired on the 22d of August. These
+generals were of the same age; they had belonged to the same regiment,
+had made the same campaigns, proceeded at nearly an equal pace in their
+perilous career, which was gloriously terminated by the same death, and
+in the same battle. It was thought right not to separate in the tomb
+these warriors, whom neither life nor death had been able to part; one
+grave received the remains of both.</p>
+
+<p>On the news of this victory, the emperor sent to General Saint-Cyr the
+staff of Marshal of the empire. He placed a great number of crosses at
+his disposal, and subsequently approved most of the promotions which
+were applied for.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this success, the determination to proceed beyond
+Smolensk was too perilous for Napoleon to decide on it alone: it was
+requisite that he should contrive to be drawn into it. Beyond Valoutina,
+Ney's corps, which was fatigued, had been replaced by that of Davoust.
+Murat as king, as brother-in-law to the emperor, and agreeably to his
+order, was to command it. Ney had submitted to this, less from
+condescension than from conformity of disposition. They agreed in their
+ardour.</p>
+
+<p>But Davoust, whose methodical and tenacious genius was a complete
+contrast to the fiery impetuosity of Murat, and who was rendered proud
+by the remembrance of, and the titles derived from two great victories,
+was piqued at being placed in this dependence. These haughty chiefs, who
+were about the same age, had been companions in war, and had mutually
+witnessed each other's elevation; they were both spoiled by the habit of
+having obeyed only a great man, and were by no means fit to command one
+another; Murat, in particular, who was too often unable to command
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Davoust nevertheless obeyed, but with an ill grace, and imperfectly, as
+wounded pride generally does. He affected immediately to break off all
+direct correspondence with the emperor. The latter, surprised at this,
+ordered him to renew it, alleging his distrust of the reports of Murat.
+Davoust made a handle of this avowal, and again asserted his
+independence. Henceforward the vanguard had two leaders. Thus the
+emperor, fatigued, distressed, overloaded with business of every kind,
+and forced to show indulgence to his lieutenants, divided his power as
+well as his armies, in spite of his precepts and his former examples.
+Circumstances, which he had so often controlled, became stronger than
+him, and controlled him in their turn.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Barclay, having fallen back without resistance nearly as far
+as Dorogobouje, Murat had no need of Davoust, and no occasion presented
+itself for misunderstanding; but about eleven in the forenoon of the 23d
+of August, a thick wood, a few wersts from that town, which the king
+wished to reconnoitre, was warmly disputed with him: he was obliged to
+carry it twice.</p>
+
+<p>Murat, surprised at such a resistance at that early hour, pushed on, and
+piercing through this curtain, beheld the whole Russian army drawn up in
+order of battle. The narrow ravine of the Luja separated him from it: it
+was noon; the extent of the Russian lines, especially towards our right,
+the preparations, the hour, the place, which was that where Barclay had
+just rejoined Bagration; the choice of the ground, well suited for a
+general engagement; all gave him reason to anticipate a battle; and he
+sent a dispatch to the emperor to apprise him of it.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time he ordered Montbrun to pass the ravine on his right
+with his cavalry, in order to reconnoitre and get upon the left of the
+enemy. Davoust, and his five divisions of infantry, extended themselves
+on that side; he protected Montbrun: the king recalled them to his left,
+on the high-road, designing, it is said, to support Montbrun's flank
+movement by some demonstrations in front.</p>
+
+<p>Davoust replied, that "This would be sacrificing our right wing, through
+which the enemy would get behind us on the high-road, our only means of
+retreat; that thus he would force us to a battle, which he, Davoust, had
+orders to avoid, and which he would avoid, his force being insufficient,
+the position bad, and he being moreover under the command of a leader in
+whom he had but little confidence." He then wrote immediately to
+Napoleon, urging him to come up without loss of time, if he would not
+have Murat engage without him.</p>
+
+<p>On this intelligence, which he received in the night of the 24th of
+August, Napoleon joyfully threw aside his indecision, which to this
+enterprising and decisive genius was absolute torture: he hurried
+forward with his guard, and proceeded twelve leagues without halting;
+but on the evening of the preceding day, the enemy's army had again
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>On our side, his retreat was attributed to the movement of Montbrun; on
+the part of the Russians to Barclay, and to a bad position chosen by the
+chief of his staff, who had taken up ground in his own disfavour,
+instead of making it serve to his advantage. Bagration was the first who
+perceived it; his rage knew no bounds, and he proclaimed it treason.</p>
+
+<p>Discord reigned in the Russian camp as well as in our advanced guard.
+Confidence in their commander, that strength of armies, was wanting; his
+every step seemed a blunder; each resolution that was taken the very
+worst. The loss of Smolensk had soured all; the junction of the two
+<i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i> increased the evil; the stronger the Russian force felt
+itself, the weaker did its general seem to it. The outcry became
+general; another leader was loudly called for. A few prudent men,
+however, interposed: Kutusof was announced, and the humbled pride of the
+Russians awaited him in order to fight.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor, on his part, already at Dorogobouje, no longer hesitated;
+he knew that he carried every where with him the fate of Europe; that
+wherever he might be, that would always be the place where the destiny
+of nations would be decided; that he might therefore advance, fearless
+of the threatening consequences of the defection of the Swedes and
+Turks. Thus he neglected the hostile armies of Essen at Riga, of
+Wittgenstein before Polotsk, of Ertell before Bobruisk, and of
+Tchitchakof in Volhynia. They consisted of 120,000 men, whose number
+could not but keep gradually augmenting; he passed them, and suffered
+himself to be surrounded by them with indifference, assured that all
+these vain obstacles of war and policy would be swept away by the very
+first thunderbolt which he should launch.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, his column of attack, which was 185,000 strong at his departure
+from Witepsk, was already reduced to 157,000; it was diminished by
+28,000 men, half of whom occupied Witepsk, Orcha, Mohilef, and Smolensk.
+The rest had been killed or wounded, or were straggling, and plundering
+in his rear our allies and the French themselves.</p>
+
+<p>But 157,000 men were sufficient to destroy the Russian army by a
+complete victory, and to take Moscow. As to his base of operation,
+notwithstanding the 120,000 Russians by whom it was threatened, it
+appeared to be secure. Lithuania, the D&uuml;na, the Dnieper, and lastly
+Smolensk, were or would soon be covered towards Riga and D&uuml;nabourg by
+Macdonald and 32,000 men; towards Polotsk, by Saint-Cyr, with 30,000; at
+Witepsk, Smolensk, and Mohilef, by Victor and 40,000; before Bobruisk,
+by Dombrowski and 12,000; and on the Bug by Schwartzenberg and Regnier,
+at the head of 45,000 men. Napoleon reckoned besides on the divisions of
+Loison and Durutte, 22,000 strong, which were already approaching
+K&ouml;nigsberg and Warsaw; and on reinforcements to the amount of 80,000,
+all of which would enter Russia before the middle of November.</p>
+
+<p>He should thus have 280,000 men, including the Lithuanian and Polish
+levies, to support him, while, with 155,000 more, he made an incursion
+of 93 leagues; for such was the distance between Smolensk and Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>But these 280,000 men were commanded by six different leaders, all
+independent of each other, and the most elevated of them, he who
+occupied the centre, and who seemed to be appointed to act as an
+intermediate link, to give some unity to the operations of the other
+five, was a minister of peace, and not of war.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, the same causes which had already diminished, by one-third, the
+French forces which first entered Russia, could not fail to disperse or
+to destroy a still greater proportion of all these reinforcements. Most
+of them were coming by detachments, formed provisionally into marching
+battalions under officers new to them, whom they were to leave the first
+day, without the incentive of discipline, <i>esprit de corps</i>, or glory,
+and traversing an exhausted country, which the season and the climate
+would be rendering daily more bare and more rude.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Napoleon beheld Dorogobouje in ashes, like Smolensk,
+especially the quarter of the merchants, those who had most to lose,
+whom their riches might have detained or brought back amongst us, and
+who, from their situation, formed a kind of intermediate class, a
+commencement of the third estate, which liberty was likely to seduce.</p>
+
+<p>He was perfectly aware that he was quitting Smolensk, as he had come
+thither, with the hope of a battle, which the indecision and discord of
+the Russian generals had as yet deferred; but his resolution was taken;
+he would hear of nothing but what was calculated to support him in it.
+He persisted in pursuing the track of the enemy; his hardihood increased
+with their prudence; their circumspection he called pusillanimity, their
+retreat flight; he despised, that he might hope.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_VII" id="BOOK_VII"></a>BOOK VII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_If" id="CHAP_If"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The emperor had proceeded with such expedition to Dorogobouje, that he
+was obliged to halt there, in order to wait for his army, and to leave
+Murat to pursue the enemy. He set out again on the 26th of August; the
+army marched in three columns abreast; the Emperor, Murat, Davoust, and
+Ney in the centre, on the high-road to Moscow; Poniatowski on the right;
+and the army of Italy on the left.</p>
+
+<p>The principal column, that of the centre, found nothing on a road where
+its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the
+Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in
+so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed
+every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to
+have set out later every day, halted earlier, and then extended itself
+more on its flanks during the night; which could be done without
+imprudence when the enemy was so near at hand.</p>
+
+<p>At Smolensk orders had been issued, as at Witepsk, to take, at starting,
+provisions for several days. The emperor was aware of the difficulty of
+collecting them, but he reckoned upon the diligence of the officers and
+the troops; they had warning,&mdash;that was sufficient; they would contrive
+to provide themselves with necessaries. They had acquired the habit of
+doing so; and it was really a curious sight to observe the voluntary and
+continual efforts of so many men to follow a single individual to such
+great distances. The existence of the army was a prodigy that was daily
+renewed, by the active, industrious, and intelligent spirit of the
+French and Polish troops, by their habit of surmounting all
+difficulties, and by their fondness for the hazards and irregularities
+of this dreadful game of an adventurous life.</p>
+
+<p>In the train of each regiment there were a multitude of those diminutive
+horses with which Poland swarms, a great number of carts of the country,
+which required to be incessantly replaced with fresh ones, and a drove
+of cattle. The baggage-waggons were driven by soldiers, for they turned
+their hands to every trade. They were missed in the ranks, it is true;
+but here the want of provisions, the necessity for transporting every
+thing with them, excused this prodigious train: it required a second
+army, as it were, to carry or draw what was indispensable for the first.</p>
+
+<p>In this prompt organization, adopted while marching, the army had
+accommodated itself to all the local customs and difficulties; the
+genius of the soldiers had admirably made the most of the scanty
+resources of the country. As to the officers, as the general orders
+always took for granted regular distributions which were never made,
+each of them, according to the degree of his zeal, intelligence, and
+firmness, appropriated to himself more or less of this spoil, and had
+converted individual pillage into regular contributions.</p>
+
+<p>For it was only by excursions on the flanks and into an unknown country
+that any provisions could be procured. Every evening, when the army
+halted, and the bivouacs were established, detachments, rarely commanded
+by divisions, sometimes by brigades, and most commonly by regiments,
+went in quest of necessaries, and penetrated into the country; a few
+wersts from the road they found all the villages inhabited, and were not
+very hostilely received; but as they could not make themselves
+understood, and besides wanted every thing, and that instantaneously,
+the peasants were soon seized with a panic and fled into the woods,
+whence they issued again as no very formidable partizans.</p>
+
+<p>The detachments meanwhile plentifully regaled themselves, and rejoined
+their corps next day or some days afterwards, laden with all that they
+had collected; and it frequently happened that they were plundered in
+their turn by their comrades belonging to the other corps whom they
+chanced to fall in with. Hence animosities, which would have infallibly
+led to most sanguinary intestine conflicts, had not all been
+subsequently overtaken by the same misfortune, and involved in the
+horrors of a common disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Till the return of their detachments, the soldiers who remained with
+their eagles lived on what they could find on the military route; in
+general it consisted of new rye, which they bruised and boiled. Owing to
+the cattle which followed, there was less want of meat than of bread;
+but the length, and especially the rapidity of the marches, occasioned
+the loss of many of these animals: they were suffocated by the heat and
+dust; when, therefore, they came to water, they ran into it with such
+fury, that many of them were drowned, while others drank so
+immoderately, as to swell themselves out till they were unable to walk.</p>
+
+<p>It was remarked, as before we reached Smolensk, that the divisions of
+the first corps continued to be the most numerous; their detachments,
+better disciplined, brought back more, and did less injury to the
+inhabitants. Those who remained with their colours lived on the contents
+of their knapsacks, the regular appearance of which relieved the eye,
+fatigued with a disorder that was nearly universal.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these knapsacks, reduced to what was strictly necessary in point
+of apparel, contained two shirts, two pair of shoes with nails, and a
+pair of extra soles, a pair of pantaloons and half-gaiters of cloth; a
+few articles requisite to cleanliness, a bandage, and a quantity of
+lint, and sixty cartridges.</p>
+
+<p>In the two sides were placed four biscuits of sixteen ounces each; under
+these, and at the bottom, was a long, narrow, linen bag, filled with ten
+pounds of flour. The whole knapsack and its contents, together with the
+straps and the hood, rolled up and fastened at top, weighed
+thirty-three pounds twelve ounces.</p>
+
+<p>Each soldier carried also a linen bag, slung in form of a shoulder-belt,
+containing two loaves of three pounds each. Thus with his sabre, his
+loaded knapsack, three flints, his turn-screw, his belt and musket, he
+had to carry fifty-eight pounds weight, and was provided with bread for
+four days, biscuit for four, flour for seven, and sixty rounds of
+ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>Behind it were carriages laden with provisions for six more days; but it
+was impossible to reckon with confidence on these vehicles, picked up on
+the spot, which would have been so convenient in any other country with
+a smaller army, and in a more regular war.</p>
+
+<p>When the flour-bag was emptied, it was filled with any corn that could
+be found, and which was ground at the first mill, if any chanced to be
+met with; if not, by the hand-mills which followed the regiments, or
+which were found in the villages, for the Russians are scarcely
+acquainted with any others. It took sixteen men twelve hours to grind in
+one of them the corn necessary for one hundred and thirty men for one
+day.</p>
+
+<p>As every house in this country has an oven, little want was felt on that
+score; bakers abounded; for the regiments of the first corps contained
+men of all trades, so that articles of food and clothing were all made
+or repaired by them during the march. They were colonies uniting the
+character of civilized and nomadic. The emperor had first conceived the
+idea, which the genius of the prince of Eckm&uuml;hl had appropriated; he had
+every thing he wanted, time, place, and men to carry it into execution;
+but these three elements of success were less at the disposal of the
+other chiefs. Besides, their characters being more impetuous and less
+methodical, would scarcely have derived the same advantages from it;
+with a less organizing genius, they would therefore have had more
+obstacles to surmount; the emperor had not paid sufficient attention to
+these differences, which were productive of baneful effects.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIf" id="CHAP_IIf"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was from Slawkowo, a few leagues beyond Dorogobouje, that Napoleon
+sent orders, on the 27th of August, to marshal Victor, who was then on
+the Niemen, to advance to Smolensk. This marshal's left was to occupy
+Witepsk, his right Mohilef, and his centre Smolensk. There he would
+succour Saint-Cyr, in case of need, serve for a point of support to the
+army of Moscow, and keep up his communications with Lithuania.</p>
+
+<p>It was also from the same imperial head-quarters that he published the
+details of his review at Valoutina, with the intention of proclaiming to
+the present and future ages the names even of the private soldiers who
+had there distinguished themselves. But he added, that at Smolensk "the
+conduct of the Poles had astonished the Russians, who had been
+accustomed to despise them." These words drew from the Poles an outcry
+of indignation, and the emperor smiled at an anger which he had
+foreseen, and the effects of which were designed to fall exclusively on
+the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>On this march he took delight in dating from the heart of Old Russia a
+number of decrees, which would be circulated in the meanest hamlets of
+France; from the desire of appearing to be present every where at once,
+and filling the earth more and more with his power: the offspring of
+that inconceiveable and expanding greatness of soul, whose ambition was
+at first a mere plaything, but finally coveted the empire of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that at the same time there was so little order about him at
+Slawkowo, that his guard burned, during the night, to warm themselves,
+the bridge which they were ordered to guard, and the only one by which
+he could, the next day, leave his imperial quarters. This disorder,
+however, like many others, proceeded not from insubordination, but from
+thoughtlessness; it was corrected as soon as it was perceived.</p>
+
+<p>The very same day Murat drove the enemy beyond the Osma, a narrow river,
+but enclosed with high banks, and of great depth, like most of the
+rivers of this country, the effect of the snow, and which, at the period
+of its general melting, prevents inundations. The Russian rear-guard,
+covered by this obstacle, faced about and established itself on the
+heights of the opposite bank. Murat ordered the ravine to be examined,
+and a ford was discovered. It was through this narrow and insecure
+defile that he dared to march against the Russians, to venture between
+the river and their position; thus cutting off from himself all retreat,
+and turning a skirmish into a desperate action. In fact, the enemy
+descended in force from their height, and drove him back to the very
+brink of the ravine, into which they had well-nigh precipitated him. But
+Murat persisted in his error; he braved it out, and converted it into a
+success. The 4th lancers carried the position, and the Russians went to
+pass the night not far off; content with having made us purchase at a
+dear rate a quarter of a league of ground, which they would have given
+up to us for nothing during the night.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment of the most imminent danger, a battery of the prince of
+Eckm&uuml;hl twice refused to fire. Its commanding officer pleaded his
+instructions, which forbade him, upon pain of being broke, to fight
+without orders from Davoust. These orders arrived, in time, according to
+some, but too late according to others. I relate this incident, because,
+on the following day, it was the occasion of a violent quarrel between
+Murat and Davoust, in presence of the emperor, at Semlewo.</p>
+
+<p>The king reproached the prince with his tardy circumspection, and more
+especially with an enmity which dated from the expedition to Egypt. In
+the vehemence of his passion he told him, that if there was any quarrel
+between them they ought to settle it by themselves, but that the army
+ought not to be made the sufferers for it.</p>
+
+<p>Davoust, irritated in his turn, accused the king of temerity; according
+to him "his thoughtless ardour was incessantly compromising his troops,
+and wasting to no purpose, their lives, their strength, and their
+stores. It was right that the emperor should at last know what was daily
+occurring in his advanced guard. Every morning the enemy had disappeared
+before it; but this experience led to no alteration whatever in the
+march: the troops, therefore, set out late, all keeping the high-road,
+and forming a single column, and in this manner they advanced in the
+void till about noon.</p>
+
+<p>"The enemy's rear-guard, ready to fight, was then discovered behind some
+marshy ravine, the bridges over which had been broken down, and which
+was commanded from the opposite bank. The light troops were instantly
+brought into action, then the first regiments of cavalry that were at
+hand, and then the artillery; but in general out of reach, or against
+straggling cossacks, who were not worth the trouble. At length, after
+vain and sanguinary attempts made in front, the king took it into his
+head to reconnoitre the force and position of the enemy more accurately,
+and to man&oelig;uvre; and he sent for the infantry.</p>
+
+<p>"Then after having long waited in this endless column, the ravine was
+crossed on the left or on the right of the Russians, who retired under a
+fire of their small arms to a new position; where the same resistance,
+and the same mode of march and attack, exposed us to the same losses and
+the same delays.</p>
+
+<p>"In this manner the king went on from position to position, till he came
+to one which was stronger or better defended. It was usually about five
+in the evening, sometimes later, rarely earlier; but in this case the
+tenacity of the Russians, and the hour, plainly indicated that their
+whole army was there, and was determined to pass the night on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>"For it could not be denied that this retreat of the Russians was
+conducted with admirable order. The ground alone dictated it to them and
+not Murat. Their positions were so well chosen, taken so seasonably, and
+each defended so exactly in proportion to its strength, and the time
+which their general wished to gain, that in truth their movements seemed
+to form part of a plan which had been long determined on, carefully
+traced, and executed with scrupulous exactness.</p>
+
+<p>"They never abandoned a post till the moment before they were likely to
+be driven from it.</p>
+
+<p>"In the evening they established themselves early in a good position,
+leaving under arms no more troops than were absolutely necessary to
+defend it, while the remainder rested and refreshed themselves."</p>
+
+<p>Davoust added that, "so far from profiting by this example, the king
+paid no regard either to the hour, the strength of the situation, or the
+resistance; that he dashed on among his tirailleurs, dancing about in
+front of the enemy's line, feeling it in every part; putting himself in
+a passion, giving his orders with loud shouts, and making himself hoarse
+with repeating them; exhausting every thing, cartouch-boxes,
+ammunition-waggons, men and horses, combatants and non-combatants, and
+keeping all the troops under arms till night had set in.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, indeed, it was found necessary to desist, and to take up their
+quarters where they were; but they no longer knew where to find
+necessaries. It was really pitiful to hear the soldiers wandering in the
+dark, groping about, as it were, for forage, water, wood, straw, and
+provisions, and then, unable to find their bivouacs again, calling out
+to one another lest they should lose themselves, during the whole night.
+Scarcely had they time, not to sleep, but to prepare their food.
+Overwhelmed with fatigue, they cursed the hardships they had to endure,
+till daylight and the enemy came to rouse them again.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not the advanced guard alone that suffered in this manner, but
+the whole of the cavalry. Every evening Murat had left behind him 20,000
+men on horseback and under arms, on the high-road. This long column had
+remained all day without eating or drinking, amidst a cloud of dust,
+under a burning sky; ignorant of what was passing before it, advancing a
+few paces from one quarter of an hour to another, then halting to deploy
+among fields of rye, but without daring to take off the bridles and to
+allow their famished horses to feed, because the king kept them
+incessantly on the alert. It was to advance five or six leagues that
+they thus passed sixteen tedious hours&mdash;particularly arduous for the
+cuirassier horses, which had more to carry than the others, though
+weaker, as the largest horses in general are, and which required more
+food; hence their great carcasses were worn down to skeletons, their
+flanks collapsed, they crawled rather than walked, and every moment one
+was seen staggering, and another falling under his rider, who left him
+to his fate."</p>
+
+<p>Davoust concluded with saying, that "in this manner the whole of the
+cavalry would perish; Murat, however, might dispose of that as he
+pleased, but as for the infantry of the first corps, so long as he had
+the command of it, he would not suffer it to be thrown away in that
+manner."</p>
+
+<p>The king was not backward in replying. While the emperor was listening
+to them, he was at the same time playing with a Russian ball, which he
+kicked about with his foot. It seemed as if there was something in the
+misunderstanding between these chiefs which did not displease him. He
+attributed their animosity entirely to their ardour, well aware that of
+all passions glory is the most jealous.</p>
+
+<p>The impatient ardour of Murat gratified his own. As the troops had
+nothing to live upon but what they found, every thing was consumed at
+the moment; for this reason it was necessary to make short work with the
+enemy, and to proceed rapidly. Besides, the general crisis in Europe was
+too strong, his situation too critical to remain there, and himself too
+impatient; he wished to bring matters to a close at any rate, in order
+to extricate himself.</p>
+
+<p>The impetuosity of the king, therefore, seemed to suit his anxiety
+better than the methodical prudence of the Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl.
+Accordingly, when he dismissed them, he said mildly to Davoust, that
+"one person could not possess every species of merit; that he knew
+better how to fight a battle than to push a rear-guard; and that if
+Murat had pursued Bagration in Lithuania, he would probably not have
+allowed him to escape." It is even asserted that he reproached the
+marshal with a restless disposition, an anxiety to appropriate to
+himself all the commands; less, indeed, from ambition than zeal, and
+that all might go on better; but yet this zeal had its inconveniences.
+He then sent them away with an injunction to agree better in future.</p>
+
+<p>The two chiefs returned to their commands, and to their animosity. As
+the war was confined to the head of the column, that also was the scene
+of their disputes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIf" id="CHAP_IIIf"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 28th of August, the army crossed the vast plains of the
+government of Wiazma: it marched in all haste, the whole together,
+through fields, and several regiments abreast, each forming a short,
+close column. The high-road was left for the artillery, its waggons, and
+those carrying the sick and wounded. The emperor, on horseback, was seen
+every where: Murat's letters, and the approach to Wiazma, deceived him
+once more with the hope of a battle: he was heard calculating on the
+march the thousands of cannon-balls which he would require to crush the
+hostile army.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon had assigned its place to the baggage: he published an order
+for burning all vehicles which should be seen among the troops, not
+excepting carts loaded with provisions, for they might embarrass the
+movements of the columns, and compromise their safety in case of attack.
+Having met in his way with the carriage of General Narbonne, his
+aid-de-camp, he himself caused it to be set on fire, before the face of
+that general, and that instantaneously, without suffering it to be
+emptied; an order which was only severe, although it appeared harsh,
+because he himself began by enforcing its execution, which, however, was
+not followed up.</p>
+
+<p>The baggage of all the corps was therefore assembled in the rear of the
+army: there was, from Dorogobouje, a long train of bat-horses and
+kibitks, harnessed with ropes; these vehicles were laden with booty,
+provisions, military effects, men appointed to take care of them;
+lastly, sick soldiers, and the arms of both, which were rusting in them.
+In this column were seen many of the tall dismounted cuirassiers,
+bestriding horses no bigger than our asses, because they could not
+follow on foot for want of practice and of boots. On this confused and
+disorderly multitude, as well as on most of the marauders on our flanks,
+the cossacks might have made successful <i>coups de main</i>. They would
+thereby have harassed the army, and retarded its march, but Barclay
+seemed fearful of discouraging us: he put out his strength only against
+our advanced guard, and that but just sufficiently to slacken without
+stopping our progress.</p>
+
+<p>This determination of Barclay's, the declining strength of the army, the
+quarrels between its chiefs, the approach of the decisive moment, gave
+uneasiness to Napoleon. At Dresden, at Witepsk, and even at Smolensk, he
+had hoped in vain for a communication from Alexander. At Ribky, on the
+28th of August, he appeared to solicit one: a letter from Berthier to
+Barclay, in no other respect worthy of notice, concluded with these
+words: "The emperor directs me to request you to present his compliments
+to the emperor Alexander; tell him that neither the vicissitudes of war,
+nor any other circumstance, can diminish the friendship which he feels
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>The same day, the 28th of August, the advanced-guard drove back the
+Russians as far as Wiazma; the army, thirsty from the march, the heat
+and the dust, was in want of water; the troops disputed the possession
+of a few muddy pools, and fought near the springs, which were soon
+rendered turbid and exhausted; the emperor himself was forced to put up
+with this muddy beverage.</p>
+
+<p>During the night, the enemy destroyed the bridges over the Wiazma,
+plundered that town, and set it on fire. Murat and Davoust precipitately
+advanced to extinguish the flames. The enemy defended his conflagration,
+but the Wiazma was fordable near the ruins of the bridges: one part of
+the advanced-guard then attacked the incendiaries, and the other the
+fire, which they speedily subdued.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion some chosen men were sent to the advanced-guard, with
+orders to watch the enemy closely at Wiazma, and ascertain whether they,
+or our soldiers, were the real incendiaries. Their report entirely
+dissipated the doubts which the emperor might still have entertained as
+to the fatal resolution of the Russians. They found in this town some
+resources, which pillage would soon have wasted. In passing through the
+city, the emperor observed this disorder: he was exceedingly incensed,
+rode into the midst of the groups of soldiers, caused a suttler to be
+seized, and ordered him to be instantly tried and shot. But the meaning
+of the phrase from his lips was well known; it was known, also that the
+more vehement his paroxysms of anger, the sooner they were followed by
+indulgence. A moment afterwards, they, therefore, merely placed in his
+way the unfortunate man on his knees, with a woman and several children
+beside him, whom they passed off for his family. The emperor, who had
+already cooled, inquired what they wanted, and caused the man to be set
+at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>He was still on horseback, when he saw Belliard, for fifteen years the
+companion in war of Murat, and then the chief of his staff, coming
+towards him. Surprised at seeing him, the emperor fancied some
+misfortune had happened. Belliard first relieved his apprehensions, and
+then added, that "Beyond the Wiazma, behind a ravine, on an advantageous
+position, the enemy had shown himself in force and ready for battle;
+that the cavalry on both sides immediately engaged, and as the infantry
+became necessary, the king in person put himself at the head of one of
+Davoust's divisions, and drew it out to lead it against the enemy; but
+that the marshal hastened up, calling to his men to halt, loudly
+censuring that man&oelig;uvre, harshly reproaching the king for it, and
+forbidding his generals to obey him: that Murat then appealed to his
+dignity, to his military rank, to the exigency of the occasion, but in
+vain; that, finally, he had sent to declare to the emperor his disgust
+for a command so contested, and to tell him that he must choose between
+him and Davoust."</p>
+
+<p>This intelligence threw Napoleon into a passion: he exclaimed, that
+"Davoust was unmindful of all subordination; that he forgot the respect
+due to his brother-in-law, to him whom he had appointed his lieutenant;"
+and he sent Berthier with orders that Compans's division, the same which
+had been the subject of the altercation, should be thenceforward under
+the command of the king. Davoust did not defend the manner, but merely
+the motive of his act, either from prejudice against the habitual
+temerity of the king, from spleen, or that he was a better judge of the
+ground, and the man&oelig;uvre adapted to it, which is very possible.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the combat had finished, and Murat, whose attention was no
+longer diverted by the enemy, was wholly occupied with the thoughts of
+his quarrel. Shut up with Belliard, and hiding himself in a manner in
+his tent, as his memory recalled the expressions of the marshal, his
+blood became more and more inflamed with shame and rage. "He had been
+set at defiance, and publicly insulted, and Davoust still lived! What
+did he care for the anger of the emperor, and for his decision? it was
+for him to revenge his own wrong! What signified his rank? it was his
+sword alone that had made him a king, and it was to that alone he should
+appeal!" He was already snatching up his arms to go and attack Davoust,
+when Belliard stopped him, by urging existing circumstances, the example
+he ought to set to the army, the enemy to be pursued, and that it would
+be wrong to distress his friends and delight the foe by so desperate a
+proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>The general says, that he then saw the king curse his crown, and strive
+to swallow the affront; but that tears of spite rolled down his cheeks
+and fell upon his clothes. Whilst he was thus tormenting himself,
+Davoust, obstinately persisting in his opinion, said that the emperor
+was misinformed, and remained quietly in his head-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon returned to Wiazma, where he was obliged to stop to ascertain
+the advantages that he might derive from his new conquest. The accounts
+which he received from the interior of Russia, represented the hostile
+government as appropriating to itself our successes, and inculcating the
+belief that the loss of so many provinces was the effect of a general
+plan of retreat, adopted beforehand. Papers seized at Wiazma stated that
+<i>Te Deum</i> had been sung at Petersburgh for pretended victories at
+Witepsk or Smolensk. "What!" he exclaimed in astonishment, "<i>Te Deum!</i>
+Dare they then lie to God as well as to men?"</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, most of the intercepted Russian letters expressed the same
+astonishment. "While our villages are blazing," said they, "we hear
+nothing here but the ringing of bells, hymns of thanksgiving, and
+triumphant reports. It seems as if they would make us thank God for the
+victories of the French. Thus there is lying in the air, lying on earth,
+lying in words and in writing, lying to Heaven and earth, lying in every
+thing. Our great men treat Russia like a child, but there is no small
+degree of credulity in believing us to be so credulous."</p>
+
+<p>Very just reflections, if means so gross had been employed to deceive
+those who were capable of writing such letters. At any rate, though
+these political falsehoods are generally resorted to, it was plain that
+when carried to such excess, they were a satire either on the governors
+or the governed, and, perhaps, on both.</p>
+
+<p>During this time the advanced-guard pushed the Russians as far as Gjatz,
+exchanging a few balls with them,&mdash;an exchange which was almost always
+to the disadvantage of the French, the Russians taking care to employ
+only their long pieces, which would carry much farther than ours.
+Another remark which we made was, that from Smolensk the Russians had
+neglected to burn the villages and the mansions. As they are of a
+character which aims at effect, this obscure evil probably appeared to
+them to be a useless one. They were satisfied with the more signal
+conflagrations of their cities.</p>
+
+<p>This defect, if that negligence proceeded from it, turned, as is
+frequently the case with all other defects, to the advantage of their
+enemies. In these villages, the French army found forage, corn, ovens
+for baking, and shelter. Others observed on this point, that all these
+devastations were allotted to cossacks, to barbarians; and that these
+hordes, either from hatred or contempt of civilization, seemed to take a
+savage and particular pleasure in the destruction of the towns.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVf" id="CHAP_IVf"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 1st of September, about noon, there was only a copse of fir-trees
+between Murat and Gjatz. The appearance of cossacks obliged him to
+deploy his first regiments, but in his impatience he soon sent for some
+horse, and having himself driven the Russians from the wood which they
+occupied, he crossed it and found himself at the gates of Gjatz. This
+sight animated the French, and they instantly made themselves masters of
+the town as far as the river which parts it into two, and the bridges of
+which had been already set on fire.</p>
+
+<p>There, as at Smolensk and Wiazma, whether by chance, or from the relic
+of a Tartar custom, the bazaar was on the Asiatic side, on the bank
+opposite to us. The Russian rear-guard, secured by the river, had time,
+therefore, to burn that whole quarter. Nothing but the promptitude of
+Murat saved the rest.</p>
+
+<p>The troops crossed the Gjatz as they could, on planks, in a few boats,
+and by fording. The Russians disappeared behind the flames, whither our
+foremost riflemen followed them,&mdash;when they saw an inhabitant come
+forth, approach them, and cry out that he was a Frenchman. His joy and
+his accent confirmed his assertion. They conducted him to Davoust, who
+interrogated him.</p>
+
+<p>According to the account of this man, there had been a great change in
+the Russian army. A violent clamour had been raised from its ranks
+against Barclay. It had been re-echoed by the nobility, by the
+merchants, by all Moscow. "That general, that minister, was a traitor;
+he caused all their divisions to be destroyed piece-meal; he was
+dishonouring the army by an interminable flight; yet, at the same time,
+they were labouring under the disgrace of an invasion, and their towns
+were in flames. If it was necessary to determine upon this ruin, they
+might as well sacrifice themselves at once; then, there would be at
+least some honour, whereas, to suffer themselves to be sacrificed by a
+stranger, was losing every thing, the honour of the sacrifice not
+excepted.</p>
+
+<p>"But why employ this stranger? Was not the contemporary, the comrade,
+the rival of Suwarrow yet living? A Russian was wanted to save Russia!"
+And they all called for, all were anxious for Kutusof and a battle. The
+Frenchman added, that Alexander had yielded; that the insubordination of
+Bagration, and the universal outcry, had obtained from him that general
+and a battle; and that, moreover, after drawing the invading army so
+far, the Russian emperor had himself judged a general engagement
+unavoidable.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, he related, that the arrival of Kutusof on the 29th of August
+at Tzarewo-zaimizcze, between Wiazma and Gjatz, and the announcement of
+a speedy battle, had intoxicated the enemy with two-fold joy; that all
+had immediately marched towards Borodino,&mdash;not to continue their flight,
+but to fix themselves on this frontier of the government of Moscow, to
+root themselves to the soil, and defend it; in short, to conquer there
+or die.</p>
+
+<p>An incident, otherwise not worthy of notice, seemed to confirm this
+intelligence; this was the arrival of a Russian officer with a flag of
+truce. He had so little to say, that it was evident from the first that
+he came only to observe. His manner was particularly displeasing to
+Davoust, who read in it something more than assurance. A French general
+having inconsiderately asked this stranger what we should find between
+Wiazma and Moscow, the Russian proudly replied, "Pultowa." This answer
+bespoke a battle; it pleased the French, who are fond of a smart
+repartee, and delight to meet with enemies worthy of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>This officer was conducted back without precaution, as he had been
+brought. He saw that there was no obstacle to prevent access to our very
+head-quarters; he traversed our advanced posts without meeting with a
+single vidette; every where the same negligence was perceptible, and the
+temerity so natural to Frenchmen and to conquerors. Every one was
+asleep; there was no watchword, no patroles; our soldiers seemed to
+despise these details, as too trivial. Wherefore so many precautions?
+They attacked&mdash;they were victorious: it was for the Russians to defend
+themselves! This officer has since said, that he was tempted to take
+advantage that very night of our imprudence, but that he did not find
+any Russian corps within his reach.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy, in his haste to burn the bridges over the Gjatz, left behind
+some of his cossacks; they were taken and conducted to the emperor, who
+was approaching on horseback. Napoleon wished to question them himself.
+He sent for his interpreter, and caused two of these Scythians, whose
+strange dress and wild look were remarkable, to be placed by his side.
+In this manner he entered Gjatz, and passed through that town. The
+answers of these barbarians corresponded with the account of the
+Frenchman; and during the night of the 1st of September, all the reports
+from the advanced posts confirmed their accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Barclay had, singly against all, supported till the very last
+moment that plan of retreat, which in 1807 he had vaunted to one of our
+generals as the only expedient for saving Russia. Among us, he was
+commended for having persisted in this prudent defensive system, in
+spite of the clamours of a proud nation irritated by misfortune, and
+before so aggressive an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>He had, no doubt, failed in suffering himself to be surprised at Wilna,
+and for not considering the marshy course of the Berezina as the proper
+frontier of Lithuania; but it was remarked that, subsequently, at
+Witepsk and Smolensk, he had forestalled Napoleon; that on the
+Loutcheza, on the Dnieper, and at Valoutina, his resistance had been
+proportionate to time and place; that this petty warfare, and the losses
+occasioned by it, had been but too much in his favour; every retrograde
+step of his drawing us to a greater distance from our reinforcements,
+and carrying him nearer to his: in short, all that he had done, he had
+done judiciously, whether he had hazarded, defended, or abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he had drawn upon himself general animadversion! But this was,
+in our opinion, his highest panegyric. We thought the better of him for
+despising public opinion, when it had gone astray; for having contented
+himself with watching our motions in order to profit by them, and for
+having proved that, most frequently, nations are saved in spite of
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Barclay showed himself still greater during the rest of the campaign.
+This commander in chief, and minister at war, who had been deprived of
+the command, that it might be given to Kutusof, voluntarily served under
+him, and was seen to obey with as much zeal as he had commanded.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vf" id="CHAP_Vf"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Russian army at length halted. Miloradowitch, with sixteen thousand
+recruits, and a host of peasants, bearing the cross and shouting, "<i>'Tis
+the will of God!</i>" hastened to join its ranks. We were informed that the
+enemy were turning up the whole plain of Borodino, and covering it with
+entrenchments, apparently with the determination of rooting themselves
+there, and not falling back any further.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon announced a battle to his army; he allowed it two days to rest,
+to prepare its arms, and to collect subsistence. He merely warned the
+detachments sent out in quest of provisions, that "if they did not
+return the following day, they would deprive themselves of the honour of
+fighting."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor then endeavoured to obtain some information concerning his
+new adversary. Kutusof was described to him as an old man, the
+groundwork of whose reputation had been formerly laid by a singular
+wound. He had since skilfully profited by circumstances. The very defeat
+of Austerlitz, which he had foreseen, added to his renown, which was
+further increased by his late campaigns against the Turks. His valour
+was incontestable, but he was charged with regulating its vehemence
+according to his private interest; for he calculated every thing. His
+genius was slow, vindictive, and, above all, crafty&mdash;the true Tartar
+character!&mdash;knowing the art of preparing an implacable war with a
+fawning, supple, and patient policy.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects, he was more an adroit courtier than an able general:
+but formidable by his renown, by his address in augmenting it, and in
+making others concur in this object. He had contrived to flatter the
+whole nation, and every individual of it, from the general to the
+private soldier.</p>
+
+<p>It was added, that there was in his person, in his language, nay, even
+in his very dress, his superstitious practices and his age, a remnant of
+Suwarrow,&mdash;the stamp of an ancient Muscovite, an air of nationality,
+which rendered him dear to the Russians: at Moscow the joy at his
+appointment had been carried to intoxication; people embraced one
+another in the streets, and considered themselves as saved.</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon had learned these particulars, and given his orders, he
+awaited the event with that tranquillity of mind peculiar to
+extraordinary men. He quietly employed himself in exploring the environs
+of his head-quarters. He remarked the progress of agriculture; but at
+the sight of the Gjatz, which pours its waters into the Wolga, he who
+had conquered so many rivers, felt anew the first emotions of his glory:
+he was heard to boast of being the master of those waves destined to
+visit Asia,&mdash;as if they were proceeding to announce his approach, and to
+open for him the way to that quarter of the globe.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus004.jpg" alt="Murat"  />
+<a id="illus004" name="illus004"></a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Portrait of Murat, King of Naples</p>
+
+<p>On the 4th of September, the army, still divided into three columns, set
+out from Gjatz and its environs. Murat had gone on a few leagues before.
+Ever since the arrival of Kutusof, troops of cossacks had been
+incessantly hovering about the heads of our columns. Murat was
+exasperated at seeing his cavalry forced to deploy against so feeble an
+obstacle. We are assured that on that day, from one of those first
+impulses worthy of the ages of chivalry, he dashed suddenly and alone
+towards their line, stopped short a few paces from them, and there,
+sword in hand, made a sign for them to retire, with an air and gesture
+so commanding, that these barbarians obeyed, and fell back in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>This circumstance, which was related to us immediately, was received
+without incredulity. The martial air of that monarch, the brilliancy of
+his chivalrous dress, his reputation, and the novelty of such an action,
+caused this momentary ascendancy to appear true, in spite of its
+improbability; for such was Murat, a theatrical monarch by the splendor
+of his dress, and truly a king by his extraordinary valour and his
+inexhaustible activity; bold as the attack, and always armed with that
+air of superiority, that threatening audacity, which is the most
+dangerous of offensive weapons.</p>
+
+<p>He had not marched long, however, before he was forced to halt. At
+Griednewa, between Gjatz and Borodino, the high-road suddenly descends
+into a deep ravine, whence it again rises as suddenly to a spacious
+height, which Kutusof had ordered Konownitzin to defend. That general at
+first made a vigorous resistance against the foremost troops of Murat;
+but as the army closely followed the latter, every moment gave increased
+energy to the attack, and diminished that of the defence; presently the
+advanced-guard of the viceroy engaged on the right of the Russians,
+where a charge by the Italian chasseurs was withstood for a moment by
+the cossacks, which excited astonishment; they became intermixed.</p>
+
+<p>Platof himself admitted that in this affair an officer was wounded near
+him, at which he was by no means surprised; but that he nevertheless
+caused the sorcerer who accompanied him to be flogged before all his
+cossacks, loudly charging him with laziness for neglecting to turn aside
+the balls by his conjurations, as he had been expressly directed to do.</p>
+
+<p>Konownitzin was vanquished and retired; on the 5th his bloody track was
+followed to the vast convent of Kolotskoi,&mdash;fortified as habitations
+were of old in those too highly vaunted Gothic ages, when civil wars
+were so frequent; when every place, not excepting even these sacred
+abodes of peace, was transformed into a military post.</p>
+
+<p>Konownitzin, threatened on the right and left, made no other stand
+either at Kolotskoi or at Golowino; but when the advanced-guard
+debouched from that village, it beheld the whole plain and the woods
+infested with cossacks, the rye crops spoiled, the villages sacked; in
+short, a general destruction. By these signs it recognized the field of
+battle, which Kutusof was preparing for the grand army. Behind these
+clouds of Scythians were perceived three villages; they presented a line
+of a league. The intervals between them, intersected by ravines and
+wood, were covered with the enemy's riflemen. In the first moment of
+ardour, some French horse ventured into the midst of these Russians, and
+were cut off.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon then appeared on a height, from which he surveyed the whole
+country, with that eye of a conqueror which sees every thing at once and
+without confusion; which penetrates through obstacles, sets aside
+accessaries, discovers the capital point, and fixes it with the look of
+an eagle, like prey on which he is about to dart with all his might and
+all his impetuosity.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that, a league before him, at Borodino, the Kologha, a river
+running in a ravine, along the margin of which he proceeded a few
+wersts, turned abruptly to the left, and discharged itself into the
+Moskwa. He guessed that a chain of considerable heights alone could
+have opposed its course, and so suddenly changed its direction. These
+were, no doubt, occupied by the enemy's army, and on this side it could
+not be easily attacked. But the Kologha, both banks of which he
+followed, while it covered the right of the position, left their left
+exposed.</p>
+
+<p>The maps of the country were insufficient; at any rate, as the ground
+necessarily sloped towards the principal stream, which was the most
+considerable merely from being the lowest, it followed, that the ravines
+which ran into it must rise, become shallower, and be at length lost, as
+they receded from the Kologha. Besides, the old road to Smolensk, which
+ran on its right, sufficiently marked their commencement; why should it
+have been formerly carried to a distance from the principal stream of
+water, and consequently from the most habitable places, if not to avoid
+the ravines and the hills which bordered them?</p>
+
+<p>The demonstrations of the enemy agreed with these inductions of his
+experience,&mdash;no precautions, no resistance in front of their right and
+their centre; but before their left a great number of troops, a marked
+solicitude to profit by the slightest accidents of the ground, in order
+to dispute it, and finally, a formidable redoubt; this was, of course,
+their weak side, since they covered it with such care. Nay, more; it was
+on the flank of the high-road, and on that of the grand army, that this
+redoubt was situated; it was therefore of the utmost importance to
+carry it, if he would advance: Napoleon gave orders to that effect.</p>
+
+<p>How much the historian is at a loss for words to express the <i>coup
+d'&oelig;il</i> of a man of genius!</p>
+
+<p>The villages and the woods were immediately occupied; on the left and in
+the centre were the army of Italy, Compans's division, and Murat; on the
+right, Poniatowski. The attack was general; for the army of Italy and
+the Polish army appeared at once on the two wings of the grand imperial
+column. These three masses drove back the Russian rear-guards upon
+Borodino, and the whole war was concentrated on a single point.</p>
+
+<p>This curtain being withdrawn, the first Russian redoubt was discovered;
+too much detached in advance of their position, which it defended
+without being defended by it. The nature of the ground had compelled the
+choice of this insulated situation.</p>
+
+<p>Compans skilfully availed himself of the undulations of the ground; its
+elevations served as platforms to his guns for battering the redoubt,
+and screened his infantry while drawing up into columns of attack. The
+61st marched foremost; the redoubt was taken by a single effort, and
+with the bayonet; but Bagration sent reinforcements, by which it was
+retaken. Three times did the 61st recover it from the Russians, and
+three times was it driven out again; but at length it maintained itself
+in it, covered with blood and half destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, when the emperor reviewed that regiment, he inquired where
+was its third battalion? "In the redoubt," was the reply of the colonel.
+But the affair did not stop there; a neighbouring wood still swarmed
+with Russian light troops, who sallied every moment from this retreat to
+renew their attacks, which were supported by three divisions: at length
+the attack of Schewardino by Morand, and of the woods of Elnia by
+Poniatowski, completely disheartened the troops of Bagration, and
+Murat's cavalry cleared the plain. It was chiefly the firmness of a
+Spanish regiment that foiled the enemy; they at last gave way, and that
+redoubt, which had been their advanced post, became ours.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the emperor assigned its place to each corps; the rest
+of the army formed in line, and a general discharge of musketry,
+accompanied at intervals with that of a few cannon, ensued. It continued
+till each party had fixed its limit, and darkness had rendered their
+fire uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>One of Davoust's regiments then sought to take its rank in the first
+line. Owing to the darkness, it passed beyond it, and got into the midst
+of the Russian cuirassiers, who attacked it, threw it into disorder,
+took from it three pieces of cannon, and killed or took three hundred
+men. The rest immediately fell into platoons, forming a shapeless mass,
+but making so formidable a resistance, that the enemy could not again
+break it; and this regiment, with diminished numbers, finally regained
+its place in the line of battle.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIf" id="CHAPTER_VIf"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The emperor encamped behind the army of Italy, on the left of the
+high-road; the old guard formed in square around his tents. As soon as
+the fire of small arms had ceased, the fires were kindled. Those of the
+Russians burned brightly, in an immense semicircle; ours gave a pale,
+unequal, and irregular light,&mdash;the troops arriving late and in haste, on
+an unknown ground, where nothing was prepared for them, and where there
+was a want of wood, especially in the centre and on the left.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor slept little. On General Caulaincourt's return from the
+conquered redoubt, as no prisoners had fallen into our hands, Napoleon
+surprised, kept asking him repeatedly, "Had not his cavalry then charged
+apropos? Were the Russians determined to conquer or die?"&mdash;The answer
+was, that "being fanaticised by their leaders, and accustomed to fight
+with the Turks, who gave no quarter, they would be killed sooner than
+surrender." The emperor then fell into a deep meditation; and judging
+that a battle of artillery would be the most certain, he multiplied his
+orders to bring up, with all speed, the parks which had not yet joined
+him.</p>
+
+<p>That very same night, a cold mizzling rain began to fall, and the autumn
+set in with a violent wind. This was an additional enemy, which it was
+necessary to take into account; for this period of the year
+corresponded with the age on which Napoleon was entering, and every one
+knows the influence of the seasons of the year on the like seasons of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>During that night how many different agitations! The soldiers and the
+officers had to prepare their arms, to repair their clothing, and to
+combat cold and hunger; for their life was a continual combat. The
+generals, and the emperor himself, were uneasy, lest their defeat of the
+preceding day should have disheartened the Russians, and they should
+escape us in the dark. Murat had anticipated this; we imagined several
+times that we saw their fires burn more faintly, and that we heard the
+noise of their departure; but day alone eclipsed the light of the
+enemy's bivouacs.</p>
+
+<p>This time there was no need to go far in quest of them. The sun of the
+6th found the two armies again, and displayed them to each other, on the
+same ground where it had left them the evening before. There was a
+general feeling of exultation.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor took advantage of the first rays of dawn, to advance between
+the two lines, and to go from height to height along the whole front of
+the hostile army. He saw the Russians crowning all the eminences, in a
+vast semicircle, two leagues in extent, from the Moskwa to the old
+Moscow road. Their right bordered the Kologha, from its influx into the
+Moskwa to Borodino; their centre, from Gorcka to Semenowska, was the
+saliant part of their line. Their right and left receded. The Kologha
+rendered their right inaccessible.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor perceived this immediately, and as, from its distance, this
+wing was not more threatening than vulnerable, he took no account of it.
+For him then the Russian army commenced at Gorcka, a village situated on
+the high-road, and at the point of an elevated plain which overlooks
+Borodino and the Kologha. This sharp projection is surrounded by the
+Kologha, and by a deep and marshy ravine; its lofty crest, to which the
+high-road ascends on leaving Borodino, was strongly entrenched, and
+formed a separate work on the right of the Russian centre, of which it
+was the extremity.</p>
+
+<p>On its left, and within reach of its fire, rose a detached hill,
+commanding the whole plain; it was crowned by a formidable redoubt,
+provided with twenty-one pieces of cannon. In front and on its right it
+was encompassed by the Kologha and by ravines; its left inclined to and
+supported itself upon a long and wide plateau, the foot of which
+descended to a muddy ravine, a branch of the Kologha. The crest of this
+plateau, which was lined by the Russians, declined and receded as it ran
+towards the left, in front of the grand army; it then kept rising as far
+as the yet smoking ruins of the village of Semenowska. This saliant
+point terminated Barclay's command and the centre of the enemy: it was
+armed with a strong battery, covered by an entrenchment.</p>
+
+<p>Here began the left wing of the Russians under Bagration. The less
+elevated crest which it occupied undulated as it gradually receded to
+Utitza, a village on the old Moscow road, where the field of battle
+ended. Two hills, armed with redoubts, and bearing diagonally upon the
+entrenchment of Semenowska, which flanked them, marked the front of
+Bagration.</p>
+
+<p>From Semenowska to the wood of Utitza there was an interval of about
+twelve hundred paces. It was the nature of the ground which had decided
+Kutusof thus to refuse this wing; for here the ravine, which was under
+the plateau in the centre, just commenced. It was scarcely an obstacle;
+the slopes of its banks were very gentle, and the summits suitable for
+artillery were at some distance from its margin. This side was evidently
+the most accessible, since the redoubt of the 61st, which that regiment
+had taken the preceding day, no longer defended the approach: this was
+even favoured by a wood of large pines, extending from the redoubt just
+mentioned to that which appeared to terminate the line of the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>But their left wing did not end there. The emperor knew that behind this
+wood was the old Moscow road; that it turned round the left wing of the
+Russians, and passing behind their army, ran again into the new Moscow
+road in front of Mojaisk. He judged that it must be occupied; and, in
+fact, Tutchkof, with his <i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i>, had placed himself across it
+at the entrance of a wood; he had covered himself by two heights, on
+which he had planted artillery.</p>
+
+<p>But this was of little consequence, because, between this detached corps
+and the last Russian redoubt, there was a space of five or six hundred
+fathoms and a covered ground. If we did not begin with overwhelming
+Tutchkof, we might therefore occupy it, pass between him and the last of
+Bagration's redoubts, and take the left wing of the enemy in flank; but
+the emperor could not satisfy himself on this point, as the Russian
+advanced posts and the woods forbade his farther advance, and
+intercepted his view.</p>
+
+<p>Having finished his reconnoissance, he formed his plan. "Eugene shall be
+the pivot!" he exclaimed: "it is the right that must commence. As soon
+as, under cover of the wood, it has taken the redoubt opposite to it, it
+must make a movement to the left, and march on the Russian flank,
+sweeping and driving back their whole army upon their right and into the
+Kologha."</p>
+
+<p>The general plan thus conceived, he applied himself to the details.
+During the night, three batteries, of sixty guns each, must be opposed
+to the Russian redoubts; two facing their left, the third before their
+centre. At daybreak, Poniatowski and his army, reduced to five thousand
+men, must advance on the old Smolensk road, turning the wood on which
+the French right wing and the Russian left were supported. He would
+flank the one and annoy the other; the army would wait for the report of
+his first shots.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, the whole of the artillery should commence upon the left of
+the Russians, its fire would open their ranks and redoubts, and Davoust
+and Ney should rush upon them; they should be supported by Junot and his
+Westphalians, by Murat and his cavalry, and lastly, by the emperor
+himself, with 20,000 guards. It was against these two redoubts that the
+first efforts should be made; it was by them that he would penetrate
+into the hostile army, thenceforth mutilated, and whose centre and right
+would then be uncovered, and almost enveloped.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, as the Russians showed themselves in redoubled masses on
+their centre and their right, threatening the Moscow road, the only line
+of operation of the grand army; as in throwing his chief force and
+himself on their left, Napoleon was about to place the Kologha between
+him and that road, his only retreat, he resolved to strengthen the army
+of Italy which occupied it, and joined with it two of Davoust's
+divisions and Grouchy's cavalry. As to his left, he judged that one
+Italian division, the Bavarian cavalry, and that of Ornano, about 10,000
+men, would suffice to cover it. Such were the plans of Napoleon.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIf" id="CHAP_VIIf"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>He was on the heights of Borodino, taking a last survey of the whole
+field of battle, and confirming himself in his plan, when Davoust
+hastened up. This marshal had just examined the left of the Russians
+with so much the more care, as it was the ground on which he was to
+act, and he mistrusted his own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He begged the emperor "to place at his disposal his five divisions,
+35,000 strong, and to unite with them Poniatowski, whose force was too
+weak to turn the enemy by itself. Next day he would set this force in
+motion; he would cover its march with the last shades of night, and with
+the wood on which the Russian left wing was supported, and beyond which
+he would pass by following the old road from Smolensk to Moscow; then,
+all at once, by a precipitate man&oelig;uvre, he would deploy 40,000 French
+and Poles on the flank and in the rear of that wing. There, while the
+emperor would occupy the front of the Muscovites by a general attack, he
+would march impetuously from redoubt to redoubt, from reserve to
+reserve, driving every thing from left to right on the high-road of
+Mojaisk, where they should put an end at once to the Russian army, the
+battle, and the war."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor listened attentively to the marshal; but after meditating in
+silence for some minutes, he replied, "No! it is too great a movement;
+it would remove me too far from my object, and make me lose too much
+time."</p>
+
+<p>The Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl, however, from conviction, persisted in his point;
+he undertook to accomplish his man&oelig;uvre before six in the morning; he
+protested that in another hour the greatest part of its effect would be
+produced. Napoleon, impatient of contradiction, sharply replied with
+this exclamation, "Ah! you are always for turning the enemy; it is too
+dangerous a man&oelig;uvre!" The marshal, after this rebuff, said no more:
+he then returned to his post, murmuring against a prudence which he
+thought unseasonable, and to which he was not accustomed; and he knew
+not to what cause to attribute it, unless the looks of so many allies,
+who were not to be relied on, an army so reduced, a position so remote,
+and age, had rendered Napoleon less enterprising than he was.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor, having decided, had returned to his camp, when Murat, whom
+the Russians had so often deceived, persuaded him that they were going
+to run away once more without fighting. In vain did Rapp, who was sent
+to observe their attitude, return and say, that he had seen them
+entrenching themselves more and more; that they were numerous,
+judiciously disposed, and appeared determined much rather to attack, if
+they were not anticipated, than to retreat: Murat persisted in his
+opinion, and the emperor, uneasy, returned to the heights of Borodino.</p>
+
+<p>He there perceived long black columns of troops covering the high-road,
+and spreading over the plain; then large convoys of waggons, provisions,
+and ammunition, in short all the dispositions indicative of a stay and a
+battle. At that very moment, though he had taken with him but few
+attendants, that he might not attract the notice and the fire of the
+enemy, he was recognized by the Russian batteries, and a cannon-shot
+suddenly interrupted the silence of that day.</p>
+
+<p>For, as it frequently happens, nothing was so calm as the day preceding
+that great battle. It was like a thing mutually agreed upon! Wherefore
+do each other useless injury? was not the next day to decide every
+thing? Besides, each had to prepare itself; the different corps, their
+arms, their force, their ammunition; they had to resume all their unity,
+which on a march is always more or less deranged. The generals had to
+observe their reciprocal dispositions of attack, defence, and retreat,
+in order to adapt them to each other and the ground, and to leave as
+little as possible to chance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus these two colossal foes, on the point of commencing their terrible
+contest, watched each other attentively, measured one another with their
+eyes, and silently prepared for a tremendous conflict.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor, who could no longer entertain doubts of a battle, returned
+to his tent to dictate the order of it. There he meditated on his awful
+situation. He had seen that the two armies were equal; about 120,000
+men, and 600 pieces of cannon on either side. The Russians had the
+advantage of ground, of speaking but one language, of one uniform, of
+being a single nation, fighting for the same cause, but a great number
+of irregular troops and recruits. The French had as many men, but more
+soldiers; for the state of his corps had just been submitted to him: he
+had before his eyes an account of the strength of his divisions, and as
+it was neither a review, nor a distribution, but a battle that was in
+prospect, this time the statements were not exaggerated. His army was
+reduced indeed, but sound, supple, nervous,&mdash;like those manly bodies,
+which, having just lost the plumpness of youth, display forms more
+masculine and strongly marked.</p>
+
+<p>Still, during the last few days that he had marched in the midst of it,
+he had found it silent, from that silence which is imposed by great
+expectation or great astonishment; like nature, the moment before a
+violent tempest, or crowds at the instant of an extraordinary danger.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that it wanted rest of some kind or other, but that there was no
+rest for it but in death or victory; for he had brought it into such a
+necessity of conquering, that it must triumph at any rate. The temerity
+of the situation into which he had urged it was evident, but he knew
+that of all faults that was the one which the French most willingly
+forgave; that in short they doubted neither of themselves nor of him,
+nor of the general result, whatever might be their individual hardships.</p>
+
+<p>He reckoned, moreover, on their habit and thirst of glory, and even on
+their curiosity; no doubt they wished to see Moscow, to be able to say
+that they had been there, to receive there the promised reward, perhaps
+to plunder, and, above all, there to find repose. He did not observe in
+them enthusiasm, but something more firm: an entire confidence in his
+star, in his genius, the consciousness of their superiority, and the
+proud assurance of conquerors, in the presence of the vanquished.</p>
+
+<p>Full of these sentiments, he dictated a proclamation, simple, grave,
+and frank, as befitted such circumstances, and men who were not just
+commencing their career, and whom, after so many sufferings, it would
+have been idle to pretend to exalt.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly he addressed himself solely to the reason of all, or what is
+the same thing, to the real interest of each; he finished with glory,
+the only passion to which he could appeal in these deserts, the last of
+the noble motives by which it was possible to act upon soldiers always
+victorious, enlightened by an advanced civilization and long experience;
+in short, of all the generous illusions, the only one that could have
+carried them so far. This harangue will some day be deemed admirable: it
+was worthy of the commander and of the army; it did honour to both.</p>
+
+<p>"Soldiers!" said he, "here is the battle which you have so ardently
+desired. Victory will now depend upon yourselves; it is necessary for
+us; it will give us abundance, good winter-quarters, and a speedy return
+home! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, and at
+Smolensk, and afford to remotest posterity occasion to cite your conduct
+on that day: let it be said of you, 'He was in that great battle under
+the walls of Moscow.'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIf" id="CHAP_VIIIf"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>About the middle of the day, Napoleon remarked an extraordinary movement
+in the enemy's camp; in fact, the whole Russian army was drawn up and
+under arms, and Kutusof, surrounded with every species of religious and
+military pomp, took his station in the middle of it. He had made his
+popes and his archimandrites dress themselves in those splendid and
+majestic insignia, which they have inherited from the Greeks. They
+marched before him, carrying the venerated symbols of their religion,
+and particularly that divine image, formerly the protectress of
+Smolensk, which, by their account, had been miraculously saved from the
+profanation of the sacrilegious French.</p>
+
+<p>When the Russian saw that his soldiers were sufficiently excited by this
+extraordinary spectacle, he raised his voice, and began by putting them
+in mind of heaven, the only country which remains to the slave. In the
+name of the religion of equality, he endeavoured to animate these serfs
+to defend the property of their masters; but it was principally by
+exhibiting to them that holy image which had taken refuge in their
+ranks, that he appealed to their courage, and raised their indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, in his mouth, "was a universal despot! the tyrannical
+disturber of the world! a poor worm! an arch-rebel, who had overturned
+their altars, and polluted them with blood; who had exposed the true
+ark of the Lord, represented by the holy image, to the profanation of
+men, and the inclemency of the seasons." He then told them of their
+cities reduced to ashes; reminded them that they were about to fight for
+their wives and children; added a few words respecting the emperor, and
+concluded by appealing to their piety and their patriotism. These were
+the virtues of instinct with this rude and simple people, who had not
+yet advanced beyond sensations, but who, for that very reason, were so
+much more formidable as soldiers; less diverted from obedience by
+reasoning; confined by slavery to a narrow circle, in which they are
+reduced to a small number of sensations, which are the only sources of
+their wants, wishes, and ideas.</p>
+
+<p>As to other characteristics, proud for want of comparison, and credulous
+as they are proud, from ignorance&mdash;worshippers of images, idolaters as
+much as Christians can be; for they had converted that religion of the
+soul, which is wholly intellectual and moral, into one entirely physical
+and material, to bring it to the level of their brute and short
+capacity.</p>
+
+<p>This solemn spectacle, however, their general's address, the
+exhortations of their officers, and the benedictions of their priests,
+served to give a thorough tincture of fanaticism to their courage. All,
+even to the meanest soldier, fancied themselves devoted by God himself
+to the defence of Heaven and their consecrated soil.</p>
+
+<p>With the French there was no solemnity, either religious or military,
+no review, no means of excitation: even the address of the emperor was
+not distributed till very late, and read the next morning so near the
+time of action, that several corps were actually engaged before they
+could hear it. The Russians, however, whom so many powerful motives
+should have inflamed, added to their invocations the sword of St.
+Michael, thus seeking to borrow aid from all the powers of heaven; while
+the French sought for it only within themselves, persuaded that real
+strength exists only in the heart, and that <i>there</i> is to be found the
+"celestial host."</p>
+
+<p>Chance so ordered it, that on that very day the emperor received from
+Paris the portrait of the King of Rome, that infant whose birth had been
+hailed by the empire with the same transports of joy and hope as it had
+been by the emperor. Every day since that happy event, the emperor, in
+the interior of his palace, had given loose when near his child, to the
+expression of the most tender feelings; when, therefore, in the midst of
+these distant fields, and all these menacing preparations, he saw once
+more that sweet countenance, how his warlike soul melted! With his own
+hand he exhibited this picture outside his tent; he then called his
+officers, and even some of the soldiers of his old guard, desirous of
+sharing his pleasure with these veteran grenadiers, of showing his
+private family to his military family, and making it shine as a symbol
+of hope in the midst of imminent peril.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, an aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had been despatched from
+the field of battle near Salamanca, arrived at that of the Moskwa. This
+was the same Fabvier, who has since made such a figure in our civil
+dissensions. The emperor received graciously the aid-de-camp of the
+vanquished general. On the eve of a battle, the fate of which was so
+uncertain, he felt disposed to be indulgent to a defeat; he listened to
+all that was said to him respecting the scattered state of his forces in
+Spain, and the number of commanders-in-chief, and admitted the justice
+of it all; but he explained his reasons, which it enters not into our
+province to mention here.</p>
+
+<p>With the return of night also returned the apprehension, that under
+cover of its shades, the Russian army might escape from the field of
+battle. Napoleon's anxiety was so great as to prevent him from sleeping.
+He kept calling incessantly to know the hour, inquiring if any noise was
+heard, and sending persons to ascertain if the enemy was still before
+him. His doubts on this subject were so strong, that he had given orders
+that his proclamation should not be read to his troops until the next
+morning, and then only in case of the certainty of a battle.</p>
+
+<p>Tranquillized for a few moments, anxiety of an opposite description
+again seized him. He became frightened at the destitute state of the
+soldiers. Weak and famished as they were, how could they support a long
+and terrible shock? In this danger he looked upon his guard as his sole
+resource; it seemed to be his security for both armies. He sent for
+Bessi&egrave;res, that one of his marshals in whom he had the greatest
+confidence for commanding it; he wished to know if this chosen reserve
+wanted nothing;&mdash;he called him back several times, and repeated his
+pressing questions. He desired that these old soldiers should have three
+days' biscuit and rice distributed among them from their waggons of
+reserve; finally, dreading that his orders had not been obeyed, he got
+up once more, and questioned the grenadiers on guard at the entrance of
+his tent, if they had received these provisions. Satisfied by their
+answer, he went in, and soon fell into a doze.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after, he called once more. His aid-de-camp found him now
+supporting his head with both hands; he seemed, by what was heard, to be
+meditating on the vanities of glory. "What is war? A trade of
+barbarians, the whole art of which consists in being the strongest on a
+given point!" He then complained of the fickleness of fortune, which he
+said, he began to experience. Seeming to revert to more encouraging
+ideas, he recollected what had been told him of the tardiness and
+carelessness of Kutusof, and expressed his surprise that Beningsen had
+not been preferred to him. He thought of the critical situation into
+which he had brought himself, and added, "that a great day was at hand,
+that there would be a terrible battle." He asked Rapp if he thought we
+should gain the victory? "No doubt;" was the reply, "but it will be
+sanguinary." "I know it," resumed Napoleon, "but I have 80,000 men; I
+shall lose 20,000, I shall enter Moscow with 60,000; the stragglers
+will there rejoin us, and afterwards the battalions on the march, and we
+shall be stronger than we were before the battle." In this estimate he
+seemed to include neither his guard nor the cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>Again assailed by his first anxiety, he sent once more to examine the
+attitude of the Russians; he was informed that their fires burned with
+equal brightness, and that by the number of these, and the moving
+shadows surrounding them, it was supposed that it was not merely a
+rear-guard, but a whole army that kept feeding them. The certainty of
+their presence at last quieted the emperor, and he tried to take some
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>But the marches which he had just made with the array, the fatigues of
+the preceding days and nights, so many cares, and his intense and
+anxious expectation, had worn him out; the chillness of the atmosphere
+had struck to him; an irritating fever, a dry cough, and excessive
+thirst consumed him. During the remainder of the night, he made vain
+attempts to quench the burning thirst which consumed him. This fresh
+disorder was complicated with an old complaint; he had been struggling
+since the day before with a painful attack of that cruel disorder<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>,
+which had been long threatening him.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> A retention of urine.</p></div>
+
+<p>At last, just at five o'clock, one of Ney's officers came to inform him
+that the marshal was still in sight of the Russians, and wished to begin
+the attack. This news seemed to restore the strength of which the fever
+had deprived him. He arose, called his officers, and sallied out,
+exclaiming, "We have them at last! Forward! Let us go and open the gates
+of Moscow!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXf" id="CHAP_IXf"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was half-past five in the morning, when Napoleon arrived near the
+redoubt which had been conquered on the 5th of September. There he
+waited for the first dawn of day, and for the first fire of
+Poniatowski's infantry. The sun rose. The emperor, showing it to his
+officers, exclaimed, "Behold the sun of Austerlitz!" But it was opposite
+to us. It rose on the Russian side, made us conspicuous to their fire,
+and dazzled us. We then first perceived, that owing to the darkness, our
+batteries had been placed out of reach of the enemy, and it was
+necessary to push them more forward. The enemy allowed this to be done:
+he seemed to hesitate in being the first to break the awful silence.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor's attention was then directed towards his right, when, all
+at once, near seven o'clock, the battle began upon his left. Shortly
+after, he was informed, that one of the regiments of Prince Eugene, the
+106th, had got possession of the village of Borodino, and its bridge,
+which it should have destroyed; but that being carried away by the
+ardour of success, it had crossed that passage, in spite of the cries of
+its general, in order to attack the heights of Gorcka, where it was
+overwhelmed by the front and flank fires of the Russians. It was added,
+that the general who commanded that brigade had been already killed, and
+that the 106th regiment would have been entirely destroyed had it not
+been for the 92d, which voluntarily ran up to its assistance, and
+collected and brought back its survivors.</p>
+
+<p>It was Napoleon himself who had just ordered his left wing to make a
+violent attack. Probably, he had only reckoned on a partial execution of
+his orders, and wished to keep the enemy's attention directed to that
+side. But he multiplied his orders, used the most violent excitations,
+and engaged a battle in front, the plan of which he had conceived in an
+oblique order.</p>
+
+<p>During this action, the emperor judging that Poniatowski was closing
+with the enemy on the old Moscow road, gave him the signal to attack.
+Suddenly, from that peaceful plain, and the silent hills, volumes of
+fire and smoke were seen spouting out, followed by a multitude of
+explosions, and the whistling of bullets, tearing the air in every
+direction. In the midst of this noise, Davoust, with the divisions
+Compans and Dessaix, and thirty pieces of cannon in front, advanced
+rapidly to the first Russian redoubt.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy's musketry began, and was answered only by the French cannon.
+The French infantry marched without firing: it was hurrying on to get
+within reach of and extinguish that of the enemy, when Compans, the
+general of that column, and his bravest soldiers, were wounded and fell:
+the rest, disconcerted, halted under the shower of balls, in order to
+return it, when Rapp, rushing to replace Compans, again led his soldiers
+on, with fixed bayonets, and at a running pace against the enemy's
+redoubt.</p>
+
+<p>He was himself just on the point of reaching it, when he was, in his
+turn, hit; it was his twenty-second wound. A third general, who
+succeeded him, also fell. Davoust himself was wounded. Rapp was carried
+to the emperor, who said to him, "What, Rapp, always hit! What are they
+doing above, then?" The aid-de-camp answered, that it would require the
+guard to finish. "No!" replied Napoleon, "I shall take good care of
+that; I have no wish to see it destroyed; I shall gain the battle
+without it."</p>
+
+<p>Ney, then, with his three divisions, reduced to 10,000 men, hastened
+into the plain to the assistance of Davoust. The enemy divided his fire.
+Ney rushed forward. The 57th regiment of Compans's division, finding
+itself supported, took fresh courage; by a last effort it succeeded in
+reaching the enemy's entrenchments, scaled them, mingled with the
+Russians, put them to the bayonet, overthrew and killed the most
+obstinate of them. The rest fled, and the 57th maintained itself in its
+conquest. At the same time Ney made so furious an attack on the two
+other redoubts, that he wrested them from the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>It was now mid-day; the left Russian line being thus forced, and the
+plain cleared, the emperor ordered Murat to proceed with his cavalry,
+and complete the victory. An instant was sufficient for that prince to
+show himself on the heights and in the midst of the enemy, who again
+made his appearance there; for the second Russian line and the
+reinforcements, led on by Bagawout and sent by Tutchkof, had come to the
+assistance of the first line. They all rushed forward, resting upon
+Semenowska, in order to retake their redoubts. The French, who were
+still in the disorder of victory, were astonished and fell back.</p>
+
+<p>The Westphalians, whom Napoleon had just sent to the assistance of
+Poniatowski, were then crossing the wood which separated that prince
+from the rest of the army; through the dust and smoke they got a glimpse
+of our troops, who were retreating. By the direction of their march,
+they guessed them to be enemies, and fired upon them. They persisted in
+their mistake, and thereby increased the disorder.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy's cavalry vigorously followed up their advantage; they
+surrounded Murat, who forgot himself in his endeavours to rally his
+troops; they were already stretching out their arms to lay hold of him,
+when he threw himself into the redoubt, and escaped from them. But there
+he found only some unsteady soldiers whose courage had forsaken them,
+and running round the parapet in a state of the greatest panic. They
+only wanted an outlet to run away.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of the king and his cries first restored confidence to a
+few. He himself seized a musket; with one hand he fought, with the other
+he elevated and waved his plume, calling to his men, and restoring them
+to their first valour by that authority which example gives. At the same
+time Ney had again formed his divisions. Their fire stopped the enemy's
+cuirassiers, and threw their ranks into disorder. They let go their
+hold, Murat was at last disengaged, and the heights were reconquered.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the king escaped this peril, when he ran into another; with
+the cavalry of Bruy&egrave;re and Nansouty, he rushed upon the enemy, and by
+obstinate and repeated charges overthrew the Russian lines, pushed and
+drove them back on their centre, and, within an hour, completed the
+total defeat of their left wing.</p>
+
+<p>But the heights of the ruined village of Semenowska, where the left of
+the enemy's centre commenced, were still untouched; the reinforcements
+which Kutusof incessantly drew from his right, supported it. Their
+commanding fire was poured down upon Ney and Murat's troops, and stopped
+their victory; it was indispensable to acquire that position. Maubourg
+with his cavalry first cleared the front; Friand, one of Davoust's
+generals, followed him with his infantry. Dufour and the 15th light were
+the first to climb the steep; they dislodged the Russians from the
+village, the ruins of which were badly entrenched. Friand, although
+wounded, followed up and secured this advantage.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Xf" id="CHAP_Xf"></a>CHAP. X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>This vigorous action opened up to us the road to victory; it was
+necessary to rush into it; but Murat and Ney were exhausted: they
+halted, and while they were rallying their troops, they sent to Napoleon
+to ask for reinforcements. Napoleon was then seized with a hesitation
+which he never before displayed; he deliberated long with himself, and
+at last, after repeated orders and counter-orders to his young guard, he
+expressed his belief that the appearance of Friand and Maubourg's troops
+on the heights would be sufficient, the decisive moment not appearing to
+him to be yet arrived.</p>
+
+<p>But Kutusof took advantage of the respite which he had no reason to
+expect; he summoned the whole of his reserve, even to the Russian
+guards, to the support of his uncovered left wing. Bagration, with all
+these reinforcements, re-formed his line, his right resting on the great
+battery which Prince Eugene was attacking, his left on the wood which
+bounded the field of battle towards Psarewo. His fire cut our ranks to
+pieces; his attack was violent, impetuous, and simultaneous; infantry,
+artillery, and cavalry, all made a grand effort. Ney and Murat stood
+firm against this tempest; the question with them was no longer about
+following up the victory, but about retaining it.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers of Friand, drawn up in front of Semenowska, repelled the
+first charges, but when they were assailed with a shower of balls and
+grape shot, they began to give way; one of their leaders got tired, and
+gave orders to retreat. At that critical moment, Murat ran up to him,
+and seizing him by the collar, exclaimed, "What are you about?" The
+colonel, pointing to the ground, covered with half his troops, answered,
+"You see well enough that it is impossible to stand here."&mdash;"Very well,
+I will remain!" exclaimed the king. These words stopped the officer: he
+looked Murat steadily in the face, and turning round, coolly said, "You
+are right! Soldiers, face to the enemy! Let us go and be killed!"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Murat had just sent back Borelli to the emperor to ask for
+assistance; that officer pointed to the clouds of dust which the charges
+of the cavalry were raising upon the heights, which had hitherto
+remained tranquil since they had been taken. Some cannon-balls also for
+the first time fell close to where Napoleon was stationed; the enemy
+seemed to be approaching; Borelli insisted, and the emperor promised his
+young guard. But, scarcely had it advanced a few paces, when he himself
+called out to it to halt. The Count de Lobau, however, made it advance
+by degrees, under pretence of dressing the line. Napoleon perceiving
+it, repeated his order.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, the artillery of the reserve advanced at that moment, to
+take a position on the conquered heights; Lauriston had obtained the
+emperor's consent to that man&oelig;uvre, but it was rather a permission
+than an order. Shortly after, however, he thought it so important, that
+he urged its execution with the only movement of impatience he exhibited
+during the whole of that day.</p>
+
+<p>It is not known whether his doubts as to the results of Prince
+Poniatowski and Prince Eugene's engagement on his right and left kept
+him in uncertainty; what is certain is, that he seemed to be
+apprehensive lest the extreme left of the Russians should escape from
+the Poles, and return to take possession of the field of battle in the
+rear of Ney and Murat. This at least was one of the causes of his
+retaining his guard in observation upon that point. To such as pressed
+him, his answer was, "that he wished to have a better view; that his
+battle was not yet begun; that it would be a long one; that they must
+learn to wait; that time entered into every thing; that it was the
+element of which all things are composed; that nothing was yet
+sufficiently clear." He then inquired the hour, and added, "that the
+hour of his battle was not yet come; that it would begin in two hours."</p>
+
+<p>But it never began: the whole of that day he was sitting down, or
+walking about leisurely, in front, and a little to the left of the
+redoubt which had been conquered on the 5th, on the borders of a
+ravine, at a great distance from the battle, of which he could scarcely
+see any thing after it got beyond the heights; not at all uneasy when he
+saw it return nearer to him, nor impatient with his own troops, or the
+enemy. He merely made some gestures of melancholy resignation, on every
+occasion, when they came to inform him of the loss of his best generals.
+He rose several times to take a few turns, but immediately sat down
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Every one around him looked at him with astonishment. Hitherto, during
+these great shocks, he had displayed an active coolness; but here it was
+a dead calm, a nerveless and sluggish inactivity. Some fancied they
+traced in it that dejection which is generally the follower of violent
+sensations: others, that he had already become indifferent to every
+thing, even to the emotion of battles. Several remarked, that the calm
+constancy and <i>sang-froid</i> which great men display on these great
+occasions, turn, in the course of time, to phlegm and heaviness, when
+age has worn out their springs. Those who were most devoted to him,
+accounted for his immobility by the necessity of not changing his place
+too much, when he was commanding over such an extent, in order that the
+bearers of intelligence might know where to find him. Finally, there
+were others who, on much better grounds, attributed it to the shock
+which his health had sustained, to a secret malady, and to the
+commencement of a violent indisposition.</p>
+
+<p>The generals of artillery, who were surprised at their stagnation,
+quickly availed themselves of the permission to fight which was just
+given them. They very soon crowned the heights. Eighty pieces of cannon
+were discharged at once. The Russian cavalry was first broken by that
+brazen line, and obliged to take refuge behind its infantry.</p>
+
+<p>The latter advanced in dense masses, in which our balls at first made
+wide and deep holes; they still, however, continued to advance, when the
+French batteries crushed them by a second discharge of grape-shot. Whole
+platoons fell at once; their soldiers were seen trying to keep together
+under this terrible fire. Every instant, separated by death, they closed
+together over her, treading her under foot.</p>
+
+<p>At last they halted, not daring to advance farther, and yet unwilling to
+retreat; either because they were struck, and, as it were, petrified
+with horror, in the midst of this great destruction, or that Bagration
+was wounded at that moment; or, perhaps, because their generals, after
+the failure of their first disposition, knew not how to change it, from
+not possessing, like Napoleon, the great art of putting such great
+bodies into motion at once, in unison, and without confusion. In short,
+these listless masses allowed themselves to be mowed down for two hours,
+making no other movement than their fall. It was a most horrible
+massacre; and our brave and intelligent artillerymen could not help
+admiring the motionless, blind, and resigned courage of their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>The victors were the first to be tired out. They became impatient at
+the tardiness of this battle of artillery. Their ammunition being
+entirely exhausted, they came to a decision, in consequence of which Ney
+moved forward, extending his right, which he made to advance rapidly,
+and again turn the left of the new front opposed to him. Davoust and
+Murat seconded him, and the remnants of Ney's corps became the
+conquerors over the remains of Bagration's.</p>
+
+<p>The battle then ceased in the plain, and became concentrated on the rest
+of the enemy's heights, and near the great redoubt, which Barclay with
+the centre and the right, continued to defend obstinately against
+Eugene.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner, about mid-day, the whole of the French right wing, Ney,
+Davoust, and Murat, after annihilating Bagration and the half of the
+Russian line, presented itself on the half-opened flank of the remainder
+of the hostile army, of which they could see the whole interior, the
+reserves, the abandoned rears, and even the commencement of the retreat.</p>
+
+<p>But as they felt themselves too weak to throw themselves into that gap,
+behind a line still formidable, they called aloud for the guard: "The
+young guard! only let it follow them at a distance! Let it show itself,
+and take their place upon the heights! They themselves will then be
+sufficient to finish!"</p>
+
+<p>General Belliard was sent by them to the emperor. He declared, "that
+from their position, the eye could penetrate, without impediment, a far
+as the road to Mojaisk, in the rear of the Russian army; that they could
+see there a confused crowd of flying and wounded soldiers, and carriages
+retreating; that it was true there was still a ravine and a thin copse
+between them, but that the Russian generals were so confounded, that
+they had no thought of turning these to any advantage; that in short,
+only a single effort was required to arrive in the middle of that
+disorder, to seal the enemy's discomfiture, and terminate the war!"</p>
+
+<p>The emperor, however, still hesitated, and ordered that general to go
+and look again, and to return and bring him word. Belliard, surprised,
+went and returned with all speed; he reported, "that the enemy began to
+think better of it; that the copse was already lined with his marksmen:
+that the opportunity was about to escape; that there was not a moment to
+be lost, otherwise it would require a second battle to terminate the
+first!"</p>
+
+<p>But Bessi&egrave;res, who had just returned from the heights, to which Napoleon
+had sent him to examine the attitude of the Russians, asserted, that,
+"far from being in disorder, they had retreated to a second position,
+where they seemed to be preparing for a fresh attack." The emperor then
+said to Belliard, "That nothing was yet sufficiently unravelled: that to
+make him give his reserves, he wanted to see more clearly upon his
+chess-board." This was his expression; which he repeated several times,
+at the same time pointing on one side to the old Moscow road, of which
+Poniatowski had not yet made himself master; on the other, to an attack
+of the enemy's cavalry in the rear of our left wing; and, finally, to
+the great redoubt, against which the efforts of prince Eugene had been
+ineffectual.</p>
+
+<p>Belliard, in consternation, returned to the king of Naples, and informed
+him of the impossibility of obtaining the reserve from the emperor; he
+said, "he had found him still seated in the same place, with a suffering
+and dejected air, his features sunk, and a dull look; giving his orders
+languishingly, in the midst of these dreadful warlike noises, to which
+he seemed completely a stranger!" At this account, Ney, furious and
+hurried away by his ardent and unmeasured character, exclaimed, "Are we
+then come so far, to be satisfied with a field of battle? What business
+has the emperor in the rear of the army? There, he is only within reach
+of reverses, and not of victory. Since he will no longer make war
+himself, since he is no longer the general, as he wishes to be the
+emperor every where, let him return to the Tuilleries, and leave us to
+be generals for him!"</p>
+
+<p>Murat was more calm; he recollected having seen the emperor the day
+before, as he was riding along, observing that part of the enemy's line,
+halt several times, dismount, and with his head resting upon the cannon,
+remain there some time in the attitude of suffering. He knew what a
+restless night he had passed, and that a violent and incessant cough cut
+short his breathing. The king guessed that fatigue, and the first
+attacks of the equinox, had shaken his weakened frame, and that in
+short, at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a manner
+chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of
+fatigue, of fever, and of a malady which, probably, more than any other,
+prostrates the moral and physical strength of its victims.</p>
+
+<p>Still, farther incitements were not wanting; for shortly after Belliard,
+Daru, urged by Dumas, and particularly by Berthier, said in a low voice
+to the emperor, "that from all sides it was the cry that the moment for
+sending the guard was now come." To which Napoleon replied, "And if
+there should be another battle to-morrow, where is my army?" The
+minister urged no farther, surprised to see, for the first time, the
+emperor putting off till the morrow, and adjourning his victory.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIf" id="CHAPTER_XIf"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Barclay, however, with the right, kept up a most obstinate struggle with
+Prince Eugene. The latter, immediately after the capture of Borodino,
+passed the Kologha in the face of the enemy's great redoubt. There,
+particularly, the Russians had calculated upon their steep heights,
+encompassed by deep and muddy ravines, upon our exhaustion, upon their
+entrenchments, defended by heavy artillery, and upon 80 pieces of
+cannon, planted on the borders of these banks, bristling with fire and
+flames! But all these elements, art, and nature, every thing failed
+them at once: assailed by a first burst of that <i>French fury</i>, which has
+been so celebrated, they saw Morand's soldiers appear suddenly in the
+midst of them, and fled in disorder.</p>
+
+<p>Eighteen hundred men of the 30th regiment, with general Bonnamy at their
+head, had just made that great effort.</p>
+
+<p>It was there that Fabvier, the aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had arrived
+but the day before from the heart of Spain, made himself conspicuous; he
+went as a volunteer, and on foot, at the head of the most advanced
+sharp-shooters, as if he had come there to represent the army of Spain,
+in the midst of the grand army; and, inspired with that rivalry of glory
+which makes heroes, wished to exhibit it at the head, and the first in
+every danger.</p>
+
+<p>He fell wounded in that too famous redoubt; for the triumph was
+short-lived; the attack wanted concert, either from precipitation in the
+first assailant, or too great slowness in those who followed. They had
+to pass a ravine, whose depth protected them from the enemy's fire. It
+is affirmed that many of our troops halted there. Morand, therefore, was
+left alone in the face of several Russian lines. It was yet only ten
+o'clock. Friand, who was on his right, had not yet commenced the attack
+of Semenowska; and, on his left, the divisions G&eacute;rard, Broussier, and
+the Italian guard, were not yet in line.</p>
+
+<p>This attack, besides, should not have been made so precipitately: the
+intention had been only to keep Barclay in check, and occupied on that
+side, the battle having been arranged to begin by the right wing, and
+pivot on the left. This was the emperor's plan, and we know not why he
+himself altered it at the moment of its execution; for it was he who, on
+the first discharge of the artillery, sent different officers in
+succession to Prince Eugene, to urge his attack.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians, recovering from their first surprise, rushed forward in
+all directions. Kutaisof and Yermoloff advanced at their head with a
+resolution worthy of so great an occasion. The 30th regiment, single
+against a whole army, ventured to attack it with the bayonet; it was
+enveloped, crushed, and driven out of the redoubt, where it left a third
+of its men, and its intrepid general pierced through with twenty wounds.
+Encouraged by their success, the Russians were no longer satisfied with
+defending themselves, but attacked in their turn. Then were seen united,
+on that single point, all the skill, strength, and fury, which war can
+bring forth. The French stood firm for four hours on the declivity of
+that volcano, under the shower of iron and lead which it vomited forth.
+But to do this required all the skill and determination of Prince
+Eugene; and the idea so insupportable to long-victorious soldiers, of
+confessing themselves vanquished.</p>
+
+<p>Each division changed its general several times. The viceroy went from
+one to the other, mingling entreaties and reproaches, and, above all,
+reminding them of their former victories. He sent to apprise the
+emperor of his critical situation; but Napoleon replied, "That he could
+not assist him; that he must conquer; that he had only to make a greater
+effort; that the heat of the battle was there." The prince was rallying
+all his forces to make a general assault, when suddenly his attention
+was diverted by furious cries proceeding from his left.</p>
+
+<p>Ouwarof, with two regiments of cavalry, and some thousand cossacks, had
+attacked his reserve, and thrown it into disorder. He ran thither
+instantly, and, seconded by Generals Delzons and Ornano, soon drove away
+that troop, which was more noisy than formidable; after which he
+returned to put himself at the head of a decisive attack.</p>
+
+<p>It was about that time that Murat, forced to remain inactive on the
+plain where he commanded, had sent, for the fourth time, to his
+brother-in-law, to complain of the losses which his cavalry were
+sustaining from the Russian troops, protected by the redoubts which were
+opposed to Prince Eugene. "He only requested the cavalry of the guard,
+with whose assistance he could turn the entrenched heights, and destroy
+them along with the army which defended them."</p>
+
+<p>The emperor seemed to give his consent, and sent in search of Bessi&egrave;res,
+who commanded these horse-guards. Unfortunately they could not find the
+marshal, who, by his orders, had gone to look at the battle somewhat
+nearer. The emperor waited nearly an hour without the least impatience,
+or repeating his order; and when the marshal returned, he received him
+with a pleasant look, heard his report quietly, and allowed him to
+advance as far as he might judge it desirable.</p>
+
+<p>But it was too late; he could no longer think of making the whole
+Russian army prisoners, or perhaps of taking entire possession of
+Russia; the field of battle was all he was likely to gain. He had
+allowed Kutusof leisure to reconnoitre his positions; that general had
+fortified all the points of difficult approach which remained to him,
+and his cavalry covered the plain.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians had thus, for the third time, renewed their left wing, in
+the face of Ney and Murat. The latter summoned the cavalry of Montbrun,
+who had been killed. General Caulaincourt succeeded him; he found the
+aides-de-camp of the unfortunate Montbrun in tears for the loss of their
+commander. "Follow me," said he to them, "weep not for him, but come and
+avenge his death!"</p>
+
+<p>The king pointed out to him the enemy's fresh wing; he must break
+through it, and push on as far as the breast of their great battery;
+when there, during the time that the light cavalry is following up his
+advantage, he, Caulaincourt, must turn suddenly, on the left with his
+cuirassiers, in order to take in the rear that terrible redoubt whose
+front fire is still mowing the ranks of the viceroy.</p>
+
+<p>Caulaincourt's reply was, "You shall see me there presently, alive or
+dead." He immediately set off, overthrew all before him, and turning
+suddenly round on the left with his cuirassiers, was the first to enter
+the bloody redoubt, when he was struck dead by a musket-ball. His
+conquest was his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>They ran immediately to acquaint the emperor with this victory, and the
+loss which it had occasioned. The grand-equerry, brother of the
+unfortunate general, listened, and was at first petrified; but he soon
+summoned courage against this misfortune, and, but for the tears which
+silently coursed down his cheeks, you might have thought that he felt
+nothing. The emperor, uttering an exclamation of sorrow, said to him,
+"You have heard the news, do you wish to retire?" But as at that moment
+we were advancing against the enemy, the grand-equerry made no reply; he
+did not retire; he only half uncovered himself to thank the emperor, and
+to refuse.</p>
+
+<p>While this determined charge of cavalry was executing, the viceroy, with
+his infantry, was on the point of reaching the mouth of this volcano,
+when suddenly he saw its fires extinguished, its smoke disappear, and
+its summit glittering with the moveable and resplendent armour of our
+cuirassiers. These heights, hitherto Russian, had at last become French;
+he hastened forward to share and terminate the victory, and to
+strengthen himself in that position.</p>
+
+<p>But the Russians had not yet abandoned it; they returned with greater
+obstinacy and fury to the attack; successively as they were beat back by
+our troops, they were again rallied by their generals, and finally the
+greater part perished at the foot of these works, which they had
+themselves raised.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, their last attacking column presented itself towards
+Semenowska and the great redoubt, without its artillery, the progress of
+which had, no doubt, been retarded by the ravines. Belliard had barely
+time to collect thirty cannon against this infantry. They came almost
+close to the mouths of our pieces, which overwhelmed them so apropos,
+that they wheeled round and retreated without being even able to deploy.
+Murat and Belliard then said, that if they could have had at that moment
+ten thousand infantry of the reserve, their victory would have been
+decisive; but that, being reduced to their cavalry, they considered
+themselves fortunate to keep possession of the field of battle.</p>
+
+<p>On his side, Grouchy, by sanguinary and repeated charges on the left of
+the great redoubt, secured the victory, and scoured the plain. But it
+was impossible to pursue the fugitive Russians; fresh ravines, with
+armed redoubts behind them, protected their retreat. There they defended
+themselves with fury until the approach of night, covering in this
+manner the great road to Moscow, their holy city, their magazine, their
+dep&ocirc;t, their place of refuge.</p>
+
+<p>From this second range of heights, their artillery overwhelmed the first
+which they had abandoned to us. The viceroy was obliged to conceal his
+panting, exhausted, and thinned lines in the hollows of the ground, and
+behind the half-destroyed entrenchments. The soldiers were obliged to
+get upon their knees, and crouch themselves up behind these shapeless
+parapets. In that painful posture they remained for several hours, kept
+in check by the enemy, who stood in check of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was about half-past three o'clock when this last victory was
+achieved; there had been several such during the day; each corps
+successively beat that which was opposed to it, without being able to
+take advantage of its success to decide the battle; as, not being
+supported in proper time by the reserve, each halted exhausted. But at
+last all the first obstacles were overcome; the firing gradually
+slackened, and got to a greater distance from the emperor. Officers were
+coming in to him from all parts. Poniatowski and Sebastiani, after an
+obstinate contest, were also victorious. The enemy halted, and
+entrenched himself in a new position. It was getting late, our
+ammunition was exhausted, and the battle ended.</p>
+
+<p>Belliard then returned for the third time to the emperor, whose
+sufferings appeared to have increased. He mounted his horse with
+difficulty, and rode slowly along the heights of Semenowska. He found a
+field of battle imperfectly gained, as the enemy's bullets, and even
+their musket-balls, still disputed the possession of it with us.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these warlike noises, and the still burning ardour of
+Ney and Murat, he continued always in the same state, his gait
+desponding, and his voice languid. The sight of the Russians, however,
+and the noise of their continued firing, seemed again to inspire him;
+he went to take a nearer view of their last position, and even wished to
+drive them from it. But Murat, pointing to the scanty remains of our own
+troops, declared that it would require the guard to finish; on which,
+Bessi&egrave;res continuing to insist, as he always did, on the importance of
+this <i>corps d'&eacute;lite</i>, objected "the distance the emperor was from his
+reinforcements; that Europe was between him and France; that it was
+indispensable to preserve, at least, that handful of soldiers, which was
+all that remained to answer for his safety." And as it was then nearly
+five o'clock, Berthier added, "that it was too late; that the enemy was
+strengthening himself in his last position; and that it would require a
+sacrifice of several more thousands, without any adequate results."
+Napoleon then thought of nothing but to recommend the victors to be
+prudent. Afterwards he returned, still at the same slow pace, to his
+tent, that had been erected behind that battery which was carried two
+days before, and in front of which he had remained ever since the
+morning, an almost motionless spectator of all the vicissitudes of that
+terrible day.</p>
+
+<p>As he was thus returning, he called Mortier to him, and ordered him "to
+make the young guard now advance, but on no account to pass the new
+ravine which separated us from the enemy." He added, "that he gave him
+in charge to guard the field of battle; that that was all he required of
+him; that he was at liberty to do whatever he thought necessary for that
+purpose, and nothing more." He recalled him shortly after to ask "if he
+had properly understood him; recommended him to make no attack; but
+merely to guard the field of battle." An hour afterwards he sent to him
+to reiterate the order, "neither to advance nor retreat, whatever might
+happen."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIf" id="CHAP_XIIf"></a>CHAP. XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>After he had retired to his tent, great mental anguish was added to his
+previous physical dejection. He had seen the field of battle; places had
+spoken much more loudly than men; the victory which he had so eagerly
+pursued, and so dearly bought, was incomplete. Was this he who had
+always pushed his successes to the farthest possible limits, whom
+Fortune had just found cold and inactive, at a time when she was
+offering him her last favours?</p>
+
+<p>The losses were certainly immense, and out of all proportion to the
+advantages gained. Every one around him had to lament the loss of a
+friend, a relation, or a brother; for the fate of battles had fallen on
+the most distinguished. Forty-three generals had been killed or wounded.
+What a mourning for Paris! what a triumph for his enemies! what a
+dangerous subject for the reflections of Germany! In his army, even in
+his very tent, his victory was silent, gloomy, isolated, even without
+flatterers!</p>
+
+<p>The persons whom he had summoned, Dumas and Daru, listened to him, and
+said nothing; but their attitude, their downcast eyes, and their
+silence, spoke more eloquently than words.</p>
+
+<p>It was now ten o'clock. Murat, whom twelve hours' fighting had not
+exhausted, again came to ask him for the cavalry of his guard. "The
+enemy's army," said he, "is passing the Moskwa in haste and disorder; I
+wish to surprise and extinguish it." The emperor repelled this sally of
+immoderate ardour; afterwards he dictated the bulletin of the day.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed pleased at announcing to Europe, that neither he nor his guard
+had been at all exposed. By some this care was regarded as a refinement
+of self-love; but those who were better informed thought very
+differently. They had never seen him display any vain or gratuitous
+passion, and their idea was, that at that distance, and at the head of
+an army of foreigners, who had no other bond of union but victory, he
+had judged it indispensable to preserve a select and devoted body.</p>
+
+<p>His enemies, in fact, would have no longer any thing to hope from fields
+of battle; neither his death, as he had no need to expose his person in
+order to insure success, nor a victory, as his genius was sufficient at
+a distance, even without bringing forward his reserve. As long,
+therefore, as this guard remained untouched, his real power and that
+which he derived from opinion would remain entire. It seemed to be a
+sort of security to him, against his allies, as well as against his
+enemies: on that account he took so much pains to inform Europe of the
+preservation of that formidable reserve; and yet it scarcely amounted to
+20,000 men, of whom more than a third were new recruits.</p>
+
+<p>These were powerful motives, but they did not at all satisfy men who
+knew that excellent reasons may be found for committing the greatest
+faults. They all agreed, "that they had seen the battle which had been
+won in the morning on the right, halt where it was favourable to us, and
+continue successively in front, a contest of mere strength, as in the
+infancy of the art! it was a battle without any plan, a mere victory of
+soldiers, rather than of a general! Why so much precipitation to
+overtake the enemy, with an army panting, exhausted, and weakened? and
+when we had come up with him, why neglect to complete his discomfiture,
+and remain bleeding and mutilated, in the midst of an enraged nation, in
+immense deserts, and at 800 leagues' distance from our resources?"</p>
+
+<p>Murat then exclaimed, "That in this great day he had not recognized the
+genius of Napoleon!" The viceroy confessed "that he had no conception
+what could be the reason of the indecision which his adopted father had
+shown." Ney, when he was called on for his opinion, was singularly
+obstinate in advising him to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Those alone who had never quitted his person, observed, that the
+conqueror of so many nations had been overcome by a burning fever, and
+above all by a fatal return of that painful malady which every violent
+movement, and all long and strong emotions excited in him. They then
+quoted the words which he himself had written in Italy fifteen years
+before: "Health is indispensable in war, and nothing can replace it;"
+and the exclamation, unfortunately prophetic, which he had uttered on
+the plains of Austerlitz: "Ordener is worn out. One is not always fit
+for war; I shall be good for six years longer, after which I must lie
+by."</p>
+
+<p>During the night, the Russians made us sensible of their vicinity, by
+their unseasonable clamours. Next morning there was an alert, close to
+the emperor's tent. The old guard was actually obliged to run to arms; a
+circumstance which, after a victory, seemed insulting. The army remained
+motionless until noon, or rather it might be said that there was no
+longer an army, but a single vanguard. The rest of the troops were
+dispersed over the field of battle to carry off the wounded, of whom
+there were 20,000. They were taken to the great abbey of Kolotskoi, two
+leagues in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, had just taken assistants from all the
+regiments; the <i>ambulances</i> had rejoined, but all was insufficient. He
+has since complained, in a printed narrative, that no troop had been
+left him to procure the most necessary articles in the surrounding
+villages.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor then rode over the field of battle; never did one present so
+horrible an appearance. Every thing concurred to make it so; a gloomy
+sky, a cold rain, a violent wind, houses burnt to ashes, a plain turned
+topsy-turvy, covered with ruins and rubbish, in the distance the sad and
+sombre verdure of the trees of the North; soldiers roaming about in all
+directions, and hunting for provisions, even in the haversacks of their
+dead companions; horrible wounds, for the Russian musket-balls are
+larger than ours; silent bivouacs, no singing or story-telling&mdash;a gloomy
+taciturnity.</p>
+
+<p>Round the eagles were seen the remaining officers and subalterns, and a
+few soldiers, scarcely enough to protect the colours. Their clothes had
+been torn in the fury of the combat, were blackened with powder, and
+spotted with blood; and yet, in the midst of their rags, their misery,
+and disasters, they had a proud look, and at the sight of the emperor,
+uttered some shouts of triumph, but they were rare and excited; for in
+this army, capable at once of analysis and enthusiasm, every one was
+sensible of the position of all.</p>
+
+<p>French soldiers are not easily deceived; they were astonished to find so
+many of the enemy killed, so great a number wounded, and so few
+prisoners, there being not 800 of the latter. By the number of these,
+the extent of a victory had been formerly calculated. The dead bodies
+were rather a proof of the courage of the vanquished, than the evidence
+of a victory. If the rest retreated in such good order, proud, and so
+little discouraged, what signified the gain of a field of battle? In
+such extensive countries, would there ever be any want of ground for the
+Russians to fight on?</p>
+
+<p>As for us, we had already too much, and a great deal more than we were
+able to retain. Could that be called conquering it? The long and
+straight furrow which we had traced with so much difficulty from Kowno,
+across sands and ashes, would it not close behind us, like that of a
+vessel on an immense ocean! A few peasants, badly armed, might easily
+efface all traces of it.</p>
+
+<p>In fact they were about to carry off, in the rear of the army, our
+wounded and our marauders. Five hundred stragglers soon fell into their
+hands. It is true that some French soldiers, arrested in this manner,
+affected to join these cossacks; they assisted them in making fresh
+captures, until finding themselves sufficiently numerous, with their new
+prisoners, they collected together suddenly and rid themselves of their
+unsuspecting enemies.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor could not value his victory otherwise than by the dead. The
+ground was strewed to such a degree with Frenchmen, extended prostrate
+on the redoubts, that they appeared to belong more to them than to those
+who remained standing. There seemed to be more victors killed there,
+than there were still living.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst the crowd of corses which we were obliged to march over in
+following Napoleon, the foot of a horse encountered a wounded man, and
+extorted from him a last sign of life or of suffering. The emperor,
+hitherto equally silent with his victory, and whose heart felt
+oppressed by the sight of so many victims, gave an exclamation; he felt
+relieved by uttering cries of indignation, and lavishing the attentions
+of humanity on this unfortunate creature. To pacify him, somebody
+remarked that it was only a Russian, but he retorted warmly, "that after
+victory there are no enemies, but only men!" He then dispersed the
+officers of his suite, in order to succour the wounded, who were heard
+groaning in every direction.</p>
+
+<p>Great numbers were found at the bottom of the ravines, into which the
+greater part of our men had been precipitated, and where many had
+dragged themselves, in order to be better protected from the enemy, and
+the violence of the storm. Some groaningly pronounced the name of their
+country or their mother; these were the youngest: the elder ones waited
+the approach of death, some with a tranquil, and others with a sardonic
+air, without deigning to implore for mercy or to complain; others
+besought us to kill them outright: these unfortunate men were quickly
+passed by, having neither the useless pity to assist them, nor the cruel
+pity to put an end to their sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>One of these, the most mutilated (one arm and his trunk being all that
+remained to him) appeared so animated, so full of hope, and even of
+gaiety, that an attempt was made to save him. In bearing him along, it
+was remarked that he complained of suffering in the limbs, which he no
+longer possessed; this is a common case with mutilated persons, and
+seems to afford additional evidence that the soul remains entire, and
+that feeling belongs to it alone, and not to the body, which can no more
+feel than it can think.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians were seen dragging themselves along to places where dead
+bodies were heaped together, and offered them a horrible retreat. It has
+been affirmed by several persons, that one of these poor fellows lived
+for several days in the carcase of a horse, which had been gutted by a
+shell, and the inside of which he gnawed. Some were seen straightening
+their broken leg by tying a branch of a tree tightly against it, then
+supporting themselves with another branch, and walking in this manner to
+the next village. Not one of them uttered a groan.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, when far from their own homes, they looked less for compassion.
+But certainly they appeared to support pain with greater fortitude than
+the French; not that they suffered more courageously, but that they
+suffered less; for they have less feeling in body and mind, which arises
+from their being less civilized, and from their organs being hardened by
+the climate.</p>
+
+<p>During this melancholy review, the emperor in vain sought to console
+himself with a cheering illusion, by having a second enumeration made of
+the few prisoners who remained, and collecting together some dismounted
+cannon: from seven to eight hundred prisoners, and twenty broken cannon,
+were all the trophies of this imperfect victory.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIIf" id="CHAP_XIIIf"></a>CHAP. XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At the same time, Murat kept pushing the Russian rear-guard as far as
+Mojaisk: the road which it uncovered on its retreat was perfectly clear,
+and without a single fragment of men, carriages, or dress. All their
+dead had been buried, for they have a religious respect for the dead.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of Mojaisk, Murat fancied himself already in possession of
+it, and sent to inform the emperor that he might sleep there. But the
+Russian rear-guard had taken a position outside the walls of the town,
+and the remains of their army were placed on a height behind it. In this
+way they covered the Moscow and the Kalouga roads.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Kutusof hesitated which of these two roads to take, or was
+desirous of leaving us in uncertainty as to the one he had taken, which
+was the case. Besides, the Russians felt it a point of honour to bivouac
+at only four leagues from the scene of our victory. That also allowed
+them time to disencumber the road behind them and clear away their
+fragments.</p>
+
+<p>Their attitude was equally firm and imposing as before the battle, which
+we could not help admiring; but something of this was also attributable
+to the length of time we had taken to quit the field of Borodino, and to
+a deep ravine which was between them and our cavalry. Murat did not
+perceive this obstacle, but General Dery, one of his officers, guessed
+it. He went and reconnoitred the ground, close to the gates of the town,
+under the Russian bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>But the king of Naples, quite as fiery as at the beginning of the
+campaign, or of his military life, made nothing of the obstacle; he
+summoned his cavalry, called to them furiously to advance, to charge and
+break through these battalions, gates, and walls! In vain his
+aid-de-camp urged the impossibility of effecting his orders; he pointed
+out to him the army on the opposite heights, which commanded Mojaisk,
+and the ravine where the remains of our cavalry were about to be
+swallowed up. Murat, in greater fury than ever, insisted "that they must
+march, and if there was any obstacle, they would see it." He then made
+use of insulting phrases to urge them on, and his orders were about to
+be carried,&mdash;with some delay, nevertheless, for there was generally an
+understanding to retard their execution, in order to give him time to
+reflect, and to allow time for a counter-order, which had been
+anticipated to arrive before any misfortune happened, which was not
+always the case, but was so this time. Murat was satisfied with wasting
+his cannon and powder on some drunken and straggling cossacks by whom he
+was almost surrounded, and who attacked him with frightful howls.</p>
+
+<p>This skirmish, however, was sufficiently serious to add to the losses of
+the preceding day, as general Belliard was wounded in it. This officer,
+who was a great loss to Murat, was employed in reconnoitring the left of
+the enemy's position. As it was approachable, the attack should have
+been made on that side, but Murat never thought of any thing but
+striking what was immediately before him.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor only arrived on the field of battle at nightfall, escorted
+by a very feeble detachment. He advanced towards Mojaisk, at a still
+slower pace than the day before, and so completely absent, that he
+neither seemed to hear the noise of the engagement, nor that of the
+bullets which were whistling around him.</p>
+
+<p>Some one stopped him, and pointed out to him the enemy's rear-guard
+between him and the town; and on the heights behind, the fires of an
+army of 50,000 men. This sight was a proof of the incompleteness of his
+victory, and how little the enemy were discouraged; but he seemed quite
+insensible of it; he listened to the reports with a dejected and
+listless air, and returned to sleep at a village some little distance
+off, which was within reach of the enemy's fire.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian autumn had triumphed over him: had it not been for that,
+perhaps the whole of Russia would have yielded to our arms on the plains
+of the Moskwa: its premature inclemency was a most seasonable assistance
+to their empire. It was on the 6th of September, the very day before the
+great battle! that a hurricane announced its fatal commencement. It
+struck Napoleon. Ever since the night of that day, it has been seen that
+a wearying fever had dried up his blood, and oppressed his spirits, and
+that he was quite overcome by it during the battle; the suffering he
+endured from this, added to another still more severe, for the five
+following days arrested his march, and bound up his genius. This it was
+which preserved Kutusof from total ruin at Borodino, and allowed him
+time to rally the remainder of his army, and withdraw it from our
+pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>On the 9th of September we found Mojaisk uncovered, and still standing:
+but beyond it the enemy's rear-guard on the heights which command it,
+and which their army had occupied the day before. Some of our troops
+entered the town for the purpose of passing through it in pursuit of the
+enemy, and others to plunder and find lodgings for themselves. They
+found neither inhabitants nor provisions, but merely dead bodies, which
+they were obliged to throw out of the windows, in order to get
+themselves under cover, and a number of dying soldiers, who were all
+collected into one spot. These last were so numerous, and had been so
+scattered about, that the Russians had not dared to set fire to the
+habitations; but their humanity, which was not always so scrupulous, had
+given way to the desire of firing on the first French they saw enter,
+which they did with shells: the consequence was, that this wooden town
+was soon set fire to, and a part of the unfortunate wounded whom they
+had abandoned were consumed in the flames.</p>
+
+<p>While we were making attempts to save them, fifty voltigeurs of the 33d
+climbed the heights, of which the enemy's cavalry and artillery still
+occupied the summit. The French army, which had halted under the walls
+of Mojaisk, was surprised at seeing this handful of men, scattered about
+on this uncovered declivity, teasing with their fire thousands of the
+enemy's cavalry. All at once what had been foreseen happened; several of
+the enemy's squadrons put themselves in motion, and in an instant
+surrounded these bold fellows, who immediately formed, and kept facing
+and firing at them in all directions; but they were so few in the midst
+of a large plain, and the number of cavalry about them was so great,
+that they soon disappeared from our eyes. A general exclamation of
+sorrow burst from the whole of our lines. Every one of the soldiers with
+his neck stretched, and his eye fixed, followed the enemy's movements,
+and endeavoured to distinguish the fate of his companions in arms. Some
+were lamenting the distance they were at, and wishing to march; others
+mechanically loaded their muskets or crossed their bayonets with a
+threatening air, as if they had been near enough to assist them. Their
+looks were sometimes as animated as if they were fighting, and at other
+times as much distressed as if they had been beat. Others advised and
+encouraged them, forgetting that they were out of reach of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>Several volleys of smoke, ascending from amidst the black mass of
+horses, prolonged the uncertainty. Some cried out, that it was our men
+firing, and still defending themselves, and that they were not yet beat.
+In fact, a Russian commanding officer had just been killed by the
+officer commanding these <i>tirailleurs</i>. This was the way in which he
+replied to the summons to surrender. Our anxiety lasted some minutes
+longer, when all at once the army set up a cry of joy and admiration at
+seeing the Russian cavalry, intimidated at this bold resistance,
+separate in order to escape their well-directed fire, disperse, and at
+last allow us to see once more this handful of brave fellows master of
+this extensive field of battle, of which it only occupied a few feet.</p>
+
+<p>When the Russians saw that we were man&oelig;uvring seriously to attack
+them, they disappeared without leaving us any traces to follow them.
+This was the same they had done at Witepsk and Smolensk, and what was
+still more remarkable, the second day after their great disaster. At
+first there was some uncertainty whether to follow the road to Moscow or
+that to Kalouga, after which Murat and Mortier proceeded, at all
+hazards, towards Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>They marched for two days, with no other food than horse-flesh and
+bruised wheat, without finding a single person or thing by which to
+discover the Russian army. That army, although its infantry only formed
+one confused mass, did not leave behind it a single fragment; such was
+the national spirit and habit of obedience in it, collectively and
+singly, and so thoroughly unprovided were we with every kind of
+information, as well as resources, in this deserted and thoroughly
+hostile country.</p>
+
+<p>The army of Italy was advancing at some leagues' distance on the left of
+the great road, and surprised some of the armed peasantry, who were not
+accustomed to fighting; but their master, with a dagger in his hand,
+rushed upon our soldiers like a madman: he exclaimed that he had no
+longer a religion, empire, or country to defend, and that life was
+odious to him; they were willing, however, to leave him that, but as he
+attempted to kill the soldiers who surrounded him, pity yielded to
+anger, and his wish was gratified.</p>
+
+<p>Near Krymskoi&eacute;, on the 11th of September, the hostile army again made
+its appearance, firmly established in a strong position. It had returned
+to its plan of looking more to the ground, in its retreat, than to the
+enemy. The duke of Treviso at first satisfied Murat of the impossibility
+of attacking it; but the smell of powder soon intoxicated that monarch.
+He committed himself, and obliged Dufour, Mortier, and their infantry,
+to advance to his support. This consisted of the remains of Friand's
+division, and the young guard. There were lost, without the least
+utility, 2000 men of that reserve which had been so unseasonably spared
+on the day of battle; and Mortier was so enraged, that he wrote to the
+emperor, that he would no longer obey Murat's orders. For it was by
+letter that the generals of the vanguard communicated with Napoleon. He
+had remained for three days at Mojaisk, confined to his apartment, still
+consumed by a burning fever, overwhelmed with business, and worn out
+with anxiety. A violent cold had deprived him of the use of his voice.
+Compelled to dictate to seven persons at once, and unable to make
+himself heard, he wrote on different papers the heads of his despatches.
+When any difficulty arose, he explained himself by signs.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment when Bessi&egrave;res enumerated to him all the generals who
+were wounded on the day of the battle. This fatal list affected him so
+poignantly, that by a violent effort he recovered his voice, and
+interrupted the marshal by the sudden exclamation, "Eight days at
+Moscow, and there will be an end of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, although he had hitherto placed all his futurity in that
+capital, a victory so sanguinary and so little decisive lowered his
+hopes. His instructions to Berthier of the 11th of September for marshal
+Victor exhibited his distress: "The enemy, attacked at the heart, no
+longer trifles with us at the extremities. Write to the duke of Belluno
+to direct all, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and isolated soldiers to
+Smolensk, in order to be forwarded from thence to Moscow."</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these bodily and mental sufferings, which he carefully
+concealed from his army, Davoust obtained access to him; his object was
+to offer himself again, notwithstanding his wound, to take the command
+of the vanguard, promising that he would contrive to march night and
+day, reach the enemy, and compel him to fight, without squandering, as
+Murat did, the strength and lives of the soldiers. Napoleon only
+answered him by extolling in high terms the audacious and inexhaustible
+ardour of his brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>He had just before heard, that the enemy's army had again been found;
+that it had not retired upon his right flank, towards Kalouga, as he had
+feared it would; that it was still retreating, and that his vanguard was
+already within two days' march of Moscow. That great name, and the great
+hopes which he attached to it, revived his strength, and on the 12th of
+September, he was sufficiently recovered to set out in a carriage, in
+order to join his vanguard.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><small>END OF VOL. I.</small></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>HISTORY</h1>
+
+<h3>OF THE</h3>
+
+<h1>EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,</h1>
+
+<h3>UNDERTAKEN BY THE</h3>
+
+<h2>EMPEROR NAPOLEON,</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE YEAR 1812.</h3>
+
+
+<h2>BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="The Aenid">
+<tr><td align='left'><small>Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><small>Incipiam&mdash;.</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>VIRGIL.</small></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<h5><i>SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED</i>.</h5>
+
+<h5>IN TWO VOLUMES,</h5>
+
+<h6>WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.</h6>
+
+<h4>VOL. II.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><small>LONDON:</small></p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, <span class="smcap">jun</span>. AND RICHTER, 30,<br />
+SOHO-SQUARE<br />
+
+1825.</small></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus005.jpg" alt="Alexander"  />
+<a id="illus005" name="illus005"></a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Portrait of the Emperor Alexander</p>
+
+<h3><a id="vol2" name="vol2">HISTORY</a></h3>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h3>NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION</h3>
+
+<h4>TO</h4>
+
+<h3>RUSSIA.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_VIII" id="BOOK_VIII"></a>BOOK VIII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Ig" id="CHAP_Ig"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>We have seen how the Emperor Alexander, surprised at Wilna amidst his
+preparations for defence, retreated with his disunited army, and was
+unable to rally it till it was at the distance of a hundred leagues from
+that city, between Witepsk and Smolensk. That Prince, hurried along in
+the precipitate retreat of Barclay, sought refuge at Drissa, in a camp
+injudiciously chosen and entrenched at great expense; a mere point in
+the space, on so extensive a frontier, and which served only to indicate
+to the enemy the object of his man&oelig;uvres.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander, however, encouraged by the sight of this camp, and of the
+D&uuml;na, took breath behind that river. It was there that he first
+consented to receive an English agent, so important did he deem it to
+appear till that moment faithful to his engagements with France. Whether
+he acted with real good faith, or merely made a show of doing so, we
+know not: so much is certain, that at Paris, after his success, he
+affirmed, on his honour, to Count Daru, that, "notwithstanding the
+accusations of Napoleon, this was his first infraction of the treaty of
+Tilsit."</p>
+
+<p>At the same time he caused Barclay to issue addresses, designed to
+corrupt the French and their allies, similar to those which had so
+irritated Napoleon at Klubokoe;&mdash;attempts which the French regarded as
+contemptible, and the Germans as unseasonable.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects, the Emperor had given his enemies but a mean opinion
+of his military talents: this opinion was founded on his having
+neglected the Berezina, the only natural line of defence of Lithuania;
+on his eccentric retreat towards the north, when the rest of his army
+was fleeing southward; and lastly, on his ukase relative to recruiting,
+dated Drissa, which assigned to the recruits, for their places of
+rendezvous, several towns that were almost immediately occupied by the
+French. His departure from the army, as soon as it began to fight, was
+also a subject of remark.</p>
+
+<p>As to his political measures in his new and in his old provinces, and
+his proclamations from Polotsk to his army, to Moscow, to his great
+nation, it was admitted that they were singularly adapted to persons and
+places. It appears, in fact, that in the political means which he
+employed there was a very striking gradation of energy.</p>
+
+<p>In the recently acquired portion of Lithuania, houses, inhabitants,
+crops, in short every thing had been spared, either from hurry or
+designedly. The most powerful of the nobles had alone been carried off:
+their defection might have set too dangerous an example, and had they
+still further committed themselves, their return in the sequel would
+have been more difficult; besides, they were hostages.</p>
+
+<p>In the provinces of Lithuania which had been of old incorporated with
+the empire, where a mild administration, favours judiciously bestowed,
+and a longer habit of subjection, had extinguished the recollection of
+independence, the inhabitants were hurried away with all they could
+carry with them. Still it was not deemed expedient to require of
+subjects professing a different religion, and a nascent patriotism, the
+destruction of property: a levy of five men only out of every five
+hundred males was ordered.</p>
+
+<p>But in Russia Proper, where religion, superstition, ignorance,
+patriotism, all went hand in hand with the government, not only had the
+inhabitants been obliged to retreat with the army, but every thing that
+could not be removed had been destroyed. Those who were not destined to
+recruit the regulars, joined the militia or the cossacks.</p>
+
+<p>The interior of the empire being then threatened, it was for Moscow to
+set an example. That capital, justly denominated by its poets, "<i>Moscow
+with the golden cupolas</i>," was a vast and motley assemblage of two
+hundred and ninety-five churches, and fifteen hundred mansions, with
+their gardens and dependencies. These palaces of brick, and their parks,
+intermixed with neat houses of wood, and even thatched cottages, were
+spread over several square leagues of irregular ground: they were
+grouped round a lofty triangular fortress; the vast double inclosure of
+which, half a league in circuit, contained, the one, several palaces,
+some churches, and rocky and uncultivated spots; the other, a prodigious
+bazaar, the town of the merchants and shopkeepers, where was displayed
+the collected wealth of the four quarters of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>These edifices, these palaces, nay, the very shops themselves, were all
+covered with polished and painted iron: the churches, each surmounted by
+a terrace and several steeples, terminating in golden balls, then the
+crescent, and lastly the cross, reminded the spectator of the history of
+this nation: it was Asia and its religion, at first victorious,
+subsequently vanquished, and finally the crescent of Mahomet surmounted
+by the cross of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>A single ray of sun-shine caused this splendid city to glisten with a
+thousand varied colours. At sight of it the traveller paused, delighted
+and astonished. It reminded him of the prodigies with which the oriental
+poets had amused his childhood. On entering it, a nearer view served but
+to heighten his astonishment: he recognized the nobles by the manners,
+the habits, and the different languages of modern Europe; and by the
+rich and light elegance of their dress. He beheld, with surprise, the
+luxury and the Asiatic form of those of the merchants; the Grecian
+costumes of the common people, and their long beards. He was struck by
+the same variety in the edifices: and yet all this was tinged with a
+local and sometimes harsh colour, such as befits the country of which
+Moscow was the ancient capital.</p>
+
+<p>When, lastly, he observed the grandeur and magnificence of so many
+palaces, the wealth which they displayed, the luxury of the equipages,
+the multitude of slaves and servants, the splendour of those gorgeous
+spectacles, the noise of those sumptuous festivities, entertainments,
+and rejoicings, which incessantly resounded within its walls, he fancied
+himself transported into a city of kings, into an assemblage of
+sovereigns, who had brought with them their manners, customs, and
+attendants from all parts of the world.</p>
+
+<p>They were, nevertheless, only subjects; but opulent and powerful
+subjects; grandees, vain of their ancient nobility, strong in their
+collected numbers, and in the general ties of consanguinity contracted
+during the seven centuries which this capital had existed. They were
+landed proprietors, proud of their existence amidst their vast
+possessions; for almost the whole territory of the government of Moscow
+belongs to them, and they there reign over a million of serfs. Finally,
+they were nobles, resting, with a patriotic and religious pride, upon
+"the cradle and the tomb of their nobility"&mdash;for such is the appellation
+which they give to Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>It seems right, in fact, that here the nobles of the most illustrious
+families should be born and educated; that hence they should launch into
+the career of honours and glory; and lastly, that hither, when
+satisfied, discontented, or undeceived, they should bring their disgust,
+or their resentment to pour it forth; their reputation, in order to
+enjoy it, to exercise its influence on the young nobility; and to
+recruit, at a distance from power, of which they have nothing farther to
+expect, their pride, which has been too long bowed down near the throne.</p>
+
+<p>Here their ambition, either satiated or disappointed, has assumed,
+amidst their own dependents, and as it were beyond the reach of the
+court, a greater freedom of speech: it is a sort of privilege which time
+has sanctioned, of which they are tenacious, and which their sovereign
+respects. They become worse courtiers, but better citizens. Hence the
+dislike of their princes to visit this vast repository of glory and of
+commerce, this city of nobles whom they have disgraced or disgusted,
+whose age or reputation places them beyond their power, and to whom they
+are obliged to show indulgence.</p>
+
+<p>To this city necessity brought Alexander: he repaired thither from
+Polotsk, preceded by his proclamations, and looked for by the nobility
+and the mercantile class. His first appearance was amidst the assembled
+nobility. There every thing was great&mdash;the circumstance, the assembly,
+the speaker, and the resolutions which he inspired. His voice betrayed
+emotion. No sooner had he ceased, than one general simultaneous,
+unanimous cry burst from all hearts:&mdash;"Ask what you please, sire! we
+offer you every thing! take our all!"</p>
+
+<p>One of the nobles then proposed the levy of a militia; and in order to
+its formation, the gift of one peasant in twenty-five: but a hundred
+voices interrupted him, crying, that "the country required a greater
+sacrifice; that it was necessary to grant one serf in ten, ready armed,
+equipped, and supplied with provisions for three months." This was
+offering, for the single government of Moscow, eighty thousand men, and
+a great quantity of stores.</p>
+
+<p>This sacrifice was immediately voted without deliberation&mdash;some say with
+enthusiasm, and that it was executed in like manner, so long as the
+danger was at hand. Others have attributed the concurrence of this
+assembly to so urgent a proposition, to submission alone&mdash;a sentiment
+indeed, which, in the presence of absolute power, absorbs every other.</p>
+
+<p>They add, that, on the breaking up of the meeting, the principal nobles
+were heard to murmur among themselves against the extravagance of such a
+measure. "Was the danger then so pressing? Was there not the Russian
+army, which, as they were told, still numbered four hundred thousand
+men, to defend them? Why then deprive them of so many peasants! The
+service of these men would be, it was said, only temporary; but who
+could ever wish for their return? It was, on the contrary, an event to
+be dreaded. Would these serfs, habituated to the irregularities of war,
+bring back their former submission? Undoubtedly not: they would return
+full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the
+villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would
+give infinite trouble to the master by spoiling the slave."</p>
+
+<p>Be this as it may, the resolution of that meeting was generous, and
+worthy of so great a nation. The details are of little consequence. We
+well know that it is the same everywhere; that every thing in the world
+loses by being seen too near; and lastly, that nations ought to be
+judged by the general mass and by results.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander then addressed the merchants, but more briefly: he ordered
+that proclamation to be read to them, in which Napoleon was represented
+as "a perfidious wretch; a Moloch, who, with treachery in his heart and
+loyalty on his lips, was striving to sweep Russia from the face of the
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>It is said that, at these words, the masculine and highly coloured faces
+of the auditors, to which long beards imparted a look at once antique,
+majestic and wild, were inflamed with rage. Their eyes flashed fire;
+they were seized with a convulsive fury: their stiffened arms, their
+clenched fists, the gnashing of their teeth, and subdued execrations,
+expressed its vehemence. The effect was correspondent. Their chief, whom
+they elect themselves, proved himself worthy of his station: he put down
+his name the first for fifty thousand rubles. It was two-thirds of his
+fortune, and he paid it the next day.</p>
+
+<p>These merchants are divided into three classes: it was proposed to fix
+the contribution for each; but one of the assembly, who was included in
+the lowest class, declared that his patriotism would not brook any
+limit, and he immediately subscribed a sum far surpassing the proposed
+standard: the others followed his example more or less closely.
+Advantage was taken of their first emotions. Every thing was at hand
+that was requisite to bind them irrevocably while they were yet
+together, excited by one another, and by the words of their sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>This patriotic donation amounted, it is said, to two millions of rubles.
+The other governments repeated, like so many echoes, the national cry of
+Moscow. The Emperor accepted all; but all could not be given
+immediately: and when, in order to complete his work, he claimed the
+rest of the promised succours, he was obliged to have recourse to
+constraint; the danger which had alarmed some and inflamed others,
+having by that time ceased to exist.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIg" id="CHAP_IIg"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile Smolensk was soon reduced; Napoleon at Wiazma, and
+consternation in Moscow. The great battle was not yet lost, and already
+people began to abandon that capital.</p>
+
+<p>The governor-general, Count Rostopchin, told the women, in his
+proclamations, that "he should not detain <i>them</i>, as the less fear the
+less danger there would be; but that their brothers and husbands must
+stay, or they would cover themselves with infamy." He then added
+encouraging particulars concerning the hostile force, which consisted,
+according to his statement, of "one hundred and fifty thousand men, who
+were reduced to the necessity of feeding on horse-flesh. The Emperor
+Alexander was about to return to his faithful capital; eighty-three
+thousand Russians, both recruits and militia, with eighty pieces of
+cannon, were marching towards Borodino, to join Kutusoff."</p>
+
+<p>He thus concluded: "If these forces are not sufficient, I will say to
+you, 'Come, my friends, and inhabitants of Moscow, let us march also! we
+will assemble one hundred thousand men: we will take the image of the
+Blessed Virgin, and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and put an
+end to the business at once!'"</p>
+
+<p>It has been remarked as a purely local singularity, that most of these
+proclamations were in the scriptural style and in poetic prose.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time a prodigious balloon was constructed, by command of
+Alexander, not far from Moscow, under the direction of a German
+artificer. The destination of this winged machine was to hover over the
+French army, to single out its chief, and destroy him by a shower of
+balls and fire. Several attempts were made to raise it, but without
+success, the springs by which the wings were to be worked having always
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>Rostopchin, nevertheless, affecting to persevere, is said to have caused
+a great quantity of rockets and other combustibles to be prepared.
+Moscow itself was designed to be the great infernal machine, the sudden
+nocturnal explosion of which was to consume the Emperor and his army.
+Should the enemy escape this danger, he would at least no longer have an
+asylum or resources; and the horror of so tremendous a calamity, which
+would be charged to his account, as had been done in regard to the
+disasters of Smolensk, Dorogobouje, Wiazma, and Gjatz, would not fail to
+rouse the whole of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the terrible plan of this noble descendant of one of the
+greatest Asiatic conquerors. It was conceived without effort, matured
+with care, and executed without hesitation. This Russian nobleman has
+since visited Paris. He is a steady man, a good husband, an excellent
+father: he has a superior and cultivated mind, and in society his
+manners are mild and pleasing: but, like some of his countrymen, he
+combines an antique energy with the civilization of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>His name henceforth belongs to history: still he had only the largest
+share in the honour of this great sacrifice. It had been previously
+commenced at Smolensk, and it was he who completed it. This resolution,
+like every thing great and entire, was admirable; the motive sufficient
+and justified by success; the devotedness unparalleled, and so
+extraordinary, that the historian is obliged to pause in order to
+fathom, to comprehend, and to contemplate it.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> A Count Rostopchin, we know, has written that he had no
+hand in that great event: but we cannot help following the opinion of
+the Russians and French, who were witnesses of and actors in this grand
+drama. All, without exception, persist in attributing to that nobleman
+the entire honour of that generous resolution. Several even seem to
+think, that if Count Rostopchin, who is yet animated by the same noble
+spirit, which will render his name imperishable, still refuses the
+immortality of so great an action, it is that he may leave all the glory
+of it to the patriotism of the nation, of which he is become one of the
+most remarkable characters.</p></div>
+
+<p>One single individual, amidst a vast empire nearly overthrown, surveys
+its danger with steady eye: he measures, he appreciates it, and
+ventures, perhaps uncommissioned, to devote all the public and private
+interests a sacrifice to it. Though but a subject, he decides the lot of
+the state, without the countenance of his sovereign; a noble, he decrees
+the destruction of the palaces of all the nobles, without their consent;
+the protector, from the post which he occupies, of a numerous
+population, of a multitude of opulent merchants and traders, of one of
+the largest capitals in Europe, he sacrifices their fortunes, their
+establishments, nay, the whole city: he himself consigns to the flames
+the finest and the richest of his palaces, and proud and satisfied, he
+quietly remains among the resentful sufferers who have been injured or
+utterly ruined by the measure.</p>
+
+<p>What motive then could be so just and so powerful as to inspire him with
+such astonishing confidence? In deciding upon the destruction of Moscow,
+his principal aim was not to famish the enemy, since he had contrived to
+clear that great city of provisions; nor to deprive the French army of
+shelter, since it was impossible to suppose that out of eight thousand
+houses and churches, dispersed over so vast a space, there should not be
+left buildings enough to serve as barracks for one hundred and fifty
+thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>He was no doubt aware also that by such a step he would counteract that
+very important point of what was supposed to be the plan of campaign
+formed by Alexander, whose object was thought to be to entice forward
+and to detain Napoleon, till winter should come upon him, seize him, and
+deliver him up defenceless to the whole incensed nation. For it was
+natural to presume that these flames would enlighten that conqueror;
+they would take from his invasion its end and aim. They would of course
+compel him to renounce it while it was yet time, and decide him to
+return to Lithuania, for the purpose of taking up winter quarters in
+that country&mdash;a determination which was likely to prepare for Russia a
+second campaign more dangerous than the first.</p>
+
+<p>But in this important crisis Rostopchin perceived two great dangers; the
+one, which threatened the national honour, was that of a disgraceful
+peace dictated at Moscow, and forced upon his sovereign; the other was a
+political rather than a military danger, in which he feared the
+seductions of the enemy more than his arms, and a revolution more than a
+conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Averse, therefore, to any treaty, this governor foresaw that in the
+populous capital, which the Russians themselves style the oracle, the
+example of the whole empire, Napoleon would have recourse to the weapon
+of revolution, the only one that would be left him to accomplish his
+purpose. For this reason he resolved to raise a barrier of fire between
+that great captain and all weaknesses, from whatever quarter they might
+proceed, whether from the throne or from his countrymen, either nobles
+or senators; and more especially between a population of serfs and the
+soldiers of a free nation; in short, between the latter and that mass of
+artisans and tradesmen, who form in Moscow the commencement of an
+intermediate class&mdash;a class for which the French Revolution was
+specially adapted.</p>
+
+<p>All the preparations were made in silence, without the knowledge either
+of the people, the proprietors of all classes, or perhaps of their
+Emperor. The nation was ignorant that it was sacrificing itself. This is
+so strictly true, that, when the moment for execution arrived, we heard
+the inhabitants who had fled to the churches, execrating this
+destruction. Those who beheld it from a distance, the most opulent of
+the nobles, mistaken like their peasants, charged us with it; and in
+short, those by whom it was ordered threw the odium of it upon us,
+having engaged in the work of destruction in order to render us objects
+of detestation, and caring but little about the maledictions of so many
+unfortunate creatures, provided they could throw the weight of them upon
+us.</p>
+
+<p>The silence of Alexander leaves room to doubt whether he approved this
+grand determination or not. What part he took in this catastrophe is
+still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the
+subject, or they make a secret of the matter:&mdash;the effect of despotism,
+which enjoins ignorance or silence.</p>
+
+<p>Some think that no individual in the whole empire excepting the
+sovereign, would have dared to take on himself so heavy a
+responsibility. His subsequent conduct has disavowed without
+disapproving. Others are of opinion that this was one of the causes of
+his absence from the army, and that, not wishing to appear either to
+order or to defend, he would not stay to be a witness of the
+catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>As to the general abandonment of the houses, all the way from Smolensk,
+it was compulsory, the Russian army defending them till they were
+carried sword in hand, and describing us every where as destructive
+monsters. The country suffered but little from this emigration. The
+peasants residing near the high road escaped through by-ways to other
+villages belonging to their lords, where they found accommodation.</p>
+
+<p>The forsaking of their huts made of trunks of trees laid one upon
+another, which a hatchet suffices for building, and of which a bench, a
+table, and an image, constitute the whole furniture, was scarcely any
+sacrifice for serfs, who had nothing of their own, whose persons did not
+even belong to themselves, and whose masters were obliged to provide for
+them, since they were their property, and the source of all their
+income.</p>
+
+<p>These peasants, moreover, in removing their carts, their implements, and
+their cattle, carried every thing with them, most of them being able to
+supply themselves with habitation, clothing, and all other necessaries:
+for these people are still in but the first stage of civilization, and
+far from that division of labour which denotes the extension and high
+improvement of commerce and society.</p>
+
+<p>But in the towns, and especially in the great capital, how could they be
+expected to quit so many establishments, to resign so many conveniencies
+and enjoyments, so much wealth, moveable and immoveable? and yet it cost
+little or no more to obtain the total abandonment of Moscow than that of
+the meanest village. There, as at Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, the
+principal nobles hesitated not to retire on our approach: for with them
+to remain would seem to be the same as to betray. But here, tradesmen,
+artisans, day-labourers, all thought it their duty to flee like the most
+powerful of the grandees. There was no occasion to command: these people
+have not yet ideas sufficient to judge for themselves, to distinguish
+and to discover differences; the example of the nobles was sufficient.
+The few foreigners who remained at Moscow might have enlightened them;
+some of these were exiled, and terror drove away the rest.</p>
+
+<p>It was, besides, an easy task to excite apprehensions of profanation,
+pillage, and devastation in the minds of people so cut off from other
+nations, and in the inhabitants of a city which had been so often
+plundered and burnt by the Tartars. With these examples before their
+eyes, they could not await an impious and ferocious enemy but for the
+purpose of fighting him: the rest must necessarily shun his approach
+with horror, if they would save themselves in this life and in the next:
+obedience, honour, religion, fear, every thing in short enjoined them to
+flee, with all that they could carry off.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight before our arrival, the departure of the archives, the
+public chests and treasure, and that of the nobles and the principal
+merchants, together with their most valuable effects, indicated to the
+rest of the inhabitants what course to pursue. The governor, already
+impatient to see the city evacuated, appointed superintendants to
+expedite the emigration.</p>
+
+<p>On the 3d of September, a Frenchwoman, at the risk of being torn in
+pieces by the furious Muscovites, ventured to leave her hiding-place.
+She wandered a long time through extensive quarters, the solitude of
+which astonished her, when a distant and doleful sound thrilled her with
+terror. It was like the funeral dirge of this vast city; fixed in
+motionless suspense, she beheld an immense multitude of persons of both
+sexes in deep affliction, carrying their effects and their sacred
+images, and leading their children along with them. Their priests, laden
+with the sacred symbols of religion, headed the procession. They were
+invoking heaven in hymns of lamentation, in which all of them joined
+with tears.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the gates of the city, this crowd of unfortunate creatures
+passed through them with painful hesitation: turned their eyes once more
+towards Moscow, they seemed to be bidding a last farewell to their holy
+city: but by degrees their sobs and the doleful tones of their hymns
+died away in the vast plains by which it is surrounded.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIg" id="CHAP_IIIg"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Thus was this population dispersed in detail or in masses. The roads to
+Cazan, Wladimir, and Yaroslaf were covered to the distance of forty
+leagues by fugitives on foot, and several unbroken files of vehicles of
+every kind. At the same time the measures of Rostopchin to prevent
+dejection and to preserve order, detained many of these unfortunate
+people till the very last moment.</p>
+
+<p>To this must be added the appointment of Kutusoff, which had revived
+their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and for
+the less affluent, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning
+the only home which they possessed; lastly, the inadequacy of the means
+of transport, notwithstanding the quantity of vehicles, which is
+peculiarly great in Russia; either because heavy requisitions for the
+exigencies of the army had reduced their number; or because they were
+too small, as it is customary to make them very light, on account of the
+sandy soil and the roads, which may be said to be rather marked out than
+constructed.</p>
+
+<p>It was just then that Kutusoff, though defeated at Borodino, sent
+letters to all quarters announcing that he was victorious. He deceived
+Moscow, Petersburg, and even the commanders of the other Russian armies.
+Alexander communicated this false intelligence to his allies. In the
+first transports of his joy he hastened to the altars, loaded the army
+and the family of his general with honours and money, gave directions
+for rejoicings, returned thanks to heaven, and appointed Kutusoff
+field-marshal for this defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the Russians affirm that their emperor was grossly imposed upon
+by this report. They are still unacquainted with the motives of such a
+deception, which at first procured Kutusoff unbounded favours, that were
+not withdrawn from him, and afterwards, it is said, dreadful menaces,
+that were not put in execution.</p>
+
+<p>If we may credit several of his countrymen, who were perhaps his
+enemies, it would appear that he had two motives. In the first place, he
+wished not to shake, by disastrous intelligence, the little firmness
+which, in Russia, Alexander was generally, but erroneously thought to
+possess. In the second, as he was anxious that his despatch should
+arrive on the very name-day of his Sovereign, it is added that his
+object was to obtain the rewards for which this kind of anniversaries
+furnishes occasion.</p>
+
+<p>But at Moscow the erroneous impression was of short continuance. The
+rumour of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately
+propagated in that city, from the singular commotion of extraordinary
+events, which has been known to spread almost instantaneously to
+prodigious distances. Still, however, the language of the chiefs, the
+only persons who durst speak, continued haughty and threatening: many of
+the inhabitants, trusting to it, remained; but they were every day more
+and more tormented by a painful anxiety. Nearly at one and the same
+moment, they were transported with rage, elevated with hope, and
+overwhelmed with fear.</p>
+
+<p>At one of those moments when, either prostrate before the altars, or in
+their own houses before the images of their saints, they had no hope but
+in heaven, shouts of joy suddenly resounded: the people instantly
+thronged the streets and public places to learn the cause. Intoxicated
+with joy, their eyes were fixed on the cross of the principal church. A
+vulture had entangled himself in the chains which supported it and was
+held suspended by them. This was a certain presage to minds whose
+natural superstition was heightened by extraordinary anxiety; it was
+thus that their God would seize and deliver Napoleon into their power.</p>
+
+<p>Rostopchin took advantage of all these movements, which he excited or
+checked according as they were favourable to him or otherwise. He caused
+the most diminutive to be selected from the prisoners taken from the
+enemy, and exhibited to the people, that the latter might derive courage
+from the sight of their weakness: and yet he emptied Moscow of every
+kind of supplies, in order to feed the vanquished, and to famish the
+conquerors. This measure was easily carried into effect, as Moscow was
+provisioned in spring and autumn by water only, and in winter by
+sledges.</p>
+
+<p>He was still preserving with a remnant of hope the order that was
+necessary, especially in such a flight, when the effects of the disaster
+at Borodino appeared. The long train of wounded, their groans, their
+garments and linen dyed with gore; their most powerful nobles struck and
+overthrown like the others&mdash;all this was a novel and alarming sight to a
+city which had for such a length of time been exempt from the horrors of
+war. The police redoubled its activity; but the terror which it excited
+could not long make head against a still greater terror.</p>
+
+<p>Rostopchin once more addressed the people. He declared that "he would
+defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the tribunals were already
+closed, but that was of no consequence; that there was no occasion for
+tribunals to try the guilty." He added, that "in two days he would give
+the signal." He recommended to the people to "arm themselves with
+hatchets, and especially with three-pronged forks, as the French were
+not heavier than a sheaf of corn." As for the wounded, he said he should
+cause "masses to be said and the water to be blessed in order to their
+speedy recovery. Next day," he added, "he should repair to Kutusoff, to
+take final measures for exterminating the enemy. And then," said he, "we
+will send these guests to the devil; we will despatch the perfidious
+wretches, and fall to work to reduce them to powder."</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff had in fact never despaired of the salvation of the country.
+After employing the militia during the battle of Borodino to carry
+ammunition and to assist the wounded, he had just formed with them the
+third rank of his army. At Mojaisk, the good face which he had kept up
+had enabled him to gain sufficient time to make an orderly retreat, to
+pick his wounded, to abandon such as were incurable, and to embarrass
+the enemy's army with them. Subsequently at Zelkowo, a check had stopped
+the impetuous advance of Murat. At length, on the 13th of September,
+Moscow beheld the fires of the Russian bivouacs.</p>
+
+<p>There the national pride, an advantageous position, and the works with
+which it was strengthened, all induced a belief that the general had
+determined to save the capital or to perish with it. He hesitated,
+however, and whether from policy or prudence, he at length abandoned the
+governor of Moscow to his full responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian army in this position of Fili, in front of Moscow, numbered
+ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were cossacks, sixty-five
+thousand veteran troops, (the relics of one hundred and twenty-one
+thousand engaged at the Moskwa,) and twenty thousand recruits, armed
+half with muskets and half with pikes.</p>
+
+<p>The French army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong the day before
+the great battle, had lost about forty thousand men at Borodino, and
+still consisted of ninety thousand. Some regiments on the march and the
+divisions of Laborde and Pino had just rejoined it: so that on its
+arrival before Moscow it still amounted to nearly one hundred thousand
+men. Its march was retarded by six hundred and seven pieces of cannon,
+two thousand five hundred artillery carriages, and five thousand baggage
+waggons; it had no more ammunition than would suffice for one
+engagement. Kutusoff perhaps calculated the disproportion between his
+effective force and ours. On this point, however, nothing but conjecture
+can be advanced, or he assigned purely military motives for his retreat.</p>
+
+<p>So much is certain, that the old general deceived the governor to the
+very last moment. He even swore to him "by his grey hair that he would
+perish with him before Moscow," when all at once the governor was
+informed, that in a council of war held at night in the camp, it had
+been determined to abandon the capital without a battle.</p>
+
+<p>Rostopchin was incensed, but not daunted by this intelligence. There was
+now no time to be lost, no farther pains were taken to conceal from
+Moscow the fate that was destined for it; indeed it was not worth while
+to dissemble for the sake of the few inhabitants who were left; and
+besides it was necessary to induce them to seek their safety in flight.</p>
+
+<p>At night, therefore, emissaries went round, knocking at every door and
+announcing the conflagration. Fusees were introduced at every favourable
+aperture, and especially into the shops covered with iron of the
+tradesmen's quarter. The fire engines were carried off: the desolation
+attained its highest pitch, and each individual, according to his
+disposition, was either overwhelmed with distress or urged to a
+decision. Most of those who were left formed groups in the public
+places; they crowded together, questioned each other, and reciprocally
+asked advice: many wandered about at random, some depressed with terror,
+others in a frightful state of exasperation. At length the army, the
+last hope of the people, deserted them: the troops began to traverse the
+city, and in their retreat they hurried along with them the still
+considerable remnant of its population.</p>
+
+<p>They departed by the gate of Kolomna, surrounded by a multitude of
+women, children, and aged persons in deep affliction. The fields were
+covered with them. They fled in all directions, by every path across the
+country, without provisions, and laden with such of their effects as in
+their agitation they had first laid their hands on. Some, for want of
+horses, had harnessed themselves to carts, and thus dragged along their
+infant children, a sick wife, or an infirm father, in short, whatever
+they held most dear. The woods afforded them shelter, and they subsisted
+on the charity of their countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>On that day, a terrific scene terminated this melancholy drama. This,
+the last day of Moscow, having arrived, Rostopchin collected together
+all whom he had been able to retain and arm. The prisons were thrown
+open. A squalid and disgusting crew tumultuously issued from them. These
+wretches rushed into the streets with a ferocious joy. Two men, a
+Russian and a Frenchman, the one accused of treason, the other of
+political indiscretion, were selected from among this horde, and dragged
+before Rostopchin, who reproached the Russian with his crime. The latter
+was the son of a tradesman: he had been apprehended while exciting the
+people to insurrection. A circumstance which occasioned alarm was the
+discovery that he belonged to a sect of German illuminati, called
+Martinists, a society of superstitious independents. His audacity had
+never failed him in prison. It was imagined for a moment that the spirit
+of equality had penetrated into Russia. At any rate he did not impeach
+any accomplices.</p>
+
+<p>At this crisis his father arrived. It was expected that he would
+intercede for his son: on the contrary, he insisted on his death. The
+governor granted him a few moments, that he might once more speak to and
+bless him. "What, I! I bless a traitor:" exclaimed the enraged
+Russian, and turning to his son, he, with a horrid voice and gesture,
+pronounced a curse upon him.</p>
+
+<p>This was the signal for his execution. The poor wretch was struck down
+by an ill-directed blow of a sabre. He fell, but wounded only, and
+perhaps the arrival of the French might have saved him, had not the
+people perceived that he was yet alive. They forced the barriers, fell
+upon him, and tore him to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman during this scene was petrified with terror. "As for
+thee," said Rostopchin, turning towards him, "being a Frenchman, thou
+canst not but wish for the arrival of the French army: be free, then,
+but go and tell thy countrymen, that Russia had but a single traitor,
+and that he is punished." Then addressing himself to the wretches who
+surrounded him, he called them sons of Russia, and exhorted them to make
+atonement for their crimes by serving their country. He was the last to
+quit that unfortunate city, and he then rejoined the Russian army.</p>
+
+<p>From that moment the mighty Moscow belonged neither to the Russians nor
+to the French, but to that guilty horde, whose fury was directed by a
+few officers and soldiers of the police. They were organized, and each
+had his post allotted to him, in order that pillage, fire, and
+devastation might commence every where at once.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVg" id="CHAP_IVg"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>That very day (September the 14th), Napoleon, being at length persuaded
+that Kutusoff had not thrown himself on his right flank, rejoined his
+advanced guard. He mounted his horse a few leagues from Moscow. He
+marched slowly and cautiously, sending scouts before him to examine the
+woods and the ravines, and to ascend all the eminences to look out for
+the enemy's army. A battle was expected: the ground favoured the
+opinion: works were begun, but had all been abandoned, and we
+experienced not the slightest resistance.</p>
+
+<p>At length the last eminence only remained to be passed: it is contiguous
+to Moscow, which it commands. It is called <i>the Hill of Salvation</i>,
+because, on its summit, the inhabitants, at sight of their holy city,
+cross and prostrate themselves. Our scouts had soon gained the top of
+this hill. It was two o'clock: the sun caused this great city to glisten
+with a thousand colours. Struck with astonishment at the sight, they
+paused, exclaiming, "Moscow! Moscow!" Every one quickened his pace; the
+troops hurried on in disorder; and the whole army, clapping their hands,
+repeated with transport, "Moscow! Moscow!" just as sailors shout "Land!
+land!" at the conclusion of a long and toilsome voyage.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of this gilded city, of this brilliant knot uniting Asia
+and Europe, of this magnificent emporium of the luxury, the manners, and
+the arts of the two fairest divisions of the globe, we stood still in
+proud contemplation. What a glorious day had now arrived! It would
+furnish the grandest, the most brilliant recollection of our whole
+lives. We felt that at this moment all our actions would engage the
+attention of the astonished universe; and that every one of our
+movements, however trivial, would be recorded by history.</p>
+
+<p>On this immense and imposing theatre we marched, accompanied, as it
+were, by the acclamations of all nations: proud of exalting our grateful
+age above all other ages, we already beheld it great from our greatness,
+and completely irradiated by our glory.</p>
+
+<p>At our return, already so ardently wished for, with what almost
+respectful consideration, with what enthusiasm should we be received by
+our wives, our countrymen, and even by our parents! We should form,
+during the rest of our lives, a particular class of beings, at whom they
+would not look but with astonishment, to whom they would not listen but
+with mingled curiosity and admiration! Crowds would throng about us
+wherever we passed; they would catch up our most unmeaning words. This
+miraculous conquest would surround us with a halo of glory: henceforward
+people would fancy that they breathed about us an air of prodigy and
+wonder.</p>
+
+<p>When these proud thoughts gave place to more moderate sentiments, we
+said to ourselves, that this was the promised term of our labours; that
+at length we should pause, since we could no longer be surpassed by
+ourselves, after a noble expedition, the worthy parallel to that of
+Egypt, and the successful rival of all the great and glorious wars of
+antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, dangers, sufferings were all forgotten. Was it possible
+to purchase too dearly the proud felicity of being able to say, during
+the rest of life, "I belonged to the army of Moscow!"</p>
+
+<p>Well, comrades, even now, amidst our abasement, and though it dates from
+that fatal city, is not this reflexion of a noble exultation
+sufficiently powerful to console us, and to make us proudly hold up our
+heads, bowed down by misfortune?</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon himself hastened up. He paused in transport: an exclamation of
+joy escaped his lips. Ever since the great battle, the discontented
+marshals had shunned him: but at the sight of captive Moscow, at the
+intelligence of the arrival of a flag of truce, struck with so important
+a result, and intoxicated with all the enthusiasm of glory, they forgot
+their grievances. They pressed around the emperor, paying homage to his
+good fortune, and already tempted to attribute to his genius the little
+pains he had taken on the 7th to complete his victory.</p>
+
+<p>But in Napoleon first emotions were of short duration. He had too much
+to think of, to indulge his sensations for any length of time. His first
+exclamation was: "There, at last, is that famous city!" and the second:
+"It was high time!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes, fixed on that capital, already expressed nothing but
+impatience: in it he beheld in imagination the whole Russian empire. Its
+walls enclosed all his hopes,&mdash;peace, the expenses of the war, immortal
+glory: his eager looks therefore intently watched all its outlets. When
+will its gates at length open? When shall he see that deputation come
+forth, which will place its wealth, its population, its senate, and the
+principal of the Russian nobility at our disposal? Henceforth that
+enterprise in which he had so rashly engaged, brought to a successful
+termination by dint of boldness, will pass for the result of a high
+combination; his imprudence for greatness: henceforth his victory at the
+Moskwa, incomplete as it was, will be deemed his greatest achievement.
+Thus all that might have turned to his ruin will contribute to his
+glory: that day would begin to decide whether he was the greatest man in
+the world, or the most rash; in short, whether he had raised himself an
+altar, or dug himself a grave.</p>
+
+<p>Anxiety, however, soon began to take possession of his mind. On his left
+and right he already beheld Prince Eugene and Poniatowski approaching
+the hostile city; Murat, with his scouts, had already reached the
+entrance of the suburbs, and yet no deputation appeared: an officer,
+sent by Miloradowitch, merely came to declare that his general would set
+fire to the city, if his rear was not allowed time to evacuate it.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon granted every demand. The first troops of the two armies were,
+for a short time, intermingled. Murat was recognized by the Cossacks,
+who, familiar as the nomadic tribes, and expressive as the people of the
+south, thronged around him: then, by their gestures and exclamations,
+they extolled his valour and intoxicated him with their admiration. The
+king took the watches of his officers, and distributed them among these
+barbarous warriors. One of them called him his <i>hettman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Murat was for a moment tempted to believe that in these officers he
+should find a new Mazeppa, or that he himself should become one: he
+imagined that he had gained them over. This momentary armistice, under
+the actual circumstances, sustained the hopes of Napoleon, such need had
+he to delude himself. He was thus amused for two hours.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the day was declining, and Moscow continued dull, silent, and
+as it were inanimate. The anxiety of the emperor increased; the
+impatience of the soldiers became more difficult to be repressed. Some
+officers ventured within the walls of the city. "Moscow is deserted!"</p>
+
+<p>At this intelligence, which he angrily refused to credit, Napoleon
+descended the Hill of Salvation, and approached the Moskwa and the
+Dorogomilow gate. He paused once more, but in vain, at the entry of that
+barrier. Murat urged him. "Well!" replied he, "enter then, since they
+wish it!" He recommended the strictest discipline; he still indulged
+hopes. "Perhaps these inhabitants do not even know how to surrender: for
+here every thing is new; they to us, and we to them."</p>
+
+<p>Reports now began to succeed each other: they all agreed. Some
+Frenchmen, inhabitants of Moscow, ventured to quit the hiding-place
+which for some days had concealed them from the fury of the populace,
+and confirmed the fatal tidings. The emperor called Daru. "Moscow
+deserted!" exclaimed he: "what an improbable story! We must know the
+truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars." He imagined that those men,
+stiff with pride, or paralysed with terror, were fixed motionless in
+their houses: and he, who had hitherto been always met by the submission
+of the vanquished, provoked their confidence, and anticipated their
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>How, indeed, was it possible for him to persuade himself, that so many
+magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile
+establishments, were forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets
+through which he had recently passed. Daru's mission however was
+fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not the least smoke rose from
+a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this immense and
+populous city; its three hundred thousand inhabitants seemed to be
+struck dumb and motionless by enchantment: it was the silence of the
+desert!</p>
+
+<p>But such was the incredulity of Napoleon, that he was not yet convinced,
+and waited for farther information. At length, an officer, determined to
+gratify him, or persuaded that whatever the Emperor willed must
+necessarily be accomplished, entered the city, seized five or six
+vagabonds, drove them before his horse to the Emperor, and imagined that
+he had brought him a deputation. From the first words they uttered,
+Napoleon discovered that the persons before him were only indigent
+labourers.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till then that he ceased to doubt the entire evacuation of
+Moscow, and lost all the hopes that he had built upon it. He shrugged
+his shoulders, and with that contemptuous look with which he met every
+thing that crossed his wishes, he exclaimed, "Ah! the Russians know not
+yet the effect which the taking of their capital will produce upon
+them!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vg" id="CHAP_Vg"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was now an hour since Murat, and the long and close column of his
+cavalry, had entered Moscow; they penetrated into that gigantic body, as
+yet untouched, but inanimate. Struck with profound astonishment at the
+sight of this complete solitude, they replied to the taciturnity of this
+modern Thebes, by a silence equally solemn. These warriors listened,
+with a secret shuddering, to the steps of their horses resounding alone,
+amid these deserted palaces. They were astonished to hear nothing but
+themselves amid such numerous habitations. No-one thought of stopping or
+of plundering, either from prudence, or because great civilized nations
+respect themselves in enemies' capitals, in the presence of those great
+centers of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile they were silently observing that mighty city, which would
+have been truly remarkable had they met with it in a flourishing and
+populous country, but which was still more astonishing in these deserts.
+It was like a rich and brilliant oasis. They had at first been struck by
+the sudden view of so many magnificent palaces; but they now perceived
+that they were intermingled with mean cottages; a circumstance which
+indicated the want of gradation between the classes, and that luxury was
+not generated there, as in other countries, by industry, but preceded
+it; whereas, in the natural order, it ought to be its more or less
+necessary consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Here more especially prevailed inequality&mdash;that bane of all human
+society, which produces pride in some, debasement in others, corruption
+in all. And yet such a generous abandonment of every thing demonstrated
+that this excessive luxury, as yet however entirely borrowed, had not
+rendered these nobles effeminate.</p>
+
+<p>They thus advanced, sometimes agitated by surprise, at others by pity,
+and more frequently by a noble enthusiasm. Several cited events of the
+great conquests which history has handed down to us; but it was for the
+purpose of indulging their pride, not to draw lessons from them; for
+they thought themselves too lofty and beyond all comparison: they had
+left behind them all the conquerors of antiquity. They were exalted by
+that which is second to virtue only, by glory. Then succeeded
+melancholy; either from the exhaustion consequent on so many sensations,
+or the effect of the operation produced by such an immeasurable
+elevation, and of the seclusion in which we were wandering on that
+height, whence we beheld immensity, infinity, in which our weakness was
+lost: for the higher we ascend, the more the horizon expands, and the
+more conscious we become of our own insignificance.</p>
+
+<p>Amid these reflexions, which were favoured by a slow pace, the report of
+fire-arms was all at once heard: the column halted. Its last horses
+still covered the fields; its centre was in one of the longest streets
+of the city; its head had reached the Kremlin. The gates of that citadel
+appeared to be closed. Ferocious cries issued from within it: men and
+women, of savage and disgusting aspect, appeared fully armed on its
+walls. In a state of filthy inebriety, they uttered the most horrible
+imprecations. Murat sent them an amicable message, but to no purpose. It
+was found necessary to employ cannon to break open the gate.</p>
+
+<p>We penetrated partly without opposition, partly by force, among these
+wretches. One of them rushed close to the king, and endeavoured to kill
+one of his officers. It was thought sufficient to disarm him, but he
+again fell upon his victim, rolled him on the ground, and attempted to
+suffocate him; and even after his arms were seized and held, he still
+strove to tear him with his teeth. These were the only Muscovites who
+had waited our coming, and who seemed to have been left behind as a
+savage and barbarous token of the national hatred.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to perceive, however, that there was no unison in this
+patriotic fury. Five hundred recruits, who had been forgotten in the
+Kremlin, beheld this scene without stirring. At the first summons they
+dispersed. Farther on, we overtook a convoy of provisions, the escort of
+which immediately threw down its arms. Several thousand stragglers and
+deserters from the enemy, voluntarily remained in the power of our
+advanced guard. The latter left to the corps which followed the task of
+picking them up; and these to others, and so on: hence they remained at
+liberty in the midst of us, till the conflagration and pillage of the
+city having reminded them of their duty, and rallied them all in one
+general feeling of antipathy, they went and rejoined Kutusoff.</p>
+
+<p>Murat, who had been stopped but a few moments by the Kremlin, dispersed
+this crew which he despised. Ardent and indefatigable as in Italy and
+Egypt, after a march of nine hundred leagues, and sixty battles fought
+to reach Moscow, he traversed that proud city without deigning to halt
+in it, and pursuing the Russian rear-guard, he boldly, and without
+hesitation, took the road for Wladimir and Asia.</p>
+
+<p>Several thousand Cossacks, with four pieces of cannon, were retreating
+in that direction. The armistice was at an end. Murat, tired of this
+peace of half a day, immediately ordered it to be broken by a discharge
+of carbines. But our cavalry considered the war as finished; Moscow
+appeared to them to be the term of it, and the advanced posts of the two
+empires were unwilling to renew hostilities. A fresh order arrived, and
+the same hesitation prevailed. At length Murat, irritated at this
+disobedience, gave his orders in person; and the firing, with which he
+seemed to threaten Asia, but which was not destined to cease till we
+reached the banks of the Seine, was renewed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIg" id="CHAP_VIg"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Napoleon did not enter Moscow till after dark. He stopped in one of the
+first houses of the Dorogomilow suburb. There he appointed Marshal
+Mortimer governor of that capital. "Above all," said he to him, "no
+pillage? For this you shall be answerable to me with your life. Defend
+Moscow against all, whether friend or foe."</p>
+
+<p>That night was a gloomy one: sinister reports followed one upon the
+heels of another. Some Frenchmen, resident in the country, and even a
+Russian officer of police, came to denounce the conflagration. He gave
+all the particulars of the preparations for it. The Emperor, alarmed by
+these accounts, strove in vain to take some rest. He called every
+moment, and had the fatal tidings repeated to him. He nevertheless
+entrenched himself in his incredulity, till about two in the morning,
+when he was informed that the fire had actually broken out.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the exchange, in the centre of the city, in its richest
+quarter. He instantly issued orders upon orders. As soon as it was
+light, he himself hastened to the spot, and threatened the young guard
+and Mortimer. The Marshal pointed out to him some houses covered with
+iron; they were closely shut up, still untouched and uninjured without,
+and yet a black smoke was already issuing from them. Napoleon pensively
+entered the Kremlin.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of this half Gothic and half modern palace of the Ruriks
+and the Romanofs, of their throne still standing, of the cross of the
+great Ivan, and of the finest part of the city, which is overlooked by
+the Kremlin, and which the flames, as yet confined to the bazaar, seemed
+disposed to spare, his former hopes revived. His ambition was flattered
+by this conquest. "At length then," he exclaimed, "I am in Moscow, in
+the ancient palace of the Czars, in the Kremlin!" He examined every part
+of it with pride, curiosity, and gratification.</p>
+
+<p>He required a statement of the resources afforded by the city; and in
+this brief moment given to hope, he sent proposals of peace to the
+Emperor Alexander. A superior officer of the enemy's had just been found
+in the great hospital; he was charged with the delivery of this letter.
+It was by the baleful light of the flames of the bazaar that Napoleon
+finished it, and the Russian departed. He was to be the bearer of the
+news of this disaster to his sovereign, whose only answer was this
+conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight favoured the efforts of the Duke of Treviso, to subdue the
+fire. The incendiaries kept themselves concealed. Doubts were
+entertained of their existence. At length, strict injunctions being
+issued, order restored, and alarm suspended, each took possession of a
+commodious house, or sumptuous palace, under the idea of there finding
+comforts that had been dearly purchased by long and excessive
+privations.</p>
+
+<p>Two officers had taken up their quarters in one of the buildings of the
+Kremlin. The view hence embraced the north and west of the city. About
+midnight they were awakened by an extraordinary light. They looked and
+beheld palaces filled with flames, which at first merely illuminated,
+but presently consumed these elegant and noble structures. They observed
+that the north wind drove these flames directly towards the Kremlin, and
+became alarmed for the safety of that fortress in which the flower of
+their army and its commander reposed. They were apprehensive also for
+the surrounding houses, where our soldiers, attendants and horses, weary
+and exhausted, were doubtless buried in profound sleep. Sparks and
+burning fragments were already flying over the roofs of the Kremlin,
+when the wind, shifting from north to west, blew them in another
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>One of these officers, relieved from apprehension respecting his corps,
+then composed himself again to sleep, exclaiming, "Let others look to it
+now; 'tis no affair of ours." For such was the unconcern produced by the
+multiplicity of events and misfortunes, and such the selfishness arising
+from excessive suffering and fatigue, that they left to each only just
+strength and feeling sufficient for his personal service and
+preservation.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before fresh and vivid lights again awoke them. They
+beheld other flames rising precisely in the new direction which the wind
+had taken towards the Kremlin, and they cursed French imprudence and
+want of discipline, to which they imputed this disaster. But three times
+did the wind thus change from north to west, and three times did these
+hostile fires, as if obstinately bent on the destruction of the imperial
+quarters, appear eager to follow this new direction.</p>
+
+<p>At this sight a strong suspicion seized their minds. Can the Muscovites,
+aware of our rash and thoughtless negligence, have conceived the hope of
+burning with Moscow our soldiers, heavy with wine, fatigue and sleep; or
+rather, have they dared to imagine that they should involve Napoleon in
+this catastrophe; that the loss of such a man would be fully equivalent
+to that of their capital; that it was a result sufficiently important to
+justify the sacrifice of all Moscow to obtain it; that perhaps Heaven,
+in order to grant them so signal a victory, had decreed so great a
+sacrifice; and lastly, that so immense a colossus required a not less
+immense funeral pile?</p>
+
+<p>Whether this was their plan we cannot tell, but nothing less than the
+Emperor's good fortune was required to prevent its being realized. In
+fact, not only did the Kremlin contain, unknown to us, a magazine of
+gunpowder; but that very night, the guards, asleep and carelessly
+posted, suffered a whole park of artillery to enter and draw up under
+the windows of Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this moment that the furious flames were driven from all
+quarters with the greatest violence towards the Kremlin; for the wind,
+attracted no doubt by this vast combustion, increased every moment in
+strength. The flower of the army and the Emperor would have been
+destroyed, if but one of the brands that flew over our heads had
+alighted on one of the powder-waggons. Thus upon each of the sparks that
+were for several hours floating in the air, depended the fate of the
+whole army.</p>
+
+<p>At length the day, a gloomy day, appeared: it came to add to the horrors
+of the scene, and to deprive it of its brilliancy. Many of the officers
+sought refuge in the halls of the palace. The chiefs, and Mortimer
+himself, overcome by the fire with which, for thirty six hours, they had
+been contending, there dropped down from fatigue and despair.</p>
+
+<p>They said nothing and we accused ourselves. Most of us imagined that
+want of discipline in our troops and intoxication had begun the
+disaster, and that the high wind had completed it. We viewed ourselves
+with a sort of disgust. The cry of horror which all Europe would not
+fail to set up terrified us. Filled with consternation by so tremendous
+a catastrophe, we accosted each other with downcast looks: it sullied
+our glory; it deprived us of the fruits of it; it threatened our present
+and our future existence; we were now but an army of criminals, whom
+Heaven and the civilized world would severely judge. From these
+overwhelming thoughts and paroxysms of rage against the incendiaries, we
+were roused only by an eagerness to obtain intelligence; and all the
+accounts began to accuse the Russians alone of this disaster.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, officers arrived from all quarters, and they all agreed. The
+very first night, that of the 14th, a fire-balloon had settled on the
+palace of Prince Trubetskoi, and consumed it: this was a signal. Fire
+had been immediately set to the Exchange: Russian police soldiers had
+been seen stirring it up with tarred lances. Here howitzer shells,
+perfidiously placed, had discharged themselves in the stoves of several
+houses, and wounded the military who crowded round them. Retiring to
+other quarters which were still standing, they sought fresh retreats;
+but when they were on the point of entering houses closely shut up and
+uninhabited, they had heard faint explosions within; these were
+succeeded by a light smoke, which immediately became thick and black,
+then reddish, and lastly the colour of fire, and presently the whole
+edifice was involved in flames.</p>
+
+<p>All had seen hideous-looking men, covered with rags, and women
+resembling furies, wandering among these flames, and completing a
+frightful image of the infernal regions. These wretches, intoxicated
+with wine and the success of their crimes, no longer took any pains to
+conceal themselves: they proceeded in triumph through the blazing
+streets; they were caught, armed with torches, assiduously striving to
+spread the conflagration: it was necessary to strike down their hands
+with sabres to oblige them to loose their hold. It was said that these
+banditti had been released from prison by the Russian generals for the
+purpose of burning Moscow; and that in fact so grand, so extreme a
+resolution could have been adopted only by patriotism and executed only
+by guilt.</p>
+
+<p>Orders were immediately issued to shoot all the incendiaries on the
+spot. The army was on foot. The old guard which exclusively occupied one
+part of the Kremlin, was under arms: the baggage, and the horses ready
+loaded, filled the courts; we were struck dumb with astonishment,
+fatigue and disappointment, on witnessing the destruction of such
+excellent quarters. Though masters of Moscow, we were forced to go and
+bivouac without provisions outside its gates.</p>
+
+<p>While our troops were yet struggling with the conflagration, and the
+army was disputing their prey with the flames, Napoleon, whose sleep
+none had dared to disturb during the night, was awoke by the two-fold
+light of day and of the fire. His first feeling was that of irritation,
+and he would have commanded the devouring element; but he soon paused
+and yielded to impossibility. Surprised that when he had struck at the
+heart of an empire, he should find there any other sentiment than
+submission and terror, he felt himself vanquished, and surpassed in
+determination.</p>
+
+<p>This conquest, for which he had sacrificed every thing, was like a
+phantom which he had pursued, and which at the moment when he imagined
+he had grasped it, vanished in a mingled mass of smoke and flame. He was
+then seized with extreme agitation; he seemed to be consumed by the
+fires which surrounded him. He rose every moment, paced to and fro, and
+again sat down abruptly. He traversed his apartments with quick steps:
+his sudden and vehement gestures betrayed painful uneasiness: he
+quitted, resumed, and again quitted, an urgent occupation, to hasten to
+the windows and watch the progress of the conflagration. Short and
+incoherent exclamations burst from his labouring bosom. "What a
+tremendous spectacle!&mdash;It is their own work!&mdash;So many palaces!&mdash;What
+extraordinary resolution!&mdash;What men!&mdash;These are Scythians indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>Between the fire and him there was an extensive vacant space, then the
+Moskwa and its two quays; and yet the panes of the windows against which
+he leaned felt already burning to the touch, and the constant exertions
+of sweepers, placed on the iron roofs of the palace, were not sufficient
+to keep them clear of the numerous flakes of fire which alighted upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a rumour was spread that the Kremlin was undermined: this
+was confirmed, it was said, by Russians, and by written documents. Some
+of his attendants were beside themselves with fear; while the military
+awaited unmoved what the orders of the Emperor and fate should decree:
+And to this alarm the Emperor replied only with a smile of incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>But he still walked convulsively; he stopped at every window, and beheld
+the terrible, the victorious element furiously consuming his brilliant
+conquest; seizing all the bridges, all the avenues to his fortress,
+inclosing, and as it were besieging him in it; spreading every moment
+among the neighbouring houses; and, reducing him within narrower and
+narrower limits, confining him at length to the site of the Kremlin
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>We already breathed nothing but smoke and ashes. Night approached, and
+was about to add darkness to our dangers: the equinoxial gales, in
+alliance with the Russians, increased in violence. The King of Naples
+and Prince Eugene hastened to the spot: in company with the Prince of
+Neufchatel they made their way to the Emperor, and urged him by their
+entreaties, their gestures, and on their knees, and insisted on removing
+him from this scene of desolation. All was in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, in possession of the palace of the Czars, was bent on not
+yielding that conquest even to the conflagration, when all at once the
+shout of "the Kremlin is on fire!" passed from mouth to mouth, and
+roused us from the contemplative stupor with which we had been seized.
+The Emperor went out to ascertain the danger. Twice had the fire
+communicated to the building in which he was, and twice had it been
+extinguished; but the tower of the arsenal was still burning. A soldier
+of the police had been found in it. He was brought in, and Napoleon
+caused him to be interrogated in his presence. This man was the
+incendiary: he had executed his commission at the signal given by his
+chief. It was evident that every thing was devoted to destruction, the
+ancient and sacred Kremlin itself not excepted.</p>
+
+<p>The gestures of the Emperor betokened disdain and vexation: the wretch
+was hurried into the first court, where the enraged grenadiers
+dispatched him with their bayonets.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus006.jpg" alt="Moscow"  />
+<a id="illus006" name="illus006"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center"  style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Conflagration of Moscow</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIg" id="CHAP_VIIg"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>This incident had decided Napoleon. He hastily descended the northern
+staircase, famous for the massacre of the Strelitzes, and desired to be
+conducted out of the city, to the distance of a league on the road to
+Petersburgh, toward the imperial palace of Petrowsky.</p>
+
+<p>But we were encircled by a sea of fire, which blocked up all the gates
+of the citadel, and frustrated the first attempts that were made to
+depart. After some search, we discovered a postern gate leading between
+the rocks to the Moskwa. It was by this narrow passage that Napoleon,
+his officers and guard escaped from the Kremlin. But what had they
+gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the fire, and
+could neither retreat nor remain where they were; and how were they to
+advance? how force a passage through the waves of this ocean of flame?
+Those who had traversed the city, stunned by the tempest, and blinded by
+the ashes, could not find their way, since the streets themselves were
+no longer distinguishable amidst smoke and ruins.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time to be lost. The roaring of the flames around us became
+every moment more violent. A single narrow winding street completely on
+fire, appeared to be rather the entrance than the outlet to this hell.
+The Emperor rushed on foot and without hesitation into this narrow
+passage. He advanced amid the crackling of the flames, the crash of
+floors, and the fall of burning timbers, and of the red-hot iron roofs
+which tumbled around him. These ruins impeded his progress. The flames
+which, with impetuous roar, consumed the edifices between which we were
+proceeding spreading beyond the walls, were blown about by the wind, and
+formed an arch over our heads. We walked on a ground of fire, beneath a
+fiery sky, and between two walls of fire. The intense heat burned our
+eyes, which we were nevertheless obliged to keep open and fixed on the
+danger. A consuming atmosphere, glowing ashes, detached flames, parched
+our throats, and rendered our respiration short and dry; and we were
+already almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned, either in
+endeavouring to protect our faces from the insupportable heat, or in
+brushing off the sparks which every moment covered and penetrated our
+garments.</p>
+
+<p>In this inexpressible distress, and when a rapid advance seemed to be
+our only mean of safety, our guide stopped in uncertainty and agitation.
+Here would probably have terminated our adventurous career, had not some
+pillagers of the first corps recognised the Emperor amidst the whirling
+flames: they ran up and guided him towards the smoking ruins of a
+quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that we met the Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl. This marshal, who had
+been wounded at the Moskwa, had desired to be carried back among the
+flames to rescue Napoleon, or to perish with him. He threw himself into
+his arms with transport; the emperor received him kindly, but with that
+composure which in danger he never lost for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>To escape from this vast region of calamities, it was further necessary
+to pass a long convoy of powder, which was defiling amidst the fire.
+This was not the least of his dangers, but it was the last, and by
+nightfall he arrived at Petrowsky.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, the 17th of September, Napoleon cast his first looks
+towards Moscow, hoping to see that the conflagration had subsided. He
+beheld it again raging with the utmost violence: the whole city appeared
+like a vast spout of fire rising in whirling eddies to the sky, which it
+deeply coloured. Absorbed by this melancholy contemplation, he preserved
+a long and gloomy silence, which he broke only by the exclamation, "This
+forebodes great misfortunes to us!"</p>
+
+<p>The effort which he had made to reach Moscow had expended all his means
+of warfare. Moscow had been the term of his projects, the aim of all his
+hopes, and Moscow was no more! What was now to be done? Here this
+decisive genius was forced to hesitate. He, who in 1805 had ordered the
+sudden and total abandonment of an expedition, prepared at an immense
+cost, and determined at Bologne-sur-mer on the surprise and annihilation
+of the Austrian army, in short, all the operations of the campaign
+between Ulm and Munich exactly as they were executed; the same man, who,
+the following year, dictated at Paris with the same infallibility all
+the movements of his army as far as Berlin, the day fixed for his
+entrance into that capital, and the appointment of the governor whom he
+destined for it&mdash;he it was, who, astonished in his turn, was now
+undecided what course to pursue. Never had he communicated his most
+daring projects to the most confidential of his ministers but in the
+order for their execution; he was now constrained to consult, and put to
+the proof, the moral and physical energies of those about him.</p>
+
+<p>In doing this, however, he still preserved the same forms. He declared,
+therefore, that he should march for Petersburg. This conquest was
+already marked out on his maps, hitherto so prophetic: orders were even
+issued to the different corps to hold themselves in readiness. But his
+decision was only a feint: it was but a better face that he strove to
+assume, or an expedient for diverting his grief for the loss of Moscow:
+so that Berthier, and more especially Bessi&egrave;res, soon convinced him that
+he had neither time, provisions, roads, nor a single requisite for so
+extensive an excursion.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment he was apprised that Kutusoff, after having fled
+eastward, had suddenly turned to the south, and thrown himself between
+Moscow and Kalouga. This was an additional motive against the expedition
+to Petersburg; there was a threefold reason for marching upon this
+beaten army for the purpose of extinguishing it; to secure his right
+flank and his line of operation; to possess himself of Kalouga and
+Toula, the granary and arsenal of Russia; and lastly, to open a safe,
+short, new, and virgin retreat to Smolensk and Lithuania.</p>
+
+<p>Some one proposed to return upon Wittgenstein and Witepsk. Napoleon was
+undecided between all these plans. That for the conquest of Petersburg
+alone flattered him: the others appeared but as ways of retreat, as
+acknowledgments of error; and whether from pride, or policy which will
+not admit itself to be in the wrong, he rejected them.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, where was he to stop in a retreat? He had so fully calculated
+on concluding a peace at Moscow, that he had no winter quarters provided
+in Lithuania. Kalouga had no temptations for him. Wherefore lay waste
+fresh provinces? It would be wiser to threaten them, and leave the
+Russians something to lose, in order to induce them to conclude a peace
+by which it might be preserved. Would it be possible to march to another
+battle, to fresh conquests, without exposing a line of operation,
+covered with sick, stragglers, wounded and convoys of all sorts? Moscow
+was the general rallying point; how could it be changed? What other name
+would have any attraction?</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, and above all, how relinquish a hope to which he had made so
+many sacrifices, when he knew that his letter to Alexander had just
+passed the Russian advanced posts; when eight days would be sufficient
+for receiving an answer so ardently desired; when he wanted that time to
+rally and re-organize his army, to collect the relics of Moscow, the
+conflagration of which had but too strongly sanctioned pillage, and to
+draw his soldiers from that vast infirmary!</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely indeed a third of that army and of that capital now existed.
+But himself and the Kremlin were still standing: his renown was still
+entire, and he persuaded himself that those two great names, Napoleon
+and Moscow, combined, would be sufficient to accomplish every thing. He
+determined, therefore, to return to the Kremlin, which a battalion of
+his guard had unfortunately preserved.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIg" id="CHAP_VIIIg"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The camps which he traversed on his way thither presented an
+extraordinary sight. In the fields, amidst thick and cold mud, large
+fires were kept up with mahogany furniture, windows, and gilded doors.
+Around these fires, on a litter of damp straw, imperfectly sheltered by
+a few boards, were seen the soldiers, and their officers, splashed all
+over with mud, and blackened with smoke, seated in arm-chairs or
+reclined on silken couches. At their feet were spread or heaped Cashmere
+shawls, the rarest furs of Siberia, the gold stuffs of Persia, and
+silver plates, off which they had nothing to eat but a black dough baked
+in the ashes, and half broiled and bloody horse-flesh. Singular
+assemblage of abundance and want, of riches and filth, of luxury and
+wretchedness!</p>
+
+<p>Between the camp and the city were met troops of soldiers dragging along
+their booty, or driving before them, like beasts of burden, Muscovites
+bending under the weight of the pillage of their capital; for the fire
+brought to view nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, previously
+unobserved in that immense city. Some of these Muscovites of both sexes
+were well dressed; they were tradespeople. They came with the wreck of
+their property to seek refuge at our fires. They lived pell-mell with
+our soldiers, protected by some, and tolerated, or rather scarcely
+remarked by others.</p>
+
+<p>About ten thousand of the enemy's troops were in the same predicament.
+For several days they wandered about among us free, and some of them
+even still armed. Our soldiers met these vanquished enemies without
+animosity, or without thinking of making them prisoners; either because
+they considered the war as at an end, from thoughtlessness, or from
+pity, and because when not in battle the French delight in having no
+enemies. They suffered them to share their fires; nay, more, they
+allowed them to pillage in their company. When some degree of order was
+restored, or rather when the officers had organized this marauding as a
+regular system of forage, the great number of these Russian stragglers
+then attracted notice. Orders were given to secure them; but seven or
+eight thousand had already escaped. It was not long before we had to
+fight them.</p>
+
+<p>On entering the city, the Emperor was struck by a sight still more
+extraordinary: a few houses scattered among the ruins were all that was
+left of the mighty Moscow. The smell issuing from this colossus,
+overthrown, burned, and calcined, was horrible. Heaps of ashes, and at
+intervals, fragments of walls or half demolished pillars, were now the
+only vestiges that marked the site of streets.</p>
+
+<p>The suburbs were sprinkled with Russians of both sexes, covered with
+garments nearly burned. They flitted like spectres among the ruins;
+squatted in the gardens, some of them were scratching up the earth in
+quest of vegetables, while others were disputing with the crows for the
+relics of the dead animals which the army had left behind. Farther on,
+others again were seen plunging into the Moskwa to bring out some of the
+corn which had been thrown into it by command of Rostopchin, and which
+they devoured without preparation, sour and spoiled as it already was.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the sight of the booty, in such of the camps where every thing
+was yet wanting, inflamed the soldiers whom their duty or stricter
+officers had kept with their colours. They murmured. "Why were they to
+be kept back? Why were they to perish by famine and want, when every
+thing was within their reach! Was it right to leave the enemy's fires to
+destroy what might be saved? Why was such respect to be paid them?" They
+added, that "as the inhabitants of Moscow had not only abandoned, but
+even endeavoured utterly to destroy it, all that they could save would
+be legitimately acquired; that the remains of that city, like the relics
+of the arms of the conquered, belonged by right to the victors, as the
+Muscovites had turned their capital into a vast machine of war, for the
+purpose of annihilating us."</p>
+
+<p>The best principled and the best disciplined were those who argued thus,
+and it was impossible to reply. Too rigid scruples at first prevented
+the issuing of orders for pillage; it was now permitted, unrestrained by
+regulations. Urged by the most imperious necessities, all hurried to
+share in the spoil, the soldiers of the <i>&eacute;lite</i>, and even officers
+themselves. Their chiefs were obliged to shut their eyes: only such
+guards as were absolutely indispensable were left with the eagles and
+the fasces.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor saw his whole army dispersed over the city. His progress was
+obstructed by a long file of marauders going in quest of booty, or
+returning with it; by tumultuous assemblages of soldiers grouped around
+the entrances of cellars, or the doors of palaces, shops, and churches,
+which the fire had nearly reached, and into which they were endeavouring
+to penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>His steps were impeded by the fragments of furniture of every kind which
+had been thrown out of the windows to save it from the flames, or by
+rich pillage which had been abandoned from caprice for some other booty;
+for such is the way with soldiers; they are incessantly beginning their
+fortune afresh, taking every thing without discrimination, loading
+themselves beyond measure, as if they could carry all they find; then,
+after they have gone a few steps, compelled by fatigue to throw away the
+greatest part of their burden.</p>
+
+<p>The roads were obstructed; the open places, like the camps, were turned
+into markets, whither every one repaired to exchange superfluities for
+necessaries. There, the rarest articles, the value of which was not
+known to their possessors, were sold at a low price; others, of
+deceitful appearance, were purchased at a price far beyond their worth.
+Gold, as being more portable, was bought at an immense loss with silver,
+which the knapsacks were incapable of holding. Everywhere soldiers were
+seen seated on bales of merchandize, on heaps of sugar and coffee,
+amidst wines and the most exquisite liqueurs, which they were offering
+in exchange for a morsel of bread. Many, in an intoxication aggravated
+by inanition, had fallen near the flames, which reached them, and put an
+end to their lives.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the houses and palaces which had escaped the fire served
+nevertheless for quarters for the officers, and all that they contained
+was respected. All of them beheld with pain this vast destruction, and
+the pillage which was its necessary consequence. Some of our men
+belonging to the <i>&eacute;lite</i> were charged with taking too much pleasure in
+collecting what they were able to save from the flames; but their number
+was so few that they were mentioned by name. In these ardent men, war
+was a passion which presupposed the existence of others. It was not
+covetousness, for they did not hoard; they spent lavishly what they
+picked up, taking in order to give, believing that one hand washed the
+other, and that they had paid for every thing with the danger.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, on such an occasion, there is scarcely any distinction to be
+made, unless in the motive: some took with regret, others with pleasure,
+and all from necessity. Amidst wealth which had ceased to belong to any
+individual, ready to be consumed, or to be buried in ashes, they were
+placed in a quite novel situation, where right and wrong were
+confounded, and for which no rule was laid down. The most delicate,
+either from principle, or because they were richer than others, bought
+of the soldiers the provision and apparel which they required: some sent
+agents to plunder for them; and the most necessitous were forced to help
+themselves with their own hands.</p>
+
+<p>As to the soldiers, many of them being embarrassed with the fruits of
+their pillage, became less active, less thoughtless: in danger they
+began to calculate, and in order to save their booty, they did what they
+would have disdained to do to save themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It was amidst this confusion that Napoleon again entered Moscow. He had
+allowed this pillage, hoping that his army, scattered over the ruins,
+would not ransack them in vain. But when he learned that the disorder
+increased; that the old guard itself was seduced; that the Russian
+peasants, who were at length allured thither with provisions, for which
+he caused them to be liberally paid for the purpose of drawing others,
+were robbed of the provisions which they brought us, by our famished
+soldiers; when he was informed that the different corps, destitute of
+every thing, were ready to fight for the relics of Moscow; that,
+finally, all the existing resources were wasted by this irregular
+pillage; he then issued strict orders, and forbade his guard to leave
+their quarters. The churches, in which our cavalry had sheltered
+themselves, were restored to the Greek worship. The business of plunder
+was ordered to be taken in turn by the corps like any other duty, and
+directions were at length given for securing the Russian stragglers.</p>
+
+<p>But it was too late. These soldiers had fled: the affrighted peasants
+returned no more; great quantities of provisions were spoiled. The
+French army have sometimes fallen into this fault, but on the present
+occasion the fire pleads their excuse: no time was to be lost in
+anticipating the flames. It is, however, a remarkable fact, that at the
+first command perfect order was restored.</p>
+
+<p>Some writers, and even French ones, have ransacked these ruins in quest
+of traces of outrages which might have been committed in them. There
+were very few. Most of our men behaved generously, considering the small
+number of inhabitants, and the great number of enemies, that they met
+with. But if in the first moments of pillage some excesses were
+committed, ought this to appear surprising in an army exasperated by
+such urgent wants, such severe sufferings, and composed of so many
+different nations?</p>
+
+<p>Misfortune having since humbled these warriors, reproaches have, as is
+always the case, been raised against them. Who can be ignorant that such
+disorders have always been the bad side of great wars, the inglorious
+part of glory; that the renown of conquerors casts its shadow like every
+thing else in this world! Does there exist a creature ever so
+diminutive, on every side of which the sun, great as is that luminary,
+can shine at once? It is therefore a law of nature, that large bodies
+have large shadows.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, people have been too much astonished at the virtues as
+well as at the vices of that army. They were the virtues of the moment,
+the vices of the age; and for this very reason, the former were less
+praiseworthy, and the latter less reprehensible, inasmuch as they were,
+if I may so express myself, enjoined by example and circumstances. Thus
+every thing is relative, which does not exclude fixed principles and
+absolute good as the point of departure and aim. But here the question
+relates to the judgment formed of this army and its chief; and he who
+would form a correct judgment of them must put himself in their place.
+As, then, this position is very elevated, very extraordinary, very
+complicated, few minds are capable of attaining it, embracing the whole
+of it, and appreciating all its necessary results.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXg" id="CHAP_IXg"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile Kutusoff, on leaving Moscow, had drawn Murat towards Kolomna,
+to the point where the Moskwa intersects the road. Here, under favour of
+the night, he suddenly turned to the south, proceeding by way of Podol,
+to throw himself between Moscow and Kalouga. This nocturnal march of the
+Russians around Moscow, the ashes and flames of which were wafted to
+them by the violence of the wind, was melancholy and religious. They
+advanced by the baleful light of the conflagration, which was consuming
+the centre of their commerce, the sanctuary of their religion, the
+cradle of their empire! Filled with horror and indignation, they all
+kept a sullen silence, which was unbroken save by the dull and
+monotonous sound of their footsteps, the roaring of the flames, and the
+howling of the tempest. The dismal light was frequently interrupted by
+livid and sudden flashes. The brows of these warriors might then be seen
+contracted by a savage grief, and the fire of their sombre and
+threatening looks answered these flames, which they regarded as our
+work; it already betrayed that ferocious revenge which was rankling in
+their hearts, which spread throughout the whole empire, and to which so
+many Frenchmen fell victims.</p>
+
+<p>At that solemn moment, Kutusoff in a firm and noble tone informed his
+sovereign of the loss of his capital. He declared, that, "in order to
+preserve the fertile provinces of the south, and his communication with
+Tormasof and Tchitchakof, he had been obliged to abandon Moscow, but
+emptied of the inhabitants, who were the life of it; that as the people
+are the soul of every empire, so wherever the Russian people were, there
+would be Moscow and the whole empire of Russia."</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, he seemed to bend under the weight of his grief. He
+admitted that "this wound was deep and could never be effaced;" but soon
+recovering himself, he added, that "the loss of Moscow made but one city
+less in the empire, that it was the sacrifice of a part for the
+salvation of the whole. He was throwing himself on the flank of the
+enemy's long line of operation, keeping him as it were blockaded by his
+detachments: there he should watch his movements, cover the resources of
+the empire, and again complete his army;" and already (on the 16th of
+September) he announced, that "Napoleon would be forced to abandon his
+fatal conquest."</p>
+
+<p>It is said that on the receipt of this intelligence Alexander was
+thunderstruck. Napoleon built hopes on the weakness of his rival, and
+the Russians at the same time dreaded the effect of that weakness. The
+Czar belied both these hopes and these fears. In his addresses to his
+subjects he exhibited himself great as his misfortune; "No pusillanimous
+dejection!" he exclaimed: "Let us vow redoubled courage and
+perseverance! The enemy is in deserted Moscow as in a tomb, without
+means of domination or even of existence. He entered Russia with three
+hundred thousand men of all countries, without union or any national or
+religious bond;&mdash;he has lost half of them by the sword, famine, and
+desertion: he has but the wreck of this army in Moscow; he is in the
+heart of Russia, and not a single Russian is at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile, our forces are increasing and inclosing him. He is in the
+midst of a mighty population, encompassed by armies which are waiting
+for, and keeping him in check. To escape famine, he will soon be obliged
+to direct his flight through the close ranks of our brave soldiers.
+Shall we then recede, when all Europe is looking on and encouraging us?
+Let us on the contrary set it an example, and kiss the hand which has
+chosen us to be the first of the nations in the cause of virtue and
+independence." He concluded with an invocation to the Almighty.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians entertain different opinions respecting their general and
+their Emperor. We, for our part, as enemies, can only judge of our
+enemies by their actions. Now such were their words, and their actions
+corresponded with them. Comrades! let us do them justice! their
+sacrifice was complete, without reserve, without tardy regrets. They
+have since claimed nothing, even in the enemy's capital which they
+preserved. Their renown has therefore remained great and unsullied. They
+have known real glory; and when a more advanced civilization shall have
+spread among all classes of that great nation, it will have its
+brilliant era, and will sway in its turn the sceptre of glory, which it
+seems to be decreed that the nations of the earth shall successively
+relinquish to each other.</p>
+
+<p>This circuitous march made by Kutusoff, either from indecision or
+stratagem, turned out fortunate for him. Murat lost all trace of him for
+three days. The Russian employed this interval in studying the ground
+and entrenching himself. His advanced guard had nearly reached Woronowo,
+one of the finest domains belonging to Count Rostopchin, when that
+nobleman proceeded forward before it. The Russians supposed that he was
+going to take a last look at this mansion, when all at once the edifice
+was wrapt from their sight by clouds of smoke.</p>
+
+<p>They hurried on to extinguish the fire, but Rostopchin himself rejected
+their aid. They beheld him amid the flames which he was encouraging,
+smiling at the demolition of this splendid mansion, and then with a firm
+hand penning these words, which the French, shuddering with surprise,
+read on the iron gate of a church which was left standing: "For eight
+years I have been embellishing this country seat, where I have lived
+happily in the bosom of my family. The inhabitants of this estate, to
+the number of 1,720, will leave it on your approach, while I have set
+fire to my house, that it might not be polluted by your presence.
+Frenchmen, I have relinquished to you my two houses at Moscow, with
+their furniture, worth half a million of rubles. Here you will find
+nothing but ashes."</p>
+
+<p>It was near this place that Murat came up with Kutusoff. On the 29th of
+September there was a smart engagement of cavalry towards Czerikowo, and
+another, on the 4th of October, near Vinkowo. But there, Miloradowitch,
+too closely pressed, turned round furiously, with twelve thousand horse,
+upon Sebastiani. He brought him into such danger, that Murat, amidst the
+fire, dictated a proposal for a suspension of arms, announcing to
+Kutusoff the approach of a flag of truce. It was Lauriston that he
+expected. But as the arrival of Poniatowski at that moment gave us some
+superiority, the king made no use of the letter which he had written; he
+fought till nightfall, and repulsed Miloradowitch.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the conflagration at Moscow, which commenced in the night of
+the 14th of September, suspended through our exertions during the day of
+the 15th, revived in the following night, and raging in its utmost
+violence on the 16th, 17th, and 18th, abated on the 19th. It ceased on
+the 20th. That very day, Napoleon, whom the flames had driven from the
+Kremlin, returned to the palace of the czars. He invited thither the
+looks of all Europe. He there awaited his convoys, his reinforcements,
+and the stragglers of his army; certain that all his men would be
+rallied by his victory, by the allurements of such vast booty, by the
+astonishing sight of captive Moscow, and above all, by his own glory,
+which from the top of this immense pile of ruins, still shone attractive
+like a beacon upon a rock.</p>
+
+<p>Twice, however, on the 22d and 28th of September, letters from Murat had
+well nigh drawn Napoleon from this fatal abode. They announced a battle;
+but twice the orders for departure, written in consequence, were burned.
+It seemed as though the war was finished for our Emperor, and that he
+was only waiting for an answer from Petersburg. He nourished his hopes
+with the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt. Was it possible that at
+Moscow he should have less ascendancy over Alexander? Then, like men who
+have long been favourites of fortune, what he ardently wished he
+confidently expected.</p>
+
+<p>His genius possessed besides that extraordinary faculty, which consisted
+in throwing aside the most important occupation whenever he pleased,
+either for the sake of variety or of rest: for in him the power of
+volition surpassed that of imagination. In this respect he reigned over
+himself as much as he did over others.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Paris diverted his attention from Petersburg. His affairs were as
+yet divided, and the couriers, which in the first days succeeded each
+other without intermission, served to engage him. But the rapidity with
+which he transacted business soon left him nothing to do. His expresses,
+which at first came from France in a fortnight, ceased to arrive. A few
+military posts, placed in four towns reduced to ashes, and in wooden
+houses rudely palisaded, were not sufficient to guard a road of
+ninety-three leagues: for we had not been able to establish more than a
+few echelons, and those at too great distances, on too long a line of
+operation, broken at every point where it was touched by the enemy; and
+for which a few peasants and a handful of Cossacks were quite
+sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Still no answer was received from Alexander. The uneasiness of Napoleon
+increased, and his means of distraction diminished. The activity of his
+genius, accustomed to the government of all Europe, had nothing
+wherewith to occupy itself but the management of one hundred thousand
+men; and then, the organization of his army was so perfect, that this
+was scarcely any occupation. Here every thing was fixed; he held all the
+wires in his hand: he was surrounded by ministers who could tell him
+immediately, at any hour of the day, the position of each man in the
+morning or at night, whether alone or not, whether with his colours, or
+in the hospital, or on leave of absence, or wherever else he might be,
+and that from Moscow to Paris&mdash;to such a degree of perfection had the
+science of military administration been brought, so experienced and well
+chosen were the officers, and so much was required by their commander.</p>
+
+<p>But eleven days had now elapsed; still Alexander was silent, and still
+did Napoleon hope to overcome his rival in obstinacy: thus losing the
+time which he ought to have gained, and which is always serviceable to
+defence against attack.</p>
+
+<p>From this period all his actions indicated to the Russians still more
+strongly than at Witepsk, that their mighty foe was resolved to fix
+himself in the heart of their empire. Moscow, though in ashes, received
+an intendant and municipalities. Orders were issued to provision it for
+the winter. A theatre was formed amidst the ruins. The first-rate actors
+of Paris were said to have been sent for. An Italian singer strove to
+reproduce in the Kremlin the evening entertainments of the Tuileries. By
+such means Napoleon expected to dupe a government, which the habit of
+reigning over error and ignorance had rendered an adept in all these
+deceptions.</p>
+
+<p>He was himself sensible of the inadequacy of these means, and yet
+September was past, October had begun. Alexander had not deigned to
+reply! it was an affront! he was exasperated. On the 3d of October,
+after a night of restlessness and anger, he summoned his marshals. "Come
+in," said he, as soon as he perceived them, "hear the new plan which I
+have conceived; Prince Eugene, read it." They listened. "We must burn
+the remains of Moscow, march by Twer to Petersburg, where we shall be
+joined by Macdonald. Murat and Davoust will form the rear-guard."&mdash;The
+Emperor, all animation, fixed his sparkling eyes on his generals, whose
+frigid and silent countenances expressed nothing but astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>Then exalting himself in order to rouse them&mdash;"What!" said he, "and are
+<i>you</i> not inflamed by this idea? Was there ever so great a military
+achievement? Henceforth this conquest is the only one that is worthy of
+us! With what glory we shall be covered, and what will the whole world
+say, when it learns that in three months we have conquered the two great
+capitals of the North!"</p>
+
+<p>But Davoust, as well as Daru, objected to him, "the season, the want of
+supplies, a sterile desert and artificial road, that from Twer to
+Petersburg, running for a hundred leagues through morasses, and which
+three hundred peasants might in one day render impassable. Why keep
+proceeding northward? why go to meet winter, to provoke and to defy
+it?&mdash;it was already too near; and what was to become of the six thousand
+wounded still in Moscow? were they then to be left to the mercy of
+Kutusoff? That general would not fail to follow close at our heels. We
+should have at once to attack and to defend ourselves, and to march, as
+though we were fleeing to a conquest."</p>
+
+<p>These officers have declared that they then proposed various plans; a
+useless trouble with a prince whose genius outstripped all other
+imaginations, and whom their objections would not have stopped, had he
+been really determined to march to Petersburg. But that idea was in him
+only a sally of anger, an inspiration of despair, on finding himself
+obliged in the face of Europe to give way, to relinquish a conquest, and
+to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>It was more especially a threat to frighten his officers as well as the
+enemy, and to bring about and promote a negotiation which Caulaincourt
+was to open. That officer had pleased Alexander; he was the only one of
+the grandees of Napoleon's court who had acquired any influence over his
+rival; but for some months past, Napoleon had kept him at a distance,
+because he had not been able to persuade him to approve his expedition.</p>
+
+<p>It was nevertheless to this very man that he was that day obliged to
+have recourse, and to disclose his anxiety. He sent for him; but when
+alone with him, he hesitated. Taking him by the arm, he walked to and
+fro a long time in great agitation, while his pride prevented him from
+breaking so painful a silence: at length it yielded, but in a
+threatening manner. He was to beg the enemy to solicit peace, as if he
+deigned to grant it.</p>
+
+<p>After a few words, which were scarcely articulate, he said, that "he was
+about to march to Petersburg. He knew that the destruction of that city
+would no doubt give pain to his grand-equerry. Russia would then rise
+against the Emperor Alexander: there would be a conspiracy against that
+monarch; he would be assassinated, which would be a most unfortunate
+circumstance. He esteemed that prince, and should regret him, both for
+his own sake and that of France. His character, he added, was suitable
+to our interests; no prince could replace him with such advantage to us.
+He thought therefore of sending Caulaincourt to him, to prevent such a
+catastrophe."</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Vicenza, however, more obstinate, than susceptible of
+flattery, did not alter his tone. He maintained that "these overtures
+would be useless; that so long as the Russian territory was not entirely
+evacuated, Alexander would not listen to any proposals; that Russia was
+sensible of all her advantage at this season of the year; nay, more,
+that this step would be detrimental to himself, inasmuch as it would
+demonstrate the need which Napoleon had of peace, and betray all the
+embarrassment of our situation."</p>
+
+<p>He added, "that the higher the rank of the negotiator whom he selected,
+the more clearly he would show his anxiety; that of course he himself
+would be more likely to fail than any other, especially as he should go
+with this certainty." The Emperor abruptly terminated the conversation
+by these words: "Well, then, I will send Lauriston."</p>
+
+<p>The latter asserts, that he added fresh objections to the preceding, and
+that, being urged by the Emperor, he recommended to him to begin his
+retreat that very day by way of Kalouga. Napoleon, irritated at this,
+acrimoniously replied, that "he liked simple plans, less circuitous
+routes, high roads, the road by which he had come, yet he would not
+retread it but with peace." Then showing to him, as he had done to the
+Duke of Vicenza, the letter which he had written to Alexander, he
+ordered him to go and obtain of Kutusoff a safe-conduct to Petersburg.
+The last words of the Emperor to Lauriston were: "I want peace, I must
+have peace, I absolutely will have peace; only save my honour!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Xg" id="CHAP_Xg"></a>CHAP. X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The general set out, and reached the advanced posts on the 5th of
+October. Hostilities were instantly suspended, the interview granted;
+but Wolkonsky, aide-de-camp to Alexander, and Beningsen were there
+without Kutusoff. Wilson asserts, that the Russian generals and
+officers, suspecting their commander, and accusing him of weakness, had
+raised a cry of treason, and that the latter had not dared to leave his
+camp.</p>
+
+<p>Lauriston's instructions purported that he was to address himself to no
+one but Kutusoff. He therefore peremptorily rejected any intermediate
+communication, and seizing, as he said, this occasion for breaking off a
+negotiation which he disapproved, he retired, in spite of all the
+solicitations of Wolkonsky, and determined to return to Moscow. In that
+case, no doubt, Napoleon, exasperated, would have fallen upon Kutusoff,
+overthrown him and destroyed his army, as yet very incomplete, and have
+forced him into a peace. In case of less decisive success, he would at
+least have been able to retire without loss upon his reinforcements.</p>
+
+<p>Beningsen unfortunately desired an interview with Murat. Lauriston
+paused. The chief of the Russian staff, an abler negotiator than
+soldier, strove to charm the new king by demonstrations of respect; to
+seduce him by praises; to deceive him with smooth words, breathing
+nothing but a weariness of war and the hope of peace: and Murat, tired
+of battles, anxious respecting their result, and as it is said,
+regretting his throne, now that he had no hope of a better, suffered
+himself to be charmed, seduced and deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Beningsen was equally successful in persuading his own commander, and
+the leader of our vanguard; he sent in great haste for Lauriston, and
+had him conducted to the Russian camp, where Kutusoff was waiting for
+him at midnight. The interview began ill. Konownitzin and Wolkonsky
+wished to be present. This shocked the French general: he insisted that
+they should retire, and they complied.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Lauriston was alone with Kutusoff, he explained his motives
+and his object, and applied for a safe-conduct to Petersburg. The
+Russian general replied, that a compliance with this demand exceeded his
+powers; but he immediately proposed to send Wolkonsky with the letter
+from Napoleon to Alexander, and offered an armistice till the return of
+that officer. He accompanied these proposals with pacific protestations,
+which were repeated by all his generals.</p>
+
+<p>"According to their account," they all deplored the continuance of the
+war. And for what reason? Their nations, like their Emperors, ought to
+esteem, to love, and to be allies of one another. It was their ardent
+wish that a speedy peace might arrive from Petersburg. Wolkonsky could
+not make "haste enough." They pressed round Lauriston, drawing him
+aside, taking him by the hand, and lavishing upon him those caressing
+manners which they have inherited from Asia.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon demonstrated that the chief point in which they were all
+agreed was to deceive Murat and his Emperor; and in this they succeeded.
+These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope,
+perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these
+appearances; eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed
+him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an
+expansive joy. He summoned all his generals; he triumphantly "announced
+to them a very speedy peace. They had but to wait another fortnight.
+None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character. On the
+receipt of his letter, Petersburg would be full of bonfires."</p>
+
+<p>But the armistice proposed by Kutusoff was unsatisfactory to him, and he
+ordered Murat to break it instantly; but notwithstanding, it continued
+to be observed, the cause of which is unknown.</p>
+
+<p>This armistice was a singular one. If either party wished to break it,
+three hours notice was to be sufficient. It was confined to the fronts
+of the two camps, but did not extend to their flanks. Such at least was
+the interpretation put upon it by the Russians. We could not bring up a
+convoy, or send out a foraging party, without fighting; so that the war
+continued everywhere, excepting where it could be favourable to us.</p>
+
+<p>In the first of the succeeding days, Murat took it into his head to show
+himself at the enemy's advanced posts. There, he was gratified by the
+notice which his fine person, his reputation for bravery, and his rank
+procured him. The Russian officers took good care not to displease him;
+they were profuse of all the marks of respect calculated to strengthen
+his illusion. He could give his orders to their vedettes just as he did
+to the French. If he took a fancy to any part of the ground which they
+occupied, they cheerfully gave it up to him.</p>
+
+<p>Some Cossack chiefs even went so far as to affect enthusiasm, and to
+tell him that they had ceased to acknowledge any other as Emperor but
+him who reigned at Moscow. Murat believed for a moment that they would
+no longer fight against him. He went even farther. Napoleon was heard to
+exclaim, while reading his letters, "Murat, King of the Cossacks! What
+folly!" The most extravagant ideas were conceived by men on whom fortune
+had lavished all sorts of favours.</p>
+
+<p>As for the Emperor, who could scarcely be deceived, he had but a few
+moments of a factitious joy. He soon complained "that an annoying
+warfare of partizans hovered around him; that notwithstanding all these
+pacific demonstrations, he was sensible that bodies of Cossacks were
+prowling on his flanks and in his rear. Had not one hundred and fifty
+dragoons of his old guard been surprised and routed, by a number of
+these barbarians? And this two days after the armistice, on the road to
+Mojaisk, on his line of operation, that by which the army communicated
+with its magazines, its reinforcements, its dep&ocirc;ts, and himself with
+Europe!"</p>
+
+<p>In fact two convoys had just fallen into the enemy's hands on that road:
+one through the negligence of its commander, who put an end to his life
+in despair; and the other through the cowardice of an officer, who was
+about to be punished when the retreat commenced. To the destruction of
+the army he owed his escape.</p>
+
+<p>Our soldiers, and especially our cavalry, were obliged every morning to
+go to a great distance in quest of provisions for the evening and the
+next day; and as the environs of Moscow and Vinkowo became gradually
+more and more drained, they were daily necessitated to extend their
+excursions. Both men and horses returned worn out with fatigue, that is
+to say such of them as returned at all; for we had to fight for every
+bushel of rye, and for every truss of forage. It was a series of
+incessant surprises, skirmishes, and losses. The peasantry took a part
+in it. They punished with death such of their number as the prospect of
+gain had allured to our camp with provisions. Others set fire to their
+own villages, to drive our foragers out of them, and to give them up to
+the Cossacks whom they had previously summoned, and who kept us there in
+a state of siege.</p>
+
+<p>It was the peasantry also who took Vere&iuml;a, a town in the neighbourhood
+of Moscow. One of their priests is said to have planned and executed
+this <i>coup-de-main</i>. He armed the inhabitants, obtained some troops from
+Kutusoff; then on the 10th of October, before daybreak, he caused the
+signal of a false attack to be given in one quarter, while in another he
+himself rushed upon our palisades, destroyed them, penetrated into the
+town, and put the whole garrison to the sword.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the war was every where; in our front, on our flanks and in our
+rear: the army was weakening, and the enemy becoming daily more
+enterprising. This conquest was destined to fare like many others, which
+are won in the mass, and lost in detail.</p>
+
+<p>Murat himself at length grew uneasy. In these daily skirmishes he saw
+half of the remnant of his cavalry melted away. At the advanced posts,
+or on meeting with our officers, those of the Russians, either from
+weariness, vanity, or military frankness carried to indiscretion,
+exaggerated the disasters which threatened us. They showed us those
+"wild-looking horses, scarcely at all broken in, whose long manes swept
+the dust of the plain. Did not this tell us that a numerous cavalry was
+joining them from all quarters, while ours was gradually perishing? Did
+not the continual discharges of fire-arms within their line apprise us
+that a multitude of recruits were there training under favour of the
+armistice?"</p>
+
+<p>And in fact, notwithstanding the long journies which they had to make,
+all these recruits joined the army. There was no occasion to defer
+calling them together as in other years, till deep snows, obstructing
+all the roads excepting the high road, rendered their desertion
+impossible. Not one failed to obey the national appeal; all Russia rose:
+mothers, it was said, wept for joy on learning that their sons had been
+selected for soldiers: they hastened to acquaint them with this glorious
+intelligence, and even accompanied them to see them marked with the sign
+of the Crusaders, to hear them cry, <i>'Tis the will of God!</i></p>
+
+<p>The Russian officers added, "that they were particularly astonished at
+our security on the approach of their mighty winter, which was their
+natural and most formidable ally, and which they expected every moment:
+they pitied us and urged us to fly. In a fortnight, your nails will drop
+off, and your arms will fall from your benumbed and half-dead fingers."</p>
+
+<p>The language of some of the Cossack chiefs was also remarkable. They
+asked our officers, "if they had not, in their own country, corn enough,
+air enough, graves enough&mdash;in short, room enough to live and die? Why
+then did they come so far from home to throw away their lives and to
+fatten a foreign soil with their blood?" They added, that "this was a
+robbery of their native land, which, while living, it is our duty to
+cultivate, to defend and to embellish; and to which after our death we
+owe our bodies, which we received from it, which it has fed, and which
+in their turn ought to feed it."</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was not ignorant of these warnings, but he would not suffer
+his resolution to be shaken by them. The uneasiness which had again
+seized him betrayed itself in angry orders. It was then that he caused
+the churches of the Kremlin to be stripped of every thing that could
+serve for a trophy to the grand army. These objects, devoted to
+destruction by the Russians themselves, belonged, he said, to the
+conquerors by the two-fold right conferred by victory, and still more by
+the conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>It required long efforts to remove the gigantic cross from the steeple
+of Ivan the Great, to the possession of which the Russians attached the
+salvation of their empire. The Emperor determined that it should adorn
+the dome of the invalids, at Paris. During the work it was remarked that
+a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that
+Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed, that "it seemed as
+if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot
+pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it
+is well known that he was accessible to every kind of presentiment.</p>
+
+<p>His daily excursions, always illumined by a brilliant sun, in which he
+strove himself to perceive and to make others recognize his star, did
+not amuse him. To the sullen silence of inanimate Moscow was superadded
+that of the surrounding deserts, and the still more menacing silence of
+Alexander. It was not the faint sound of the footsteps of our soldiers
+wandering in this vast sepulchre, that could rouse our Emperor from his
+reverie, and snatch him from his painful recollections and still more
+painful anticipations.</p>
+
+<p>His nights in particular became irksome to him. He passed part of them
+with Count Daru. It was then only that he admitted the danger of his
+situation. "From Wilna to Moscow what submission, what point of support,
+rest or retreat, marks his power? It is a vast, bare and desert field of
+battle, in which his diminished army is imperceptible, insulated, and as
+it were lost in the horrors of an immense void. In this country of
+foreign manners and religion, he has not conquered a single individual;
+he is in fact master only of the ground on which he stands. That which
+he has just quitted and left behind him is no more his than that which
+he has not yet reached. Insufficient for these vast deserts, he is lost
+as it were in their immense space."</p>
+
+<p>He then reviewed the different resolutions of which he still had the
+choice. "People imagined," he said, "that he had nothing to do but
+march, without considering that it would take a month to refit his army
+and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the
+Cossacks would celebrate daily triumphs over his sick and his
+stragglers. He would appear to fly. All Europe would resound with the
+report! Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom
+to rally, and which imagined that it had found such a rival in
+Alexander."</p>
+
+<p>Then appreciating all the power which he derived from the notion of his
+infallibility, he shuddered at the idea of giving it the first blow.
+"What a frightful series of dangerous wars would date from his first
+retrograde step! Let not then his inactivity be censured! As if I did
+not know," added he, "that in a military point of view Moscow is of no
+value! But Moscow is not a military position, it is a political
+position. People look upon me as general there, when in fact I am
+Emperor!" He then exclaimed that "in politics a person ought never to
+recede, never to retrograde, never to admit himself to be wrong, as it
+lessened his consideration; that when mistaken, he ought to persevere,
+in order to give him the appearance of being in the right."</p>
+
+<p>On this account he adhered to his own opinion with that tenacity which,
+on other occasions, was his best quality, but in this case his worst
+defect.</p>
+
+<p>His distress meanwhile increased. He knew that he could not rely on the
+Prussian army: an intimation from too authentic a source, addressed to
+Berthier, extinguished his confidence in the support of the Austrians.
+He was sensible that Kutusoff was playing with him, but he had gone so
+far, that he could neither advance nor stay where he was, nor retreat,
+nor fight with honour and success. Thus alternately impelled and held
+back by all that can decide and dissuade, he remained upon those ashes,
+ceasing to hope, but continuing to desire.</p>
+
+<p>The letter of which Lauriston was the bearer had been dispatched on the
+6th of October; the answer to it could scarcely arrive before the 20th;
+and yet in spite of so many threatening demonstrations, the pride, the
+policy, and perhaps the health of Napoleon induced him to pursue the
+worst of all courses, that of waiting for this answer, and of trusting
+to time which was destroying him. Daru, like his other grandees, was
+astonished to find in him no longer that prompt decision, variable and
+rapid as the circumstances that called it forth; they asserted, that his
+genius could no longer accommodate itself to them; they placed it to the
+account of his natural obstinacy, which led to his elevation, and was
+likely to cause his downfall.</p>
+
+<p>But in this extremely critical warlike position, which by its
+complication with a political position, became the most delicate which
+ever existed, it was not to be expected that a character like his, which
+had hitherto been so great from its unshaken constancy, would make a
+speedy renunciation of the object which he had proposed to himself ever
+since he left Witepsk.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIg" id="CHAP_XIg"></a>CHAP. XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Napoleon however, was completely aware of his situation. To him every
+thing seemed lost if he receded in the face of astonished Europe, and
+every thing saved if he could yet overcome Alexander in determination.
+He appreciated but too well the means that were left him to shake the
+constancy of his rival; he knew that the number of effective troops,
+that his situation, the season, in short every thing would become daily
+more and more unfavourable to him; but he reckoned upon that force of
+illusion which gave him his renown. Till that day he had borrowed from
+it a real and never-failing strength; he endeavoured therefore to keep
+up by specious arguments the confidence of his people, and perhaps also
+the faint hope that was yet left to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Moscow, empty of inhabitants, no longer furnished him with any thing to
+lay hold of. "It is no doubt a misfortune," said he, "but this
+misfortune is not without its advantage. Had it been otherwise, he would
+not have been able to keep order in so large a city, to overawe a
+population of three hundred thousand souls, and to sleep in the Kremlin
+without having his throat cut. They have left us nothing but ruins, but
+at least we are quiet among them. Millions have no doubt slipped through
+our hands, but how many millions is Russia losing! Her commerce is
+ruined for a century to come. The nation is thrown back fifty years;
+this, of itself, is an important result. When the first moment of
+enthusiasm is past, this reflexion will fill them with consternation."
+The conclusion which he drew was, that so violent a shock would convulse
+the throne of Alexander, and force that prince to sue for peace.</p>
+
+<p>If he reviewed his different <i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i>, as their reduced
+battalions now presented but a narrow front, which he had traversed in a
+moment, this diminution vexed him; and whether he wished to dissemble
+for the sake of his enemies or his own people, he declared that the
+practice hitherto pursued, of ranging the men three deep, was wrong, and
+that two were sufficient; he therefore ordered that in future his
+infantry should be drawn up in two ranks only.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, more, he insisted that the inflexibility of the <i>states of
+situation</i> should give way to this illusion. He disputed their results.
+The obstinacy of Count Lobau could not overcome his: he was desirous no
+doubt of making his aide-de-camp understand what he wished others to
+believe, and that nothing could shake his resolution.</p>
+
+<p>Murat, nevertheless, transmitted to him tidings of the distress of his
+advanced guard. They terrified Berthier; but Napoleon sent for the
+officer who brought them, pressed him with his interrogatories, daunted
+him with his looks, brow-beat him with his incredulity. The assertions
+of Murat's envoy lost much of their assurance. Napoleon took advantage
+of his hesitation to keep up the hopes of Berthier, and to persuade him
+that matters were not yet so very urgent; and he sent back the officer
+to Murat's camp with the opinion which he would no doubt propagate, that
+the Emperor was immoveable, that he doubtless had his reasons for thus
+persisting, and that they must all redouble their exertions.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the attitude of his army seconded his wishes. Most of the
+officers persevered in their confidence. The common soldiers, who,
+seeing their whole lives in the present moment and expecting but little
+from the future, concerned themselves but little about it, retained
+their thoughtlessness, the most valuable of their qualities. The
+rewards, however, which the Emperor bestowed profusely upon them in the
+daily reviews, were received only with a sedate joy, mingled with some
+degree of dejection. The vacant places that were just filled up were yet
+dyed with blood. These favours were threatening.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, ever since they had left Wilna many of them had
+thrown away their winter garments, that they might load themselves with
+provisions. Their shoes were worn by the length of the way, and the rest
+of their apparel by the actions in which they had been engaged; but, in
+spite of all, their attitude was still lofty. They carefully concealed
+their wretched plight from the notice of the Emperor, and appeared
+before him with their arms bright and in the best order. In this first
+court of the palace of the Czars, eight hundred leagues from their
+resources, and after so many battles and bivouacs, they were anxious to
+appear still clean, ready and smart; for herein consists the pride of
+the soldier: here they piqued themselves upon it the more on account of
+the difficulty, in order to astonish, and because man prides himself on
+every thing that requires extraordinary effort.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor complaisantly affected to know no better, catching at every
+thing to keep up his hopes, when all at once the first snows fell. With
+them fell all the illusions with which he had endeavoured to surround
+himself. From that moment he thought of nothing but retreat, without,
+however, pronouncing the word, and yet no positive order for it could be
+obtained from him. He merely said, that in twenty days the army must be
+in winter-quarters, and he urged the departure of his wounded. On this,
+as on other occasions, he would not consent to the voluntary
+relinquishment of any thing, however trifling; there was a deficiency of
+horses for his artillery, now too numerous for an army so reduced; it
+did not signify, and he flew into a passion at the proposal to leave
+part of it in Moscow. "No; the enemy would make a trophy of it."&mdash;and he
+insisted that every thing should go along with him.</p>
+
+<p>In this desert country, he gave orders for the purchase of twenty
+thousand horses, and he expected forage for two months to be provided,
+on a tract where the most distant and dangerous excursions were not
+sufficient for the supply of the passing day. Some of his officers were
+astonished to hear orders which it was so impossible to execute; but we
+have already seen that he sometimes issued such orders to deceive his
+enemies, and most frequently to indicate to his own troops the extent of
+his necessities, and the exertions which they ought to make for the
+purpose of supplying them.</p>
+
+<p>His distress manifested itself only in some paroxysms of ill humour. It
+was in the morning at his levee. There, amid the assembled chiefs, in
+whose anxious looks he imagined he could read disapprobation, he seemed
+desirous to awe them by the severity of his attitude, by his sharp tone
+and his abrupt language. From the paleness of his face, it was evident
+that Truth, whose best time for obtaining a hearing is in the darkness
+of night, had oppressed him grievously by her presence, and tired him
+with her unwelcome light. Sometimes, on these occasions, his bursting
+heart would overflow, and pour forth his sorrows around him by movements
+of impatience; but so far from lightening his grief, he aggravated them
+by those acts of injustice for which he reproached himself, and which he
+was afterwards anxious to repair.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Count Daru alone that he unbosomed himself frankly, but
+without weakness. He said, "he should march upon Kutusoff, crush or
+drive him back, and then turn suddenly towards Smolensk." Daru, who had
+before approved this course, replied, that "it was now too late; that
+the Russian army was reinforced, his own weakened; his victory
+forgotten; that the moment his troops should turn their faces towards
+France, they would slip away from him by degrees; that each soldier,
+laden with booty, would try to get the start of the army, for the
+purpose of selling it in France."&mdash;"What then is to be done?" exclaimed
+the Emperor. "Remain here," replied Daru, "make one vast entrenched camp
+of Moscow and pass the winter in it. He would answer for it that there
+would be no want of bread and salt: the rest foraging on a large scale
+would supply. Such of the horses as they could not procure food for
+might be salted down. As to lodgings, if there were not houses enough,
+the cellars might make up the deficiency. Here we might stay till the
+return of spring, when our reinforcements and all Lithuania in arms
+should come to relieve, to join us, and to complete the conquest."</p>
+
+<p>After listening to this proposal the Emperor was for some time silent
+and thoughtful; he then replied, "This is a lion's counsel! But what
+would Paris say? what would they do there? what have they been doing for
+the last three weeks that they have not heard from me? who knows what
+would be the effect of a suspension of communications for six months!
+No; France would not accustom itself to my absence, and Prussia and
+Austria would take advantage of it."</p>
+
+<p>Still Napoleon did not decide either to stay or to depart. Overcome in
+this struggle of obstinacy, he deferred from day to day the avowal of
+his defeat. Amid the dreadful storm of men and elements which was
+gathering around him, his ministers and his aides-de-camp saw him pass
+whole days in discussing the merits of some new verses which he had
+received, or the regulations for the <i>Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise</i> at Paris, which
+he took three evenings to finish. As they were acquainted with his deep
+anxiety, they admired the strength of his genius, and the facility with
+which he could take off or fix the whole force of his attention on
+whatever he pleased.</p>
+
+<p>It was merely remarked that he prolonged his meals, which had hitherto
+been so simple and so short. He seemed desirous of stifling thought by
+repletion. He would then pass whole hours, half reclined, as if torpid,
+and awaiting, with a novel in his hand, the catastrophe of his terrible
+history. On beholding this obstinate and inflexible character struggling
+with impossibility, his officers would then observe to one another, that
+having arrived at the summit of his glory, he no doubt foresaw that from
+his first retrograde step would date its decline; that for this reason
+he continued immoveable, clinging to and lingering a few moments longer
+on this elevation.</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff, meanwhile, was gaining that time which we were losing. His
+letters to Alexander described "his army as being in the midst of
+abundance; his recruits arriving from all quarters and being trained;
+his wounded recovering in the bosom of their families; the peasants,
+some in arms, some on the look out from the tops of steeples, while
+others were stealing into our habitations and even into the Kremlin.
+Rostopchin received from them a daily report of what was passing at
+Moscow, as before its capture. If they undertook to be our guides, it
+was for the purpose of delivering us into his hands. His partizans were
+every day bringing in some hundreds of prisoners. Every thing concurred
+to destroy the enemy's army and to strengthen his own; to serve him and
+to betray us; in a word, the campaign, which was over for us, was but
+just about to begin for them."</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff neglected no advantage. He made his camp ring with the news of
+the victory of Salamanca. "The French," said he, "are expelled from
+Madrid. The hand of the Most High presses heavily upon Napoleon. Moscow
+will be his prison, his grave, and that of all his grand army. We shall
+soon take France in Russia!" It was in such language that the Russian
+general addressed his troops and his Emperor; and nevertheless he still
+kept up appearances with Murat. At once bold and crafty, he contrived
+slowly to prepare a sudden and impetuous warfare, and to cover his plans
+for our destruction with demonstrations of kindness and honeyed words.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after several days of illusion, the charm was dispelled. A
+Cossack completely dissolved it. This barbarian fired at Murat, at the
+moment when that prince came as usual to show himself at the advanced
+posts. Murat was exasperated; he declared to Miloradowitch that an
+armistice which was incessantly violated was at an end; and that
+thenceforward each ought to put confidence in himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time he apprised the Emperor, that a woody country on his
+left might favour attempts against his flank and rear; that his first
+line, backed against a ravine, might be precipitated into it; that in
+short the position which he occupied, in advance of a defile, was
+dangerous, and rendered a retrograde movement absolutely necessary. But
+Napoleon would not consent to this step, though he had at first pointed
+out Woronowo as a more secure position. In this war, still in his view
+rather political than military, he dreaded above all the appearance of
+receding. He preferred risking every thing.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, on the 13th of October, he sent back Lauriston to
+Murat, to examine the position of the vanguard. As to the Emperor,
+either from a tenacious adherence to his first hope, or that any
+disposition which might be construed into a preparation for retreat,
+equally shocked his pride and his policy, a singular negligence was
+remarked in his preparations for departure. He nevertheless thought of
+it, for that very day he traced his plan of retreat by Woloklamsk,
+Zubtzow, and Bielo&eacute;, on Witepsk. A moment afterwards he dictated another
+on Smolensk. Junot received orders to burn on the 21st, at Kolotskoi,
+all the muskets of the wounded, and to blow up the ammunition waggons.
+D'Hilliers was to occupy Elnia, and to form magazines at that place. It
+was not till the 17th, at Moscow, that Berthier thought of causing
+leather to be distributed for the first time among the troops.</p>
+
+<p>This major-general was a wretched substitute for his principal on this
+critical occasion. In a strange country and climate, he recommended no
+new precaution, and he expected the minutest details to be dictated by
+his Emperor. They were forgotten. This negligence or want of foresight
+was attended with fatal consequences. In an army, each division of which
+was commanded by a marshal, a prince, or even a king, one relied perhaps
+too much on the other. Besides, Berthier gave no orders of himself; he
+thought it enough to repeat exactly the very letter of Napoleon's
+commands; for, as to their spirit, either from fatigue or habit, he was
+incessantly confounding the positive with the conjectural parts of those
+instructions.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon meanwhile rallied his <i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i>. The reviews which he
+held in the Kremlin were more frequent; he formed all the dismounted
+cavalry into battalions, and lavishly distributed rewards. The division
+of Claparede, the trophies and all the wounded that could be removed,
+set out for Mojaisk; the rest were collected in the great foundling
+hospital; French surgeons were placed there; and the Russian wounded,
+intermixed with ours, were intended to serve them for a safeguard.</p>
+
+<p>But it was too late. Amid these preparations, and at the moment when
+Napoleon was reviewing Ney's divisions in the first court of the
+Kremlin, a report was all at once circulated around him, that the report
+of cannon was heard towards Vinkowo. It was some time before any one
+durst apprise him of the circumstance; some from incredulity or
+uncertainty, and dreading the first movement of his impatience; others
+from love of ease, hesitating to provoke a terrible signal, or
+apprehensive of being sent to verify this assertion, and of exposing
+themselves to a fatiguing excursion.</p>
+
+<p>Duroc, at length, took courage. The Emperor was at first agitated, but
+quickly recovering himself, he continued the review. An aide-de-camp,
+young Beranger, arrived shortly after with the intelligence that Murat's
+first line had been surprised and overthrown, his left turned by favour
+of the woods, his flank attacked, his retreat cut off; that twelve
+pieces of cannon, twenty ammunition waggons, and thirty waggons
+belonging to the train were taken, two generals killed, three or four
+thousand men lost and the baggage; and lastly, that the King was
+wounded. He had not been able to rescue the relics of his advanced guard
+from the enemy, but by repeatedly charging their numerous troops which
+already occupied the high road in his rear, his only retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Our honour however was saved. The attack in front, directed by Kutusoff,
+was feeble; Poniatowski, at some leagues distance on the right, made a
+glorious resistance; Murat and his carbineers, by supernatural
+exertions, checked Bagawout, who was ready to penetrate our left flank,
+and restored the fortune of the day. Claparede and Latour-Maubourg
+cleared the defile of Spaskaplia, two leagues in the rear of our line,
+which was already occupied by Platof. Two Russian generals were killed,
+and others wounded: the loss of the enemy was considerable, but the
+advantage of the attack, our cannon, our position, the victory in short,
+were theirs.</p>
+
+<p>As for Murat, he no longer had an advanced guard. The armistice had
+destroyed half the remnant of his cavalry. This engagement finished it;
+the survivors, emaciated with hunger, were so few as scarcely to furnish
+a charge. Thus had the war recommenced. It was now the 18th of October.</p>
+
+<p>At these tidings Napoleon recovered the fire of his early years. A
+thousand orders general and particular, all differing, yet all in unison
+and all necessary, burst at once from his impetuous genius. Night had
+not yet arrived, and the whole army was already in motion for Woronowo;
+Broussier was sent in the direction of Fominsko&euml;, and Poniatowski toward
+Medyn. The Emperor himself quitted Moscow before daylight on the 19th of
+October. "Let us march upon Kalouga," said he, "and woe be to those whom
+I meet with by the way!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_IX" id="BOOK_IX"></a>BOOK IX.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Ih" id="CHAP_Ih"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the southern part of Moscow, near one of its gates, one of its most
+extensive suburbs is divided by two high roads; both run to Kalouga: the
+one, that on the right, is the more ancient; the other is new. It was on
+the first that Kutusoff had just beaten Murat. By the same road Napoleon
+left Moscow on the 19th of October, announcing to his officers his
+intention to return to the frontiers of Poland by Kalouga, Medyn,
+Yuknow, Elnia, and Smolensk. One of them, Rapp, observed that "it was
+late, and that winter might overtake them by the way." The Emperor
+replied, "that he had been obliged to allow time to the soldiers to
+recruit themselves, and to the wounded collected in Moscow, Mojaisk, and
+Kolotskoi, to move off towards Smolensk." Then pointing to a still
+serene sky, he asked, "if in that brilliant sun they did not recognize
+his star?" But this appeal to his fortune, and the sinister expression
+of his looks, belied the security which he affected.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon entered Moscow with ninety thousand fighting men, and twenty
+thousand sick and wounded, and quitted it with more than a hundred
+thousand combatants. He left there only twelve hundred sick. His stay,
+notwithstanding daily losses, had therefore served to rest his infantry,
+to complete his stores, to augment his force by ten thousand men, and to
+protect the recovery or the retreat of a great part of his wounded. But
+on this very first day he could perceive, that his cavalry and artillery
+might be said rather to crawl than to march.</p>
+
+<p>A melancholy spectacle added to the gloomy presentiments of our chief.
+The army had ever since the preceding day been pouring out of Moscow
+without intermission. In this column of one hundred and forty thousand
+men and about fifty thousand horses of all kinds, a hundred thousand
+combatants marching at the head with their knapsacks, their arms,
+upwards of five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand
+artillery-waggons, still exhibited a formidable appearance, worthy of
+soldiers who had conquered the world. But the rest, in an alarming
+proportion, resembled a horde of Tartars after a successful invasion. It
+consisted of three or four files of infinite length, in which there was
+a mixture, a confusion of chaises, ammunition waggons, handsome
+carriages, and vehicles of every kind. Here trophies of Russian,
+Turkish, and Persian colours, and the gigantic cross of Ivan the
+Great&mdash;there, long-bearded Russian peasants carrying or driving along
+our booty, of which they constituted a part: others dragging even
+wheelbarrows filled with whatever they could remove. The fools were not
+likely to proceed in this manner till the conclusion of the first day:
+their senseless avidity made them think nothing of battles and a march
+of eight hundred leagues.</p>
+
+<p>In these followers of the army were particularly remarked a multitude of
+men of all nations, without uniform and without arms, and servants
+swearing in every language, and urging by dint of shouts and blows the
+progress of elegant carriages, drawn by pigmy horses harnessed with
+ropes. They were filled with provisions, or with the booty saved from
+the flames. They carried also French women with their children. Formerly
+these females were happy inhabitants of Moscow; they now fled from the
+hatred of the Muscovites, which the invasion had drawn upon their heads;
+the army was their only asylum.</p>
+
+<p>A few Russian girls, voluntary captives, also followed. It looked like a
+caravan, a wandering nation, or rather one of those armies of antiquity
+returning loaded with slaves and spoil after a great devastation. It was
+inconceivable how the head of this column could draw and support such a
+heavy mass of equipages in so long a route.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the width of the road and the shouts of his escort,
+Napoleon had great difficulty to obtain a passage through this immense
+throng. No doubt the obstruction of a defile, a few forced marches and a
+handful of Cossacks, would have been sufficient to rid us of all this
+incumbrance: but fortune or the enemy had alone a right to lighten us in
+this manner. As for the Emperor, he was fully sensible that he could
+neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor
+reproach them for securing it. Besides, the provisions concealed the
+booty, and could he, who could not give his troops the subsistence which
+he ought to have done, forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly,
+in failure of military conveyances, these vehicles would be the only
+means of preservation for the sick and wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, therefore, extricated himself in silence from the immense
+train which he drew after him, and advanced on the old road leading to
+Kalouga. He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that
+he should go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all
+at once, about mid-day, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he
+halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three
+marches across the country gained the new road to Kalouga.</p>
+
+<p>The rain, which overtook him in the midst of this man&oelig;uvre, spoiled
+the cross-roads, and obliged him to halt in them. This was a most
+unfortunate circumstance. It was not without difficulty that our cannon
+were drawn out of the sloughs.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate the Emperor had masked his movement by Ney's corps and the
+relics of Murat's cavalry, which had remained behind the Motscha and at
+Woronowo. Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the
+grand army on the old road, whilst on the 23rd of October, the whole of
+it, transferred to the new one, had but one march to make in order to
+pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kalouga.</p>
+
+<p>A letter from Berthier to Kutusoff, dated the first day of this flanking
+march, was at once a last attempt at peace, and perhaps a <i>ruse de
+guerre</i>. No satisfactory answer was returned to it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIh" id="CHAP_IIh"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 23rd the imperial quarters were at Borowsk. That night was an
+agreeable one for the Emperor: he was informed that at six in the
+evening Delzons and his division had, four leagues in advance of him,
+found Malo-Yaroslawetz and the woods which command it unoccupied: this
+was a strong position within reach of Kutusoff, and the only point where
+he could cut us off from the new road to Kalouga.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor wished first to secure this advantage by his presence; the
+order to march was even given, but withdrawn, we know not why. He passed
+the whole of that evening on horseback, not far from Borowsk, on the
+left of the road, the side on which he supposed Kutusoff to be. He
+reconnoitred the ground in the midst of a heavy rain, as if he
+anticipated that it might become a field of battle. Next day, the 24th,
+he learned that the Russians had disputed the possession of
+Malo-Yaroslawetz with Delzons. Owing either to confidence or uncertainty
+in his plans, this intelligence gave him very little concern.</p>
+
+<p>He quitted Borowsk, therefore, late and leisurely, when the noise of a
+very smart engagement reached where he was; he then became uneasy,
+hastened to an eminence and listened. "Had the Russians anticipated him?
+Was his man&oelig;uvre thwarted? Had he not used sufficient expedition in
+that march, the object of which was to pass the left flank of Kutusoff?"</p>
+
+<p>In reality there was in this whole movement a little of that torpor
+which succeeds a long repose. Moscow is but one hundred and ten wersts
+from Malo-Yaroslawetz; four days would have been sufficient to go that
+distance; we took six. The army, laden with provisions and pillage, was
+heavy, and the roads were deep. A whole day had been sacrificed to the
+passage of the Nara and its morass, as also to the rallying of the
+different corps. It is true that in defiling so near the enemy it was
+necessary to march close, that we might not present to him too long a
+flank. Be this as it may, we may date all our calamities from that
+delay.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was still listening; the noise increased. "Is it then a
+battle?" he exclaimed. Every discharge agitated him, for the chief point
+with him was no longer to conquer, but to preserve, and he urged on
+Davoust, who accompanied him; but he and that marshal did not reach the
+field of battle till dark, when the firing was subsiding and the whole
+was over.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor saw the end of the battle, but without being able to assist
+the viceroy. A band of Cossacks from Twer had nearly captured one of his
+officers, who was only a very short distance from him.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till then that an officer, sent by Prince Eugene, came to him
+to explain the whole affair. "The troops had," he said, "in the first
+place, been obliged to cross the Louja at the foot of Malo-Yaroslawetz,
+at the bottom of an elbow which the river makes in its course; and then
+to climb a steep hill: it is on this rapid declivity, broken by pointed
+crags, that the town is built. Beyond is an elevated plain, surrounded
+with wood from which run three roads, one in front, coming from Kalouga,
+and two on the left, from Lectazowo, the entrenched camp of Kutusoff.</p>
+
+<p>"On the preceding day Delzons found no enemy there; but he did not think
+it prudent to place his whole division in the upper town, beyond a river
+and a defile, and on the margin of a precipice, down which it might have
+been thrown by a nocturnal surprise. He remained, therefore, on the low
+bank of the Louja, sending only two battalions to occupy the town and to
+watch the elevated plain.</p>
+
+<p>"The night was drawing to a close; it was four o'clock, and all were
+already asleep in Delzons's bivouacs, excepting a few sentinels, when
+Doctorof's Russians suddenly rushed in the dark out of the wood with
+tremendous shouts. Our sentinels were driven back on their posts, the
+posts on their battalions, the battalions on the division: and yet it
+was not a <i>coup-de-main</i>, for the Russians had brought up cannon. At the
+very commencement of the attack, the firing had conveyed the tidings of
+a serious affair to the viceroy, who was three leagues distant."</p>
+
+<p>The report added, that "the Prince had immediately hastened up with some
+officers, and that his divisions and his guard had precipitately
+followed him. As he approached, a vast amphitheatre, where all was
+bustle, opened before him; the Louja marked the foot of it, and a
+multitude of Russian riflemen already disputed its banks."</p>
+
+<p>Behind them from the summit of the declivities on which the town was
+situated, their advanced guard poured their fire on Delzons: beyond
+that, on the elevated plain, the whole army of Kutusoff was hastening up
+in two long black columns, by the two roads from Lectazowo. They were
+seen stretching and entrenching themselves on this bare slope, upon a
+line of about half a league, where they commanded and embraced every
+thing by their number and position: they were already placing themselves
+across the old road to Kalouga, which was open the preceding day, which
+we might have occupied and travelled if we had pleased, but which
+Kutusoff would henceforward have it in his power to defend inch by inch.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy's artillery had at the same time taken advantage of the
+heights which bordered the river on their side; their fire traversed the
+low ground in the bend of the river, in which were Delzons and his
+troops. The position was untenable, and hesitation would have been
+fatal. It was necessary to get out of it either by a prompt retreat, or
+by an impetuous attack; but it was before us that our retreat lay, and
+the viceroy gave orders for the attack.</p>
+
+<p>After crossing the Louja by a narrow bridge, the high road from Kalouga
+runs along the bottom of a ravine which ascends to the town, and then
+enters Malo-Yaroslawetz. The Russians, in mass occupied this hollow way:
+Delzons and his Frenchmen rushed upon them head foremost; the Russians
+were broken and overthrown; they gave way and presently our bayonets
+glistened on the heights.</p>
+
+<p>Delzons, conceiving himself sure of the victory, announced it as won. He
+had nothing but a pile of buildings to storm, his soldiers hesitated. He
+himself advanced and was encouraging them by his words, gestures and
+example, when a ball struck him on the forehead, and extended him on the
+ground. His brother threw himself upon him, covered him with his body,
+clasped him in his arms, and would have borne him off out of the fire
+and the fray, but a second ball hit him also, and both expired together.</p>
+
+<p>This loss left a great void, which required to be filled up. Guilleminot
+succeeded Delzons, and the first thing he did was to throw a hundred
+grenadiers into a church and church-yard, in the walls of which they
+made loop-holes. This church stood on the left of the high road, which
+it commanded, and to this edifice we owed the victory. Five times on
+that day was this post passed by the Russian columns, which were
+pursuing ours, and five times did its fire, seasonably poured upon their
+flank and rear, harass them and slacken their progress: afterwards when
+we resumed the offensive, this position placed them between two fires
+and ensured the success of our attacks.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had that general made this disposition when he was assailed by
+hosts of Russians; he was driven back towards the bridge, where the
+viceroy had stationed himself, in order to judge how to act and prepare
+his reserves. At first the reinforcements which he sent came up but
+slowly one after another; and as is almost always the case, each of
+them, being inadequate to any great effort, was successively destroyed
+without result.</p>
+
+<p>At length the whole of the 14th division was engaged: the combat was
+then carried, for the third time, to the heights. But when the French
+had passed the houses, when they had removed from the central point from
+which they set out; when they had reached the plain, where they were
+exposed, and where the circle expanded; they could advance no farther:
+overwhelmed by the fire of a whole army they were daunted and shaken:
+fresh Russians incessantly came up; our thinned ranks gave way and were
+broken; the obstacles of the ground increased their confusion: they
+again descended precipitately and abandoned every thing.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the shells having set fire to the wooden town behind them, in
+their retreat they were stopped by the conflagration; one fire drove
+them back upon another; the Russian recruits, wrought up to a pitch of
+fanatic fury, closely pursued them; our soldiers became enraged; they
+fought man to man: some were seen seizing each other by one hand,
+striking with the other, until both victors and vanquished rolled down
+precipices into the flames, without losing their hold. There the wounded
+expired, either suffocated by the smoke, or consumed by the fire. Their
+blackened and calcined skeletons soon presented a hideous sight, when
+the eye could still discover in them the traces of a human form.</p>
+
+<p>All, however, were not equally intent on doing their duty. There was one
+officer, a man who was known to talk very big, and who, at the bottom of
+a ravine, wasted the time for action in making speeches. In this place
+of security he kept about him a sufficient number of troops to authorize
+his remaining himself, leaving the rest to expose themselves in detail,
+without unison and at random.</p>
+
+<p>The 15th division was still left. The viceroy summoned it: as it
+advanced, it threw a brigade into the suburb on the left, and another
+into the town on the right. It consisted of Italians, recruits, who had
+never before been in action. They ascended, shouting enthusiastically,
+ignorant of the danger or despising it, from that singular disposition,
+which renders life less dear in its flower than in its decline, either
+because while young we fear death less from the feeling of its distance,
+or because at that age, rich in years and prodigal of every thing, we
+squander life as the wealthy do their fortune.</p>
+
+<p>The shock was terrible: every thing was reconquered for the fourth time,
+and lost in like manner. More eager to begin than their seniors, they
+were sooner disheartened, and returned flying to the old battalions,
+which supported and were obliged to lead them back to the danger.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians, emboldened by their incessantly increasing numbers and
+success, then descended by their right to gain possession of the bridge
+and to cut off our retreat. Prince Eugene had nothing left but his last
+reserve: he and his guard now took part in the combat. At this sight,
+and at his call, the remains of the 13th, 14th, and 15th divisions
+mustered their courage; they made a powerful and a last effort, and for
+the fifth time the combat was transferred to the heights.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time Colonel Peraldi and the Italian chasseurs overthrew
+with their bayonets the Russians, who were already approaching the left
+of the bridge, and inebriated by the smoke and the fire, through which
+they had passed, by the havoc which they made, and by their victory,
+they pushed forward without stopping on the elevated plain, and
+endeavoured to make themselves masters of the enemy's cannon: but one of
+those deep clefts, with which the soil of Russia is intersected, stopped
+them in the midst of a destructive fire; their ranks opened, the enemy's
+cavalry attacked them, and they were driven back to the very gardens of
+the suburbs. There they paused and rallied: all, both French and
+Italians, obstinately defended the upper avenues of the town, and the
+Russians being at length repulsed, drew back and concentrated themselves
+on the road to Kalouga, between the woods and Malo-Yaroslawetz.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner eighteen thousand Italians and French crowded together at
+the bottom of a ravine, defeated fifty thousand Russians, posted over
+their heads, and seconded by all the obstacles that a town built on a
+steep declivity is capable of presenting.</p>
+
+<p>The army, however, surveyed with sorrow this field of battle, where
+seven generals and four thousand Italians had been killed or wounded.
+The sight of the enemy's loss afforded no consolation; it was not twice
+the amount of ours, and their wounded would be saved. It was moreover
+recollected that in a similar situation Peter I., in sacrificing ten
+Russians for one Swede, thought that he was not sustaining merely an
+equal loss, but even gaining by so terrible a bargain. But what caused
+the greatest pain, was the idea that so sanguinary a conflict might have
+been spared.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the fires which were discovered on our left, in the night
+between the 23d and 24th, had apprised us of the movement of the
+Russians towards Malo-Yaroslawetz; and yet the French army had marched
+thither languidly; a single division, thrown to the distance of three
+leagues from all succour, had been carelessly risked; the <i>corps
+d'arm&eacute;e</i> had remained out of reach of each other. Where were now the
+rapid movements of Marengo, Ulm, and Eckm&uuml;hl? Why so slow and drawling a
+march on such a critical occasion? Was it our artillery and baggage that
+had caused this tardiness? Such was at least the most plausible
+presumption.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIh" id="CHAP_IIIh"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When the Emperor heard the report of this combat, he was a few paces to
+the right of the high road, at the bottom of a ravine, close to the
+rivulet and village of Ghorodinia, in the habitation of a weaver, an
+old, crazy, filthy, wooden hut. Here he was half a league from
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, at the commencement of the bend of the Louja. It was
+in this worm-eaten dwelling, and in a dirty dark room, parted off into
+two by a cloth, that the fate of the army and of Europe was about to be
+decided.</p>
+
+<p>The first hours of the night passed in receiving reports. All agreed
+that the enemy was making preparations against the next day for a
+battle, which all were disposed to decline. About eleven o'clock
+Bessi&egrave;res entered. This marshal owed his elevation to honourable
+services, and above all to the affection of the Emperor, who had become
+attached to him as to a creation of his own. It is true, that a man
+could not be a favourite with Napoleon, as with any other monarch; that
+it was necessary at least to have followed and been of some service to
+him, for he sacrificed little to the agreeable; in short, it was
+requisite that he should have been more than a witness of so many
+victories; and the Emperor when fatigued, accustomed himself to see with
+eyes which he believed to be of his own formation.</p>
+
+<p>He had sent this marshal to examine the attitude of the enemy. Bessi&egrave;res
+had obeyed: he had carefully explored the front of the Russian position.
+"It is," said he, "unassailable!"&mdash;"Oh heavens!" exclaimed the Emperor,
+clasping his hands, "are you sure you are right? Are you not mistaken?
+Will you answer for that?" Bessi&egrave;res repeated his assertion: he affirmed
+that "three hundred grenadiers would there be sufficient to keep in
+check a whole army." Napoleon then crossed his arms with a look of
+consternation, hung his head, and remained as if overwhelmed with the
+deepest dejection. "His army was victorious and himself conquered. His
+route was intercepted, his man&oelig;uvre, thwarted: Kutusoff, an old man,
+a Scythian, had been beforehand with him! And he could not accuse his
+star. Did not the sun of France seem to have followed him to Russia? Was
+not the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz open but the preceding day? It was not
+his fortune then that had failed him, but he who had been wanting to his
+fortune?"</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed in this abyss of painful reflections, he fell into so profound
+a stupor, that none of those about him could draw from him a single
+word. Scarcely could a nod of the head be obtained from him by dint of
+importunity. At length he strove to get some rest: but a feverish
+anxiety prevented him from closing his eyes. During all the rest of that
+cruel night he kept rising, lying down again, and calling incessantly,
+but yet not a single word betrayed his distress: it was only from the
+agitation of his body that the anguish of his mind was to be inferred.</p>
+
+<p>About four in the morning, one of his orderly officers, the Prince
+d'Aremberg, came to inform him that under favour of the night, the woods
+and some inequalities of ground, Cossacks were slipping in between him
+and his advanced posts. The Emperor had just sent off Poniatowski on his
+right to Kremenskoe. So little did he expect the enemy from that side,
+that he had neglected to order out any scouts on his right flank. He
+therefore slighted the report of his orderly officer.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner did the sun appear above the horizon on the 25th, than he
+mounted his horse, and advanced on the Kalouga road, which to him was
+now nothing more than the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz. To reach the bridge
+of that town, he had to cross the plain, about a league in length and
+breadth, embraced by the bend of the Louja: a few officers only attended
+him. The four squadrons of his usual escort, not having been previously
+apprised, hastened to rejoin, but had not yet overtaken him. The road
+was covered with sick-waggons, artillery, and vehicles of luxury: it was
+the interior of the army, and every one was marching on without
+mistrust.</p>
+
+<p>In the distance, towards the right, a few small bodies of men were first
+seen running, and then large black lines advancing. Outcries were
+presently heard: some women and attendants on the army were met running
+back, too much affrighted and out of breath, either to listen to any
+thing, or to answer any question. At the same time the file of vehicles
+stopped in uncertainty; disorder arose in it: some endeavoured to
+proceed, others to turn back; they crossed, jostled and upset one
+another: and the whole was soon a scene of complete uproar and
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor looked on and smiled, still advancing, and believing it to
+be a groundless panic. His aides-de-camp suspected that it was Cossacks
+whom they saw, but they marched in such regular platoons that they still
+had doubts on the subject; and if those wretches had not howled at the
+moment of attack, as they all do to stifle the sense of danger, it is
+probable that Napoleon would not have escaped them. A circumstance which
+increased the peril was, that their cries were at first mistaken for
+acclamations, and their hurrahs for shouts of <i>Vive l'Empereur!</i></p>
+
+<p>It was Platof and six thousand Cossacks, who in the rear of our
+victorious advanced-guard, had ventured to cross the river, the low
+plain and the high road, carrying all before them; and it was at the
+very moment when the Emperor, perfectly tranquil in the midst of his
+army, and the windings of a deep river, was advancing, refusing belief
+to so audacious a plan, that they put it in execution.</p>
+
+<p>When they had once started, they approached with such speed, that Rapp
+had but just time to say to the Emperor, "It is the Cossacks!&mdash;turn
+back!" The Emperor, whose eyes deceived him, or who disliked running
+away, stood firm, and was on the point of being surrounded, when Rapp
+seized the bridle of his horse, and turned him round, crying. "Indeed
+you must!" And really it was high time to fly, although Napoleon's pride
+would not allow him to do so. He drew his sword, the Prince of
+Neufchatel and the grand equerry did the same; then placing themselves
+on the left side of the road, they waited the approach of the horde,
+from which they were not forty paces distant. Rapp had barely time to
+turn himself round to face these barbarians, when the foremost of them
+thrust his lance into the chest of his horse with such violence as to
+throw him down. The other aides-de-camp, and a few horse belonging to
+the guard, extricated the general. This action, the bravery of
+Lecoulteux, the efforts of a score of officers and chasseurs, and above
+all the thirst of these barbarians for plunder, saved the Emperor. And
+yet they needed only to have stretched out their hands and seized him;
+for, at the same moment, the horde, in crossing the high road, overthrew
+every thing before them, horses, men, and carriages, wounding and
+killing some, and dragging them into the woods for the purpose of
+plundering them; then, loosing the horses harnessed to the guns, they
+took them along with them across the country. But they had only a
+momentary victory; a triumph of surprise. The cavalry of the guard
+galloped up; at this sight they let go their prey and fled; and this
+torrent subsided, leaving indeed melancholy traces, but abandoning all
+that it was hurrying away in its course.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these barbarians, however, carried their audacity even to
+insolence. They were seen retiring at a foot-pace across the interval
+between our squadrons, and coolly reloading their arms. They reckoned
+upon the heaviness of our cavalry of the <i>&eacute;lite</i>, and the swiftness of
+their own horses, which they urge with a whip. Their flight was effected
+without disorder; they faced round several times, without waiting indeed
+till within reach of fire, so that they left scarcely any wounded and
+not one prisoner. At length they enticed us on to ravines covered with
+bushes, where we were stopped by their artillery, which was waiting for
+them. All this furnished subject for reflection. Our army was worn down;
+and the war had begun again with new and undiminished spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, struck with astonishment that the enemy had dared to attack
+him, halted until the plain was cleared; after which he returned to
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, where the viceroy pointed out to him the obstacles
+which had been conquered the preceding day.</p>
+
+<p>The ground itself spoke sufficiently. Never was field of battle more
+terribly eloquent. Its marked features; its ruins covered with blood;
+the streets, the line of which could no longer be recognized but by the
+long train of the dead, whose heads were crushed by the wheels of the
+cannon, the wounded, who were still seen issuing from the rubbish and
+crawling along, with their garments, their hair, and their limbs half
+consumed by the fire, and uttering lamentable cries; finally, the
+doleful sound of the last melancholy honours which the grenadiers were
+paying to the remains of their colonels and generals who had been
+slain&mdash;all attested the extreme obstinacy of the conflict. In this scene
+the Emperor, it was said, beheld nothing but glory: he exclaimed, that
+"the honour of so proud a day belonged exclusively to Prince Eugene."
+This sight, nevertheless, aggravated the painful impression which had
+already seized him. He then advanced to the elevated plain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVh" id="CHAP_IVh"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Can you ever forget, comrades, the fatal field which put a stop to the
+conquest of the world, where the victories of twenty years were blasted,
+where the great edifice of our fortune began to totter to its
+foundation? Do you not still figure to yourselves the blood-stained
+ruins of that town, those deep ravines, and the woods which surround
+that elevated plain and convert it, as it were, into a tented field? On
+one side were the French, quitting the north, which they shunned; on the
+other, at the entrance of the wood, were the Russians, guarding the
+south, and striving to drive us back upon their mighty winter. In the
+midst of this plain, between the two armies, was Napoleon, his steps and
+his eyes wandering from south to west, along the roads to Kalouga and
+Medyn, both which were closed against him. On that to Kalouga, were
+Kutusoff and one hundred and twenty thousand men, ready to dispute with
+him twenty leagues of defiles; towards Medyn he beheld a numerous
+cavalry: it was Platof and those same hordes which had just penetrated
+into the flank of the army, had traversed it through and through, and
+burst forth, laden with booty, to form again on his right flank, where
+reinforcements and artillery were waiting for them. It was on that side
+that the eyes of the Emperor were fixed longest; it was there that he
+received the reports of his officers and consulted his maps: then,
+oppressed with regret and gloomy forebodings, he slowly returned to his
+head-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Murat, Prince Eugene, Berthier, Davoust and Bessi&egrave;res followed him. This
+mean habitation of an obscure artisan contained within it an Emperor,
+two Kings, and three Generals. Here they were about to decide the fate
+of Europe, and of the army which had conquered it. Smolensk was the
+goal. Should they march thither by Kalouga, Medyn or Mojaisk? Napoleon
+was seated at a table, his head supported by his hands, which concealed
+his features, as well as the anguish which they no doubt expressed.</p>
+
+<p>A silence fraught with such imminent destinies continued to be
+respected, until Murat, whose actions were always the result of
+impetuous feeling, became weary of this hesitation. Yielding to the
+dictates of his genius, which was wholly directed by his ardent
+temperament, he was eager to burst from that uncertainty, by one of
+those first movements which elevate to glory, or hurry to destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Rising, he exclaimed, that "he might possibly be again accused of
+imprudence, but that in war circumstances decided and gave to every
+thing its name; that where there is no other course than to attack,
+prudence becomes temerity and temerity prudence; that to stop was
+impossible, to fly dangerous, consequently they ought to pursue. What
+signified the menacing attitude of the Russians and their impenetrable
+woods? For his part he cared not for them. Give him but the remnant of
+his cavalry, and that of the guard, and he would force his way into
+their forests and their battalions, overthrow all before him, and open
+anew to the army the road to Kalouga."</p>
+
+<p>Here Napoleon, raising his head, extinguished all this fire, by saying,
+that "we had exhibited temerity enough already; that we had done too
+much for glory, and it was high time to give up thinking of any thing
+but how to save the rest of the army."</p>
+
+<p>Bessi&egrave;res, either because his pride revolted from the idea of obeying
+the King of Naples, or from a desire to preserve uninjured the cavalry
+of the guard, which he had formed, for which he was answerable to
+Napoleon, and which he exclusively commanded; Bessi&egrave;res, finding himself
+supported, then ventured to add, that "neither the army nor even the
+guard had sufficient spirit left for such efforts. It was already said
+in both, that as the means of conveyance were inadequate, henceforth the
+victor, if overtaken, would fall a prey to the vanquished; that of
+course every wound would be mortal. Murat would therefore be but feebly
+seconded. And in what a position! its strength had just been but too
+well demonstrated. Against what enemies! had they not remarked the field
+of the preceding day's battle, and with what fury the Russian recruits,
+only just armed and clothed, had there fought and fell?" The Marshal
+concluded by voting in favour of retreat, which the Emperor approved by
+his silence.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl immediately observed, that, "as a retreat was
+decided upon, he proposed that it should be by Medyn and Smolensk." But
+Murat interrupted Davoust, and whether from enmity or from that
+discouragement which usually succeeds the rejection of a rash measure,
+he declared his astonishment, "that any one should dare to propose so
+imprudent a step to the Emperor. Had Davoust sworn the destruction of
+the army? Would he have so long and so heavy a column trail along,
+without guides and in uncertainty, on an unknown track, within reach of
+Kutusoff, presenting its flank to all the attacks of the enemy? Would
+he, Davoust, defend it? Why&mdash;when in our rear Borowsk and Vere&iuml;a would
+lead us without danger to Mojaisk&mdash;why reject that safe route? There,
+provisions must have been collected, there every thing was known to us,
+and we could not be misled by any traitor."</p>
+
+<p>At these words Davoust, burning with a rage which he had great
+difficulty to repress, replied, that "he proposed a retreat through a
+fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful and well supplied route,
+villages still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might
+not avail himself of it, to cut us off from the route from Mojaisk to
+Smolensk, recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and
+ashes, where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where
+we should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons and
+famine!</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was
+asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as
+if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the Emperor alone
+had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his
+Sovereign, and never should be!"</p>
+
+<p>The quarrel growing warm, Bessi&egrave;res and Berthier interposed. As for the
+Emperor, still absorbed in the same attitude, he appeared insensible to
+what was passing. At length he broke up this council with the words,
+"Well, gentlemen, I will decide."</p>
+
+<p>He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most
+speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate
+effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to
+him. So painful was this effort, that in the inward struggle which it
+occasioned, he lost the use of his senses. Those who attended him have
+asserted, that the report of another warm affair with the Cossacks,
+towards Borowsk, a few leagues in the rear of the army, was the last
+shock which induced him finally to adopt this fatal resolution.</p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat
+northward, at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed
+by the defeat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, were retiring southward.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vh" id="CHAP_Vh"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The very same night a similar anxiety had agitated the Russian camp.
+During the combat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, Kutusoff had approached the field
+of battle, groping his way, as it were, pausing at every step, and
+examining the ground, as if he was afraid of its sinking beneath him; he
+did not send off the different corps which were dispatched to the
+assistance of Doctorof, till the orders for that purpose were absolutely
+extorted from him. He durst not place himself in person across
+Napoleon's way, till an hour when general battles are not to be
+apprehended.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson, warm from the action, then hastened to him.&mdash;Wilson, that active
+bustling Englishman, whom we had seen in Egypt, in Spain, and every
+where else, the enemy of the French and of Napoleon. He was the
+representative of the allies in the Russian army; he was in the midst of
+Kutusoff's army an independent man, an observer, nay, even a
+judge&mdash;infallible motives of aversion; his presence was odious to the
+old Russian general; and as hatred never fails to beget hatred, both
+cordially detested each other.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson reproached him with his excessive dilatoriness; he reminded him
+that five times in one day it had caused them to lose the victory, in
+the battle of Vinkowo, on the 18th of October. In fact, on that day
+Murat would have been destroyed, had Kutusoff fully occupied the front
+of the French by a brisk attack, while Beningsen was turning their left
+wing. But either from negligence, or that tardiness which is the fault
+of age, or as several Russians assert, because Kutusoff was more envious
+of Beningsen than inimical to Napoleon, the veteran had attacked too
+faintly, and too late, and had stopped too soon.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson continued to insist on his agreeing to a decisive engagement on
+the following day, and on his refusal, he asked, "Was he then determined
+to open a free passage for Napoleon? to allow him to escape with his
+victory? What a cry of indignation would be raised in Petersburgh, in
+London, throughout all Europe! Did he not already hear the murmurs of
+his own troops?"</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff, irritated at this, replied, that "he would certainly rather
+make a bridge of gold for the enemy than compromise his army, and with
+it the fate of the whole empire. Was not Napoleon fleeing? why then stop
+him and force him to conquer? The season was sufficient to destroy him:
+of all the allies of Russia, they could rely with most confidence on
+winter; and he should wait for its assistance. As for the Russian army,
+it was under his command, and it would obey him in spite of the clamours
+of Wilson; Alexander, when informed of his proceedings, would approve
+them. What did he care for England? was it for her that he was fighting?
+He was a true-born Russian, his fondest wish was to see Russia
+delivered, and delivered she would be without risking the chance of
+another battle; and as for the rest of Europe, it was nothing to him
+whether it was under the dominion of France or England."</p>
+
+<p>Thus was Wilson repulsed, and yet Kutusoff, shut up with the French army
+in the elevated plain of Malo-Yaroslawetz, was compelled to put himself
+into the most threatening attitude. He there drew up, on the 25th, all
+his divisions, and seven hundred pieces of artillery. No doubts were any
+longer entertained in the two armies that a decisive day had arrived:
+Wilson was of that opinion himself. He remarked that the Russian lines
+had at their back a muddy ravine, across which there was an unsafe
+bridge. This only way of retreat, in the sight of an enemy, appeared to
+him to be impracticable. Kutusoff was now in such a situation that he
+must either conquer or perish; and the Englishman was hugging himself at
+the prospect of a decisive engagement: whether its issue proved fatal to
+Napoleon or dangerous to Russia, it must be bloody, and England could
+not but be a gainer by it.</p>
+
+<p>Still uneasy, however, he went at night through the ranks: he was
+delighted to hear Kutusoff swear that he was at length going to fight;
+he triumphed on seeing all the Russian generals preparing for a terrible
+conflict; Beningsen alone had still his doubts on the subject. The
+Englishman, nevertheless, considering that the position no longer
+admitted of falling back, at length lay down to wait for daylight, when
+about three in the morning a general order for retreat awoke him. All
+his efforts were ineffectual. Kutusoff had resolved to direct his flight
+southward, first to Gonczarewo, and then beyond Kalouga; and at the Oka
+every thing was by this time ready for his passage.</p>
+
+<p>It was at that very instant that Napoleon ordered his troops to retire
+northward on Mojaisk. The two armies therefore turned their backs on
+each other, mutually deceiving each other by means of their rear-guards.</p>
+
+<p>On the part of Kutusoff, Wilson asserts, that his retreat was like a
+rout. Cavalry, cannon, carriages, and battalions thronged from all sides
+to the entrance of the bridge, against which the Russian army was
+backed. There all these columns, hurrying from the right, the left, and
+the centre, met, clashed, and became blended into so enormous and so
+dense a mass, that it lost all power of motion. It took several hours to
+disentangle it and to clear the passage. A few balls discharged by
+Davoust, which he regarded as thrown away, fell among this confused
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon needed but to have advanced upon this disorderly rabble. It was
+after the greatest effort, that of Malo-Yaroslawetz, had been made, and
+when he had nothing to do but to march, that he retreated. But such is
+war! in which it is impossible to attempt too much or to be too daring.
+One army knows not what the other is doing. The advanced posts are the
+exterior of these two great hostile bodies, by means of which they
+overawe one another. What an abyss there is between two armies that are
+in the presence of each other!</p>
+
+<p>Besides, it was perhaps because the Emperor had been wanting in prudence
+at Moscow that he was now deficient in audacity: he was worn out; the
+two affairs with the Cossacks had disgusted him: he felt for his
+wounded; so many horrors disheartened him, and like men of extreme
+resolutions, having ceased to hope for a complete victory, he determined
+upon a precipitate retreat.</p>
+
+<p>From that moment he had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on
+leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October
+that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust with
+twenty-five thousand men remained as a rear-guard. While he advanced a
+few paces, and, without being aware of it, spread consternation among
+the Russians, the grand army in astonishment turned its back on them. It
+marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of
+it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring
+his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.</p>
+
+<p>For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but
+two points where he could halt and rest, the first, Smolensk, and the
+second, Minsk. He had made these two towns his two great dep&ocirc;ts, where
+immense magazines were established. But Wittgenstein, still before
+Polotsk, threatened the left flank of the former, and Tchitchakof,
+already at Bresk-litowsky, the right flank of the latter. Wittgenstein's
+force was gaining strength by recruits and fresh corps which he was
+daily receiving, and by the gradual diminution of that of Saint Cyr.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six
+thousand fresh troops. The <i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i> had been at Smolensk ever
+since the beginning of September. He reckoned also upon detachments
+being sent from his dep&ocirc;ts, on the sick and wounded who had recovered,
+and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into
+marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and
+fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease.
+He should therefore have time to regain that position on the D&uuml;na and
+the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence,
+added to that of Victor, Saint Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe
+Wittgenstein, check Kutusoff, and threaten Alexander even in his second
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>He therefore proclaimed that he was going to take post on the D&uuml;na. But
+it was not upon that river and the Borysthenes that his thoughts rested:
+he was sensible that it was not with a harassed and reduced army that he
+could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses,
+which the ice would speedily efface. He placed no reliance on a sea of
+snow six feet deep, with which winter would speedily cover those parts,
+but to which it would also give solidity: the whole then would be one
+wide road for the enemy to reach him, to penetrate into the intervals
+between his wooden cantonments, scattered over a frontier of two hundred
+leagues, and to burn them.</p>
+
+<p>Had he at first stopped there, as he declared he should on his arrival
+at Witepsk; had he there taken proper measures for preserving and
+recruiting his army; had Tormasof, Tchitchakof and Hoertel been driven
+out of Volhynia; had he raised a hundred thousand Cossacks in those rich
+provinces; his winter-quarters would then have been habitable. But now,
+nothing was ready for him there; and not only was his force inadequate
+to the purpose, but Tchitchakof, a hundred leagues in his rear, would
+still threaten his communications with Germany and France and his
+retreat. It was therefore at a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a
+more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina, it was to
+Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter-quarters,
+from which he was forty marches distant.</p>
+
+<p>But should he arrive there in time? He had reason to think so.
+Dombrowski and his Poles, placed around Bobruisk, would be sufficient to
+keep Ertell in check. As for Schwartzenberg, that general had been
+victorious; he was at the head of forty-two thousand Austrians, Saxons,
+and Poles, whom Durutte, and his French division, from Warsaw, would
+augment to more than fifty thousand men. He had pursued Tormasof as far
+as the Styr.</p>
+
+<p>It was true that the Russian army of Moldavia had just formed a junction
+with the remnant of the army of Volhynia; that Tchitchakof, an active
+and resolute general, had assumed the command of fifty-five thousand
+Russians; that the Austrian had paused and even thought it prudent, on
+the 23d of September, to retire behind the Bug; but he was to have
+recrossed that river at Bresk-litowsky, and Napoleon knew no more.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, without a defection, which it was too late to foresee, and
+which a precipitate return could alone prevent, he flattered himself
+that Schwartzenberg, Regnier, Durutte, Dombrowski, and twenty thousand
+men, divided between Minsk, Slonim, Grodno, and Wilna&mdash;in short, that
+seventy thousand men; would not allow sixty thousand Russians to gain
+possession of his magazines and to cut off his retreat.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIh" id="CHAP_VIh"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Napoleon, reduced to such hazardous conjectures, arrived quite pensive
+at Vere&iuml;a, when Mortier presented himself before him. But I perceive
+that, hurried along, just as we then were, by the rapid succession of
+violent scenes and memorable events, my attention has been diverted from
+a fact worthy of notice. On the 23d of October, at half-past one in the
+morning, the air was shaken by a tremendous explosion which for a moment
+astonished both armies, though amid such mighty expectations scarcely
+any thing now excited astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>Mortier had obeyed his orders; the Kremlin was no more: barrels of
+powder had been placed in all the halls of the palace of the Czars, and
+one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which
+supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on
+this volcano, which a Russian howitzer-shell might have exploded. Here
+he covered the march of the army upon Kalouga and the retreat of our
+different convoys towards Mojaisk.</p>
+
+<p>Among these eight thousand men there were scarcely two thousand on whom
+Mortier could rely: the others were dismounted cavalry, men of different
+countries and regiments, under new officers, without similar habits,
+without common recollections, in short, without any bond of union, who
+formed rather a rabble than an organized body; they could scarcely fail
+in a short time to disperse.</p>
+
+<p>This marshal was looked upon as a devoted victim. The other chiefs, his
+old companions in glory, had left him with tears in their eyes, as well
+as the Emperor, who said to him, "that he relied on his good fortune;
+but still in war we must sometimes make part of a fire." Mortier had
+resigned himself without hesitation. His orders were to defend the
+Kremlin, and on retreating to blow it up, and to burn what yet remained
+of the city. It was from the castle of Krasnopachra, on the 21st of
+October, that Napoleon had sent him his last orders. After executing
+them, Mortier was to march upon Vere&iuml;a and to form the rear-guard of the
+army.</p>
+
+<p>In this letter Napoleon particularly recommended to him "to put the men
+still remaining in the hospitals into the carriages belonging to the
+young guard, those of the dismounted cavalry, and any others that he
+might find. The Romans," added he, "awarded civic crowns to those who
+saved citizens: so many soldiers as he should save, so many crowns would
+the Duke of Treviso deserve. He must put them on his horses and those of
+any of his troops. It was thus that he, Napoleon, acted at St. Jean
+d'Acre. He ought so much the more to take this measure, since, as soon
+as the convoy should have rejoined the army, there would be plenty of
+horses and carriages, which the consumption would have rendered useless
+for its supply. The Emperor hoped that he should have to testify his
+satisfaction to the Duke of Treviso for having saved him five hundred
+men. He must begin with the officers and then with the subalterns, and
+give the preference to Frenchmen. He would therefore assemble all the
+generals and officers under his command, to make them sensible of the
+importance of this measure, and how well they would deserve of the
+Emperor if they saved him five hundred men."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, as the grand army was leaving Moscow, the Cossacks were
+penetrating into the suburbs, and Mortier had retired towards the
+Kremlin, as a remnant of life retires towards the heart, when death has
+begun to seize the extremities. These Cossacks were the scouts to ten
+thousand Russians under the command of Winzingerode.</p>
+
+<p>This foreigner, inflamed with hatred of Napoleon, and animated by the
+desire of retaking Moscow and naturalizing himself in Russia by this
+signal exploit, pushed on to a considerable distance from his men; he
+traversed, running, the Georgian colony, hastened towards the Chinese
+town and the Kremlin, met with advanced posts, mistook them, fell into
+an ambuscade, and finding himself a prisoner in a city which he had come
+to take, he suddenly changed his part, waving his handkerchief in the
+air, and declaring that he had brought a flag of truce.</p>
+
+<p>He was conducted to the Duke of Treviso. There he claimed, in a high
+tone, the protection of the law of nations, which, he said, was violated
+in his person. Mortier replied, that "a general-in-chief, coming in this
+manner, might be taken for a rash soldier, but never for a flag of
+truce, and that he must immediately deliver his sword." The Russian
+general, having no longer any hope of imposing upon him, complied and
+admitted his imprudence.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after four days' resistance, the French bid an eternal adieu
+to that fatal city. They carried with them four hundred wounded, and, on
+retiring, deposited, in a safe and secret place, a fire-work skilfully
+prepared, which a slow fire was already consuming; its progress was
+minutely calculated; so that it was known at what hour the fire would
+reach the immense heap of powder buried among the foundations of these
+condemned palaces.</p>
+
+<p>Mortier hastened his flight; but while he was rapidly retiring, some
+greedy Cossacks and squalid Muscovites, allured probably by the prospect
+of pillage, approached; they listened, and emboldened by the apparent
+quiet which pervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate into it;
+they ascended, and their hands, eager after plunder, were already
+stretched forth, when in a moment they were all destroyed, crushed,
+hurled into the air, with the buildings which they had come to pillage,
+and thirty thousand stand of arms that had been left behind there: and
+then their mangled limbs, mixed with fragments of walls and shattered
+weapons, blown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower.</p>
+
+<p>The earth shook under the feet of Mortier. At Feminskoe, ten leagues
+off, the Emperor heard the explosion, and he himself, in that tone of
+anger in which he sometimes addressed Europe, published the following
+day a bulletin, dated from Borowsk, to this effect, that "the Kremlin,
+the arsenal, the magazines were all destroyed; that the ancient citadel,
+which dated from the origin of the monarchy, and the first palace of the
+Czars, no longer existed; that Moscow was now but a heap of ruins, a
+filthy and unwholesome sink, without importance, either political or
+military. He had abandoned it to Russian beggars and plunderers to march
+against Kutusoff, to throw himself on the left wing of that general, to
+drive him back, and then to proceed quietly to the banks of the D&uuml;na,
+where he should take up his winter-quarters." Then, apprehensive lest he
+should appear to be retreating, he added, that "there he should be
+within eighty leagues of Wilna and Petersburg, a double advantage; that
+is to say, twenty marches nearer to his resources and his object." By
+this remark he hoped to give to his retreat the air of an offensive
+march.</p>
+
+<p>It was on this occasion that he declared, that "he had refused to give
+orders for the destruction of the whole country which he was quitting;
+he felt a repugnance to aggravate the miseries of its inhabitants. To
+punish the Russian incendiary and a hundred wretches who make war like
+Tartars, he would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two
+hundred thousand serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely
+destitute of resources."</p>
+
+<p>He had not then been soured by misfortune; but in three days every thing
+had changed. After coming in collision with Kutusoff, he retreated
+through this same town of Borowsk, and no sooner had he passed through
+it than it ceased to exist. It was thus that in future all was destined
+to be burned behind him. While conquering, he had preserved: when
+retiring, he resolved to destroy: either from necessity, to ruin the
+enemy and to retard his march, every thing being imperative in war; or
+by way of reprisal, the dreadful consequence of wars of invasion, which
+in the first place authorize every means of defence, while these
+afterwards operate as motives to those of attack.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted, however, that the aggression in this terrible
+species of warfare was not on the side of Napoleon. On the 19th of
+October, Berthier had written to Kutusoff, proposing "to regulate
+hostilities in such a manner that they might not inflict on the
+Muscovite empire more evils than were inseparable from a state of war;
+the devastation of Russia being as detrimental to that empire as it was
+painful to Napoleon." But Kutusoff replied, that "it was not in his
+power to restrain the Russian patriotism," which amounted to an approval
+of the Tartar war made upon us by his militia, and authorized us in some
+measure to repay them in their own coin.</p>
+
+<p>The like flames consumed Vere&iuml;a, where Mortier rejoined the Emperor,
+bringing to him Winzingerode. At sight of that German general, all the
+secret resentments of Napoleon took fire; his dejection gave place to
+anger, and he discharged all the spleen that oppressed him upon his
+enemy. "Who are you?" he exclaimed, crossing his arms with violence as
+if to grasp and to restrain himself, "a man without country! You have
+always been my personal enemy. When I was at war with the Austrians, I
+found you in their ranks. Austria is become my ally, and you have
+entered into the Russian service. You have been one of the warmest
+instigators of the present war. Nevertheless you are a native of the
+states of the Confederation of the Rhine; you are my subject. You are
+not an ordinary enemy, you are a rebel; I have a right to bring you to
+trial! <i>Gendarmes d'&eacute;lite</i>, seize this man!" The <i>gendarmes</i> remained
+motionless, like men accustomed to see these violent scenes terminate
+without effect, and sure of obeying best by disobeying.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor resumed: "Do you see, sir, this devastated country, these
+villages in flames? To whom are these disasters to be charged? to fifty
+adventurers like yourself, paid by England, who has thrown them upon the
+continent; but the weight of this war will ultimately fall on those who
+have excited it. In six months I shall be at Petersburg, and I will call
+them to account for all this swaggering."</p>
+
+<p>Then addressing the aide-de-camp of Winzingerode, who was a prisoner
+like himself, "As for you, Count Narischkin," said he, "I have nothing
+to upbraid you with; you are a Russian, you are doing your duty; but how
+could a man of one of the first families in Russia become the
+aide-de-camp of a foreign mercenary? Be the aide-de-camp of a Russian
+general; that employment will be far more honourable."</p>
+
+<p>Till then General Winzingerode had not had an opportunity to answer this
+violent language, except by his attitude: it was calm as his reply. "The
+Emperor Alexander," he said, "was his benefactor and that of his family:
+all that he possessed he owed to him; gratitude had made him his
+subject; he was at the post which his benefactor had allotted to him,
+and consequently he was only doing his duty."</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon added some threats, but in a less violent strain, and he
+confined himself to words, either because he had vented all his wrath in
+the first explosion, or because he merely designed to frighten the
+Germans who might be tempted to abandon him. Such at least was the
+interpretation which those about him put upon his violence. It was
+disapproved; no account was taken of it, and each was eager to accost
+the captive general, to tranquillize and to console him. These
+attentions were continued till the army reached Lithuania, where the
+Cossacks retook Winzingerode and his aide-de-camp. The Emperor had
+affected to treat this young Russian nobleman with kindness, at the same
+time that he stormed so loudly against his general&mdash;a proof that there
+was calculation even in his wrath.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIh" id="CHAP_VIIh"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk. That town was still full
+of wounded; some were carried away and the rest collected together and
+left, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians. Napoleon had
+proceeded but a few wersts from that place, when the winter began. Thus,
+after an obstinate combat, and ten days' marching and countermarching,
+the army, which had brought from Moscow only fifteen rations of flour
+per man, had advanced but three days' march in its retreat. It was in
+want of provisions and overtaken by the winter.</p>
+
+<p>Some men had already sunk under these hardships. In the first days of
+the retreat, on the 26th of October, carriages, laden with provisions,
+which the horses could no longer draw, were burned. The order for
+setting fire to all behind the army then followed; in obedience to it,
+powder-waggons, the horses of which were already worn out, were blown up
+together with the houses. But at length, as the enemy had not again
+shown himself, we seemed to be but once more setting out on a toilsome
+journey; and Napoleon, on again seeing the well-known road, was
+recovering his confidence, when, towards evening, a Russian chasseur,
+who had been made prisoner, was sent to him by Davoust.</p>
+
+<p>At first he questioned him carelessly; but as chance would have it, this
+Russian had some knowledge of roads, names, and distances. He answered,
+that "the whole Russian army was marching by Medyn upon Wiazma." The
+Emperor then became attentive. Did Kutusoff mean to forestall him there,
+as at Malo-Yaroslawetz, to cut off his retreat upon Smolensk, as he had
+done that upon Kalouga, and to coop him up in this desert without
+provisions, without shelter, and in the midst of a general insurrection?
+His first impulse, however, inclined him to reject this notion; for,
+whether owing to pride or experience, he was accustomed not to give his
+adversaries credit for that ability which he should have displayed in
+their place.</p>
+
+<p>In this instance, however, he had another motive. His security was but
+affected: for it was evident that the Russian army was taking the Medyn
+road, the very one which Davoust had recommended for the French army:
+and Davoust, either from vanity or inadvertence, had not confided this
+alarming intelligence to his dispatch alone. Napoleon feared its effects
+on his troops, and therefore affected to disbelieve and to despise it;
+but at the same time he gave orders that his guard should march next day
+in all haste, and so long as it should be light, as far as Gjatz. Here
+he proposed to afford rest and provisions to this flower of his army, to
+ascertain, so much nearer, the direction of Kutusoff's march, and to be
+beforehand with him at that point.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not consulted the season, which seemed to avenge the slight.
+Winter was so near at hand, that a blast of a few minutes was sufficient
+to bring it on, sharp, biting, intense. We were immediately sensible
+that it was indigenous to this country, and that we were strangers in
+it. Every thing was altered: roads, faces, courage: the army became
+sullen, the march toilsome, and consternation began.</p>
+
+<p>Some leagues from Mojaisk, we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a
+large rivulet; two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks
+were sufficient to ensure the passage: but such was the confusion and
+inattention, that the Emperor was detained there. Several pieces of
+cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It
+seemed as if each <i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i> was marching separately as if there
+was no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing that bound these
+corps together. In reality the elevation of each of their chiefs
+rendered them too independent of one another. The Emperor himself had
+become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance
+from the details of his army; and Berthier, holding an intermediate
+place between him and officers, who were all kings, princes, or
+marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution. He was
+besides wholly incompetent to the situation.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, stopped by the trifling obstacle of a broken bridge,
+confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and
+contempt; to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On
+this particular point he had received no orders from the Emperor: he
+therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a
+faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear and
+distinct, he reflected, he repeated the Emperor, but added nothing, and
+what Napoleon forgot was forgotten without retrieve.</p>
+
+<p>After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some
+of us, raising our eyes, uttered an exclamation of horror. Each
+instantly looked around him, and beheld a plain trampled, bare and
+devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface,
+and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared to be the
+most misshapen. It had all the appearance of an extinguished and
+destroyed volcano. The ground was covered all around with fragments of
+helmets and cuirasses, broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms,
+and standards dyed with blood.</p>
+
+<p>On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corses. A number
+of skeletons, left on the summit of one of the hills, overlooked the
+whole. It seemed as if death had here fixed his empire; it was that
+terrible redoubt, the conquest and the grave of Caulaincourt. Presently
+the cry, "It is the field of the great battle!" formed a long and
+doleful murmur. The Emperor passed quickly. Nobody stopped. Cold,
+hunger, and the enemy urged us on: we merely turned our faces as we
+proceeded to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so many
+companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whom we were obliged to
+leave behind.</p>
+
+<p>It was here that we had inscribed with the sword and blood one of the
+most memorable pages of our history. A few relics yet recorded it, and
+they would soon be swept away. Some day the traveller will pass with
+indifference over this plain, undistinguished from any other; but when
+he shall learn that it was the theatre of the great battle, he will turn
+back, long survey it with inquisitive looks, impress its minutest
+features on his greedy memory, and doubtless exclaim, What men! what a
+commander! what a destiny! These were the soldiers, who thirteen years
+before in the south attempted a passage to the East, through Egypt, and
+were dashed against its gates. They afterwards conquered Europe, and
+hither they came by the north to present themselves again before that
+same Asia, to be again foiled. What then urged them into this roving and
+adventurous life? They were not barbarians, seeking a more genial
+climate, more commodious habitations, more enchanting spectacles,
+greater wealth: on the contrary, they possessed all these advantages,
+and all possible pleasures; and yet they forsook them, to live without
+shelter, and without food, to fall daily and in succession, either slain
+or mutilated. What necessity drove them to this?&mdash;Why, what but
+confidence in a leader hitherto infallible! the ambition to complete a
+great work gloriously begun! the intoxication of victory, and above all,
+that insatiable thirst of fame, that powerful instinct, which impels man
+to seek death, in order to obtain immortality.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIh" id="CHAP_VIIIh"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>While the army was passing this fatal field in grave and silent
+meditation, one of the victims of that sanguinary day was perceived, it
+is said, still living, and piercing the air with his groans. It was
+found by those who ran up to him that he was a French soldier. Both his
+legs had been broken in the engagement; he had fallen among the dead,
+where he remained unnoticed. The body of a horse, gutted by a shell, was
+at first his asylum; afterwards, for fifty days, the muddy water of a
+ravine, into which he had rolled, and the putrified flesh of the dead,
+had served for dressing for his wounds and food for the support of his
+languishing existence. Those who say that they discovered this man
+affirm that they saved him.</p>
+
+<p>Farther on, we again beheld the great abbey or hospital of Kolotskoi, a
+sight still more hideous than that of the field of battle. At Borodino
+all was death, but not without its quiet; there at least the battle was
+over; at Kolotskoi it was still raging. Death here seemed to be pursuing
+his victims, who had escaped from the engagement, with the utmost
+malignity; he penetrated into them by all their senses at once. They
+were destitute of every thing for repelling his attacks, excepting
+orders, which it was impossible to execute in these deserts, and which,
+moreover, issuing from too high and too distant a quarter, passed
+through too many hands to be executed.</p>
+
+<p>Still, in spite of famine, cold, and the most complete destitution, the
+devotedness of a few surgeons and a remnant of hope, still supported a
+great number of wounded in this pestiferous abode. But when they saw the
+army repass, and that they were about to be left behind, the least
+infirm crawled to the threshold of the door, lined the way, and extended
+towards us their supplicating hands.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor had just given orders that each carriage, of whatever kind
+it might be, should take up one of these unfortunate creatures, that the
+weakest should be left, as at Moscow, under the protection of such of
+the wounded and captive Russian officers as had been recovered by our
+attentions. He halted to see this order carried into execution, and it
+was at a fire kindled with his forsaken waggons that he and most of his
+attendants warmed themselves. Ever since morning a multitude of
+explosions proclaimed the numerous sacrifices of this kind which it
+already had been found necessary to make.</p>
+
+<p>During this halt, an atrocious action was witnessed. Several of the
+wounded had just been placed in the suttlers' carts. These wretches,
+whose vehicles were overloaded with the plunder of Moscow, murmured at
+the new burden imposed upon them; but being compelled to admit it, they
+held their peace. No sooner, however, had the army recommenced its
+march, than they slackened their pace, dropped behind their columns, and
+taking advantage of a lonely situation, they threw all the unfortunate
+men committed to their care into the ditches. One only lived long enough
+to be picked up by the next carriages that passed: he was a general, and
+through him this atrocious procedure became known. A shudder of horror
+spread throughout the column; it reached the Emperor; for the sufferings
+of the army were not yet so severe and so universal as to stifle pity,
+and to concentrate all his affections within the bosom of each
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening of this long day, as the imperial column approached
+Gjatz, it was surprised to find Russians quite recently killed on the
+way. It was remarked, that each of them had his head shattered in the
+same manner, and that his bloody brains were scattered near him. It was
+known that two thousand Russian prisoners were marching on before, and
+that their guard consisted of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Poles. On this
+discovery, each, according to his disposition, was indignant, approved,
+or remained indifferent. Around the Emperor these various feelings were
+mute. Caulaincourt broke out into the exclamation, that "it was an
+atrocious cruelty. Here was a pretty specimen of the civilization which
+we were introducing into Russia! What would be the effect of this
+barbarity on the enemy? Were we not leaving our wounded and a multitude
+of prisoners at his mercy? Did he want the means of wreaking the most
+horrible retaliation?"</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon preserved a gloomy silence, but on the ensuing day these
+murders had ceased. These unfortunate people were then merely left to
+die of hunger in the enclosures where, at night, they were confined like
+cattle. This was no doubt a barbarity too; but what could we do?
+Exchange them? the enemy rejected the proposal. Release them? they would
+have gone and published the general distress, and, soon joined by
+others, they would have returned to pursue us. In this mortal warfare,
+to give them their lives would have been sacrificing our own. We were
+cruel from necessity. The mischief arose from our having involved
+ourselves in so dreadful an alternative.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, in their march to the interior of Russia, our soldiers, who had
+been made prisoners, were not more humanely treated, and there,
+certainly, imperious necessity was not an excuse.</p>
+
+<p>At length the troops arrived with the night at Gjatz; but this first day
+of winter had been cruelly occupied. The sight of the field of battle,
+and of the two forsaken hospitals, the multitude of waggons consigned to
+the flames, the Russians with their brains blown out, the excessive
+length of the march, the first severities of winter, all concurred to
+render it horrible: the retreat became a flight; and Napoleon, compelled
+to yield and run away, was a spectacle perfectly novel.</p>
+
+<p>Several of our allies enjoyed it with that inward satisfaction which is
+felt by inferiors, when they see their chiefs at length thwarted, and
+obliged in their turn to give way. They indulged that miserable envy
+that is excited by extraordinary success, which rarely occurs without
+being abused, and which shocks that equality which is the first want of
+man. But this malicious joy was soon extinguished and lost in the
+universal distress.</p>
+
+<p>The wounded pride of Napoleon justified the supposition of such
+reflections. This was perceived in one of the halts of that day: there,
+on the rough furrows of a frozen field, strewed with wrecks both Russian
+and French, he attempted, by the energy of his words, to relieve himself
+from the weight of the insupportable responsibility of so many
+disasters. "He had in fact dreaded this war, and he devoted its author
+to the execration of the whole world. It was &mdash;&mdash; whom he accused of
+this; it was that Russian minister, sold to the English, who had
+fomented it, and the traitor had drawn into it both Alexander and
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>These words, uttered before two of his generals, were heard with that
+silence enjoined by old respect, added to that which is due to
+misfortune. But the Duke of Vicenza, perhaps too impatient, betrayed his
+indignation by a gesture of anger and incredulity, and, abruptly
+retiring, put an end to this painful conversation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXh" id="CHAP_IXh"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>From Gjatz the Emperor proceeded in two marches to Wiazma. He there
+halted to wait for Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the
+road of Medyn and Yucknow, which runs at that place into the high road
+to Smolensk. It was this cross-road which might bring the Russian army
+from Malo-Yaroslawetz on his passage. But on the first of November,
+after waiting thirty-six hours, Napoleon had not seen any avant-courier
+of that army; he set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had
+fallen asleep, and the fear that the Russian had left Wiazma on his
+right, and proceeded two marches farther towards Dorogobouje to cut off
+his retreat. At any rate, he left Ney at Wiazma, to collect the first
+and fourth corps, and to relieve, as the rear-guard, Davoust, whom he
+judged to be fatigued.</p>
+
+<p>He complained of the tardiness of the latter; he wrote to reproach him
+with being still five marches behind him, when he ought to have been no
+more than three days later; he considered the genius of that marshal as
+too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.</p>
+
+<p>The whole army, and the corps of Prince Eugene in particular, repeated
+these complaints. They said, that "owing to his spirit of order and
+obstinacy, Davoust had suffered the enemy to overtake him at the Abbey
+of Kalotskoi; that he had there done ragamuffin Cossacks the honour of
+retiring before them, step by step, and in square battalions, as if they
+had been Mamelukes; that Platof, with his cannon, had played at a
+distance on the deep masses which he had presented to him; that then
+only the marshal had opposed to them merely a few slender lines, which
+had speedily formed again, and some light pieces, the first fire of
+which had produced the desired effect; but that these man&oelig;uvres and
+regular foraging excursions had occasioned a great loss of time, which
+is always valuable in retreat, and especially amidst famine, through
+which the most skilful man&oelig;uvre was to pass with all possible
+expedition."</p>
+
+<p>In reply to this, Davoust urged his natural horror of every kind of
+disorder, which had at first led him to attempt to introduce regularity
+into this flight; he had endeavoured to cover the wrecks of it, fearing
+the shame and the danger of leaving for the enemy these evidences of our
+disastrous state.</p>
+
+<p>He added, that, "people were not aware of all that he had had to
+surmount; he had found the country completely devastated, houses
+demolished, and the trees burned to their very roots; for it was not to
+him who came last, that the work of general destruction had been left;
+the conflagration preceded him. It appeared as if the rear-guard had
+been totally forgotten! No doubt, too, people forgot the frozen road
+rough with the tracks of all who had gone before him; as well as the
+deep fords and broken bridges, which no one thought of repairing, as
+each corps, when not engaged, cared but for itself alone."</p>
+
+<p>Did they not know besides, that the whole tremendous train of
+stragglers, belonging to the other corps, on horseback, on foot, and in
+vehicles, aggravated these embarrassments, just as in a diseased body
+all the complaints fly to and unite in the part most affected? Every day
+he marched between these wretches and the Cossacks, driving forward the
+one and pressed by the other.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, after passing Gjatz, he had found the slough of Czarewo-Zaimcze
+without a bridge, and completely encumbered with carriages. He had
+dragged them out of the marsh in sight of the enemy, and so near to them
+that their fires lighted his labours, and the sound of their drums
+mingled with that of his voice. For the marshal and his generals could
+not yet resolve to relinquish to the enemy so many trophies; nor did
+they make up their minds to it, till after superfluous exertions, and in
+the last extremity, which happened several times a day.</p>
+
+<p>The road was in fact crossed every moment by marshy hollows. A slope,
+slippery as glass with the frost, hurried the carriages into them and
+there they stuck; to draw them out it was necessary to climb the
+opposite ascent by an icy road, where the horses, whose shoes were worn
+quite smooth, could not obtaining a footing, and where every moment they
+and their drivers dropped exhausted one upon the other. The famished
+soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to
+pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they
+broiled the yet bleeding flesh and devoured it.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the artillerymen, a chosen corps, and their officers, all
+brought up in the first school in the world, kept off these unfortunate
+wretches whenever they could, and took the horses from their own chaises
+and waggons, which they abandoned to save the guns. To these they
+harnessed their horses, nay even themselves: the Cossacks, observing
+this disaster from a distance, durst not approach; but with their light
+pieces mounted on sledges they threw their balls into all this disorder,
+and served to increase it.</p>
+
+<p>The first corps had already lost ten thousand men: nevertheless, by dint
+of efforts and sacrifices, the viceroy and the Prince of Eckm&uuml;hl were,
+on the 2d of November, within two leagues of Wiazma. It is certain that
+the same day they might have passed that town, joined Ney, and avoided a
+disastrous engagement. It is affirmed, that such was the opinion of
+Prince Eugene, but that Davoust believed his troops to be too much
+fatigued, on which the viceroy, sacrificing himself to his duty, staid
+to share a danger which he foresaw. Davoust's generals say, on the
+contrary, that Prince Eugene, who was already encamped, could not find
+in his heart to make his soldiers leave their fires and their meal,
+which they had already begun, and the cooking of which always cost them
+a great deal of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, during the deceptive tranquillity of that night, the
+advanced-guard of the Russians arrived from Malo-Yaroslawetz, our
+retreat from which place had put an end to theirs: it skirted along the
+two French corps and that of Poniatowski, passed their bivouacs, and
+disposed its columns of attack against the left flank of the road, in
+the intermediate two leagues which Davoust and Eugene had left between
+themselves and Wiazma.</p>
+
+<p>Miloradowitch, whom we denominated the Russian Murat, commanded this
+advanced-guard. He was, according to his countrymen, an indefatigable
+and successful warrior, impetuous as that soldier-king, of a stature
+equally remarkable, and, like him, a favourite of fortune. He was never
+known to be wounded, though numbers of officers and soldiers had fallen
+around him, and several horses had been killed under him. He despised
+the principles of war: he even made an art of not following the rules of
+that art, pretending to surprise the enemy by unexpected blows, for he
+was prompt in decision; he disdained to make any preparations, leaving
+places and circumstances to suggest what was proper to be done, and
+guiding himself only by sudden inspirations. In other respects, a
+general in the field of battle alone, he was destitute of foresight in
+the management of any affairs, either public or private, a notorious
+spendthrift, and, what is rare, not less upright than prodigal.</p>
+
+<p>It was this general, with Platof and twenty thousand men, whom we had
+now to fight.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Xh" id="CHAP_Xh"></a>CHAP. X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 3d of November, Prince Eugene was proceeding towards Wiazma,
+preceded by his equipages and his artillery, when the first light of day
+shewed him at once his retreat threatened by an army on his left; behind
+him his rear-guard cut off; and on his left the plain covered with
+stragglers and scattered vehicles, fleeing before the lances of the
+enemy. At the same time, towards Wiazma, he heard Marshal Ney, who
+should have assisted him, fighting for his own preservation.</p>
+
+<p>That Prince was not one of those generals, the offspring of favour, to
+whom every thing is unexpected and cause of astonishment, for want of
+experience. He immediately looked the evil in the face, and set about
+remedying it. He halted, turned about, deployed his divisions on the
+right of the high road, and checked in the plain the Russian columns,
+who were striving to cut him off from that road. Their foremost troops,
+overpowering the right of the Italians, had already seized one point, of
+which they kept possession, when Ney despatched from Wiazma one of his
+regiments, which attacked them in the rear and dislodged them.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time Compans, a general of Davoust's, joined the Italian
+rear-guard with his division. They cleared a way for themselves, and
+while they, united with the Viceroy, were engaged, Davoust with his
+column passed rapidly behind them, along the left side of the high road,
+then crossing it as soon as he had got beyond them, he claimed his place
+in the order of battle, took the right wing, and found himself between
+Wiazma and the Russians. Prince Eugene gave up to him the ground which
+he had defended, and crossed to the other side of the road. The enemy
+then began to extend himself before them, and endeavoured to break
+through their wings.</p>
+
+<p>By the success of this first man&oelig;uvre, the two French and Italian
+corps had not conquered the right to continue their retreat, but only
+the possibility of defending it. They were still thirty thousand strong;
+but in the first corps, that of Davoust, there was some disorder. The
+hastiness of the man&oelig;uvre, the surprise, so much wretchedness, and,
+above all, the fatal example of a multitude of dismounted cavalry,
+without arms, and running to and fro bewildered with fear, threw it into
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>This sight encouraged the enemy; he took it for a rout. His artillery,
+superior in number, man&oelig;uvred at a gallop: it took obliquely and in
+flank our lines, which it cut down, while the French cannon, already at
+Wiazma, and which had been ordered to return in haste, could with
+difficulty be brought along. However, Davoust and his generals had still
+their firmest troops, about them. Several of these officers, still
+suffering from the wounds received at the Moskwa, one with his arm in a
+sling, another with his head wrapped in cloths, were seen supporting the
+best, encouraging the most irresolute, dashing at the enemy's batteries,
+forcing them to retire, and even seizing three of their pieces; in
+short, astonishing both the enemy and their own fugitives, and combating
+a mischievous example by their noble behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>Miloradowitch, perceiving that his prey was escaping, now applied for
+reinforcement; and it was again Wilson, who was sure to be present
+wherever he could be most injurious to France, who hastened to summon
+Kutusoff. He found the old marshal unconcernedly resting himself with
+his army within hearing of the action. The ardent Wilson, urgent as the
+occasion, excited him in vain: he could not induce him to stir.
+Transported with indignation, he called him traitor, and declared that
+he would instantly despatch one of his Englishmen full speed to
+Petersburg, to denounce his treason to his Emperor and his allies.</p>
+
+<p>This threat had no effect on Kutusoff; he persisted in remaining
+inactive; either because to the frost of age was superadded that of
+winter, and that in his shattered frame his mind was depressed by the
+sight of so many ruins; or that, from another effect of old age, a
+person becomes prudent when he has scarcely any thing to risk, and a
+temporiser when he has no more time to lose. He seemed still to be of
+opinion, as at Malo-Yaroslawetz, that the Russian winter alone could
+overthrow Napoleon; that this genius, the conqueror of men, was not yet
+sufficiently conquered by Nature; that it was best to leave to the
+climate the honour of that victory, and to the Russian atmosphere the
+work of vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Miloradowitch, left to himself, then tried to break the French line of
+battle; but he could not penetrate it except by his fire, which made
+dreadful havoc in it. Eugene and Davoust were growing weak; and as they
+heard another action in the rear of their right, they imagined that the
+rest of the Russian army was approaching Wiazma by the Yuknof road, the
+outlet of which Ney was defending.</p>
+
+<p>It was only an advanced-guard: but they were alarmed at the noise of
+this fight in the rear of their own, threatening their retreat. The
+action had lasted ever since seven in the morning; night was
+approaching; the baggage must by this time have got away; the French
+generals therefore began to retire.</p>
+
+<p>This retrograde movement increased the ardour of the enemy, and but for
+a memorable effort of the 25th, 57th, and 85th regiments, and the
+protection of a ravine, Davoust's corps would have been broken, turned
+by its right, and destroyed. Prince Eugene, who was not so briskly
+attacked, was able to effect his retreat more rapidly through Wiazma;
+but the Russians followed him thither, and had penetrated into the town,
+when Davoust, pursued by twenty thousand men, and overwhelmed by eighty
+pieces of cannon, attempted to pass in his turn.</p>
+
+<p>Morand's division first entered the town: it was marching on with
+confidence, under the idea that the action was over, when the Russians,
+who were concealed by the windings of the streets, suddenly fell upon
+it. The surprise was complete and the confusion great: Morand
+nevertheless rallied and re-encouraged his men, retrieved matters, and
+fought his way through.</p>
+
+<p>It was Compans who put an end to the whole. He closed the march with his
+division. Finding himself too closely pressed by the bravest troops of
+Miloradowitch, he turned about, dashed in person at the most eager,
+overthrew them, and having thus made them fear him, he finished his
+retreat without further molestation. This conflict was glorious to each,
+and its result disastrous to all: it was without order and unity. There
+would have been troops enough to conquer, had there not been too many
+commanders. It was not till near two o'clock that the latter met to
+concert their man&oelig;uvres, and these were even then executed without
+harmony.</p>
+
+<p>When at length the river, the town of Wiazma, night, mutual fatigue, and
+Marshal Ney had separated them from the enemy, the danger being
+adjourned and the bivouacs established, the numbers were counted.
+Several pieces of cannon which had been broken, the baggage, and four
+thousand killed or wounded, were missing. Many of the soldiers had
+dispersed. Their honour was saved, but there were immense gaps in the
+ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring every thing within a
+narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each
+regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion a platoon. The
+soldiers had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, or officers.</p>
+
+<p>This sad re-organization took place by the light of the conflagration of
+Wiazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and
+Miloradowitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double
+darkness of night and the forests. Several times the relics of these
+brave troops, conceiving that they were attacked, crawled to their arms.
+Next morning, when they fell into their ranks again, they were
+astonished at the smallness of their number.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIh" id="CHAP_XIh"></a>CHAP. XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The spirits of the troops were 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, of that universal
+source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the
+spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed us.</p>
+
+<p>But on the 6th of November, the heavens declared against us. Their azure
+disappeared. The army marched enveloped in cold fogs. These fogs became
+thicker, and presently an immense cloud descended upon it in large
+flakes of snow. It seemed as if the very sky was falling, and joining
+the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects
+changed their appearance, and became confounded, and not to be
+recognised again; we proceeded, without knowing where we were, without
+perceiving the point to which we were bound; every thing was transformed
+into an obstacle. While the soldier was struggling with the tempest of
+wind and snow, the flakes, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated
+in every hollow; their surfaces concealed unknown abysses, which
+perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the men were engulphed, and
+the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found a grave in these
+snow-pits.</p>
+
+<p>Those who followed turned aside, but the storm drove into their faces
+both the snow that was descending from the sky, and that which it raised
+from the ground: it seemed bent on opposing their progress. The Russian
+winter, under this new form, attacked them on all sides: it penetrated
+through their light garments and their torn shoes and boots. Their wet
+clothes froze upon their bodies; an icy envelope encased them and
+stiffened all their limbs. A keen and violent wind interrupted
+respiration: it seized their breath at the moment when they exhaled it,
+and converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all round
+their mouths.</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate creatures still crawled on, shivering, till the snow,
+gathering like balls under their feet, or the fragment of some broken
+article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades,
+caused them to stumble and fall. There they groaned in vain; the snow
+soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spot where they lay: such
+was their only grave! The road was studded with these undulations, like
+a cemetery: the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected;
+they passed on quickly with averted looks. But before them, around them,
+there was nothing but snow: this immense and dreary uniformity extended
+farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded; it was
+like 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 funeral verdure, the motionless aspect of their
+gigantic black trunks and their dismal look, which completed the doleful
+appearance of a general mourning, and of an army dying amidst a nature
+already dead.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing, even to their very arms, still offensive at
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, but since then defensive only, now turned against
+them. These seemed to their frozen limbs insupportably heavy, in the
+frequent falls which they experienced, they dropped from their hands and
+were broken or buried in the snow. If they rose again, it was without
+them; for they did not throw them away; hunger and cold wrested them
+from their grasp. The fingers of many others were frozen to the musket
+which they still held, which deprived them of the motion necessary for
+keeping up some degree of warmth and life.</p>
+
+<p>We soon met with numbers of men belonging to all the corps, sometimes
+singly, at others in troops. They had not basely deserted their colours;
+it was cold and inanition which had separated them from their columns.
+In this general and individual struggle, they had parted from one
+another, and there they were, disarmed, vanquished, defenceless, without
+leaders, obeying nothing but the urgent instinct of self-preservation.</p>
+
+<p>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 passage, all had been laid waste to the
+extent of seven or eight leagues; they met with nothing but Cossacks,
+and an armed population, which encompassed, wounded, and stripped them
+naked, and then left them, with ferocious bursts of laughter, to expire
+on 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
+nobly a country which they were unable to defend, hovered on both flanks
+of the army under favour of the woods. Those whom they did not despatch
+with their pikes and hatchets, they brought back to the fatal and
+all-devouring high road.</p>
+
+<p>Night then came on&mdash;a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow which
+covered every thing, they knew not where to halt, where to sit, where to
+lie down, where to find some root or other to eat, and 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 kept together. They strove to establish themselves;
+but the tempest, still active, dispersed the first preparations for
+bivouacs. The pines, laden with frost, obstinately resisted the flames;
+their snow, that from the sky which yet continued to fall fast, and that
+on the ground, which melted with the efforts of the soldiers, and the
+effect of the first fires, extinguished those fires, as well as the
+strength and spirits of the men.</p>
+
+<p>When at length the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and
+soldiers around them prepared their wretched repast; it consisted of
+lean and bloody pieces of flesh torn from the horses that were knocked
+up, and at most a few spoonfuls of rye-flour mixed with snow-water. Next
+morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked the
+bivouacs; and the ground about them was strewed with the bodies of
+several thousand horses.</p>
+
+<p>From that day we began to place less reliance on one another. In that
+lively army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an
+advanced civilization, discouragement and neglect of discipline spread
+rapidly, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil as in good.
+Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, at every
+moment, some portion separated from the yet organised troops, and fell
+into disorder. There were some, however, who withstood this wide
+contagion of indiscipline and despondency. These were officers,
+non-commissioned officers, and steady soldiers. These were extraordinary
+men: they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk,
+which they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised
+that all their wants should be supplied.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this manner that, after this deluge of snow, and the increase
+of cold which it foreboded, each, whether officer or soldier, preserved
+or lost his fortitude, according to his disposition, his age, and his
+constitution. That one of our leaders who had hitherto been the
+strictest in enforcing discipline, now paid little attention to it.
+Thrown out of all his fixed ideas of regularity, order, and method, he
+was seized with despair at the sight of such universal disorder, and
+conceiving, before the others, that all was lost, he felt himself ready
+to abandon all.</p>
+
+<p>From Gjatz to Mikalewska, a village between Dorogobouje and Smolensk,
+nothing remarkable occurred in the imperial column, unless that it was
+found necessary to throw the spoils of Moscow into the lake of Semlewo:
+cannon, gothic armour, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of
+Ivan the Great, were buried in its waters; trophies, glory, all those
+acquisitions to which we had sacrificed every thing, became a burden to
+us; our object was no longer to embellish, to adorn life, but to
+preserve it. In this vast wreck, the army, like a great ship tossed by
+the most tremendous of tempests, threw without hesitation into that sea
+of ice and snow, every thing that could slacken or impede its progress.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIh" id="CHAP_XIIh"></a>CHAP. XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>During the 3d and 4th of November Napoleon halted at Stakowo. This
+repose, and the shame of appearing to flee, inflamed his imagination. He
+dictated orders, according to which his rear-guard, by appearing to
+retreat in disorder, was to draw the Russians into an ambuscade, where
+he should be waiting for them in person; but this vain project passed
+off with the pre-occupation which gave it birth. On the 5th he slept at
+Dorogobouje. Here he found the hand-mills which were ordered for the
+expedition at the time the cantonments of Smolensk were projected; of
+these a late and totally useless distribution was made.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, the 6th of November, opposite to Mikalewska, at the moment
+when the clouds, laden with sleet and snow, were bursting over our
+heads, Count Daru was seen hastening up, and a circle of vedettes
+forming around him and the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>An express, the first that had been able to reach us for ten days, had
+just brought intelligence of that strange conspiracy, hatched in Paris
+itself, and in the depth of a prison, by an obscure general. He had had
+no other accomplices than the false news of our destruction, and forged
+orders to some troops to apprehend the Minister, the Prefect of Police,
+and the Commandant of Paris. His plan had completely succeeded, from the
+impulsion of a first movement, from ignorance and the general
+astonishment; but no sooner was a rumour of the affair spread abroad,
+than an order was sufficient again to consign the leader, with his
+accomplices or his dupes, to a prison.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was apprised at the same moment of their crime and their
+punishment. Those who at a distance strove to read his thoughts in his
+countenance could discover nothing. He repressed his feelings; his first
+and only words to Daru were, "How now, if we had remained at Moscow!" He
+then hastened into a house surrounded with a palisade, which had served
+for a post of correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>The moment he was alone with the most devoted of his officers, all his
+emotions burst forth at once in exclamations of astonishment,
+humiliation and anger. Presently afterwards he sent for several other
+officers, to observe the effect which so extraordinary a piece of
+intelligence would produce upon them. He perceived in them a painful
+uneasiness and consternation, and their confidence in the stability of
+his government completely shaken. He had occasion to know that they
+accosted each other with a sigh, and the remark, that it thus appeared
+that the great revolution of 1789, which was thought to be finished, was
+not yet over. Grown old in struggles to get out of it, were they to be
+again plunged into it, and to be thrown once more into the dreadful
+career of political convulsions? Thus war was coming upon us in every
+quarter, and we were liable to lose every thing at once.</p>
+
+<p>Some rejoiced at this intelligence, in the hope that it would hasten the
+return of the Emperor to France, that it would fix him there, and that
+he would no longer risk himself abroad, since he was not safe at home.
+On the following day, the sufferings of the moment put an end to these
+conjectures. As for Napoleon, all his thoughts again flew before him to
+Paris, and he was advancing mechanically towards Smolensk, when his
+whole attention was recalled to the present place and time, by the
+arrival of an aide-de-camp of Ney.</p>
+
+<p>From Wiazma that Marshal had begun to protect this retreat, mortal to so
+many others, but immortal for himself. As far as Dorogobouje, it had
+been molested only by some bands of Cossacks, troublesome insects
+attracted by our dying and by our forsaken carriages, flying away the
+moment a hand was lifted, but harassing by their continual return.</p>
+
+<p>They were not the subject of Ney's message. On approaching Dorogobouje
+he had met with the traces of the disorder which prevailed in the corps
+that preceded him, and which it was not in his power to efface. So far
+he had made up his mind to leave the baggage to the enemy; but he
+blushed with shame at the sight of the first pieces of cannon abandoned
+before Dorogobouje.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal had halted there. After a dreadful night, in which snow,
+wind, and famine had driven most of his men from the fires, the dawn,
+which is always awaited with such impatience in a bivouac, had brought
+him a tempest, the enemy, and the spectacle of an almost general
+defection. In vain he had just fought in person at the head of what men
+and officers he had left: he had been obliged to retreat precipitately
+behind the Dnieper; and of this he sent to apprise the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>He wished him to know the worst. His aide-de-camp, Colonel Dalbignac,
+was instructed to say, that "the first movement of retreat from
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, for soldiers who had never yet run away, had
+dispirited the army; that the affair at Wiazma had shaken its firmness;
+and that lastly, the deluge of snow and the increased cold which it
+betokened, had completed its disorganization: that a multitude of
+officers, having lost every thing, their platoons, battalions,
+regiments, and even divisions, had joined the roving masses: generals,
+colonels, and officers of all ranks, were seen mingled with the
+privates, and marching at random, sometimes with one column, sometimes
+with another: that as order could not exist in the presence of disorder,
+this example was seducing even the veteran regiments, which had served
+during the whole of the wars of the revolution: that in the ranks, the
+best soldiers were heard asking one another, why they alone were
+required to fight in order to secure the flight of the rest; and how any
+one could expect to keep up their courage, when they heard the cries of
+despair issuing from the neighbouring woods, in which large convoys of
+their wounded, who had been dragged to no purpose all the way from
+Moscow, had just been abandoned? Such then was the fate which awaited
+themselves! what had they to gain by remaining by their colours?
+Incessant toils and combats by day, and famine at night; no shelter, and
+bivouacs still more destructive than battle: famine and cold drove sleep
+far away from them, or if fatigue got the better of these for the
+moment, that repose which ought to refresh them put a period to their
+lives. In short, the eagles had ceased to protect&mdash;they destroyed. Why
+then remain around them to perish by battalions, by masses? It would be
+better to disperse, and since there was no other course than flight, to
+try who could run fastest. It would not then be the best that would
+fall: the cowards behind them would no longer eat up the relics of the
+high road." Lastly, the aide-de-camp was commissioned to explain to the
+Emperor all the horrors of his situation, the responsibility of which
+Ney absolutely declined.</p>
+
+<p>But Napoleon saw enough around himself to judge of the rest. The
+fugitives were passing him; he was sensible that nothing could now be
+done but sacrifice the army successively, part by part, beginning at the
+extremities, in order to save the head. When, therefore, the
+aide-de-camp was beginning, he sharply interrupted him with these words,
+"Colonel, I do not ask you for these details." The Colonel was silent,
+aware that in this disaster, now irremediable, and in which every one
+had occasion for all his energies, the Emperor was afraid of complaints,
+which could have no other effect but to discourage both him who indulged
+in, and him who listened to them.</p>
+
+<p>He remarked the attitude of Napoleon, the same which he retained
+throughout the whole of this retreat. It was grave, silent, and
+resigned; suffering much less in body than others, but much more in
+mind, and brooding over his misfortunes. At that moment General
+Charpentier sent him from Smolensk a convoy of provisions. Bessi&egrave;res
+wished to take possession of them, but the Emperor instantly had them
+forwarded to the Prince of the Moskwa, saying, "that those who were
+fighting must eat before the others." 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 re-organized."</p>
+
+<p>But if this hope kept some to their duty, many others abandoned every
+thing, to hasten towards that promised term of their sufferings. As for
+Ney, he saw that a sacrifice was required, and that he was marked out as
+the victim: he resigned himself, ready to meet the whole of a danger
+great as his courage: thenceforward he neither attached his honour to
+baggage, nor to cannon, which the winter alone wrested from him. A first
+bend of the Borysthenes stopped and kept back part of his guns at the
+foot of its icy slopes; he sacrificed them without hesitation, passed
+that obstacle, faced about, and made the hostile river, which crossed
+his route, serve him as the means of defence.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians, however, advanced under favour of a wood and 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, got
+discouraged; they gave way, justifying themselves by their
+faint-heartedness on the preceding day, fleeing because they had fled;
+which before they would have considered as impossible. But Ney rushed in
+amongst them, snatched one of their muskets, and led them back to the
+fire, which he was the first to renew; exposing his life like a private
+soldier, with a musket in his hand, the same as when he was neither
+husband nor father, neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor
+consideration: in short, as if he had still every thing to gain, when in
+fact he had every thing to lose. At the same time that he again turned
+soldier, he ceased not to be a general; he took advantage of the ground,
+supported himself against a height, and covered himself with a palisaded
+house. His generals and his colonels, among whom he himself remarked
+Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who expected to
+pursue, was obliged to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>By this action, Ney gave the army a respite of twenty-four hours; it
+profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and all the
+succeeding days, he manifested the same heroism. Between Wiazma and
+Smolensk he fought ten whole days.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIIh" id="CHAP_XIIIh"></a>CHAP. XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 13th of November he was approaching that city, which he was not
+to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to keep off the
+enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his
+left were seen covered with a multitude of fugitives. In their fright,
+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
+flock of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of
+Italy, returning quite stripped, without baggage, and without cannon.</p>
+
+<p>Platof had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.
+Near that town Prince Eugene had left 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 crossed before was
+a mere brook, and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swelled into a
+river. It ran over a bed of mud, and was bounded by two steep banks. It
+was found necessary to cut a way in these rough and frozen banks, and to
+give orders for the demolition, during the night, of the neighbouring
+houses, in order to build a bridge with the materials. But those who had
+taken shelter in them opposed their destruction. The Viceroy, more
+beloved than feared, was not obeyed. The pontonniers were disheartened,
+and when daylight appeared with the Cossacks, the bridge, after being
+twice broken down, was abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of
+disbanded men, sick and wounded, upwards of a hundred pieces of cannon,
+ammunition waggons, and a multitude of other vehicles, lined the bank,
+and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford through the
+ice carried along by the torrent. The first guns that tried to cross
+reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while
+at the same time the bed of the river at the ford was deepened by the
+wheels and the efforts of the horses. A carriage stuck fast; others did
+the same; and the stoppage became general.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in
+vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the
+Viceroy at length found himself necessitated to order his artillery and
+all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The
+owners had scarcely time to part from their effects; while they were
+selecting from them the articles which they most needed, and loading
+horses with them, a multitude of soldiers hastened up; they fell in
+preference upon the vehicles of luxury; they broke in pieces and
+rummaged every thing, revenging their destitution on this wealth, their
+privations on these superfluities, and snatching them from the Cossacks,
+who looked on at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>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 singular
+sight to behold the riches of Paris and Moscow, the luxuries of two of
+the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised on the
+snow of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>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 waggons, 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 waggons were
+blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not
+killed on the spot dispersed in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>A few hundred men, who were still called the 14th division, were opposed
+to these hordes, and sufficed to keep them at a respectful distance till
+the next day. All the rest, soldiers, administrators, women and
+children, sick and wounded, driven by the enemy's balls, crowded the
+bank of the torrent. But at the sight of its swollen current, of the
+sharp and massive sheets of ice flowing down it, and the necessity of
+aggravating their already intolerable sufferings from cold by plunging
+into its chilling waves, they all hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>An Italian, Colonel Delfanti, was obliged to set the example and cross
+first. The soldiers then moved and the crowd followed. The weakest, the
+least resolute, or the most avaricious, staid behind. Such as could not
+make up their minds to part from their booty, and to forsake fortune
+which was forsaking them, were surprised in the midst of their
+hesitation. Next day the savage Cossacks were seen amid all this wealth,
+still covetous of the squalid and tattered garments of the unfortunate
+creatures who had become their prisoners: they stripped them, and then
+collecting them in troops, drove them along naked on the snow, by hard
+blows with the shaft of their lances.</p>
+
+<p>The army of Italy, thus dismantled, thoroughly soaked in the waters of
+the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow
+near a village, where its officers expected to have found lodging for
+themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They
+rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on each habitation, profiting by the
+darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being
+known by them. They tore down every thing, doors, windows and even the
+wood-work of the roofs, feeling little compunction to compel others, be
+they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Their generals strove in vain to drive them off; they took their blows
+without murmur or opposition, but without desisting; and 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 remained
+silently but actively engaged 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 should fall
+upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in
+their design, and respect for the anger of their generals.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fact which reflects disgrace on the enemy, that during this
+disaster, and in sight of so rich a booty, a few hundred men, left at
+the distance of half a league from the Viceroy, on the other side of the
+Wop, were sufficient to curb, for twenty hours, not only the courage but
+also the cupidity of Platof's Cossacks.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible, indeed, that the Hetman made sure of destroying the
+Viceroy on the following day. In fact, all his measures were so well
+planned, that at the moment when the army of Italy, after an unquiet and
+disorderly march, came in sight of Dukhowtchina, a town yet uninjured,
+and was joyfully hastening forward to shelter itself there, several
+thousand Cossacks sallied forth from it with cannon, and suddenly
+stopped its progress: at the same time Platof, with all his hordes, came
+up and attacked its rear-guard and both flanks.</p>
+
+<p>Persons, who were eye-witnesses, assert that a complete tumult and
+disorder then ensued; that the disbanded men, the women, and the
+attendants, ran over one another, and broke quite through the ranks;
+that, in short, there was a moment when this unfortunate army was but a
+shapeless mass, a mere rabble rout whirling round and round. All seemed
+to be lost; but the coolness of the Prince and the efforts of the
+officers saved all. The best men disengaged themselves; the ranks were
+again formed. They advanced, firing a few volleys, and the enemy, who
+had every thing on his side excepting courage, the only advantage yet
+left us, opened and retired, confining himself to a mere demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>The army took his place still warm in that town, beyond which he went to
+bivouac, and to prepare similar surprises to the very gates of Smolensk.
+For this disaster at the Wop had made the Viceroy give up the idea of
+separating from the Emperor; there these hordes grew bolder; they
+surrounded the 14th division. When Prince Eugene would have gone to its
+relief, the men and their officers, stiffened with a cold of twenty
+degrees, which the wind rendered most piercing, continued stretched on
+the warm ashes of their fires. To no purpose did he point out to them
+their comrades surrounded, the enemy approaching, the bullets and balls
+which were already reaching them; they refused to rise, protesting that
+they would rather perish than any longer have to endure such cruel
+hardships. The vedettes themselves had abandoned their posts. Prince
+Eugene nevertheless contrived to save his rear-guard.</p>
+
+<p>It was in returning with it towards Smolensk that his stragglers had
+been driven back on Ney's troops, to whom they communicated their panic;
+all hurried together towards the Dnieper; here they crowded together at
+the entrance of the bridge, without thinking of defending themselves,
+when a charge made by the 4th regiment stopped the advance of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Its colonel, young Fezenzac, contrived to infuse fresh life into these
+men who were half perished with cold. There, as in every thing that can
+be called action, was manifested the superiority of the sentiments of
+the soul over the sensations of the body; for every physical sensation
+tended to encourage despondency and flight; nature advised it with her
+hundred most urgent voices; and yet a few words of honour were
+sufficient to produce the most heroic devotedness. The soldiers of the
+4th regiment rushed like furies upon the enemy, against the mountain of
+snow and ice of which he had taken possession, and in the teeth of the
+northern hurricane, for they had every thing against them. Ney himself
+was obliged to moderate their impetuosity.</p>
+
+<p>A reproach from their colonel effected this change. These private
+soldiers devoted themselves, that they might not be wanting to their own
+characters, from that instinct which requires courage in a man, as well
+as from habit and the love of glory. A splendid word for so obscure a
+situation! For, what is the glory of a common soldier, who perishes
+unseen, who is neither praised, censured, nor regretted, but by his own
+division of a company! The circle of each, however, is sufficient for
+him: a small society embraces the same passions as a large one. The
+proportions of the bodies differ; but they are composed of the same
+elements; it is the same life that animates them, and the looks of a
+platoon stimulate a soldier, just as those of an army inflame a general.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIVh" id="CHAP_XIVh"></a>CHAP. XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At length the army again beheld Smolensk; it approached the term so
+often held forth to its sufferings. The soldiers pointed it out to each
+other. There was that land of promise where their famine 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
+should enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel;
+there they should be furnished with new shoes and garments adapted to
+the climate.</p>
+
+<p>At this sight, the corps <i>d'&eacute;lite</i>, some soldiers, and the veteran
+regiments, 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 masses round the lofty walls
+and gates of the city; but their disorderly multitude, their haggard
+faces, begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms and the
+grotesque habiliments which they had substituted for them, in short,
+their strange, hideous look, and their extreme ardour, excited alarm. It
+was conceived that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger,
+were not repelled, a general pillage would be the consequence, and the
+gates were closed against it.</p>
+
+<p>It was also hoped that by this rigour these men would be forced to
+rally. A horrid struggle between order and disorder then commenced in
+the remnant of that unfortunate army. In vain did some entreat, weep,
+conjure, threaten, strive to burst the gates, and drop down dead at the
+feet of their comrades, who had orders to repel them; they found them
+inexorable: they were forced to await the arrival of the first troops,
+who were still officered and in order.</p>
+
+<p>These were the old and young guard. It was not till afterwards that the
+disbanded men were allowed to enter; they and the other corps which
+arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed that their
+entry had been delayed merely to give more rest and more provisions to
+this guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust; they execrated it.
+"Were they then to be for ever sacrificed to this privileged class,
+fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost but at reviews,
+festivities, and distributions? Was the army always to put up with their
+leavings; and in order to obtain them, was it always to wait till they
+had glutted themselves?" It was impossible 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.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk
+for which they had so ardently wished; they had left the banks of the
+Borysthenes strewed with the dying bodies of the weakest of their
+number; impatience and several hours' waiting had finished them. They
+left others on the icy steep which they had to climb to reach the upper
+town. The rest ran to the magazines, and there more of them expired
+while they beset the doors; for they were again repulsed. "Who were
+they? to what corps did they belong? what had they to show for it? The
+persons who had to distribute the provisions were responsible for them;
+they had orders to deliver them only to authorized officers, bringing
+receipts, for which they could exchange the rations committed to their
+care." Those who applied had no officers; nor could they tell where
+their regiments were. Two thirds of the army were in this predicament.</p>
+
+<p>These unfortunate men then dispersed through the streets, having no
+longer any other hope than pillage. But horses dissected to the very
+bones every where denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the houses
+had been all broken and torn away to feed the bivouac-fires: 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 still the fatal high-road, passing through an empty
+name; it was a new bivouac among deceitful ruins; colder even than the
+forests which they had just quitted.</p>
+
+<p>Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colours; they
+rejoined them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread
+that could be baked had been distributed: there was no more biscuit, no
+butcher's meat, rye-flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were delivered
+out to them. It required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the
+detachments of the different corps from murdering one another at the
+doors of the magazines: and when, after long formalities, their wretched
+fare was delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their
+regiments; they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds
+of flour, and ran to hide themselves till they had devoured it. The same
+was the case with the spirits. Next day the houses were found full of
+the bodies of these unfortunate wretches.</p>
+
+<p>In short, that fatal Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to as
+the term of its sufferings, marked only their commencement.
+Inexpressible hardships awaited us: we had yet to march forty days under
+that yoke of iron. Some, already overloaded with present miseries, sunk
+under the alarming prospect of those which awaited them. Others revolted
+against their destiny; finding they had nothing to rely on but
+themselves, they resolved to live at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the
+weaker, they plundered their dying companions by violence or stealth, of
+their subsistence, their garments, and even the gold, with which they
+had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom
+despair had made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their
+infamous booty, profiting by the general condition, an obscure name, a
+uniform no longer distinguishable, and night, in short, by all kinds of
+obscurities, favourable to cowardice and guilt. If works already
+published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed in
+silence details so disgusting; for these atrocities were rare, and
+justice was dealt to the most criminal.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor arrived on the 9th of November, 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 continue his retreat. He had
+calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one
+hundred thousand men; there was not more than half the quantity of
+flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were set up
+against one of the persons appointed to provide these supplies. The
+commissary saved his life only by crawling for a long time on his knees
+at the feet of Napoleon. Probably the reasons which he assigned did more
+for him than his supplications.</p>
+
+<p>"When he arrived," he said, "bands of stragglers, whom, when advancing,
+the army left behind it, had, as it were, involved Smolensk in terror
+and destruction. The men died there of hunger as upon the road. When
+some degree of order had been restored, the Jews alone had at first
+offered to furnish the necessary provisions. More generous motives
+subsequently engaged the aid of some Lithuanian noblemen. At length the
+foremost of the long convoys of provisions collected in Germany
+appeared. These were the carriages called <i>comtoises</i>, and were the only
+ones which had traversed the sands of Lithuania; they brought no more
+than two hundred quintals of flour and rice; several hundred German and
+Italian bullocks had also arrived with them.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile the accumulation of dead bodies in the houses, courts, and
+gardens, and their unwholesome effluvia, infected the air. The dead were
+killing the living. The civil officers as well as many of the military
+were attacked: some had become to all appearance idiots, weeping or
+fixing their hollow eyes stedfastly on the ground. There were others
+whose hair had become stiff, erect, and ropy, and who, amidst a torrent
+of blasphemies, a horrid convulsion, or a still more frightful laugh,
+had dropped down dead.</p>
+
+<p>"At the same time it had been found necessary to kill without delay the
+greatest part of the cattle brought from Germany and Italy. These
+animals would neither walk any farther, nor eat. Their eyes, sunk in
+their sockets, were dull and motionless. They were killed without
+seeking to avoid the fatal blow. Other misfortunes followed: several
+convoys were intercepted, magazines taken, and a drove of eight hundred
+oxen had just been carried off from Krasno&euml;."</p>
+
+<p>This man added, that "regard ought also to be had to the great quantity
+of detachments which had passed through Smolensk; to the stay which
+Marshal Victor, twenty-eight thousand men, and about fifteen thousand
+sick, had made there; to the multitude of posts and marauders whom the
+insurrection and the approach of the enemy had driven back into the
+city. All had subsisted upon the magazines; it had been necessary to
+deliver out nearly sixty thousand rations per day; and lastly,
+provisions and cattle had been sent forward towards Moscow as far as
+Mojaisk and towards Kalouga as far as Yelnia."</p>
+
+<p>Many of these allegations 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
+quantity of provisions distributed over this space was incalculable; the
+efforts for transporting them thither gigantic, and the result little
+better than nothing. They were insufficient in that immensity.</p>
+
+<p>Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had
+been surpassed; the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above
+time, climate, and distances, had, as it were, lost itself in space:
+great as was its measure, it had been beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, he was passionate, from necessity. He had not deceived
+himself in regard to the inadequacy of his supplies. Alexander alone had
+deceived him. Accustomed to triumph over every thing by the terror of
+his name, and the astonishment produced by his audacity, he had ventured
+his army, himself, his fortune, his all, on a first movement of
+Alexander's. He was still the same man as in Egypt, at Marengo, Ulm, and
+Esslingen; it was Ferdinand Cortes; it was the Macedonian burning his
+ships, and above all solicitous, in spite of his troops, to penetrate
+still farther into unknown Asia; finally, it was C&aelig;sar risking his whole
+fortune in a fragile bark.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_X" id="BOOK_X"></a>BOOK X.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Im" id="CHAP_Im"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The surprise of Vinkowo, however, that unexpected attack of Kutusoff in
+front of Moscow, was only the spark of a great conflagration. On the
+same day, at the same hour, the whole of Russia had resumed the
+offensive. The general plan of the Russians was at once developed. The
+inspection of the map became truly alarming.</p>
+
+<p>On the 18th of October, at the very moment that the cannon of Kutusoff
+were destroying Napoleon's illusions of glory and of peace,
+Wittgenstein, at one hundred leagues in the rear of his left wing, had
+thrown himself upon Polotsk; Tchitchakof, behind his right, and two
+hundred leagues farther off, had taken advantage of his superiority over
+Schwartzenberg; and both of them, one descending from the north, and the
+other ascending from the south, were endeavouring to unite their forces
+at Borizof.</p>
+
+<p>This was the most difficult passage in our retreat, and both these
+hostile armies were already close to it, at the time that Napoleon was
+at the distance of twelve days' journey, with the winter, famine, and
+the grand Russian army between them.</p>
+
+<p>At Smolensk it was only suspected that Minsk was in danger; the officers
+who were present at the loss of Polotsk gave the following details
+respecting it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the battle of the 18th of August, which raised him to the
+dignity of marshal, Saint Cyr had remained on the Russian bank of the
+D&uuml;na, in possession of Polotsk, and of an entrenched camp in front of
+its walls. This camp showed how easy it would have been for the whole
+army to have taken up its winter quarters on the frontiers of Lithuania.
+Its barracks, constructed by our soldiers, were more spacious than the
+houses of the Russian peasantry, and equally warm: they were beautiful
+military villages, properly entrenched, and equally protected from the
+winter and from the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>For two months the two armies carried on merely a war of partizans. With
+the French its object was to extend themselves through the country in
+search of provisions; on the part of the Russians, to strip them of what
+they found. A war of this sort was entirely in favour of the Russians,
+as our people, being ignorant of the country as well as of the language,
+even of the names of the places where they attempted to enter, were
+incessantly betrayed by the inhabitants, and even by their guides.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of these checks, and of hunger, and disease, the strength
+of Saint Cyr's army was diminished one half, while that of Wittgenstein
+had been more than doubled by the arrival of recruits. By the middle of
+October, the Russian army at that point amounted to fifty-two thousand
+men, while ours was only seventeen thousand. In this number must be
+included the 6th corps, or the Bavarians, reduced from twenty-two
+thousand to eighteen hundred men, and two thousand cavalry. The latter
+were then absent; Saint Cyr being without forage, and uneasy respecting
+the attempts of the enemy upon his flanks, had sent them to a
+considerable distance up the river, with orders to return by the left
+bank, in order to procure subsistence and to gain intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>For this marshal was afraid of having his right turned by Wittgenstein
+and his left by Steingell, who was advancing at the head of two
+divisions of the army of Finland, which had recently arrived at Riga.
+Saint Cyr had sent a very pressing letter to Macdonald, requesting him
+to use his efforts to stop the march of these Russians, who would have
+to pass his army, and to send him a reinforcement of fifteen thousand
+men; or if he would not do that, to come himself with succours to that
+amount, and take the command. In the same letter he also submitted to
+Macdonald all his plans of attack and defence. But Macdonald did not
+feel himself authorized to operate so important a movement without
+orders. He distrusted Yorck, whom he perhaps suspected of an intention
+of allowing the Russians to get possession of his park of besieging
+artillery. His reply was that he must first of all think of defending
+that, and he remained stationary.</p>
+
+<p>In this state of affairs, the Russians became daily more and more
+emboldened; and finally, on the 17th of October, the out-posts of Saint
+Cyr were driven into his camp, and Wittgenstein possessed himself of all
+the outlets of the woods which surround Polotsk. He threatened us with a
+battle, which he did not believe we would venture to accept.</p>
+
+<p>The French marshal, without orders from his Emperor, had been too late
+in his determination to entrench himself. His works were only marked out
+as much as was necessary, (not to cover their defenders), but to point
+out the place where their efforts would be principally required. Their
+left, resting on the D&uuml;na, and defended by batteries placed on the left
+bank of the river, was the strongest. Their right was weak. The Polota,
+a stream which flows into the D&uuml;na, separated them.</p>
+
+<p>Wittgenstein sent Yatchwil to threaten the least accessible side, and
+on the 18th he himself advanced against the other; at first with some
+rashness, for two French squadrons, the only ones which Saint Cyr had
+retained, overthrew his column in advance, took its artillery, and made
+himself prisoner, it is said, without being aware of it; so that they
+abandoned this general-in-chief, as an insignificant prize, when they
+were forced by numbers to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Rushing from their woods, the Russians then exhibited their whole force,
+and attacked Saint Cyr in the most furious manner. In one of the first
+discharges of their musketry, the marshal was wounded by a ball. He
+remained, however, in the midst of the troops, but being unable to
+support himself, was obliged to be carried about. Wittgenstein's
+determination to carry this point lasted as long as it was daylight. The
+redoubts, which were defended by Maison, were taken and retaken seven
+times. Seven times did Wittgenstein believe himself the conqueror; Saint
+Cyr finally wore him out. Legrand and Maison remained in possession of
+their entrenchments, which were bathed with the blood of the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>But while on the right the victory appeared completely gained, on the
+left every thing seemed to be lost: the eagerness of the Swiss and the
+Croats was the cause of this reverse. Their rivalry had up to that
+period wanted an opportunity of showing itself. From a too great anxiety
+to show themselves worthy of belonging to the grand army, they acted
+rashly. Having been placed carelessly in front of their position, in
+order to draw on Yacthwil, they had, instead of abandoning the ground
+which had been prepared for his destruction, rushed forward to meet his
+masses, and were overwhelmed by numbers. The French artillery, being
+prevented from firing on this medley, became useless, and our allies
+were driven back into Polotsk.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that the batteries on the left bank of the D&uuml;na discovered,
+and were able to commence firing on the enemy, but instead of arresting,
+they only quickened his march. The Russians under Yacthwil, in order to
+avoid that fire, threw themselves with great rapidity into the ravine of
+the Polota, by which they were about to penetrate into the town, when at
+last three cannon, which were hastily directed against the head of their
+column, and a last effort of the Swiss, succeeded in driving them back.
+At five o'clock the battle terminated; the Russians retreated on all
+sides into their woods, and fourteen thousand men had beat fifty
+thousand.</p>
+
+<p>The night which followed was perfectly tranquil, even to Saint Cyr. His
+cavalry were deceived, and brought him wrong intelligence; they assured
+him that no enemy had passed the D&uuml;na either above or below his
+position: this was incorrect, as Steingell and thirteen thousand
+Russians had crossed the river at Drissa, and gone up the left bank,
+with the object of taking the marshal in the rear, and shutting him up
+in Polotsk, between them, the D&uuml;na, and Wittgenstein.</p>
+
+<p>The morning of the 19th exhibited the latter under arms, and making
+every disposition for an attack, the signal for which he appeared to be
+afraid of giving. Saint Cyr, however, was not to be deceived by these
+appearances; he was satisfied that it was not his feeble entrenchments
+which kept back an enterprising and numerous enemy, but that he was
+doubtless waiting the effect of some man&oelig;uvre, the signal of an
+important co-operation, which could only be effected in his rear.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, about ten o'clock in the morning, an aide-de-camp came in full
+gallop from the other side of the river, with the intelligence, that
+another hostile army, that of Steingell, was marching rapidly along the
+Lithuanian side of the river, and that it had defeated the French
+cavalry. He required immediate assistance, without which this fresh army
+would speedily get in the rear of the camp and surround it. The news of
+this engagement soon reached the army of Wittgenstein, where it excited
+the greatest joy, while it carried dismay into the French camp. Their
+position became dreadfully critical. Let any one figure to himself these
+brave fellows, hemmed in, against a wooden town, by a force treble their
+number, with a great river behind them, and no other means of retreat
+but a bridge, the passage from which was threatened by another army.</p>
+
+<p>It was in vain that Saint Cyr then weakened his force by three
+regiments, which he dispatched to the other side to meet Steingell, and
+whose march he contrived to conceal from Wittgenstein's observation.
+Every moment the noise of the former's artillery was approaching nearer
+and nearer to Polotsk. The batteries, which from the left side protected
+the French camp, were now turned round, ready to fire upon this new
+enemy. At sight of this, loud shouts of joy burst out from the whole of
+Wittgenstein's line; but that officer still remained immoveable. To make
+him begin it was not merely necessary that he should <i>hear</i> Steingell;
+he seemed absolutely determined to <i>see</i> him make his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, all Saint Cyr's generals, in consternation, were surrounding
+him, and urging him to order a retreat, which would soon become
+impossible. Saint Cyr refused; convinced that the 50,000 Russians before
+him under arms, and on the tiptoe of expectation, only waited for his
+first retrograde movement to dart upon him, he remained immoveable,
+availing himself of their unaccountable inaction, and still flattering
+himself that night would cover Polotsk with its shades before Steingell
+could make his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>He has since confessed, that never in his life was his mind in such a
+state of agitation. A thousand times, in the course of these three hours
+of suspense, he was seen looking at his watch and at the sun; as if he
+could hasten his setting.</p>
+
+<p>At last, when Steingell was within half an hour's march of Polotsk, when
+he had only to make a few efforts to appear in the plain, to reach the
+bridge of the town, and shut out Saint Cyr from the only outlet by which
+he could escape from Wittgenstein, he halted. Soon after, a thick fog,
+which the French looked upon as an interposition from heaven, preceded
+the approach of night, and shut out the three armies from the sight of
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>Saint Cyr only waited for that moment. His numerous artillery was
+already silently crossing the river, his divisions were about to follow
+it and conceal their retreat, when the soldiers of Legrand, either from
+habit, or regret at abandoning their camp entire to the enemy, set fire
+to it; the other two divisions, fancying that this was a signal agreed
+upon, followed their example, and in an instant the whole line was in a
+blaze.</p>
+
+<p>This fire disclosed their movement; the whole of Wittgenstein's
+batteries immediately began their fire; his columns rushed forward, his
+shells set fire to the town; the French troops were obliged to contend
+every inch of ground with the flames, the fire throwing light on the
+engagement the same as broad daylight. The retreat, however, was
+effected in good order; on both sides the loss was great; but it was not
+until three o'clock in the morning of the 20th of October that the
+Russian eagle regained possession of Polotsk.</p>
+
+<p>As good luck would have it, Steingell slept soundly at the noise of this
+battle, although he might have heard even the shouts of the Russian
+militia. He seconded the attack of Wittgenstein during that night as
+little as Wittgenstein had seconded his the day before. It was not until
+Wittgenstein had finished on the right side, that the bridge of Polotsk
+was broken down, and Saint Cyr, with all his force on the left bank, and
+then fully able to cope with Steingell, that the latter began to put
+himself in motion. But De Wrede, with 6,000 French, surprised him in his
+first movement, beat him back several leagues into the woods which he
+had quitted, and took or killed 2,000 of his men.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIm" id="CHAP_IIm"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+<p>Those three days were days of glory. Wittgenstein was repulsed,
+Steingell defeated, and ten thousand Russians, with six generals, killed
+or put <i>hors du combat</i>. But Saint Cyr was wounded, the offensive was
+lost, confidence, joy, and plenty reigned in the enemy's corps,
+despondency and scarcity in ours; it was necessary to fall back. The
+army required a commander: De Wrede aspired to be so, but the French
+generals refused even to enter into concert with that officer, from a
+knowledge of his character, and a belief that it was impossible to go on
+harmoniously with him. Amidst their jarring pretensions Saint Cyr,
+although wounded, was obliged to retain the command of these two corps.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after, he gave orders to retreat on Smoliantzy by all the
+roads leading to that place. He himself kept in the centre, regulating
+the march of the different columns by that of each other. This was a
+mode of retreat completely contrary to that which Napoleon had just
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>Saint Cyr's object was to find more provisions, to march with greater
+freedom, and more concert; in short, to avoid that confusion which is so
+common in the march of numerous columns, when troops, artillery, and
+baggage are crowded together on one road. He completely succeeded. Ten
+thousand French, Swiss, and Croats, with fifty thousand Russians at
+their heels, retired slowly in four columns, without allowing themselves
+to be broken, and kept Wittgenstein and Steingell from advancing more
+than three marches in eight days.</p>
+
+<p>By retreating in this manner towards the south, they covered the right
+flank of the road from Orcha to Borizof, by which the Emperor was
+returning from Moscow. One column only, that of the left, met with a
+check. It was that of De Wrede and his fifteen hundred Bavarians,
+augmented with a brigade of French cavalry, which he retained with him
+in spite of Saint Cyr's orders. He marched at his own pleasure; his
+wounded pride would no longer suffer him to yield obedience to others;
+but it cost him the whole of his baggage. Afterwards, under pretence of
+better serving the common cause by covering the line of operations from
+Wilna to Witepsk, which the Emperor had abandoned, he separated himself
+from the second corps, retreated by Klubokoe on Vileika, and made
+himself useless.</p>
+
+<p>The discontent of De Wrede had existed ever since the 19th of August. He
+fancied that he had contributed so great a part to the victory of the
+18th, that he thought it was made too little of in the report of the
+following day. This feeling had rankled in his mind, and was increased
+by repeated complaints, and by the instigation of a brother, who it was
+said was serving in the Austrian army. Added to this, it was believed,
+that at the last period of the retreat, the Saxon general, Thielmann,
+had drawn him into his plans for the liberation of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>This defection was scarcely felt at the time. The Duke of Belluno, with
+twenty-five thousand men, hastened from Smolensk, and on the 31st of
+October effected a junction with Saint Cyr in front of Smoliantzy, at
+the very moment that Wittgenstein, ignorant of this junction, and
+relying on his superior strength, had crossed the Lukolmlia, imprudently
+engaged himself in defiles at his rear, and attacked our out-posts. It
+only required a simultaneous effort of the two French corps to have
+destroyed his army completely. The generals and soldiers of the second
+corps were burning with ardour. But at the moment that victory was in
+their hearts, and when, believing it before their eyes, they were
+waiting for the signal to engage, Victor gave orders to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Whether this prudence, which was then considered unseasonable, arose
+from his unacquaintance with a country, which he then saw for the first
+time, or from his distrust of soldiers whom he had not yet tried, we
+know not. It is possible that he did not feel himself justified in
+risking a battle, the loss of which would certainly have involved that
+of the grand army and its leader.</p>
+
+<p>After falling back behind the Lukolmlia, and keeping on the defensive
+the whole of the day, he took advantage of the night to gain Sienno. The
+Russian general then became sensible of the peril of his position; it
+was so critical, that he only took advantage of our retrograde movement,
+and the discouragement which it occasioned, to effect his retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The officers who gave us these details added, that ever since that time
+Wittgenstein seemed to think of nothing but retaking Witepsk, and
+keeping on the defensive. He probably thought it too rash to turn the
+Berezina at its sources, in order to join Tchitchakof; for a vague
+rumour had already reached us of the march of this army from the south
+upon Minsk and Borizof, and of the defection of Schwartzenberg.</p>
+
+<p>It was at Mikalewska, on the 6th of November, that unfortunate day when
+he had just received information of Mallet's conspiracy, that Napoleon
+was informed of the junction of the second and the ninth corps, and of
+the unfortunate engagement at Czazniki. Irritated at the intelligence,
+he sent orders to the Duke of Belluno immediately to drive Wittgenstein
+behind the D&uuml;na, as the safety of the army depended upon it. He did not
+conceal from the marshal that he had arrived at Smolensk with an army
+harassed to death and his cavalry entirely dismounted.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, therefore, the days of good fortune were passed, and from all
+quarters nothing but disastrous intelligence arrived. On one side
+Polotsk, the D&uuml;na, and Witepsk lost, and Wittgenstein already within
+four days march of Borizof; on the other, towards Elnia, Baraguay
+d'Hilliers defeated. That general had allowed the enemy to cut off the
+brigade of Augereau, and to take the magazines, and the Elnia road, by
+the possession of which Kutusoff was now enabled to anticipate us at
+Krasno&euml;, as he had done at Wiazma.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, at one hundred leagues in advance of us,
+Schwartzenberg informed the Emperor, that he was covering Warsaw; in
+other words, that he had uncovered Minsk and Borizof, the magazine, and
+the retreat of the grand army, and that probably, the Emperor of Austria
+would deliver up his son-in-law to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment, in our rear and our centre, Prince Eugene was
+conquered by the Wop; the draught-horses which had been waiting for us
+at Smolensk were devoured by the soldiers; those of Mortier carried off
+in a forage; the cattle at Krasno&euml; captured; the army exhibiting
+frightful symptoms of disease; and at Paris the period of conspiracies
+appeared to have returned; in short, every thing seemed to combine to
+overwhelm Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>The daily reports which he received of the state of each corps of the
+army were like so many bills of mortality; in these he saw his army,
+which had conquered Moscow, reduced from an hundred and eighty thousand,
+to thirty thousand men, still capable of fighting. To this mass of
+calamities, he could only oppose an inert resistance, an impassable
+firmness, and an unshaken attitude. His countenance remained the same;
+he changed none of his habits, nothing in the form of his orders; in
+reading them, you would have supposed that he had still several armies
+under his command. He did not even expedite his march. Irritated only at
+the prudence of Marshal Victor, he repeated his orders to him to attack
+Wittgenstein, and thereby remove the danger which menaced his retreat.
+As to Baraguay d'Hilliers, whom an officer had just accused, he had him
+brought before him, and sent him off to Berlin, where that general,
+overwhelmed by the fatigues of the retreat, and sinking under the weight
+of chagrin, died before he was able to make his defence.</p>
+
+<p>The unshaken firmness which the Emperor preserved was the only attitude
+which became so great a spirit, and so irreparable a misfortune. But
+what appears surprising, is, that he allowed fortune to strip him of
+every thing, rather than sacrifice a part to save the rest. It was at
+first without his orders that the commanders of corps burnt the baggage
+and destroyed their artillery; he only allowed it to be done. If he
+afterwards gave similar instructions, they were absolutely extorted from
+him; he seemed as if he was tenacious, above every thing, that no action
+of his should confess his defeat; either from a feeling that he thus
+respected his misfortunes, and by his inflexibility set the example of
+inflexible courage to those around him, or from that proud feeling of
+men who have been long fortunate, which precipitates their downfall.</p>
+
+<p>Smolensk, however, which was twice fatal to the army, was a place of
+rest for some. During the respite which this afforded to their
+sufferings, these were asking each other, "how it happened, that at
+Moscow every thing had been forgotten; why there was so much useless
+baggage; why so many soldiers had already died of hunger and cold under
+the weight of their knapsacks, which were loaded with gold, instead of
+food and raiment; and, above all, if three and thirty days rest had not
+allowed sufficient time to make snow shoes for the artillery, cavalry,
+and draught-horses, which would have made their march more sure and
+rapid?</p>
+
+<p>"If that had been done, we should not have lost our best men at Wiazma,
+at the Wop, at the Dnieper, and along the whole road; in short, even
+now, Kutusoff, Wittgenstein, and perhaps Tchitchakof would not have had
+time to prepare more fatal days for us.</p>
+
+<p>"But why, in the absence of orders from Napoleon, had not that
+precaution been taken by the commanders, all of them kings, princes, and
+marshals? Had not the winter in Russia been foreseen? Was it that
+Napoleon, accustomed to the active intelligence of his soldiers, had
+reckoned too much upon their foresight? Had the recollection of the
+campaign in Poland, during a winter as mild as that of our own climate,
+deceived him, as well as an unclouded sun, whose continuance, during the
+whole of the month of October, had astonished even the Russians
+themselves? What spirit of infatuation is it that has seized the whole
+army as well as its leader? What has every one been reckoning upon? as
+even supposing that at Moscow the hope of peace had dazzled us all, it
+was always necessary to return, and nothing had been prepared, even for
+a pacific journey homeward!"</p>
+
+<p>The greater number could not account for this general infatuation,
+otherwise than by their own carelessness, and because in armies, as well
+as in despotic governments, it is the office of one to think for all; in
+this case that <i>one</i> was alone regarded as responsible, and misfortune,
+which authorizes distrust, led every one to condemn him. It had been
+already remarked, that in this important fault, this forgetfulness, so
+improbable in an active genius during so long and unoccupied a
+residence, there was something of that spirit of error, "the fatal
+forerunner of the fall of kings!"</p>
+
+<p>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 Doukhowtchina. "Then it was not the necessity of waiting
+for the army of Italy which detained him! To what then must we attribute
+this delay, when famine, disease and the winter, and three hostile
+armies were gradually surrounding us?</p>
+
+<p>"While we had been penetrating to the heart of the Russian Colossus, had
+not his arms remained advanced and extended towards the Baltic and the
+Black Sea? was he likely to leave them motionless now, when, instead of
+striking him mortal blows, we had been struck ourselves? Was not the
+fatal moment arrived when this Colossus was about to surround us with
+his threatening arms? Could we imagine that we had either tied them up,
+or paralysed them, by opposing to them the Austrians in the south, and
+the Prussians in the north? Was it not rather a method of rendering the
+Poles and the French, who were mixed with these dangerous allies,
+entirely useless?</p>
+
+<p>"But without going far in search of causes of uneasiness, was the
+Emperor ignorant of the joy of the Russians, when three months before he
+stopped to attack Smolensk, instead of marching to the right to Elnia,
+where he would have cut off the enemy's army from a retreat upon their
+capital? Now that the war has returned back to the same spots, will the
+Russians, whose movements are much more free than ours were then,
+imitate our error? Will they keep in our rear when they can so easily
+place themselves before us, on the line of our retreat?</p>
+
+<p>"Is Napoleon unwilling to allow that Kutusoff's attack may be bolder and
+more skilful than his own had been? Are the circumstances still the
+same? Was not every thing favourable to the Russians during their
+retreat, and, on the contrary, has not every thing been unfavourable to
+us, in our retreat? Will not the cutting off Augereau and his brigade
+upon that road open his eyes? What business had we in the burnt and
+ravaged Smolensk, but to take a supply of provisions and proceed rapidly
+onwards?</p>
+
+<p>"But the Emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches five
+days from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the
+appearance of a slow and glorious retreat! This was the reason of his
+ordering the destruction of the towers which surround Smolensk, from the
+wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its walls!
+as if there was any idea of our returning to a place, which we did not
+even know whether we should ever get out of.</p>
+
+<p>"Will any one believe that he wished to give time to the artillerymen to
+shoe their horses against the ice? as if he could expect any labour from
+workmen emaciated with hunger and long marches; from poor wretches who
+hardly found, the day long enough to procure provisions and dress them,
+whose forges were thrown away or damaged, and who besides wanted the
+indispensable materials for a labour so considerable.</p>
+
+<p>"But perhaps he wished to allow himself time to drive on before him, out
+of danger and clear of the ranks, the troublesome crowd of soldiers, who
+had become useless, to rally the better sort, and to re-organize the
+army? as if it were possible to convey any orders whatever to men so
+scattered about, or to rally them, without lodgings, or distribution of
+provisions, to <i>bivouacs</i>; in short, to think of re-organization for
+corps of dying soldiers, all of whom had no longer any thing to adhere
+to, and whom the least touch would dissolve."</p>
+
+<p>Such, around Napoleon, were the conversations of his officers; or rather
+their secret reflexions: for their devotion to him remained entire for
+two whole years longer, in the midst of the greatest calamities, and of
+the general revolt of nations.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, however, made an effort which was not altogether fruitless;
+namely, to rally, under one commander, all that remained of the cavalry:
+of thirty-seven thousand cavalry which were present at the passage of
+the Niemen, there were now only eighteen hundred left on horseback. He
+gave the command of them to Latour-Maubourg; whether from the esteem
+felt for him, or from fatigue, no one objected to it.</p>
+
+<p>As to Latour-Maubourg, he received the honour or the charge without
+expressing either pleasure or regret. He was a character of peculiar
+stamp; always ready without forwardness, calm and active, remarkable for
+his extreme purity of morals, simple and unostentatious; in other
+respects, unaffected and sincere in his relations with others, and
+attaching the idea of glory only to actions, and not to words. He always
+marched with the same order and moderation in the midst of the most
+immoderate disorder; and yet, what does honour to the age, he attained
+to the highest distinctions as quickly and as rapidly as any who could
+be named.</p>
+
+<p>This feeble re-organization, the distribution of a part of the
+provisions, the plunder of the rest, the repose which the Emperor and
+his guard were enabled to take, the destruction of part of the artillery
+and baggage, and finally, the expedition of a number of orders, were
+nearly all the benefits which were derived from that fatal delay. In
+other respects, all the misfortunes happened which had been foreseen. A
+few hundred men were only rallied for a moment. The explosion of the
+mines scarcely blew up the outside of some of the walls, and was only of
+use on the last day, in driving out of the town the stragglers whom we
+had been unable to set in motion.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers who had totally lost heart, the women, and several thousand
+sick and wounded, were here abandoned. This was when Augereau's disaster
+near Elnia made it but too evident that Kutusoff, now become the
+pursuer, did not confine himself to the high road; that he was marching
+from Wiazma by Elnia, direct upon Krasno&euml;; finally, when we ought to
+have foreseen that we should be obliged to cut our way through the
+Russian army, it was only on the 14th of November that the grand army
+(or rather thirty-six thousand troops) commenced its march.</p>
+
+<p>The old and young guard had not then more than from nine to ten thousand
+infantry, and two thousand cavalry; Davoust and the first corps, from
+eight to nine thousand; Ney and the third corps, five to six thousand;
+Prince Eugene and the army of Italy, five thousand; Poniatowski, eight
+hundred; Junot and the Westphalians, seven hundred; Latour-Maubourg and
+the rest of the cavalry, fifteen hundred; there might also be about one
+thousand light horse, and five hundred dismounted cavalry, whom we had
+succeeded in collecting together.</p>
+
+<p>This army had left Moscow one hundred thousand strong; in
+five-and-twenty days it had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men. The
+artillery had already lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon, and
+yet these feeble remains were always divided into eight armies, which
+were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers, and a long train
+of cannon and baggage.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it was this incumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a
+mistaken sense of security, which led the Emperor to order a day's
+interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; most
+probably it was the latter. Be that as it may, he, Eugene, Davoust, and
+Ney only quitted Smolensk in succession; Ney was not to leave it till
+the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery saw the trunnions
+of the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the ammunition, to
+drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the towers which
+surrounded the city.</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues distance from
+thence, and preparing to cut in pieces successively those remnants of
+corps thus extended and parcelled out.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIi" id="CHAP_IIIi"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was on the 14th of November, about five in the morning, that the
+imperial column at last quitted Smolensk. Its march was still firm, but
+gloomy and silent as night, and mute and discoloured as the aspect of
+the country through which it was advancing.</p>
+
+<p>This silence was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied
+to the poor horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met
+with ravines; and when upon these icy declivities, men, horses, and
+artillery were rolling in obscurity, one over the other. The first day
+they advanced five leagues. The artillery of the guard took twenty-two
+hours to get over that ground.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, this first column arrived, without any great loss of men,
+at Korythinia, which Junot had passed with his Westphalian corps, now
+reduced to seven hundred men. A vanguard had pushed on as far as
+Krasno&euml;. The wounded and disbanded men were on the point of reaching
+Liady. Korythinia is five leagues from Smolensk; Krasno&euml; five leagues
+from Korythinia; Liady four leagues from Krasno&euml;. The Boristhenes flows
+at two leagues on the right of the high road from Korythinia to Krasno&euml;.</p>
+
+<p>Near Korythinia another road, that from Elnia to Krasno&euml;, runs close to
+the great road. That very day Kutusoff advanced upon that road with
+ninety thousand men, which completely covered it; his march was parallel
+with that of Napoleon, whom he soon outstripped; on the cross-roads he
+sent forward several vanguards to intercept our retreat.</p>
+
+<p>One of these, said to be commanded by Ostermann, made its appearance at
+Korythinia at the same time with Napoleon, and was driven back.</p>
+
+<p>A second, consisting of twenty thousand men, and commanded by
+Miloradowitch, took a position three leagues in advance of us, towards
+Merlino and Nikoulina, behind a ravine which skirts the left side of the
+great road; and there, lying in ambush on the flank of our retreat, it
+awaited our passage.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time a third reached Krasno&euml;, which it surprised during the
+night, but was driven out by Sebastiani, who had just arrived there.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, a fourth, pushed still more in advance, got between Krasno&euml; and
+Liady, and carried off, upon the high road, several generals and other
+officers who were marching singly.</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff, at the same time, with the bulk of his army, advanced, and
+took a position in the rear of these vanguards, and within reach of them
+all, and felicitated himself on the success of his man&oelig;uvres, which
+would have inevitably failed, owing to his tardiness, had it not been
+for our want of foresight; for this was a contest of errors, in which
+ours being the greatest, we could have no thought of escaping total
+destruction. Having made these dispositions, the Russian commander must
+have believed that the French army was entirely in his power; but this
+belief saved us. Kutusoff was wanting to himself at the moment of
+action; his old age executed only half and badly the plans which it had
+combined wisely.</p>
+
+<p>During the time that all these masses were arranging themselves round
+Napoleon, he remained perfectly tranquil in a miserable hut, the only
+one left standing in Korythinia, apparently quite unconscious of all
+these movements of troops, artillery, and cavalry, which were
+surrounding him in all directions; at least he sent no orders to the
+three corps which had halted at Smolensk to expedite their march, and he
+himself waited for daylight to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>His column was advancing, without precaution, preceded by a crowd of
+stragglers, all eager to reach Krasno&euml;, when at two leagues from that
+place, a row of Cossacks, placed from the heights on our left all across
+the great road, appeared before them. Seized with astonishment, these
+stragglers halted; they had looked for nothing of the kind, and at first
+were inclined to believe that relentless fate had traced upon the snow
+between them and Europe, that long, black, and motionless line as the
+fatal term assigned to their hopes.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them, stupified and rendered insensible by the misery of their
+situation, with their eyes mentally fixed on home, and pursuing
+mechanically and obstinately that direction, would listen to no warning,
+and were about to surrender; the others collected together, and on both
+sides there was a pause, in order to consider each other's force.
+Several officers, who then came up, put these disbanded soldiers in some
+degree of order; seven or eight riflemen, whom they sent forward, were
+sufficient to break through that threatening curtain.</p>
+
+<p>The French were smiling at the audacity of this idle demonstration, when
+all at once, from the heights on their left, an enemy's battery began
+firing. Its bullets crossed the road; at the same time thirty squadrons
+showed themselves on the same side, threatening the Westphalian corps
+which was advancing, the commander of which was so confused, that he
+made no disposition to meet their attack.</p>
+
+<p>A wounded officer, unknown to these Germans, and who was there by mere
+chance, called out to them with an indignant voice, and immediately
+assumed their command. The men obeyed him as they would their own
+leader. In this case of pressing danger the differences of convention
+disappeared. The man really superior having shown himself, acted as a
+rallying point to the crowd, who grouped themselves around him, while
+the general-in-chief remained mute and confounded, receiving with
+docility the impulse the other had given, and acknowledging his
+superiority, which, after the danger was over, he disputed, but of which
+he did not, as too often happens, seek to revenge himself.</p>
+
+<p>This wounded officer was Excelmans! In this action he was every thing,
+general, officer, soldier, even an artilleryman, for he actually laid
+hold of a cannon that had been abandoned, loaded and pointed it, and
+made it once more be of use against our enemies. As to the commander of
+the Westphalians, after this campaign, his premature and melancholy end
+makes us presume that excessive fatigue and the consequences of some
+severe wounds had already affected him mortally.</p>
+
+<p>On seeing this leading column marching in such good order, the enemy
+confined itself to attacking it with their bullets, which it despised,
+and soon left behind it. When it came to the turn of the grenadiers of
+the old guard to pass through this fire, they closed their ranks around
+Napoleon like a moveable fortress, proud of having to protect him. Their
+band of music expressed this pride. When the danger was greatest, they
+played the well-known air, "<i>O&ugrave; peut-on &ecirc;tre mieux qu'au sein de sa
+famille!</i>" (Where can we be happier than in the bosom of our family!) But
+the Emperor, whom nothing escaped, stopped them with an exclamation,
+"Rather play, <i>Veillons au salut de l'Empire</i>!" (Let us watch for the
+safety of the empire!) words much better suited to his pre-occupation,
+and to the general situation.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders
+to silence it, and in two hours after he reached Krasno&euml;. The sight of
+Sebastiani, and of the first grenadiers who preceded him, had been
+sufficient to drive away the enemy's infantry. Napoleon entered in a
+state of great anxiety, from not knowing what corps had been attacking
+him, and his cavalry being too weak to enable them to get him
+information, out of reach of the high road. He left Mortier and the
+young guard a league behind him, in this way stretching out from too
+great a distance a hand too feeble to assist his army, and determined to
+wait for it.</p>
+
+<p>The passage of his column had not been sanguinary, but it could not
+conquer the ground as it did the enemy; the road was hilly; at every
+eminence cannon were obliged to be left behind without being spiked, and
+baggage, which was plundered before it was abandoned. The Russians from
+their heights saw the whole interior of the army, its weaknesses, its
+deformities, its most shameful parts: in short, all that is generally
+concealed with the greatest care.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding, it appeared as if Miloradowitch, from his elevated
+position, was satisfied with merely insulting the passage of the
+Emperor, and of that old guard which had been so long the terror of
+Europe. He did not dare to gather up its fragments until it had passed
+on; but then he became bold, concentrated his forces, and descending
+from the heights, took up a strong position with twenty thousand men,
+quite across the high road; by this movement he separated Eugene,
+Davoust, and Ney from the Emperor, and closed the road to Europe against
+these three leaders.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVi" id="CHAP_IVi"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>While he was making these preparations, Eugene was using all his efforts
+at Smolensk to collect his scattered troops; with great difficulty he
+tore them from the plunder of the magazines, and he did not succeed in
+rallying eight thousand men until late on the 15th of November. He was
+obliged to promise them supplies of provisions, and to show them the
+road to Lithuania, in order to induce them to renew their march. Night
+compelled him to halt at three leagues distance from Smolensk; the half
+of his soldiers had already left their ranks. Next morning he continued
+his march, with all that the cold of the night and of death had not
+fastened round their <i>bivouacs</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The noise of the cannon which they had heard the day before had ceased;
+the royal column was advancing with difficulty, adding its own fragments
+to those which it encountered. At its head, the viceroy and the chief of
+his staff, buried in their own melancholy reflections, gave the reins to
+their horses. Insensibly they left their troop behind them, without
+being sensible of it; for the road was strewed with stragglers and men
+marching at their pleasure, the idea of keeping whom in order had been
+abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>In this way they advanced to within two leagues of Krasno&euml;, but then a
+singular movement which was passing before them attracted their absent
+looks. Several of the disbanded soldiers had suddenly halted; those who
+followed as they came up, formed a group with them; others who had
+advanced farther fell back upon the first; they crowded together; a mass
+was soon formed. The viceroy surprised, then looked about him; he
+perceived that he had got the start of the main body of his army by an
+hour's march: that he had about him only fifteen hundred men of all
+ranks, of all nations, without organization, without leaders, without
+order, without arms ready or fit for an engagement, and that he was
+summoned to surrender.</p>
+
+<p>This summons was answered by a general cry of indignation! But the
+Russian flag of truce, who presented himself singly, insisted: "Napoleon
+and his guard," said he to them, "have been beaten; you are surrounded
+by twenty thousand Russians: you have no means of safety but in
+accepting honourable conditions, and these Miloradowitch proposes to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>At these words, Guyon, one of the generals whose soldiers were either
+all dead or dispersed, rushed from the crowd, and with a loud voice
+called out, "Return immediately to whence you came, and tell him who
+sent you, that if he has twenty thousand men, we have eighty thousand!"
+The Russian, confounded, immediately retired.</p>
+
+<p>All this happened in the twinkling of an eye; in a moment after the
+hills on the left of the road were spouting out lightning and whirlwinds
+of smoke; showers of shells and grape-shot swept the high road, and
+threatening advancing columns showed their bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>The viceroy hesitated for a moment; it grieved him to leave that
+unfortunate troop, but at last, leaving his chief of the staff with
+them, he returned back to his divisions, in order to bring them forward
+to the combat, to make them get beyond the obstacle before it became
+insurmountable, or to perish; for with the pride derived from a crown
+and so many victories, it was not to be expected that he could ever
+admit the thought of surrender.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Guilleminot summoned about him the officers who, in this
+crowd, had mingled with the soldiers. Several generals, colonels, and a
+great number of officers immediately started forth and surrounded him;
+they concerted together, and accepting him for their leader, they
+distributed into platoons all the men who had hitherto formed but one
+mass, and whom in that state they had found it impossible to excite.</p>
+
+<p>This organization was made under a sharp fire. Several superior officers
+went and placed themselves proudly in the ranks, and became once more
+common soldiers. From a different species of pride, some marines of the
+guard insisted on being commanded by one of their own officers, while
+each of the other platoons was commanded by a general. Hitherto the
+Emperor himself had been their colonel; now they were on the point of
+perishing they maintained their privilege, which nothing could make them
+forget, and which was respected accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>These brave men, in this order, proceeded on their march to Krasno&euml;: and
+they had already got beyond the batteries of Miloradowitch, when the
+latter, rushing with his columns upon their flanks, hemmed them in so
+closely, as to compel them to turn about, and seek a position in which
+they could defend themselves. To the eternal glory of these warriors it
+should be told, that these fifteen hundred French and Italians, one to
+ten, with nothing in their favour but a determined countenance and very
+few fire-arms in a state fit for use, kept their enemies at a respectful
+distance upwards of an hour.</p>
+
+<p>But as there was still no appearance of the viceroy and the rest of his
+divisions, a longer resistance was evidently impossible. They were again
+and again summoned to lay down their arms. During these short pauses
+they heard the cannon rolling at a distance in their front and in their
+rear. Thus, therefore, "the whole army was attacked at once, and from
+Smolensk to Krasno&euml; it was but one engagement! If we wanted assistance,
+there could be none expected by waiting for it; we must go and look for
+it; but on which side? At Krasno&euml; it was impossible; we were too far
+from it; there was every reason to believe that our troops were beaten
+there. It would besides become matter of necessity for us to retreat;
+and we were too near the Russians under Miloradowitch, who were calling
+to us from their ranks to lay down our arms, to venture to turn our
+backs upon them. It would therefore be a much better plan, as our faces
+were now turned towards Smolensk, and as Prince Eugene was on that side,
+to form ourselves into one compact mass, keep all its movements well
+connected, and rushing headlong, to re-enter Russia by cutting our way
+through these Russians, and rejoin the viceroy; then to return together,
+to overthrow Miloradowitch, and at last reach Krasno&euml;."</p>
+
+<p>To this proposition of their leader, there was a loud and unanimous cry
+of assent. Instantly the column formed into a mass, and rushed into the
+midst of ten thousand hostile muskets and cannon. The Russians, at first
+seized with astonishment, opened their ranks and allowed this handful of
+warriors, almost disarmed, to advance into the middle of them. Then,
+when they comprehended their purpose, either from pity or admiration,
+the enemy's battalions, which lined both sides of the road, called out
+to our men to halt; they entreated and conjured them to surrender; but
+the only answer they received was a more determined march, a stern
+silence, and the point of the bayonet. The whole of the enemy's fire was
+then poured upon them at once, at the distance of a few yards, and the
+half of this heroic column was stretched wounded or lifeless on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>The remainder proceeded without a single man quitting the body of his
+troop, which no Russian was bold enough to venture near. Few of these
+unfortunate men again saw the viceroy and their advancing divisions.
+Then only they separated; they ran and threw themselves into these
+feeble ranks, which were opened to receive and protect them.</p>
+
+<p>For more than an hour the Russian cannon had been thinning them. While
+one half of their forces had pursued Guilleminot and compelled him to
+retreat, Miloradowitch, with the other half, had stopped Prince Eugene.
+His right rested on a wood which was protected by heights entirely
+covered with cannon; his left touched the great road, but more in the
+rear. This disposition dictated that of Eugene. The royal column, by
+degrees, as it came up, deployed on the right of the road, its right
+more forward than its left. The viceroy thus placed obliquely between
+him and the enemy the great road, the possession of which was the
+subject of contest. Each of the two armies occupied it by its left.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians, placed in a position so offensive, kept entirely on the
+defensive; their bullets alone attacked Eugene. A cannonade was kept up
+on both sides, on theirs most destructive, on ours almost totally
+ineffective. Tired out with this firing, Eugene formed his resolution;
+he called the 14th French division, drew it up on the left of the great
+road, pointed out to it the woody height on which the enemy rested, and
+which formed his principal strength; <i>that</i> was the decisive point, the
+centre of the action, and to make the rest fall, <i>that</i> must be carried.
+He did not expect it would; but that effort would draw the attention and
+the strength of the enemy on that side, the right of the great road
+would remain free, and he would endeavour to take proper advantage of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred soldiers, formed into three troops, were all that could be
+found willing to mount to this assault. These devoted men advanced
+resolutely against hostile thousands in a formidable position. A battery
+of the Italian guard advanced to protect them, but the Russian batteries
+immediately demolished it, and their cavalry took possession of it.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the grape-shot which was mowing them rapidly down, the three
+hundred French kept moving on, and they had actually reached the enemy's
+position, when, suddenly from two sides of the wood two masses of
+cavalry rushed forth, bore down upon, overwhelmed and massacred them.
+Not one escaped; and with them perished all remains of discipline and
+courage in their division.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that General Guilleminot again made his appearance. That in
+a position so critical, Prince Eugene, with four thousand enfeebled
+troops, the remnant of forty-two thousand and upwards, should not have
+despaired, that he should still have exhibited a bold countenance, may
+be conceived, from the known character of that commander; but that the
+sight of our disaster and the ardour of victory should not have urged
+the Russians to more than indecisive efforts, and that they should have
+allowed the night to put an end to the battle, is with us, to this day,
+matter of complete astonishment. Victory was so new to them, that even
+when they held it in their hands, they knew not how to profit by it;
+they delayed its completion until the next day.</p>
+
+<p>The viceroy saw that the greater part of the Russians, attracted by his
+demonstrations, had collected on the left of the road, and he only
+waited until night, the sure ally of the weakest, had chained all their
+movements. Then it was, that leaving his fires burning on that side, to
+deceive the enemy, he quitted it, and marching entirely across the
+fields, he turned, and silently got beyond the left of Miloradowitch's
+position, while that general, too certain of his victory, was dreaming
+of the glory of receiving, next morning, the sword of the son of
+Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this perilous march, there was an awful moment. At the
+most critical instant, when these soldiers, the survivors of so many
+battles, were stealing along the side of the Russian army, holding their
+breath and the noise of their steps; when their all depended on a look
+or a cry of alarm; the moon all at once coming out of a thick cloud
+appeared to light their movements. At the same moment a Russian sentinel
+called out to them to halt, and demanded who they were? They gave
+themselves up for lost! but Klisky, a Pole, ran up to this Russian, and
+speaking to him in his own language, said to him with the greatest
+composure, in a low tone of voice, "Be silent, fellow! don't you see
+that we belong to the corps of Ouwarof, and that we are going on a
+secret expedition?" The Russian, outwitted, held his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>But the Cossacks were galloping up every moment to the flanks of the
+column, as if to reconnoitre it, and then returned to the body of their
+troop. Their squadrons advanced several times as if they were about to
+charge; but they did no more, either from doubt as to what they saw, for
+they were still deceived, or from prudence, as it frequently halted, and
+presented a determined front to them.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after two hours most anxious march, they again reached the high
+road, and the viceroy was actually in Krasno&euml; on the 17th of November,
+when Miloradowitch, descending from his heights in order to seize him,
+found the field of battle occupied only by a few stragglers, whom no
+effort could induce the night before to quit their fires.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vi" id="CHAP_Vi"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Emperor on his side had waited for the viceroy during the whole of
+the preceding day. The noise of his engagement had irritated him. An
+effort to break through the enemy, in order to join him, had been
+ineffectually attempted; and when night came on without his making his
+appearance, the uneasiness of his adopted father was at the height.
+"Eugene and the army of Italy, and this long day of baffled expectation,
+had they then terminated together?" Only one hope remained to Napoleon;
+and that was, that the viceroy, driven back towards Smolensk, had there
+joined Davoust and Ney, and that the following day they would, with
+united forces, attempt a decisive effort.</p>
+
+<p>In his anxiety, the Emperor assembled the marshals who remained with
+him. These were Berthier, Bessi&egrave;res, Mortier, and Lefebvre; these were
+saved; they had cleared the obstacle; they had only to continue their
+retreat through Lithuania, which was open to them; but would they
+abandon their companions in the midst of the Russian army? No,
+certainly; and they determined once more to enter Russia, either to
+deliver, or to perish with them.</p>
+
+<p>When this resolution was taken, Napoleon coolly prepared the
+dispositions to carry it into effect. He was not at all shaken by the
+great movements which the enemy were evidently making around him. He saw
+that Kutusoff was advancing in order to surround and take him prisoner
+in Krasno&euml;. The very night before, he had learned that Ojarowski, with a
+vanguard of Russian infantry, had got beyond him, and taken a position
+at Maliewo, in a village in the rear of his left. Irritated, instead of
+depressed, by misfortune, he called his aide-de-camp, Rapp, and
+exclaimed, "that he must set out immediately, and proceed during the
+night and the darkness to attack that body of infantry with the bayonet;
+that this was the first time of its exhibiting so much audacity, and
+that he was determined to make it repent it, in such a way, that it
+should never again dare to approach so near to his head-quarters." Then
+instantly recalling him, he continued, "But, no! let Roguet and his
+division go alone! As for thee, remain where thou art, I don't wish thee
+to be killed here, I shall have occasion for thee at Dantzic."</p>
+
+<p>Rapp, while he was carrying this order to Roguet, could not help feeling
+astonished, that his leader, surrounded by eighty thousand enemies, whom
+he was going to attack next day with nine thousand, should have so
+little doubt about his safety, as to be thinking of what he should have
+to do at Dantzic, a city from which he was separated by the winter, two
+other hostile armies, famine, and a hundred and eighty leagues.</p>
+
+<p>The nocturnal attack on Chirkowa and Maliewo was successful. Roguet
+formed his idea of the enemy's position by the direction of their fires;
+they occupied two villages, connected by a causeway, which was defended
+by a ravine. He disposed his troop into three columns of attack; those
+on the right and left were to advance silently, as close as possible to
+the enemy; then at the signal to charge, which he himself would give
+them from the centre, they were to rush into the midst of the enemy
+without firing a shot, and making use only of their bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately the two wings of the young guard commenced the action. While
+the Russians, taken by surprise, and not knowing on which side to defend
+themselves, were wavering from their right to their left, Roguet, with
+his column, rushed suddenly upon their centre and into the midst of
+their camp, into which he entered pell-mell with them. Thus divided and
+thrown into confusion, they had barely time to throw the best part of
+their great and small arms into a neighbouring lake, and to set fire to
+their tents, the flames arising from which, instead of saving them, only
+gave light to their destruction.</p>
+
+<p>This check stopped the movement of the Russian army for four-and-twenty
+hours, put it in the Emperor's power to remain at Krasno&euml;, and enabled
+Eugene to rejoin him during the following night. He was received by
+Napoleon with the greatest joy; but the Emperor's uneasiness respecting
+Davoust and Ney became shortly after proportionably greater.</p>
+
+<p>Around us the camp of the Russians presented a spectacle similar to what
+it had done at Vinkowo, Malo-Yaroslawetz, and Wiazma. Every evening,
+close to the general's tent, the relics of the Russian saints,
+surrounded by an immense number of wax tapers, were exposed to the
+adoration of the soldiers. While each of these was, according to custom,
+giving proofs of his devotion by an endless repetition of crossings and
+genuflections, the priests were addressing them with fanatical
+exhortations, which would appear barbarous and absurd to every civilized
+nation.</p>
+
+<p>In spite, however, of the great power of such means, of the number of
+the Russians, and of our weakness, Kutusoff, who was only at two
+leagues' distance from Miloradowitch, while the latter was beating
+Prince Eugene, remained immoveable. During the following night,
+Beningsen, urged on by the ardent Wilson, in vain attempted to animate
+the old Russian. Elevating the faults of his age into virtues, he
+applied the names of wisdom, humanity, and prudence, to his dilatoriness
+and strange circumspection; he was resolved to finish as he had begun.
+For if we may be allowed to compare small things with great, his renown
+had been established on a principle directly contrary to that of
+Napoleon, fortune having made the one, and the other having created his
+fortune.</p>
+
+<p>He made a boast of "advancing only by short marches; of allowing his
+soldiers to rest every third day; he would blush, and halt immediately,
+if they wanted bread or spirits for a single moment." Then, with great
+self-gratulation, he pretended that "all the way from Wiazma, he had
+been escorting the French army as his prisoners; chastising them
+whenever they wished to halt, or strike out of the high road; that it
+was useless to run any risks with captives; that the Cossacks, a
+vanguard, and an army of artillery, were quite sufficient to finish
+them, and make them pass successively under the yoke; and that in this
+plan, he was admirably seconded by Napoleon himself. Why should he seek
+to <i>purchase</i> of Fortune what she was so generously giving him? Was not
+the term of Napoleon's destiny already irrevocably marked? it was in the
+marshes of the Berezina that this meteor would be extinguished, this
+colossus overthrown, in the midst of Wittgenstein, Tchitchakof, and
+himself, and in the presence of the assembled Russian armies. As for
+himself, he would have the glory of delivering him up to them,
+enfeebled, disarmed, and dying; and to him that glory was sufficient."</p>
+
+<p>To this discourse the English officer, still more active and eager,
+replied only by entreating the field-marshal "to leave his head-quarters
+only for a few moments, and advance upon the heights; there he would see
+that the last moment of Napoleon was already come. Would he allow him
+even to get beyond the frontiers of Russia proper, which loudly called
+for the sacrifice of this great victim? Nothing remained but to strike;
+let him only give the order, one charge would be sufficient, and in two
+hours the face of Europe would be entirely changed!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, gradually getting warmer at the coolness with which Kutusoff
+listened to him, Wilson, for the third time, threatened him with the
+general indignation. "Already, in his army, at the sight of the
+straggling, mutilated, and dying column, which was about to escape from
+him, he might hear the Cossacks exclaiming, what a shame it was to allow
+these skeletons to escape in this manner out of their tomb!" But
+Kutusoff, whom old age, that misfortune without hope, rendered
+indifferent, became angry at the attempts made to rouse him, and by a
+short and violent answer, shut the indignant Englishman's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>It is asserted that the report of a spy had represented to him Krasno&euml;
+as filled with an enormous mass of the imperial guard, and that the old
+marshal was afraid of compromising his reputation by attacking it. But
+the sight of our distress emboldened Beningsen; this chief of the staff
+prevailed upon Strogonof, Gallitzin, and Miloradowitch, with a force of
+more than fifty thousand Russians, and one hundred pieces of cannon, to
+venture to attack at daylight, in spite of Kutusoff, fourteen thousand
+famished, enfeebled, and half-frozen French and Italians.</p>
+
+<p>This was a danger, the imminence of which Napoleon fully comprehended.
+He might escape from it; daylight had not yet appeared. He was at
+liberty to avoid this fatal engagement; to gain Orcha and Borizof by
+rapid marches along with Eugene and his guard; there he could rally his
+forces with thirty thousand French under Victor and Ouidin&ocirc;t, with
+Dombrowski, with Regnier, with Schwartzenberg, and with all his dep&ocirc;ts,
+and be might again, the following year, make his appearance as
+formidable as ever.</p>
+
+<p>On the 17th, before daylight, he issued his orders, armed himself, and
+going out on foot, at the head of his old guard, began his march. But it
+was not towards Poland, his ally, that it was directed, nor towards
+France, where he would be still received as the head of a rising
+dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on taking up his sword
+on this occasion, were "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is
+time that I should become the general." He turned back into the midst of
+eighty thousand enemies, plunged into the thickest of them, in order to
+draw all their efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favour of
+Davoust and Ney, and to tear them from a country, the gates of which had
+been closed upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on one side the Russian battalions
+and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right, and in our
+rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other, Napoleon with his six
+thousand guards advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to take his
+place in the middle of that terrible circle. At the same time Mortier, a
+few yards in front of his Emperor, displayed in the face of the whole
+Russian army, the five thousand men which still remained to him.</p>
+
+<p>Their object was to defend the right flank of the great road from
+Krasno&euml; to the great ravine in the direction of Stachowa. A battalion of
+<i>chasseurs</i> of the old guard, formed in a square like a fortress, was
+planted close to the high road, and acted as a support to the left wing
+of our young soldiers. On their right, in the snowy plains which
+surrounded Krasno&euml;, the remains of the cavalry of the guard, a few
+cannon, and the four hundred cavalry of Latour-Maubourg (as, since they
+left Smolensk, the cold had killed or dispersed fourteen hundred of
+them) occupied the place of the battalions and batteries which the
+French army no longer possessed.</p>
+
+<p>The artillery of the Duke of Treviso was reinforced by a battery
+commanded by Drouot; one of those men who are endowed with the whole
+strength of virtue, who think that duty embraces every thing, and are
+capable of making the noblest sacrifices simply and without the least
+effort.</p>
+
+<p>Claparede remained at Krasno&euml;, where, with a few soldiers, he protected
+the wounded, the baggage, and the retreat. Prince Eugene continued his
+retreat towards Liady. His engagement of the preceding day and his night
+march had entirely broken up his corps; his divisions only retained
+sufficient unity to drag themselves along, and to perish, but not to
+fight.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Roguet had been recalled to the field of battle from Maliewo.
+The enemy kept pushing columns across that village, and was extending
+more and more beyond our right in order to surround us. The battle then
+commenced. But what kind of battle? The Emperor had here no sudden
+illumination to trust to, no flashes of momentary inspiration, none of
+these great strokes so unforeseen from their boldness, which ravish
+fortune, extort a victory, and by which he had so often disconcerted,
+stunned, and crushed his enemies. All <i>their</i> movements were now free,
+all <i>ours</i> enchained, and this genius of attack was reduced to defend
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Here therefore it became perfectly evident that renown is not a vain
+shadow, that she is real strength, and doubly powerful by the inflexible
+pride which she imparts to her favourites, and the timid precautions
+which she suggests to them who venture to attack her. The Russians had
+only to march forward without man&oelig;uvring, even without firing: their
+mass was sufficient, they might have crushed Napoleon and his feeble
+troop: but they did not dare to come to close quarters with him. They
+were awed by the presence of the conqueror of Egypt and of Europe. The
+Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, an army of victories, seemed
+to rise between him and the whole of the Russians. We might almost fancy
+that, in the eyes of that submissive and superstitious people, a renown
+so extraordinary appeared like some thing supernatural; that they
+regarded it as beyond their reach; that they believed they could only
+attack and demolish it from a distance; and in short, that against that
+old guard, that living fortress, that column of granite, as it had been
+styled by its leader, human efforts were impotent, and that cannon alone
+could demolish it.</p>
+
+<p>These made wide and deep breaches in the ranks of Roguet and the young
+guard, but they killed without vanquishing. These young soldiers, one
+half of whom had never before been in an engagement, received the shock
+of death during three hours without retreating one step, without making
+a single movement to escape it, and without being able to return it,
+their artillery having been broken, and the Russians keeping beyond the
+reach of their musketry.</p>
+
+<p>But every instant strengthened the enemy and weakened Napoleon. The
+noise of the cannon as well as Claparede apprised him, that in the rear
+of Krasno&euml; and his army, Beningsen was proceeding to take possession of
+the road to Liady, and cut off his retreat. The east, the west, and the
+south were sparkling with the enemy's fires; one side only remained
+open, that of the north and the Dnieper, towards an eminence, at the
+foot of which were the high road and the Emperor. We fancied we saw the
+enemy covering this eminence with his cannon: in that situation they
+were just over Napoleon's head, and might have crushed him at a few
+yards' distance. He was apprised of his danger, cast his eyes for an
+instant upon it, and uttered merely these words, "Very well, let a
+battalion of my <i>chasseurs</i> take possession of it!" Immediately
+afterwards, without paying farther attention to it, his whole looks and
+attention reverted to the perilous situation of Mortier.</p>
+
+<p>Then at last Davoust made his appearance, forcing his way through a
+swarm of Cossacks, whom he drove away by a precipitate march. At the
+sight of Krasno&euml;, this marshal's troops disbanded themselves, and ran
+across the fields to get beyond the right of the enemy's line, in the
+rear of which they had come up. Davoust and his generals could only
+rally them at Krasno&euml;.</p>
+
+<p>The first corps was thus preserved, but we learned at the same time,
+that our rear-guard could no longer defend itself at Krasno&euml;; that Ney
+was probably still at Smolensk, and that we must give up waiting for him
+any longer. Napoleon, however, still hesitated; he could not determine
+on making this great sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>But at last, as all were likely to perish, his resolution was fixed. He
+called Mortier, and squeezing his hand sorrowfully, told him, "that he
+had not a moment to lose; that the enemy were overwhelming him in all
+directions; that Kutusoff might already reach Liady, perhaps Orcha, and
+the last winding of the Boristhenes before him; that he would therefore
+proceed thither rapidly with his old guard, in order to occupy that
+passage. Davoust would relieve Mortier; but both of them must endeavour
+to hold out in Krasno&euml; until night, after which they must come and
+rejoin him." Then with his heart full of Ney's misfortune, and of
+despair at abandoning him, he withdrew slowly from the field of battle,
+traversed Krasno&euml;, where he again halted, and then cleared his way to
+Liady.</p>
+
+<p>Mortier was anxious to obey, but at that moment the Dutch troops of the
+guard had lost, along with a third part of their number, an important
+post which they were defending, which the enemy immediately after
+covered with his artillery. Roguet, feeling the destructive effects of
+its fire, fancied he was able to extinguish it. A regiment which he sent
+against the Russian battery was repulsed; a second (the 1st of the
+<i>voltigeurs</i>) got into the middle of the Russians, and stood firm
+against two charges of their cavalry. It continued to advance, torn to
+pieces by their grape-shot, when a third charge overwhelmed it. Fifty
+soldiers and eleven officers were all of it that Roguet was able to
+preserve.</p>
+
+<p>That general had lost the half of his men. It was now two o'clock, and
+his unshaken fortitude still kept the Russians in astonishment, when at
+last, emboldened by the Emperor's departure, they began to press upon
+him so closely, that the young guard was nearly hemmed in, and very soon
+in a situation in which it could neither hold out, nor retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, some platoons which Davoust had rallied, and the appearance
+of another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy's attention.
+Mortier availed himself of it. He gave orders to the three thousand men
+he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty
+thousand enemies. "Do you hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde, "the
+marshal orders ordinary time! Ordinary time, soldiers!" And this brave
+and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a
+shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as slowly from this field of
+carnage, as they would have done from a field of man&oelig;uvre.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIi" id="CHAP_VIi"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasno&euml; between him and
+Beningsen, he was in safety. The communication between that town and
+Liady was only interrupted by the fire of the enemy's batteries, which
+flanked the left side of the great road. Colbert and Latour-Maubourg
+kept them in check upon their heights. In the course of this march a
+most singular accident occurred. A howitzer shell entered the body of a
+horse, burst there, and blew him to pieces without wounding his rider,
+who fell upon his legs, and went on.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, meanwhile, halted at Liady, four leagues from the field of
+battle. When night came on, he learned that Mortier, who he thought was
+in his rear, had got before him. Melancholy and uneasy, he sent for him,
+and with an agitated voice, said to him, "that he had certainly fought
+gloriously, and suffered greatly. But why had he placed his Emperor
+between him and the enemy? why had he exposed himself to be cut off?"</p>
+
+<p>The marshal had got the start of Napoleon without being aware of it. He
+exclaimed, "that he had at first left Davoust in Krasno&euml;, again
+endeavouring to rally his troops, and that he himself had halted, not
+far from that: but that the first corps, having been driven back upon
+him, had obliged him to retrograde. That besides, Kutusoff did not
+follow up his victory with vigour, and appeared to hang upon our flank
+with all his army with no other view than to feast his eyes with our
+distress, and gather up our fragments."</p>
+
+<p>Next day the march was continued with hesitation. The impatient
+stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of Napoleon; he
+was on foot, with a stick in his hand, walking with difficulty and
+repugnance, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to
+tear himself from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then passing,
+and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening he reached Dombrowna, a wooden town, with a population
+like Liady; a novel sight for an army, which had for three months seen
+nothing but ruins. We had at last emerged from old Russia and her
+deserts of snow and ashes, and entered into a friendly and inhabited
+country, whose language we understood. The weather just then became
+milder, a thaw had begun, and we received some provisions.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and with some famine and bivouacs,
+all ceased at once; but it was too late. The Emperor saw that his army
+was destroyed; every moment the name of Ney escaped from his lips, with
+exclamations of grief. That night particularly he was heard groaning and
+exclaiming, "That the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to the heart,
+and yet that he could not succour them without fixing himself in some
+place: but where was it possible for him to rest, without ammunition,
+provisions, or artillery? He was no longer strong enough to halt; he
+must reach Minsk as quickly as possible."</p>
+
+<p>He had hardly spoken the words, when a Polish officer arrived with the
+news, that Minsk itself, his magazine, his retreat, his only hope, had
+just fallen into the hands of the Russians, Tchitchakof having entered
+it on the 16th. Napoleon, at first, was mute and overpowered at this
+last blow; but immediately afterwards, elevating himself in proportion
+to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now nothing to do,
+but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets."</p>
+
+<p>But in order to reach this new enemy, who had escaped from
+Schwartzenberg, or whom Schwartzenberg had perhaps allowed to pass, (for
+we knew nothing of the circumstances,) and to escape from Kutusoff and
+Wittgenstein, we must cross the Berezina at Borizof. With that view
+Napoleon (on the 19th of November, from Dombrowna) sent orders to
+Dombrowski to give up all idea of fighting Hoertel, and proceed with all
+haste to occupy that passage. He wrote to the Duke of Reggio, to march
+rapidly to the same point, and to hasten to recover Minsk; the Duke of
+Belluno would cover his march. After giving these orders, his agitation
+was appeased, and his mind, worn out with suffering, sunk into
+depression.</p>
+
+<p>It was still far from daylight, when a singular noise drew him out of
+his lethargy. Some say that shots were at first heard, which had been
+fired by our own people, in order to draw out of the houses such as had
+taken shelter in them, that they might take their places; others assert,
+that from a disorderly practice, too common in our bivouacs, of
+vociferating to each other, the name of <i>Hausanne</i>, a grenadier, being
+suddenly called out loudly, in the midst of a profound silence, was
+mistaken for the alert cry of <i>aux armes</i>, which announced a surprise by
+the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever might be the cause, every one immediately saw, or fancied he
+saw, the Cossacks, and a great noise of war and of alarm surrounded
+Napoleon. Without disturbing himself, he said to Rapp, "Go and see, it
+is no doubt some rascally Cossacks, determined to disturb our rest!" But
+it became very soon a complete tumult of men running to fight or to
+flee, and who, meeting in the dark, mistook each other for enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon for a moment imagined that a serious attack had been made. As
+an embanked stream of water ran through the town, he inquired if the
+remaining artillery had been placed behind that ravine, and being
+informed that the precaution had been neglected, he himself immediately
+ran to the bridge, and caused his cannon to be hurried over to the other
+side.</p>
+
+<p>He then returned to his old guard, and stopping in front of each
+battalion: "Grenadiers!" said he to them, "we are retreating without
+being conquered by the enemy, let us not be vanquished by ourselves! Set
+an example to the army! Several of you have already deserted their
+eagles, and even thrown away their arms. I have no wish to have recourse
+to military laws to put a stop to this disorder, but appeal entirely to
+yourselves! Do justice among yourselves. To your own honour I commit the
+support of your discipline!"</p>
+
+<p>The other troops he harangued in a similar style. These few words were
+quite sufficient to the old grenadiers, who probably had no occasion for
+them. The others received them with acclamation, but an hour afterwards,
+when the march was resumed, they were quite forgotten. As to his
+rear-guard, throwing the greatest part of the blame of this hot alarm
+upon it, he sent an angry message to Davoust on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>At Orcha we found rather an abundant supply of provisions, a bridge
+equipage of sixty boats, with all its appurtenances, which were entirely
+burnt, and thirty-six pieces of cannon, with their horses, which were
+distributed between Davoust, Eugene, and Latour-Maubourg.</p>
+
+<p>Here for the first time we again met with the officers and gendarmes,
+who had been sent for the purpose of stopping on the two bridges of the
+Dnieper the crowd of stragglers, and making them rejoin their columns.
+But those eagles, which formerly promised every thing, were now looked
+upon as of fatal omen, and deserted accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Disorder was already regularly organized, and had enlisted in its ranks
+men who showed their ability in its service. When an immense crowd had
+been collected, these wretches called out "the Cossacks!" with a view to
+quicken the march of those who preceded them and to increase the tumult.
+They then took advantage of it, to carry off the provisions and cloaks
+of those whom they had thrown off their guard.</p>
+
+<p>The gendarmes, who again saw this army for the first time since its
+disaster, were astonished at the sight of such misery, terrified at the
+great confusion, and became discouraged. This friendly frontier was
+entered tumultuously; it would have been given up to pillage, had it not
+been for the guard, and a few hundred men who remained, with Prince
+Eugene.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon entered Orcha with six thousand guards, the remains of
+thirty-five thousand! Eugene, with eighteen hundred soldiers, the
+remains of forty-two thousand! Davoust, with four thousand, the remains
+of seventy thousand!</p>
+
+<p>This marshal had lost every thing, was actually without linen, and
+emaciated with hunger. He seized upon a loaf which was offered him by
+one of his comrades, and, voraciously devoured it. A handkerchief was
+given him to wipe his face, which was covered with rime. He exclaimed,
+"that none but men of iron constitutions could support such trials, that
+it was physically impossible to resist them; that there were limits to
+human strength, the utmost of which had been exceeded."</p>
+
+<p>He it was who at first supported the retreat as far as Wiazma. He was
+still, according to his custom, halting at all the defiles, and
+remaining there the very last, sending every one to his ranks, and
+constantly struggling with the disorder. He urged his soldiers to insult
+and strip of their booty such of their comrades as threw away their
+arms; the only means of retaining the first and punishing the last.
+Nevertheless, his methodical and severe genius, so much out of its
+element in that scene of universal confusion, has been accused of being
+too much intimidated at it.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor made fruitless attempts to check this discouragement. When
+alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers; but
+in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear inflexible.
+He issued a proclamation, "ordering every one to return to their ranks;
+if they did not, he would strip the officers of their grades, and put
+the soldiers to death."</p>
+
+<p>A threat like this produced neither good nor bad impression upon men who
+had become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from
+danger, but from suffering, and less apprehensive of the <i>death</i> with
+which they were threatened than of the <i>life</i> that was offered to them.</p>
+
+<p>But Napoleon's confidence increased with his peril; in his eyes, and in
+the midst of these deserts of mud and ice, this handful of men was still
+the grand army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! and there was no
+infatuation in this firmness; we were certain of it, when, in this very
+town, we saw him burning with his own hands every thing belonging to
+him, which might serve as trophies to the enemy, in the event of his
+fall.</p>
+
+<p>There also were unfortunately consumed all the papers which he had
+collected in order to write the history of his life, for such was his
+intention when he set out for this fatal war. He had then determined to
+halt as a threatening conqueror on the borders of the D&uuml;na and the
+Boristhenes, to which he now returned as a disarmed fugitive. At that
+time he regarded the <i>ennui</i> of six winter months, which he would have
+been detained on these rivers, as his greatest enemy, and to overcome
+it, this second C&aelig;sar intended there to have dictated his Commentaries.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIi" id="CHAP_VIIi"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Every thing, however, was now changed; two hostile armies were cutting
+off his retreat. The question to decide was, through which of them he
+must attempt to force his way: and as he knew nothing of the Lithuanian
+forests into which he was about to penetrate, he summoned such of his
+officers as had passed through them in order to reach him.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor began by telling them, that "Too much familiarity with great
+victories was frequently the precursor of great disasters, but that
+recrimination was now out of the question." He then mentioned the
+capture of Minsk, and after admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff's
+persevering man&oelig;uvres on his right flank, declared "that he meant to
+abandon his line of operations on the Minsk, unite with the Dukes of
+Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein's army, and regain
+Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina."</p>
+
+<p>Jomini combated this plan. That Swiss general described the position of
+Wittgenstein as a series of long defiles, in which his resistance might
+be either obstinate or flexible, but in either way sufficiently long to
+consummate our destruction. He added, that in this season, and in such a
+state of disorder, a change of route would complete the destruction of
+the army; that it would lose itself in the cross-roads of these barren
+and marshy forests; he maintained that the high road alone could keep it
+in any degree of union. Borizof, and its bridge over the Berezina, were
+still open; and it would be sufficient to reach it.</p>
+
+<p>He then stated that he knew of a road to the right of that town,
+constructed on wooden bridges, and passing across the marshes of
+Lithuania. This was the only road, by his account, by which the army
+could reach Wilna by Zembin and Malodeczno, leaving Minsk on the left,
+its road a day's journey longer, its fifty broken bridges rendering a
+passage impracticable, and Tchitchakof in possession of it. In this
+manner we should pass between the two hostile armies, avoiding them
+both.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was staggered; but as his pride revolted at the appearance
+of avoiding an engagement, and he was anxious to signalize his departure
+from Russia by a victory, he sent for General Dodde, of the engineers.
+As soon as he saw him he called out to him, "Whether shall we retreat by
+Zembin, or go and beat Wittgenstein at Smoliantzy?" and knowing that
+Dodde had just come from the latter position, he asked him if it was
+approachable?</p>
+
+<p>His reply was, that Wittgenstein occupied a height which entirely
+commanded that miry country; that it would be necessary for us to tack
+about, within his sight and within his reach, by following the windings
+and turnings of the road, in order to ascend to the Russian camp; that
+thus our column of attack would be long exposed to their fire, first its
+left and then its right flank; that this position was therefore
+unapproachable in front, and that to turn it, it would be necessary to
+retrograde towards Witepsk, and take too long a circuit.</p>
+
+<p>Disappointed in this last hope of glory, Napoleon then decided for
+Borizof. He ordered General Ebl&eacute; to proceed with eight companies of
+sappers and pontonniers to secure the passage of the Berezina, and
+General Jomini to act as his guide. But he said at the same time, "that
+it was cruel to retreat without fighting, to have the appearance of
+flight. If he had any magazine, any point of support, which would allow
+him to halt, he would still prove to Europe that he always knew how to
+fight and to conquer."</p>
+
+<p>All these illusions were now destroyed. At Smolensk, where he arrived
+first, and from which he was the first to depart, he had rather been
+informed of, than witnessed his disaster. At Krasno&euml;, where our miseries
+had successively been unrolled before his eyes, the peril had distracted
+his attention; but at Orcha he could contemplate, at once and leisurely,
+the full extent of his misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>At Smolensk, thirty-six thousand combatants, one hundred and fifty
+cannon, the army-chest, and the hope of life and breathing at liberty on
+the other side of the Berezina, still remained; here, there were
+scarcely ten thousand soldiers, almost without clothing or shoes,
+entangled amidst a crowd of dying men, with a few cannon, and a pillaged
+army-chest.</p>
+
+<p>In five days, every evil had been aggravated; destruction and
+disorganization had made frightful progress; Minsk had been taken. He
+had no longer to look for rest and abundance on the other side of the
+Berezina, but fresh contests with a new enemy. Finally, the defection of
+Austria from his alliance seemed to be declared, and perhaps it was a
+signal given to all Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was even uncertain whether he should reach Borizof in time to
+meet the new peril, which Schwartzenberg's hesitation seemed to have
+prepared for him. We have seen that a third Russian army, that of
+Wittgenstein, menaced, on his right, the interval which separated him
+from that town; that he had sent the Duke of Belluno against him, and
+had ordered that marshal to retrieve the opportunity he had lost on the
+1st of November, and to resume the offensive.</p>
+
+<p>In obedience to these orders, on the 14th of November, the very day
+Napoleon quitted Smolensk, the Dukes of Belluno and of Reggio had
+attacked and driven back the out-posts of Wittgenstein towards
+Smoliantzy, preparing, by this engagement, for a battle which they
+agreed should take place on the following day.</p>
+
+<p>The French were thirty thousand against forty thousand; there, as well
+as at Wiazma, the soldiers were sufficiently numerous, if they had not
+had too many leaders.</p>
+
+<p>The two Marshals disagreed. Victor wished to man&oelig;uvre on the enemy's
+left wing, to overthrow Wittgenstein with the two French corps, and
+march by Botscheikowo on Kamen, and from Kamen by Pouichna on Berezina.
+Ouidin&ocirc;t warmly disapproved of this plan, saying that it would separate
+them from the grand army, which required their assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, one of the leaders wishing to man&oelig;uvre, and the other to attack
+in front, they did neither the one nor the other. Ouidin&ocirc;t retired during
+the night to Czere&iuml;a, and Victor, discovering this retreat at daybreak,
+was compelled to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>He halted within a day's march of the Lukolmlia, near Sienno, where
+Wittgenstein did not much disturb him; but the Duke of Reggio having at
+last received the order dated from Dombrowna, which directed him to
+recover Minsk, Victor was about to be left alone before the Russian
+general. It was possible that the latter would then become aware of his
+superiority: and the Emperor, who at Orcha, on the 20th of November, saw
+his rear-guard, lost, his left flank menaced by Kutusoff, and his
+advance column stopped at the Berezina by the army of Volhynia, learned
+that Wittgenstein and forty thousand more enemies, far from being beaten
+and repulsed, were ready to fall upon his right, and that he had no time
+to lose.</p>
+
+<p>But Napoleon was long before he could determine to quit the Boristhenes.
+It appeared to him that this was like a second abandonment of the
+unfortunate Ney, and casting off for ever his intrepid companion in
+arms. There, as he had done at Liady and Dombrowna, he was calling every
+hour of the day and night, and sending to inquire if no tidings had been
+heard of that marshal; but not a trace of his existence had transpired
+through the Russian army; four days this mortal silence had lasted, and
+yet the Emperor still continued to hope.</p>
+
+<p>At last, being compelled, on the 20th of November, to quit Orcha, he
+still left there Eugene, Mortier, and Davoust, and halted at two leagues
+from thence, inquiring for Ney, and still expecting him. The same
+feeling of grief pervaded the whole army, of which Orcha then contained
+the remains. As soon as the most pressing wants allowed a moment's rest,
+the thoughts and looks of every one were directed towards the Russian
+bank. They listened for any warlike noise which might announce the
+arrival of Ney, or rather his last sighs; but nothing was to be seen but
+enemies who were already menacing the bridges of the Boristhenes! One of
+the three leaders then wished to destroy them, but the others refused
+their consent, on the ground, that this would be again separating them
+from their companion in arms, and a confession that they despaired of
+saving him, an idea to which, from their dread of so great a misfortune,
+they could not reconcile themselves.</p>
+
+<p>But with the fourth day all hope at last vanished. Night only brought
+with it a wearisome repose. They blamed themselves for Ney's misfortune,
+forgetting that it was utterly impossible to wait longer for the third
+corps in the plains of Krasno&euml;, where they must have fought for another
+twenty-eight hours, when they had merely strength and ammunition left
+for one.</p>
+
+<p>Already, as is the case in all cruel losses, they began to treasure up
+recollections. Davoust was the last who had quitted the unfortunate
+marshal, and Mortier and the viceroy were inquiring of him what were his
+last words! At the first reports of the cannonade opened on the 15th on
+Napoleon, Ney was anxious immediately to evacuate Smolensk in the suite
+of the viceroy; Davoust refused, pleading the orders of the Emperor, and
+the obligation to destroy the ramparts of the town. The two chiefs
+became warm, and Davoust persisting to remain until the following day,
+Ney, who had been appointed to bring up the rear, was compelled to wait
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, that on the 16th, Davoust sent to warn him of his danger;
+but Ney, either from a change of opinion, or from an angry feeling
+against Davoust, then returned him for answer, "That all the Cossacks in
+the universe should not prevent him from executing his instructions."</p>
+
+<p>After exhausting these recollections and all their conjectures, they
+again relapsed into a more gloomy silence, when suddenly they heard the
+steps of several horses, and then the joyful cry, "Marshal Ney is safe!
+here are some Polish cavalry come to announce his approach!" One of his
+officers then galloped in, and informed them that the marshal was
+advancing on the right bank of the Boristhenes, and had sent him to ask
+for assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Night had just set in; Davoust, Eugene, and Mortier had only its short
+duration to revive and animate the soldiers, who had hitherto always
+bivouacked. For the first time since they left Moscow, these poor
+fellows had received a sufficient quantum of provisions; they were about
+to prepare them and to take their rest, warm and under cover: how was it
+possible to make them resume their arms, and turn them from their
+asylums during that night of rest, whose inexpressible sweets they had
+just begun to taste? Who could persuade them to interrupt it, to retrace
+their steps, and return once more into the darkness and frozen deserts
+of Russia?</p>
+
+<p>Eugene and Mortier disputed the honour of this sacrifice, and the first
+only carried it in right of his superior rank. Shelter and the
+distribution of provisions had effected that which threats had failed to
+do. The stragglers were rallied, the viceroy again found himself at the
+head of four thousand men; all were ready to march at the news of Ney's
+danger; but it was their last effort.</p>
+
+<p>They proceeded in the darkness, by unknown roads, and had marched two
+leagues at random, halting every few minutes to listen. Their anxiety
+was already increased. Had they lost their way? were they too late? had
+their unfortunate comrades fallen? was it the victorious Russian army
+they were about to meet? In this uncertainty, Prince Eugene directed
+some cannon shot to be fired. Immediately after they fancied they heard
+signals of distress on that sea of snow; they proceeded from the third
+corps, which, having lost all its artillery, answered the cannon of the
+fourth by some volleys of platoon firing.</p>
+
+<p>The two corps were thus directed towards their meeting. Ney and Eugene
+were the first to recognize each other; they ran up, Eugene more
+precipitately, and threw themselves into each other's arms. Eugene wept,
+Ney let some angry words escape him. The first was delighted, melted,
+and elevated by the warlike heroism which his chivalrous heroism had
+just saved! The latter, still heated from the combat, irritated at the
+dangers which the honour of the army had run in his person, and blaming
+Davoust, whom he wrongfully accused of having deserted him.</p>
+
+<p>Some hours afterwards, when the latter wished to excuse himself, he
+could draw nothing from Ney but a severe look, and these words,
+"Monsieur le Mar&eacute;chal, I have no reproaches to make to you; God is our
+witness and your judge!"</p>
+
+<p>When the two corps had fairly recognized each other, they no longer kept
+their ranks. Soldiers, officers, generals, all ran towards each other.
+Those of Eugene shook hands with those of Ney; they touched them with a
+joyful mixture of astonishment and curiosity, and pressed them to their
+bosoms with the tenderest compassion. The refreshments and brandy which
+they had just received they lavished upon them; they overwhelmed them
+with questions. They then all proceeded together in company, towards
+Orcha, all impatient, Eugene's soldiers to hear, and Ney's to tell their
+story.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIi" id="CHAP_VIIIi"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>They stated, that on the 17th of November they had quitted Smolensk with
+twelve cannon, six thousand infantry, and three hundred cavalry, leaving
+there five thousand sick at the mercy of the enemy; and that had it not
+been for the noise of Platof's cannon, and the explosion of the mines,
+their marshal would never have been able to bring away from the ruins of
+that city seven thousand unarmed stragglers who had taken shelter in
+them. They dwelt upon the attentions which their leader had shown to the
+wounded, and to the women and their children, proving upon this occasion
+that the bravest was again the most humane.</p>
+
+<p>At the gates of the city an unnatural action struck them with a degree
+of horror which was still undiminished. A mother had abandoned her
+little son, only five years old; in spite of his cries and tears she had
+driven him away from her sledge which was too heavily laden. She herself
+cried out with a distracted air, "that <i>he</i> had never seen France! that
+<i>he</i> would not regret it! as for <i>her</i>, <i>she</i> knew France! <i>she</i> was
+resolved to see France once more!" Twice did Ney himself replace the
+unfortunate child in the arms of his mother, twice did she cast him off
+on the frozen snow.</p>
+
+<p>This solitary crime, amidst a thousand instances of the most devoted and
+sublime tenderness, they did not leave unpunished. The unnatural mother
+was herself abandoned to the same snow from which her infant was
+snatched, and entrusted to another mother; this little orphan was
+exhibited in their ranks; he was afterwards seen at the Berezina, then
+at Wilna, even at Kowno, and finally escaped from all the horrors of the
+retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The officers of Ney continued, in answer to the pressing questions of
+those of Eugene; they depicted themselves advancing towards Krasno&euml;,
+with their marshal at their head, completely across our immense wrecks,
+dragging after them one afflicted multitude, and preceded by another,
+whose steps were quickened by hunger.</p>
+
+<p>They described how they found the bottom of each ravine filled with
+helmets, hussar-caps, trunks broken open, scattered garments, carriages
+and cannon, some overturned, others with the horses still harnessed, and
+the poor animals worn out, expiring and half devoured.</p>
+
+<p>How, near Korythinia, at the end of their first day's march, a violent
+cannonading and the whistling of several bullets over their heads, had
+led them to imagine that a battle had just commenced. This discharge
+appeared to proceed from before and quite close to them even upon the
+road, and yet they could not get sight of a single enemy. Ricard and his
+division advanced with a view to discover them, but they only found, in
+a turn of the road, two French batteries abandoned, with their
+ammunition, and in the neighbouring field a horde of wretched Cossacks,
+who immediately fled, terrified at their audacity in setting fire to
+them, and at the noise they had made.</p>
+
+<p>Ney's officers here interrupted their narrative to inquire in their turn
+what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why
+had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had
+time to spike them, or at least to spoil their ammunition?</p>
+
+<p>In continuation, they said they had hitherto only discovered the traces
+of a disastrous march. But next morning there was a complete change, and
+they confessed their unlucky presentiments when they arrived at that
+field of snow reddened with blood, sprinkled with broken cannon and
+mutilated corses. The dead bodies still marked the ranks and places of
+battle; they pointed them out to each other. <i>There</i> had been the 14th
+division; <i>there</i> were still to be seen, on the broken plates of their
+caps, the numbers of its regiments. <i>There</i> had been the Italian guard;
+there were its dead, whose uniforms were still distinguishable! But
+where were its living remnants? Vainly did they interrogate that field
+of blood, these lifeless forms, the motionless and frozen silence of the
+desert and the grave! they could neither penetrate into the fate of
+their companions, nor into that which awaited themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Ney hurried them rapidly over all these ruins, and they had advanced
+without impediment to a part of the road, where it descends into a deep
+ravine, from which it rises into a broad and level height. It was that
+of Katova, and the same field of battle, where, three months before, in
+their triumphant march, they had beat Newerowskoi, and saluted Napoleon
+with the cannon which they had taken the day before from his enemies.
+They said they recollected the situation, notwithstanding the different
+appearance given to it by the snow.</p>
+
+<p>Mortier's officers here exclaimed, "that it was in that very position
+that the Emperor and they had waited for them on the 17th, fighting all
+the time." Very well, replied those of Ney, Kutusoff, or rather
+Miloradowitch, occupied Napoleon's place, for the old Russian general
+had not yet quitted Dobro&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>Their disbanded men were already retrograding, pointing to the snowy
+plains completely black with the enemy's troops, when a Russian,
+detaching himself from their army, descended the hill; he presented
+himself alone to their marshal, and either from an affectation of
+extreme politeness, respect for the misfortune of their leader, or dread
+of the effects of his despair, covered with honied words the summons to
+surrender.</p>
+
+<p>It was Kutusoff who had sent him. "That field-marshal would not have
+presumed to make so cruel a proposal to so great a general, to a warrior
+so renowned, if there remained a single chance of safety for him. But
+there were eighty thousand Russians before and around him, and if he had
+any doubt of it, Kutusoff offered to let him send a person to go through
+his ranks, and count his forces."</p>
+
+<p>The Russian had not finished his speech, when suddenly forty discharges
+of grape shot, proceeding from the right of his army, and cutting our
+ranks to pieces, struck him with amazement, and interrupted what he had
+to say. At the same moment a French officer darted forward, seized, and
+was about to kill him as a traitor, when Ney, checking this fury, called
+to him angrily, "A marshal never surrenders; there is no parleying under
+an enemy's fire; you are my prisoner." The unfortunate officer was
+disarmed, and placed in a situation of exposure to the fire of his own
+army. He was not released until we reached Kowno, after twenty-six days
+captivity, sharing all our miseries, at liberty to escape, but
+restrained by his parole.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the enemy's fire became still hotter, and, as they
+said, all the hills, which but an instant before looked cold and silent,
+became like so many volcanoes in eruption, but that Ney became still
+more elevated at it: then with a burst of enthusiasm that seemed to
+return every time they had occasion to mention his name in their
+narrative, they added, that in the midst of all this fire that ardent
+man seemed to breathe an element exclusively his own.</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff had not deceived him. On the one side, there were eighty
+thousand men in complete ranks, full, deep, well-fed, and in double
+lines, a numerous cavalry, an immense artillery occupying a formidable
+position, in short, every thing, and fortune to boot, which alone is
+equal to all the rest. On the other side, five thousand soldiers, a
+straggling and dismembered column, a wavering and languishing march,
+arms defective and dirty, the greatest part mute and tottering in
+enfeebled hands.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the French leader had no thought of yielding, nor even of dying,
+but of penetrating and cutting his way through the enemy; and that
+without the least idea that he was attempting a sublime effort. Alone,
+and looking no where for support, while all were supported by him, he
+followed the impulse of a strong natural temperament, and the pride of a
+conqueror, whom the habit of gaining improbable victories had impressed
+with the belief that every thing was possible.</p>
+
+<p>But what most astonished them, was, that they had been all so docile;
+for all had shown themselves worthy of him, and they added, that it was
+there they clearly saw that it is not merely great obstinacy, great
+designs, or great temerity which constitute the great man, but
+principally the power of influencing and supporting others.</p>
+
+<p>Ricard and his fifteen hundred soldiers were in front. Ney impelled them
+against the enemy, and prepared the rest of his army to follow them.
+That division descended with the road into the ravine, but in ascending,
+was driven back into it, overwhelmed by the first Russian line.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal, without being intimidated, or allowing others to be so,
+collected the survivors, placed them in reserve, and proceeded forward
+in their place; Ledru, Razont, and Marchand seconded him. He ordered
+four hundred Illyrians to take the enemy on their left flank, and with
+three thousand men, he himself mounted in front to the assault. He made
+no harangue; he marched at their head, setting the example, which, in a
+hero, is the most eloquent of all oratorical movements, and the most
+imperious of all orders. All followed him. They attacked, penetrated,
+and overturned the first Russian line, and without halting were
+precipitating themselves upon the second; but before they could reach
+it, a volley of artillery and grape shot poured down upon them. In an
+instant Ney saw all his generals wounded, the greatest part of his
+soldiers killed; their ranks were empty, their shapeless column whirled
+round, tottered, fell back, and drew him along with it.</p>
+
+<p>Ney found that he had attempted an impossibility, and he waited until
+the flight of his men had once more placed the ravine between them and
+the enemy, that ravine which was now his sole resource; there, equally
+hopeless and fearless, he halted and rallied them. He drew up two
+thousand men against eighty thousand; he returned the fire of two
+hundred cannon with six pieces, and made fortune blush that she should
+ever betray such courage.</p>
+
+<p>She it was, doubtless, who then struck Kutusoff with the palsy of
+inertness. To their infinite surprise, they saw this Russian Fabius
+running into extremes like all imitators, persisting in what he called
+his humanity and prudence, remaining upon his heights with his pompous
+virtues, without allowing himself, or daring to conquer, as if he was
+astonished at his own superiority. Seeing that Napoleon had been
+conquered by his rashness, he pushed his horror of that fault to the
+very extreme of the opposite vice.</p>
+
+<p>It required, however, but a transport of indignation in any one of the
+Russian corps to have completely extinguished them; but all were afraid
+to make a decisive movement; they remained clinging to their soil with
+the immobility of slaves, as if they had no boldness but in their
+watchword, or energy but in their obedience. This discipline, which
+formed their glory in <i>their</i> retreat, was their disgrace in <i>ours</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They were for a long time uncertain, not knowing which enemy they were
+fighting with; for they had imagined that Ney had retreated from
+Smolensk by the right bank of the Dnieper; they were mistaken, as is
+frequently the case, from supposing that their enemy had done what he
+ought to have done.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, the Illyrians had returned completely in disorder;
+they had had a most singular adventure. In their advance to the left
+flank of the enemy's position, these four hundred men had met with five
+thousand Russians returning from a partial engagement, with a French
+eagle, and several of our soldiers prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>These two hostile troops, the one returning to its position, the other
+going to attack it, advanced in the same direction, side by side,
+measuring each other with their eyes, but neither of them venturing to
+commence the engagement. They marched so close to each other, that from
+the middle of the Russian ranks the French prisoners stretched out their
+arms towards their friends, conjuring them to come and deliver them. The
+latter called out to them to come to them, and they would receive and
+defend them; but no one moved on either side. Just then Ney was
+overthrown, and they retreated along with him.</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff, however, relying more on his artillery than his soldiers,
+sought only to conquer at a distance. His fire so completely commanded
+all the ground occupied by the French, that the same bullet which
+prostrated a man in the first rank proceeded to deal destruction in the
+last of the train of carriages, among the women who had fled from
+Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>Under this murderous hail, Ney's soldiers remained astonished,
+motionless, looking at their chief, waiting his decision to be satisfied
+that they were lost, hoping they knew not why, or rather, according to
+the remark of one of their officers, because in the midst of this
+extreme peril they saw his spirit calm and tranquil, like any thing in
+its place. His countenance became silent and devout; he was watching the
+enemy's army, which, becoming more suspicious since the successful
+artifice of Prince Eugene, extended itself to a great distance on his
+flanks, in order to shut him out from all means of preservation.</p>
+
+<p>The approach of night began to render objects indistinct; winter, which
+in that sole point was favourable to our retreat, brought it on quickly.
+Ney had been waiting for it, but the advantage he took of the respite
+was to order his men to return to Smolensk. They all said that at these
+words they remained frozen with astonishment. Even his aide-de-camp
+could not believe his ears; he remained silent like one who did not
+understand what he heard, and looked at his general with amazement. But
+the marshal repeated the same order; in his brief and imperious tone,
+they recognized a resolution taken, a resource discovered, that
+self-confidence which inspires others with the same quality, and a
+spirit which commands his position, however strong that may be. They
+immediately obeyed, and without hesitation turned their backs on their
+own army, on Napoleon, and on France! They returned once more into that
+fatal Russia. Their retrograde march lasted an hour; they passed again
+over the field of battle marked by the remains of the army of Italy;
+there they halted, and their marshal, who had remained alone in the
+rear-guard, then rejoined them.</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes followed his every movement. What was he going to do; and
+whatever might be his plan, whither would he direct his steps, without a
+guide, in an unknown country? But he, with his warlike instinct, halted
+on the edge of a ravine of such depth, as to make it probable that a
+rivulet ran through it. He made them clear away the snow and break the
+ice; then consulting his map, he exclaimed "That this was one of the
+streams which flowed into the Dnieper! this must be our guide, and we
+must follow it; that it would lead us to that river, which we must
+cross, and that on the other side we should be safe!" He immediately
+proceeded in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>However at a little distance from the high road which he had abandoned,
+he again halted in a village, the name of which they knew not, but
+believed that it was either Fomina, or Danikowa. There he rallied his
+troops, and made them light their fires, as if he intended to take up
+his quarters in it for the night. Some Cossacks who followed him took it
+for granted, and no doubt sent immediately to apprise Kutusoff of the
+spot where, next day, a French marshal would surrender his arms to him;
+for shortly after the noise of their cannon was heard.</p>
+
+<p>Ney listened: "Is this Davoust at last," he exclaimed, "who has
+recollected me?" and he listened a second time. But there were regular
+intervals between the firing; it was a salvo. Being then fully satisfied
+that the Russian army was triumphing by anticipation over his captivity,
+he swore he would give the lie to their joy, and immediately resumed his
+march.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time his Poles ransacked the country. A lame peasant was the
+only inhabitant they had discovered; this was an unlooked-for piece of
+good fortune. He informed them that they were within the distance of a
+league from the Dnieper, but that it was not fordable there, and could
+not yet be frozen over. "It will be so," was the marshal's remark; but
+when it was observed to him that the thaw had just commenced, he added
+"that it did not signify, we must pass, as there was no other resource."</p>
+
+<p>At last, about eight o'clock, after passing through a village, the
+ravine terminated, and the lame Russian, who walked first, halted and
+pointed to the river. They imagined that this must have been between
+Syrokorenia and Gusino&eacute;. Ney, and those immediately behind him, ran up
+to it. They found the river sufficiently frozen to bear their weight,
+the course of the flakes which it bore along to that point, being
+counteracted by a sudden turn in its banks, was there suspended; the
+winter had completely frozen it over only in that single spot; both
+above and below it, its surface was still moveable.</p>
+
+<p>This observation was sufficient to make their first sensation of joy
+give way to uneasiness. This hostile river might only offer them a
+treacherous appearance. One officer devoted himself for the rest; he
+crossed to the other side with great difficulty. He returned and
+reported, that the men, and perhaps some of the horses might pass over,
+but that the rest must be abandoned, and there was no time to lose, as
+the ice was beginning to give way in consequence of the thaw.</p>
+
+<p>But in this nocturnal and silent march across fields, of a column
+composed of weakened and wounded men, and women with their children,
+they had been unable to keep close enough, to prevent their extending,
+separating, and losing the traces of each other in the darkness. Ney
+perceived that only a part of his people had come up; nevertheless, he
+might have always surmounted the obstacle, thereby secured his own
+safety, and waited on the other side. The idea never once entered his
+mind; some one proposed it to him, but he rejected it instantly. He
+allowed three hours for the rallying; and without suffering himself to
+be agitated by impatience, or the danger of waiting so long, he wrapped
+himself up in his cloak, and passed these three dangerous hours in a
+profound sleep on the bank of the river. So much did he possess of the
+temperament of great men, a strong mind in a robust body, and that
+vigorous health, without which no man can ever expect to be a hero.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXi" id="CHAP_IXi"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At last, about midnight, the passage began; but the first persons who
+ventured on the ice, called out that the ice was bending under them,
+that it was sinking, that they were up to their knees in water;
+immediately after which that frail support was heard splitting with
+frightful cracks, which were prolonged in the distance, as in the
+breaking up of a frost. All halted in consternation.</p>
+
+<p>Ney ordered them to pass only one at a time; they proceeded with
+caution, not knowing sometimes in the darkness if they were putting
+their feet on the flakes or into a chasm; for there were places where
+they were obliged to clear large crevices, and jump from one piece of
+ice to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing for
+ever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling to
+them to make haste.</p>
+
+<p>When at last, after several of these dreadful panics, they reached the
+opposite bank and fancied themselves saved, a perpendicular steep,
+entirely covered with rime, again opposed their landing. Many were
+thrown back upon the ice which they broke in their fall, or which
+bruised them. By their account, this Russian river and its banks
+appeared only to have contributed with regret, by surprise, and as it
+were by compulsion, to their escape.</p>
+
+<p>But what seemed to affect them with the greatest horror in their
+relation, was the trouble and distraction of the females and the sick,
+when it became necessary to abandon, along with the baggage, the remains
+of their fortune, their provisions, and in short, their whole resources
+against the present and the future. They saw them stripping themselves,
+selecting, throwing away, taking up again, and falling with exhaustion
+and grief upon the frozen bank of the river. They seemed to shudder
+again at the recollection of the horrible sight of so many men scattered
+over that abyss, the continual noise of persons falling, the cries of
+such as sunk in, and, above all, of the wailing and despair of the
+wounded, who, from their carts, which durst not venture on this weak
+support, stretched out their hands to their companions, and intreated
+not to be left behind.</p>
+
+<p>Their leader then determined to attempt the passage of several waggons,
+loaded with these poor creatures; but in the middle of the river, the
+ice sunk down and separated. Then were heard, on the opposite bank,
+proceeding from the gulf, first, cries of anguish long and piercing,
+then stifled and feeble groans, and last of all an awful silence. All
+had disappeared!</p>
+
+<p>Ney was looking stedfastly at the abyss with an air of consternation,
+when through the darkness, he imagined he saw an object still moving; it
+turned out to be one of those unfortunate persons, an officer, named
+Briqueville, whom a deep wound in the groin had disabled from standing
+upright. A large piece of ice had borne him up. He was soon distinctly
+seen, dragging himself from one piece to another on his knees and hands,
+and on his getting near enough to the side, the marshal himself caught
+hold of, and saved him.</p>
+
+<p>The losses since the preceding day amounted to four thousand stragglers
+and three thousand soldiers, either killed, dead, or missing; the cannon
+and the whole of the baggage were lost; there remained to Ney scarcely
+three thousand soldiers, and about as many disbanded men. Finally, when
+all these sacrifices were consummated, and all that had been able to
+cross the river were collected, they resumed their march, and the
+vanquished river became once more their friend and their guide.</p>
+
+<p>They proceeded at random and uncertain, when one of them happening to
+fall, recognised a beaten road; it was but too much so, for those who
+were marching first, stooping and using their hands, as well as their
+eyes, halted in alarm, exclaiming, "that they saw the marks quite fresh
+of a great quantity of cannon and horses." They had, therefore, only
+avoided one hostile army to fall into the midst of another; at a time
+when they could scarcely walk, they must be again obliged to fight! The
+war was therefore everywhere! But Ney made them push on, and without
+disturbing himself, continued to follow these menacing traces.</p>
+
+<p>They brought them to a village called Gusino&eacute;, into which they entered
+suddenly, and seized every thing; they found in it all that they had
+been in want of since they left Moscow, inhabitants, provisions, repose,
+warm dwellings, and a hundred Cossacks, who awoke to find themselves
+prisoners. Their reports, and the necessity of taking some refreshment
+to enable him to proceed, detained the marshal there a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>About ten o'clock, they reached two other villages, and were resting
+themselves there, when suddenly they saw the surrounding forests filled
+with movements. They had scarcely time to call to each other, to look
+about, and to concentrate themselves in the village which was nearest to
+the Boristhenes, when thousands of Cossacks came pouring out from
+between the trees, and surrounded the unfortunate troop with their
+lances and their cannon.</p>
+
+<p>These were Platof, and his hordes, who were following the right bank of
+the Dnieper. They might have burnt the village, discovered the weakness
+of Ney's force, and exterminated it; but for three hours they remained
+motionless, without even firing; for what reason, is not known. The
+account since given by themselves is, that they had no orders; that at
+that moment their leader was not in a state to give any: and that in
+Russia no one dares to take upon himself a responsibility that does not
+belong to him.</p>
+
+<p>The bold countenance of Ney kept them in check. He himself and a few
+soldiers were sufficient; he even ordered the rest of his people to
+continue their repast till night came on. He then caused the order to be
+circulated to decamp in silence, to give notice to each other in a low
+tone of voice, and to march as compact as possible. Afterwards, they all
+began their march together; but their very first step was like a signal
+given to the enemy, who immediately discharged the whole of his
+artillery at them: all his squadrons also put themselves in movement at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>At the noise occasioned by this, the disarmed stragglers, of whom there
+were yet between three and four thousand, took the alarm. This flock of
+men wandered here and there; the great mass of them kept reeling about
+in uncertainty, sometimes attempting to throw themselves into the ranks
+of the soldiers, who drove them back. Ney contrived to keep them between
+him and the Russians, whose fire was principally absorbed by these
+useless beings. The most timid, therefore, in this instance, served as a
+covering to the bravest.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time that the marshal made a rampart of these poor wretches
+to cover his right flank, he regained the banks of the Dnieper, and by
+that covered his left flank; he marched on thus between the two,
+proceeding from wood to wood, from one turning to another, taking
+advantage of all the windings, and of the least accidents of the soil.
+Whenever he ventured to any distance from the river, which he was
+frequently obliged to do, Platof then surrounded him on all sides.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus007.jpg" alt="Ney"  />
+<a id="illus007" name="illus007"></a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Portrait of Marshal Ney</p>
+
+<p>In this manner, for two days and a distance of twenty leagues, did six
+thousand Cossacks keep constantly buzzing about the flanks of their
+column, now reduced to fifteen hundred men in arms, keeping it in a
+state of siege, disappearing before its sallies, and returning again
+instantly, like their Scythian ancestors; but with this fatal
+difference, that they managed their cannon mounted on sledges, and
+discharged their bullets in their flight, with the same agility which
+their forefathers exhibited in the management of their bows and the
+discharge of their arrows.</p>
+
+<p>The night brought some relief, and at first they plunged into the
+darkness with a degree of joy; but then, if any one halted for a moment
+to bid a last adieu to some worn out or wounded comrade, who sunk to
+rise no more, he ran the risk of losing the traces of his column. Under
+such circumstances there were many cruel moments, and not a few
+instances of despair. At last, however, the enemy slackened his pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>This unfortunate column was proceeding more tranquilly, groping its way
+through a thick wood, when all at once, a few paces before it, a
+brilliant light and several discharges of cannon flashed in the faces of
+the men in the first rank. Seized with terror, they fancied that there
+was an end of them, that they were cut off, that their end was now come,
+and they fell down terrified; those who were behind, got entangled among
+them, and were brought to the ground. Ney, who saw that all was lost,
+rushed forward, ordered the charge to be beat, and, as if he had
+foreseen the attack, called out, "Comrades, now is your time: forward!
+They are our prisoners!" At these words, his soldiers, who but a minute
+before were in consternation, and fancied themselves surprised, believed
+they were about to surprise their foes; from being vanquished, they rose
+up conquerors; they rushed upon the enemy, who had already disappeared,
+and whose precipitate flight through the forest they heard at a
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>They passed quickly through this wood; but about ten o'clock at night,
+they met with a small river embanked in a deep ravine, which they were
+obliged to cross one by one, as they had done the Dnieper. Intent on the
+pursuit of these poor fellows, the Cossacks again got sight of them, and
+tried to take advantage of that moment: but Ney, by a few discharges of
+his musketry, again repulsed them. They surmounted this obstacle with
+difficulty, and in an hour after reached a large village, where hunger
+and exhaustion compelled them to halt for two hours longer.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, the 19th of Nov., from midnight till ten o'clock in the
+morning, they kept marching on, without meeting any other enemy than a
+hilly country; about that time Platof's columns again made their
+appearance, and Ney halted and faced them, under the protection of the
+skirts of a wood. As long as the day lasted, his soldiers were obliged
+to resign themselves to see the enemy's bullets overturning the trees
+which served to shelter them, and furrowing their bivouacs; for they had
+now nothing but small arms, which could not keep the Cossack artillery
+at a sufficient distance.</p>
+
+<p>On the return of night, the marshal gave the usual signal, and they
+proceeded on their march to Orcha. During the preceding day, he had
+already despatched thither Pch&eacute;bendowski with fifty horse, to require
+assistance; they must already have arrived there, unless the enemy had
+already gained possession of that town.</p>
+
+<p>Ney's officers concluded their narrative by saying, that during the rest
+of their march, they had met with several formidable obstacles, but that
+they did not think them worth relating. They continued, however,
+speaking enthusiastically of their marshal, and making us sharers of
+their admiration of him; for even his equals had no idea of being
+jealous of him. He had been too much regretted, and his preservation had
+excited too agreeable emotions, to allow envy to have any part in them;
+besides, Ney had placed himself completely beyond its reach. As to
+himself, in all this heroism, he had gone so little beyond his natural
+disposition, that had it not been for the &eacute;clat of his glory in the
+eyes, the gestures, and the acclamations of every one, he would never
+have imagined that he had done a sublime action.</p>
+
+<p>And this was not an enthusiasm of surprise. Each of the latter days had
+had its remarkable men; amongst others, that of the 16th had Eugene,
+that of the 17th Mortier; but from this time, Ney was universally
+proclaimed the hero of the retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The distance between Smolensk and Orcha is hardly five days' march. In
+that short passage, what a harvest of glory had been reaped! how little
+space and time are required to establish an immortal renown! Of what
+nature then are these great inspirations, that invisible and impalpable
+germ of great devotion, produced in a few moments, issuing from a single
+heart, and which must fill time and eternity?</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon, who was two leagues farther on, heard that Ney had just
+re-appeared, he leaped and shouted for joy, and exclaimed, "I have then
+saved my eagles! I would have given three hundred millions from my
+treasury, sooner than have lost such a man."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_XI" id="BOOK_XI"></a>BOOK XI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Ik" id="CHAP_Ik"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The army had thus for the third and last time repassed the Dnieper, a
+river half Russian and half Polish, but of Russian origin. It runs from
+east to west as far as Orcha, where it appears as if it would penetrate
+into Poland; but there the heights of Lithuania oppose its farther
+progress, and compel it to turn towards the south, and to become the
+frontier of the two countries.</p>
+
+<p>Kutusoff and his eighty thousand Russians halted before this feeble
+obstacle. Hitherto they had been rather the spectators than the authors
+of our calamities; we saw them no more; our army was released from the
+punishment of their joy.</p>
+
+<p>In this war, and as always happens, the character of Kutusoff availed
+him more than his talents. So long as it was necessary to deceive and
+temporize, his crafty spirit, his indolence, and his great age, acted of
+themselves; he was the creature of circumstances, which he ceased to be
+as soon as it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to
+anticipate, and to attack.</p>
+
+<p>But after passing Smolensk, Platof passed over to the right flank of the
+road, in order to join Wittgenstein. The war was then entirely
+transferred to that side.</p>
+
+<p>On the 22d of November, the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to
+Borizof, on a wide road, (skirted by a double row of large birch trees,)
+in which the snow had melted, and through a deep and liquid mud. The
+weakest were drowned in it; it detained and delivered to the Cossacks
+such of our wounded, as, under the idea of a continuance of the frost,
+had exchanged their waggons for sledges.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this gradual decay, an action was witnessed exhibiting
+something of antique energy. Two marines of the guard were cut off from
+their column by a band of Cossacks, who seemed determined to take them.
+One became discouraged, and wished to surrender; the other continued to
+fight, and called out to him, that if he was coward enough to do so, he
+would certainly shoot him. In fact, seeing his companion throw away his
+musket, and stretching out his arms to the enemy, he brought him to the
+ground just as he fell into the hands of the Cossacks; then profiting by
+their surprise, he quickly reloaded his musket, with which he threatened
+the most forward. He kept them thus at bay, retreated from tree to tree,
+gained ground upon them, and succeeded in rejoining his troop.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the first days of the march to Borizof, that the news of
+the fall of Minsk became generally known in the army. The leaders
+themselves began then to look around them with consternation; their
+imagination, tormented with such a long continuance of frightful
+spectacles, gave them glimpses of a still more fatal futurity. In their
+private conversations, several exclaimed, that, "like Charles XII. in
+the Ukraine, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow only to destroy
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Others would not agree in attributing the calamities we at present
+suffered to that incursion. Without wishing to excuse the sacrifices to
+which we had submitted, by the hope of terminating the war in a single
+campaign, they asserted, "that that hope had been well founded; that in
+pushing his line of operation as far as Moscow, Napoleon had given to
+that lengthened column a base sufficiently broad and solid."</p>
+
+<p>They showed "the trace of this base marked out by the D&uuml;na, the Dnieper,
+the Ula, and the Berezina, from Riga to Bobruisk; they said that
+Macdonald, Saint Cyr and De Wrede, Victor and Dombrowski were there
+waiting for them; there were thus, including Schwartzenberg, and even
+Augereau, (who protected the interval between the Elbe and the Niemen
+with fifty thousand men,) nearly two hundred and eighty thousand
+soldiers on the defensive, who, from the north to the south, supported
+the attack of one hundred and fifty thousand men upon the east; and from
+thence they argued, that this <i>point</i> upon Moscow, however hazardous it
+might appear, had been both sufficiently prepared, and was worthy of the
+genius of Napoleon, and that its success was possible; in fact, its
+failure had been entirely occasioned by errors of detail."</p>
+
+<p>They then brought to mind our useless waste of lives before Smolensk,
+Junot's inaction at Valoutina, and they maintained, "that in spite of
+all these losses, Russia would have been completely conquered on the
+field of battle of the Moskwa, if Marshal Ney's first successes had been
+followed up.</p>
+
+<p>"Even at the last, although the expedition had failed in a military
+point of view, by the indecision of that day, and politically by the
+burning of Moscow, the army might still have returned from it safe and
+sound. From the time of our entrance into that capital, had not the
+Russian general and the Russian winter allowed us, the one forty, and
+the other fifty days, to recover ourselves, and to make our retreat?"</p>
+
+<p>Deploring afterwards the rash obstinacy of losing so much time at
+Moscow, and the fatal hesitation at Malo-Yaroslawetz, they proceeded to
+reckon up their losses. Since their leaving Moscow, they had lost all
+their baggage, five hundred cannon, thirty-one eagles, twenty-seven
+generals, forty thousand prisoners, sixty thousand dead: all that
+remained were forty thousand stragglers, unarmed, and eight thousand
+effective soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Last of all, when their column of attack had been destroyed, they asked,
+"by what fatality it had happened, that the remains of this column, when
+collected at its base, which had been vigorously supported, were left
+without knowing where to halt, or to take breath? Why could they not
+even concentrate themselves at Minsk and at Wilna, behind the marshes of
+the Berezina, and there keep back the enemy, at least for some time,
+take advantage of the winter and recruit themselves?</p>
+
+<p>"But no, all is lost by another side, by the fault of entrusting an
+Austrian to guard the magazines, and cover the retreat of all these
+brave armies, and not placing a military leader at Wilna or Minsk, with
+a force sufficient either to supply the insufficiency of the Austrian
+army to meet the combined armies of Moldavia and Volhynia, or to prevent
+its betraying us."</p>
+
+<p>Those who made such complaints were not unaware of the presence of the
+Duke of Bassano at Wilna; but notwithstanding the talents of that
+minister, and the great confidence the Emperor placed in him, they
+considered that being a stranger to the art of war, and overloaded with
+the cares of a great administration, and of every thing political, the
+direction of military affairs should not have been left to him. Such
+were the complaints of those, whose sufferings left them the leisure
+necessary for observation. That a fault had been committed, it was
+impossible to deny; but to say how it might have been avoided, to weigh
+the value of the motives which had occasioned it, in so great a crisis,
+and in the presence of so great a man, is more than one would venture to
+undertake. Who is there besides that does not know, that in these
+hazardous and gigantic enterprises, every thing becomes a fault, when
+the object of them has failed?</p>
+
+<p>Although the treachery of Schwartzenberg was by no means so evident, it
+is certain, that, with the exception of the three French generals who
+were with him, the whole of the grand army considered it as beyond a
+doubt. They said, "that Walpole's only object at Vienna was to act as a
+secret agent of England; that he and Metternich composed between them
+the perfidious instructions which were sent to Schwartzenberg. Hence it
+was that ever since the 20th of September, the day when the arrival of
+Tchitchakof and the battle of Lutsk closed the victorious career of
+Schwartzenberg, that marshal had repassed the Bug, and covered Warsaw by
+uncovering Minsk; hence his perseverance in that false man&oelig;uvre:
+hence, after a feeble effort towards Bresk-litowsky on the 10th of
+October, his neglect to avail himself of Tchitchakof's inaction by
+getting between him and Minsk, and hence his losing his time in military
+promenades, and insignificant marches towards Briansk, Bialystok, and
+Volkowitz.</p>
+
+<p>"He had thus allowed the admiral to take rest, and rally his sixty
+thousand men, to divide them into two, to leave one half with Sacken to
+oppose him, and to set out on the 27th of October with the other half to
+take possession of Minsk, of Borizof, of the magazine, of the passage of
+Napoleon, and of his winter quarters. Then only did Schwartzenberg put
+himself in the rear of this hostile movement, instead of anticipating
+it, as he had orders to do, leaving Regnier in the presence of Sacken,
+and marching so slowly, that from the very first the admiral had got
+five marches the start of him.</p>
+
+<p>"On the 14th of November, at Volkowitz, Sacken attacked Regnier,
+separated him from the Austrians, and pressed him so closely, that he
+was obliged to call Schwartzenberg to his aid. Immediately, the latter,
+as if he had been expecting the summons, retrograded, leaving Minsk to
+its fate. It is true that he released Regnier, that he beat Sacken and
+destroyed half his army, pursuing him as far as the Bug; but on the 16th
+of November, the very day of his victory, Minsk was taken by
+Tchitchakof: this was a double victory for Austria. Thus all appearances
+were preserved; the new field-marshal satisfied the wishes of his
+government, which was equally the enemy of the Russians whom he had just
+weakened on one side, and of Napoleon, whom on the other he had betrayed
+to them."</p>
+
+<p>Such was the language of almost the whole of the grand army; its leader
+was silent, either because he expected no more zeal on the part of an
+ally, or from policy, or because he believed that Schwartzenberg had
+acted with sufficient honour, in sending him the sort of notice which he
+did six weeks before, when he was at Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>However, he did address some reproaches to the field-marshal. To these
+the latter replied, by complaining bitterly, first, of the double and
+contradictory instructions which he had received, to cover Warsaw and
+Minsk at the same time; and second, of the false news which had been
+transmitted to him by the Duke of Bassano.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "that minister had constantly represented to him that the grand
+army was retreating safe and sound, in good order, and always
+formidable. Why had he been trifled with, by sending him bulletins made
+to deceive the idlers of the capital? His only reason for not making
+greater efforts to join the grand army was, because he believed that it
+was fully able to protect itself."</p>
+
+<p>He also alleged his own weakness. "How could it be expected that with
+twenty-eight thousand men he could so long keep sixty thousand in check?
+In that situation, if Tchitchakof stole a few marches on him, was it at
+all wonderful? Had he then hesitated to follow him, to leave Gallicia,
+his point of departure, his magazines, and his dep&ocirc;t? If he ceased his
+pursuit, it was only because Regnier and Durutte, the two French
+generals, summoned him in the most urgent manner to come to their
+assistance. Both they and he had reason to expect that Maret, Ouidin&ocirc;t,
+or Victor, would provide for the safety of Minsk."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIk" id="CHAP_IIk"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In fact, no one had any right to accuse another of treachery, when we
+had betrayed ourselves, for all had been wanting in the time of need.</p>
+
+<p>At Wilna, they appeared to have had no suspicion of the real state of
+affairs; and at a time when the garrisons, the dep&ocirc;ts, the marching
+battalions, and the divisions of Durutte, Loison, and Dombrowski,
+between the Berezina and the Vistula, might have formed at Minsk an army
+of thirty thousand men, three thousand men, headed by a general of no
+reputation, were the only forces which Tchitchakof found there to oppose
+him. It was a known fact that this handful of young soldiers was exposed
+in front of a river, into which they were precipitated by the admiral,
+whereas, if they had been placed on the other side, that obstacle would
+have protected them for some time.</p>
+
+<p>For thus, as frequently happens, the faults of the general plan had led
+to faults of detail. The governor of Minsk had been negligently chosen.
+He was, it was said, one of those men who undertake every thing, who
+promise every thing, and who do nothing. On the 16th of November, he
+lost that capital, and with it four thousand seven hundred sick, the
+warlike ammunition, and two million rations of provisions. It was five
+days since the news of this loss had reached Dombrowna, and the news of
+a still greater calamity came on the heels of it.</p>
+
+<p>This same governor had retreated towards Borizof. There he neglected to
+inform Ouidin&ocirc;t, who was only at the distance of two marches, to come to
+his assistance; and failed to support Dombrowski, who made a hasty march
+thither from Bobruisk and Igumen. The latter did not arrive, however, in
+the night of the 20th and 21st, at the <i>t&ecirc;te-du-pont</i>, until after the
+enemy had taken possession of it; notwithstanding, he expelled
+Tchitchakof's vanguard, took possession of it, and defended himself
+gallantly there until the evening of the 21st; but being then
+overwhelmed by the fire of the Russian artillery, which took him in
+flank, and attacked by a force more than double his own, he was driven
+across the river, and out of the town, as far as the road to Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was wholly unprepared for this disaster; he fancied that he had
+completely prevented it by the instructions he had sent to Victor from
+Moscow, on the 6th of October. These instructions "anticipated a warm
+attack from Wittgenstein or Tchitchakof; they recommended Victor to keep
+within reach of Polotsk and of Minsk; to have a prudent, discreet, and
+intelligent officer about Schwartzenberg; to keep up a regular
+correspondence with Minsk, and to send other agents in different
+directions."</p>
+
+<p>But Wittgenstein having made his attack before Tchitchakof, the nearer
+and more pressing danger had attracted every one's attention; the wise
+instructions of the 6th of October had not been repeated by Napoleon,
+and they appeared to have been entirely forgotten by his lieutenant.
+Finally, when the Emperor learned at Dombrowna the loss of Minsk, he had
+no idea that Borizof was in such imminent danger, as when he passed the
+next day through Orcha, he had the whole of his bridge-equipage burnt.</p>
+
+<p>His correspondence also of the 20th of November with Victor proved his
+security; it supposed that Ouidin&ocirc;t would have nearly arrived on the 25th
+at Borizof, while that place had been taken possession of by Tchitchakof
+on the 21st.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the day immediately subsequent to that fatal catastrophe, at
+the distance of three marches from Borizof, and upon the high road, that
+an officer arrived and announced to Napoleon this fresh disaster. The
+Emperor, striking the ground with his stick, and darting a furious look
+to heaven, pronounced these words, "It is then written above that we
+shall now commit nothing but faults!"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Marshal Ouidin&ocirc;t, who was already marching towards Minsk,
+totally ignorant of what had happened, halted on the 21st between Bobr
+and Kroupki, when in the middle of the night General Brownikowski
+arrived to announce to him his own defeat, as well as that of General
+Dombrowski; that Borizof was taken, and that the Russians were following
+hard at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>On the 22d the marshal marched to meet them, and rallied the remains of
+Dombrowski's force.</p>
+
+<p>On the 23d, at three leagues on the other side of Borizof, he came in
+contact with the Russian vanguard, which he overthrew, taking from it
+nine hundred men and fifteen hundred carriages, and drove back by the
+united force of his artillery, infantry, and cavalry, as far as the
+Berezina; but the remains of Lambert's force, on repassing Borizof and
+that river, destroyed the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was then at Toloczina: he made them describe to him the
+position of Borizof. They assured him that at that point the Berezina
+was not merely a river but a lake of moving ice; that the bridge was
+three hundred fathoms in length; that it had been irreparably destroyed,
+and the passage by it rendered completely impracticable.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment arrived a general of engineers, who had just returned
+from the Duke of Belluno's corps. Napoleon interrogated him; the general
+declared "that he saw no means of escape but through the middle of
+Wittgenstein's army." The Emperor replied, "that he must find a
+direction in which he could turn his back to all the enemy's generals,
+to Kutusoff, to Wittgenstein, to Tchitchakof;" and he pointed with his
+finger on the map to the course of the Berezina below Borizof; it was
+there he wished to cross the river. But the general objected to him the
+presence of Tchitchakof on the right bank; the Emperor then pointed to
+another passage below the first, and then to a third, still nearer to
+the Dnieper. Recollecting, however, that he was then approaching the
+country of the Cossacks, he stopped short, and exclaimed, "Oh yes!
+Pultawa! that is like Charles XII.!"</p>
+
+<p>In fact, every disaster which Napoleon could anticipate had occurred;
+the melancholy conformity, therefore, of his situation with that of the
+Swedish conqueror, threw his mind into such a state of agitation, that
+his health became still more seriously affected than it had been at
+Malo-Yaroslawetz. Among the expressions he made use of, loud enough to
+be overheard, was this: "See what happens when we heap faults on
+faults!"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, these first movements were the only ones that had escaped
+him, and the valet-de-chambre who assisted him, was the only person that
+witnessed his agitation. Duroc, Daru, and Berthier have all said, that
+they knew nothing of it, that they saw him unshaken; this was very true,
+humanly speaking, as he retained sufficient command over himself to
+avoid betraying his anxiety, and as the strength of man most frequently
+consists in concealing his weakness.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable conversation, which was overheard the same night, will show
+better than any thing else, how critical was his position, and how well
+he bore it. It was getting late; Napoleon had gone to bed. Duroc and
+Daru, who remained in his chamber, fancying that he was asleep, were
+giving way, in whispers, to the most gloomy conjectures; he overheard
+them, however, and the word "prisoner of state," coming to his ear,
+"How!" exclaimed he, "do you believe they would dare?" Daru, after his
+first surprise, immediately answered, "that if we were compelled to
+surrender, we must be prepared for every thing; that he had no reliance
+on an enemy's generosity; that we knew too well that great state-policy
+considered itself identified with morality, and was regulated by no
+law." "But France," said the Emperor, "what would France say?" "Oh, as
+to France," continued Daru, "we are at liberty to make a thousand
+conjectures more or less disagreeable, but none of us can know what will
+take place there." And he then added, "that for the sake of the
+Emperor's chief officers, as well as the Emperor himself, the most
+fortunate thing would be, if by the air or otherwise, as the earth was
+closed upon us, the Emperor could reach France, from whence he could
+much more certainly provide for their safety, than by remaining among
+them!" "Then I suppose I am in your way?" replied the Emperor, smiling.
+"Yes, Sire." "And you have no wish to be a prisoner of state?" Daru
+replied in the same tone, "that it was enough for him to be a prisoner
+of war." On which the Emperor remained for some time in a profound
+silence; then with a more serious air: "Are all the reports of my
+ministers burnt?" "Sire, hitherto you would not allow that to be done."
+"Very well, go and destroy them; for it must be confessed, we are in a
+most melancholy position." This was the sole avowal which it wrested
+from him, and on that idea he went to sleep, knowing, when it was
+necessary, how to postpone every thing to the next day.</p>
+
+<p>His orders displayed equal firmness. Ouidin&ocirc;t had just sent to inform him
+of his determination to overthrow Lambert; this he approved of, and he
+also urged him to make himself master of a passage, either above or
+below Borizof. He expressed his anxiety, that by the 24th this passage
+should be fixed on, and the preparations begun, and that he should be
+apprised of it, in order to make his march correspond. Far from thinking
+of making his escape through the midst of these three hostile armies,
+his only idea now was, that of beating Tchitchakof, and retaking Minsk.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, that eight hours afterwards, in a second letter to the Duke
+of Reggio, he resigned himself to cross the Berezina near Veselowo, and
+to retreat directly upon Wilna by Vileika, avoiding the Russian admiral.</p>
+
+<p>But on the 24th he learned that the passage could only be attempted near
+Studzianka; that at that spot the river was only fifty-four fathoms
+wide, and six feet deep; that they would land on the other side, in a
+marsh, under the fire of a commanding position strongly occupied by the
+enemy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIk" id="CHAP_IIIk"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>All hope of passing between the Russian armies was thus lost; driven by
+the armies of Kutusoff and Wittgenstein upon the Berezina, there was no
+alternative but to cross that river in the teeth of the army of
+Tchitchakof, which lined its banks.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the 23d, Napoleon had been preparing for it, as for a
+desperate action. And first he had the eagles of all the corps brought
+to him, and burnt. He formed into two battalions, eighteen hundred
+dismounted cavalry of his guard, of whom only eleven hundred and
+fifty-four were armed with muskets and carbines.</p>
+
+<p>The cavalry of the army of Moscow was so completely destroyed, that
+Latour-Maubourg had not now remaining under his command more than one
+hundred and fifty men on horseback. The Emperor collected around his
+person all the officers of that arm who were still mounted; he styled
+this troop, of about five hundred officers, his <i>sacred squadron</i>.
+Grouchy and Sebastiani had the command of them; generals of division
+served in it as captains.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon ordered further that all the useless carriages should be burnt;
+that no officer should keep more than one; that half the waggons and
+carriages of all the corps should also be burnt, and that the horses
+should be given to the artillery of the guard. The officers of that arm
+had orders to take all the draught-cattle within their reach, even the
+horses of the Emperor himself, sooner than abandon a single cannon, or
+ammunition waggon.</p>
+
+<p>After giving these orders, he plunged into the gloomy and immense forest
+of Minsk, in which a few hamlets and wretched habitations have scarcely
+cleared a few open spots. The noise of Wittgenstein's artillery filled
+it with its echo. That Russian general came rushing from the north upon
+the right flank of our expiring column; he brought back with him the
+winter which had quitted us at the same time with Kutusoff; the news of
+his threatening march quickened our steps. From forty to fifty thousand
+men, women, and children, glided through this forest as precipitately as
+their weakness and the slipperiness of the ground, from the frost
+beginning again to set in, would allow.</p>
+
+<p>These forced marches, commenced before daylight, and which did not
+finish at its close, dispersed all that had remained together. They lost
+themselves in the darkness of these great forests and long nights. They
+halted at night and resumed their march in the morning, in darkness, at
+random, and without hearing the signal; the dissolution of the remains
+of the corps was then completed; all were mixed and confounded together.</p>
+
+<p>In this last stage of weakness and confusion, as we were approaching
+Borizof, we heard loud cries before us. Some ran forward fancying it was
+an attack. It was Victor's army, which had been feebly driven back by
+Wittgenstein to the right side of our road, where it remained waiting
+for the Emperor to pass by. Still quite complete and full of animation,
+it received the Emperor, as soon as he made his appearance, with the
+customary but now long forgotten acclamations.</p>
+
+<p>Of our disasters it knew nothing; they had been carefully concealed even
+from its leaders. When therefore, instead of that grand column which had
+conquered Moscow, its soldiers perceived behind Napoleon only a train of
+spectres covered with rags, with female pelisses, pieces of carpet, or
+dirty cloaks, half burnt and holed by the fires, and with nothing on
+their feet but rags of all sorts, their consternation was extreme. They
+looked terrified at the sight of those unfortunate soldiers, as they
+defiled before them, with lean carcasses, faces black with dirt, and
+hideous bristly beards, unarmed, shameless, marching confusedly, with
+their heads bent, their eyes fixed on the ground and silent, like a
+troop of captives.</p>
+
+<p>But what astonished them more than all, was to see the number of
+colonels and generals scattered about and isolated, who seemed only
+occupied about themselves, and to think of nothing but saving the wrecks
+of their property or their persons; they were marching pell-mell with
+the soldiers, who did not notice them, to whom they had no longer any
+commands to give, and of whom they had nothing to expect, all ties
+between them being broken, and all ranks effaced by the common misery.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers of Victor and Ouidin&ocirc;t could not believe their eyes. Moved
+with compassion, their officers, with tears in their eyes, detained such
+of their companions as they recognised in the crowd. They first supplied
+them with clothes and provisions, and then asked them where were their
+<i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i>? And when the others pointed them out, seeing, instead
+of so many thousand men, only a weak platoon of officers and
+non-commissioned officers round a commanding officer, their eyes still
+kept on the look out.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of so great a disaster struck the second and the ninth corps
+with discouragement, from the very first day. Disorder, the most
+contagious of all evils, attacked them; for it would seem as if order
+was an effort against nature. And yet the disarmed, and even the dying,
+although they were now fully aware that they had to fight their way
+across a river, and through a fresh enemy, never doubted of their being
+victorious.</p>
+
+<p>It was now merely the shadow of an army, but it was the shadow of the
+grand army. It felt conscious that nature alone had vanquished it. The
+sight of its Emperor revived it. It had been long accustomed not to look
+to him for its means of support, but solely to lead it to victory. This
+was its first unfortunate campaign, and it had had so many fortunate
+ones! it only required to be able to follow him. He alone, who had
+elevated his soldiers so high, and now sunk them so low, was yet able to
+save them. He was still, therefore, cherished in the heart of his army,
+like hope in the heart of man.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, amid so many beings who might have reproached him with their
+misfortunes, he marched on without the least fear, speaking to one and
+all without affectation, certain of being respected as long as glory
+could command our respect. Knowing perfectly that he belonged to us, as
+much as we to him, his renown being a species of national property, we
+should have sooner turned our arms against ourselves, (which was the
+case with many,) than against him, and it was a minor suicide.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them fell and died at his feet, and though in the most frightful
+delirium, their sufferings never gave its wanderings the turn of
+reproach, but of entreaty. And in fact did not he share the common
+danger? Which of them all risked so much as he? Who suffered the
+greatest loss, in this disaster?</p>
+
+<p>If any imprecations were uttered, it was not in his presence; it seemed,
+that of all misfortunes, that of incurring his displeasure was still the
+greatest; so rooted were their confidence in, and submission to that man
+who had subjected the world to them; whose genius, hitherto uniformly
+victorious and infallible, had assumed the place of their free-will, and
+who having so long in his hands the book of pensions, of rank, and of
+history, had found wherewithal to satisfy not only covetous spirits, but
+also every generous heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVk" id="CHAP_IVk"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>We were now approaching the most critical moment; Victor was in the rear
+with 15,000 men; Ouidin&ocirc;t in front with 5,000, and already on the
+Berezina; the Emperor, between them, with 7,000 men, 40,000 stragglers,
+and an enormous quantity of baggage and artillery, the greatest part of
+which belonged to the second and the ninth corps.</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th, as he was about to reach the Berezina, he appeared to
+linger on his march. He halted every instant on the high road, waiting
+for night to conceal his arrival from the enemy, and to allow the Duke
+of Reggio time to evacuate Borizof.</p>
+
+<p>This marshal, when he entered that town upon the 23d, found the bridge,
+which was 300 fathoms in length, destroyed at three different points,
+and that the vicinity of the enemy rendered it impossible to repair it.
+He had ascertained, that on his left, two miles lower down the river,
+there was, near Oukoholda, a deep and unsafe ford; that at the distance
+of a mile above Borizof, namely, at Stadhof, there was another, but of
+difficult approach. Finally, he had learned within the last two days,
+that at Studzianka, two leagues above Stadhof, there was a third
+passage;&mdash;for the knowledge of this he was indebted to Corbineau's
+brigade.</p>
+
+<p>This was the same brigade which the Bavarian general, De Wrede, had
+taken from the second corps, in his march to Smoliantzy. He had retained
+it until he reached Dokszitzi, from whence he sent it back to the second
+corps by way of Borizof. When Corbineau arrived there, he found
+Tchitchakof already in possession of it, and was compelled to make his
+retreat by ascending the Berezina, and concealing his force in the
+forests which border that river. Not knowing at what point to cross it,
+he accidentally saw a Lithuanian peasant, whose horse seemed to be quite
+wet, as if he had just come through it. He laid hold of this man, and
+made him his guide; he got up behind him, and crossed the river at a
+ford opposite to Studzianka. He immediately rejoined Ouidin&ocirc;t, and
+informed him of the discovery he had made.</p>
+
+<p>As Napoleon's intention was to retreat directly upon Wilna, the marshal
+saw at once that this passage was the most direct, as well as the least
+dangerous. It was also observed, that even if our infantry and artillery
+should be too closely pressed by Wittgenstein and Kutusoff, and
+prevented from crossing the river on bridges, there was at least a
+certainty, from the ford having been tried, that the Emperor and the
+cavalry would be able to pass; that all would not then be lost, both
+peace and war, as if Napoleon himself remained in the enemy's hands. The
+marshal therefore did not hesitate. In the night of the 23d, the general
+of artillery, a company of pontonniers, a regiment of infantry, and the
+brigade Corbineau, took possession of Studzianka.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the other two passages were reconnoitred, and both
+found to be strongly observed. The object therefore was to deceive and
+displace the enemy. As force could do nothing, recourse was had to
+stratagem; in furtherance of which, on the 24th, three hundred men and
+several hundred stragglers were sent towards Oukoholda, with
+instructions to collect there, with as much noise as possible, all the
+necessary materials for the construction of a bridge; the whole division
+of the cuirassiers was also made to promenade on that side within view
+of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this, Major General Lorenc&eacute; had several Jews sought out
+and brought to him; he interrogated them with great apparent minuteness
+relative to that ford, and the roads leading from it to Minsk. Then,
+affecting to be mightily pleased with their answers, and to be satisfied
+that there was no better passage to be found, he retained some of these
+rascals as guides, and had the others conveyed beyond our out-posts. But
+to make still more sure of the latter <i>not</i> keeping their word with him,
+he made them swear that they would return to meet us, in the direction
+of lower Berezina, in order to inform us of the enemy's movements.</p>
+
+<p>While these attempts were making to draw Tchitchakof's attention
+entirely to the left, the means of effecting a passage were secretly
+preparing at Studzianka. It was only on the 25th, at five in the
+evening, that Ebl&eacute; arrived there, followed only by two field forges, two
+waggons of coal, six covered waggons of utensils and nails, and some
+companies of pontonniers. At Smolensk he had made each workman provide
+himself with a tool and some cramp-irons.</p>
+
+<p>But the tressels, which had been made the day before, out of the beams
+of the Polish cabins, were found to be too weak. The work was all to do
+over again. It was found to be quite impossible to finish the bridge
+during the night; it could only be fixed during the following day, the
+26th, in full daylight, and under the enemy's fire; but there was no
+room for hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>On the first approach of that decisive night, Ouidin&ocirc;t ceded to Napoleon
+the occupation of Borizof, and went to take position with the rest of
+his corps at Studzianka. They marched in the most profound obscurity,
+without making the least noise, and mutually recommending to each other
+the deepest silence.</p>
+
+<p>By eight o'clock at night Ouidin&ocirc;t and Dombrowski had taken possession of
+the heights commanding the passage, while General Ebl&eacute; descended from
+them. That general placed himself on the borders of the river, with his
+pontonniers and a waggon-load of the irons of abandoned wheels, which at
+all hazards he had made into cramp-irons. He had sacrificed every thing
+to preserve that feeble resource, and it saved the army.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the night of the 25th he made them sink the first
+tressel in the muddy bed of the river. But to crown our misfortunes, the
+rising of the waters had made the traces of the ford entirely disappear.
+It required the most incredible efforts on the part of our unfortunate
+sappers, who were plunged in the water up to their mouths, and had to
+contend with the floating pieces of ice which were carried along by the
+stream. Many of them perished from the cold, or were drowned by the ice
+flakes, which a violent wind drove against them.</p>
+
+<p>They had every thing to conquer but the enemy. The rigour of the
+atmosphere was just at the degree necessary to render the passage of the
+river more difficult, without suspending its course, or sufficiently
+consolidating the moving ground upon which we were about to venture. On
+this occasion the winter showed itself more Russian than even the
+Russians themselves. The latter were wanting to their season, which
+never failed them.</p>
+
+<p>The French laboured during the whole night by the light of the enemy's
+fires, which shone on the heights of the opposite bank, and within reach
+of the artillery and musketry of the division Tchaplitz. The latter,
+having no longer any doubt of our intentions, sent to apprise his
+commander-in-chief.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vk" id="CHAP_Vk"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The presence of a hostile division deprived us of all hope of deceiving
+the Russian admiral. We were expecting every instant to hear the whole
+fire of his artillery directed upon our workmen; and even if he did not
+discover them until daylight, their labours would not then be
+sufficiently advanced; and the opposite bank, being low and marshy, was
+too much commanded by Tchaplitz's positions to make it at all possible
+for us to force a passage.</p>
+
+<p>When he quitted Borizof, therefore, at ten o'clock at night, Napoleon
+imagined that he was setting out for a most desperate contest. He
+settled himself for the night, with the 6,400 guards which still
+remained to him, at Staroi-Borizof, a chateau belonging to Prince
+Radzivil, situated on the right of the road from Borizof to Studzianka,
+and equidistant from these two points.</p>
+
+<p>He passed the remainder of that night on his feet, going out every
+moment, either to listen, or to repair to the passage where his destiny
+was accomplishing; for the magnitude of his anxieties so completely
+filled his hours, that as each revolved, he fancied that it was morning.
+Several times he was reminded of his mistake by his attendants.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness had scarcely disappeared when he joined Ouidin&ocirc;t. The sight of
+danger tranquillized him, as it always did; but on seeing the Russian
+fires and their position, his most determined generals, such as Rapp,
+Mortier, and Ney, exclaimed, "that if the Emperor escaped this danger,
+they must absolutely believe in the influence of his star!" Murat
+himself thought it was now time to think of nothing but saving Napoleon.
+Some of the Poles proposed it to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was waiting for the approach of daylight in one of the
+houses on the borders of the river, on a steep bank which was crowned
+with Ouidin&ocirc;t's artillery. Murat obtained access to him; he declared to
+his brother-in-law, "that he looked upon the passage as impracticable;
+he urged him to save his person while it was yet time. He informed him
+that he might, without any danger, cross the Berezina a few leagues
+above Studzianka; that in five days he would reach Wilna; that some
+brave and determined Poles, perfectly acquainted with all the roads, had
+offered themselves for his guards, and to be responsible for his
+safety."</p>
+
+<p>But Napoleon rejected this proposition as an infamous plan, as a
+cowardly flight, and was indignant that any one should dare to think for
+a moment that he would abandon his army, so long as it was in danger. He
+was not, however, at all displeased with Murat, probably because that
+prince had afforded him an opportunity of showing his firmness, or
+rather because he saw nothing in his proposal but a mark of devotion,
+and because the first quality in the eyes of sovereigns is attachment to
+their persons.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the appearance of daylight made the Russian fires grow
+pale and disappear. Our troops stood to their arms, the artillerymen
+placed themselves by their pieces, the generals were observing, and the
+looks of all were steadily directed to the opposite bank, preserving
+that silence which betokens great expectation, and is the forerunner of
+great danger.</p>
+
+<p>Since the day before, every blow struck by our pontonniers, echoing
+among the woody heights, must, we concluded, have attracted the whole
+attention of the enemy. The first dawn of the 26th was therefore
+expected to display to us his battalions and artillery, drawn up, in
+front of the weak scaffolding, to the construction of which Ebl&eacute; had yet
+to devote eight hours more. Doubtless they were only waiting for
+daylight to enable them to point their cannon with better aim. When day
+appeared, we saw their fires abandoned, the bank deserted, and upon the
+heights, thirty pieces of artillery in full retreat. A single bullet of
+theirs would have been sufficient to annihilate the only plank of
+safety, which we were about to fix, in order to unite the two banks; but
+that artillery retreated exactly as ours was placed in battery.</p>
+
+<p>Farther off, we perceived the rear of a long column, which was moving
+off towards Borizof without ever looking behind it; one regiment of
+infantry, however, and twelve cannon remained, but without taking up any
+position; we also saw a horde of Cossacks wandering about the skirts of
+the wood: they formed the rear-guard of Tchaplitz's division, six
+thousand strong, which was thus retiring, as if for the purpose of
+delivering up the passage to us.</p>
+
+<p>The French, at first could hardly venture to believe their eyes. At
+last, transported with joy, they clapped their hands, and uttered loud
+shouts. Rapp and Ouidin&ocirc;t rushed precipitately into the house where the
+Emperor was. "Sire," they said to him, "the enemy has just raised his
+camp, and quitted his position!"&mdash;"It is not possible!" he replied; but
+Ney and Murat just then entered and confirmed this report. Napoleon
+immediately darted out; he looked, and could just see the last files of
+Tchaplitz's column getting farther off and disappearing in the woods.
+Transported with joy, he exclaimed, "I have outwitted the admiral!"</p>
+
+<p>During this first movement, two of the enemy's pieces re-appeared, and
+fired. An order was given to remove them by a discharge of our
+artillery.</p>
+
+<p>One salvo was enough; it was an act of imprudence which was not
+repeated, for fear of its recalling Tchaplitz. The bridge was as yet
+scarcely begun; it was eight o'clock, and the first tressels were only
+then fixing.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, however, impatient to get possession of the opposite bank,
+pointed it out to the bravest. Jacqueminot, aide-de-camp to the Duke of
+Reggio, and the Lithuanian count Predziecski, were the first who threw
+themselves into the river, and in spite of the pieces of ice, which cut
+and bled the chests and sides of their horses, succeeded in reaching the
+other side. Sourd, chief of the squadron, and fifty chasseurs of the
+7th, each carrying a voltigeur <i>en croupe</i>, followed them, as well as
+two frail rafts which transported four hundred men in twenty trips. The
+Emperor having expressed a wish to have a prisoner to interrogate,
+Jacqueminot, who overheard him, had scarcely crossed the river, when he
+saw one of Tchaplitz's soldiers; he rushed after, attacked, and disarmed
+him; then seizing and placing him on the bow of his saddle, he brought
+him through the river and the ice to Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>About one o'clock the bank was entirely cleared of the Cossacks, and the
+bridge for the infantry finished. The division Legrand crossed it
+rapidly with its cannon, the men shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" in the
+presence of their sovereign, who was himself actively pressing the
+passage of the artillery, and encouraged his brave soldiers by his voice
+and example.</p>
+
+<p>He exclaimed, when he saw them fairly in possession of the opposite
+bank, "Behold my star again appear!" for he was a believer in fatality,
+like all conquerors, those men, who, having the largest accounts with
+Fortune, are fully aware how much they are indebted to her, and who,
+moreover, having no intermediate power between themselves and heaven,
+feel themselves more immediately under its protection.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIk" id="CHAP_VIk"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>At that moment, a Lithuanian nobleman, disguised as a peasant, arrived
+from Wilna with the news of Schwartzenberg's victory over Sacken.
+Napoleon appeared pleased in proclaiming it aloud, with the addition,
+that "Schwartzenberg had immediately returned upon the heels of
+Tchitchakof, and that he was coming to our assistance." A conjecture, to
+which the disappearance of Tchaplitz gave considerable probability.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, as the first bridge which was just finished had only been made
+for the infantry, a second was begun immediately after, a hundred
+fathoms higher up, for the artillery and baggage, which was not finished
+until four o'clock in the afternoon. During that interval, the Duke of
+Reggio, with the rest of the second corps, and Dombrowski's division,
+followed General Legrand to the other side; they formed about seven
+thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal's first care was to secure the road to Zembin, by a
+detachment which chased some Cossacks from it; to push the enemy towards
+Borizof, and to keep him as far back as possible from the passage of
+Studzianka.</p>
+
+<p>Tchaplitz, in obedience to the admiral's orders, proceeded as far as
+Stakhowa, a village close to Borizof, he then turned back, and
+encountered the first troops of Ouidin&ocirc;t commanded by Albert. Both sides
+halted. The French, finding themselves rather too far off from their
+main body, only wanted to gain time, and the Russian general waited for
+orders.</p>
+
+<p>Tchitchakof had found himself in one of those difficult situations, in
+which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between
+several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one
+side, than it removes and gets overturned upon another.</p>
+
+<p>His march from Minsk to Borizof in three columns, not only by the high
+road, but by the roads of Antonopolia, Logo&iuml;sk, and Zembin, showed that
+his whole attention was at first directed to that part of the Berezina,
+above Borizof. Feeling himself then so strong upon his left, he felt
+only that his right was weakened, and in consequence, his anxiety was
+entirely transferred to that side.</p>
+
+<p>The error which led him into that false direction had other and stronger
+foundations. Kutusoff's instructions directed his responsibility to that
+point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused
+to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend
+that part of the river. He alleged, as his justification for refusal,
+the danger of a distemper among the cattle, a pretext unheard of and
+improbable, but perfectly true, as Tchitchakof himself has admitted.</p>
+
+<p>The admiral adds further, that information sent to him by Wittgenstein
+directed his anxiety towards Lower Berezino, as well as the supposition,
+natural enough, that the presence of that general on the right flank of
+the grand army and above Borizof, would push Napoleon below that town.</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of the passages of Charles XII. and of Davoust at
+Berezino, might also be another of his motives. By taking that
+direction, Napoleon would not only escape Wittgenstein, but he might
+retake Minsk, and form a junction with Schwartzenberg. This last was a
+serious consideration with Tchitchakof, Minsk being his conquest, and
+Schwartzenberg his first adversary. Lastly, and principally, Ouidin&ocirc;t's
+demonstration near Ucholoda, and probably the report of the Jews,
+determined him.</p>
+
+<p>The admiral, completely deceived, had therefore resolved, on the evening
+of the 25th, to descend the Berezina, at the very moment that Napoleon
+had determined to re-ascend it. It might almost be said that the French
+Emperor dictated the Russian general's resolution, the time for adopting
+it, the precise moment, and every detail of its execution. Both started
+at the same time from Borizof, Napoleon for Studzianka, Tchitchakof for
+Szabaszawiczy, turning their backs to each other as if by mutual
+agreement, and the admiral recalling all the troops which he had above
+Borizof, with the exception of a small body of light troops, and without
+even taking the precaution of breaking up the roads.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding, at Szabaszawiczy, he was not more than five or six
+leagues from the passage which was effectuating. On the morning of the
+26th he must have been informed of it. The bridge of Borizof was only
+three hours' march from the point of attack. He had left fifteen
+thousand men before that bridge; he might therefore have returned in
+person to that point, rejoined Tchaplitz at Stakhowa, on the same day
+made an attack, or at least made preparations for it, and on the
+following day, the 27th, overthrown with eighteen thousand men the seven
+thousand soldiers of Ouidin&ocirc;t and Dombrowski; and finally resumed, in
+front of the Emperor and of Studzianka, the position which Tchaplitz had
+quitted the day before.</p>
+
+<p>But great errors are seldom repaired with the same readiness with which
+they are committed; either because it is in our nature to be at first
+doubtful of them, and that no one is disposed to admit them until they
+are completely certain; or because they confuse, and in the distrust of
+our own judgment, we hesitate, and require the support of other
+opinions.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, that the admiral lost the remainder of the 26th and the
+whole of the 27th in consultations, in feeling his way, and in
+preparations. The presence of Napoleon and his grand army, of the
+weakness of which it was impossible for him to have any idea, dazzled
+him. He saw the Emperor every where; before his right, in the simulated
+preparations for a passage; opposite his centre at Borizof, because in
+fact the arrival of the successive portions of our army filled that
+place with movements; and finally, at Studzianka before his left, where
+the Emperor really was.</p>
+
+<p>On the 27th, so little had he recovered from his error that he made his
+chasseurs reconnoitre and attack Borizof; they crossed over upon the
+beams of the burnt bridge, but were repulsed by the soldiers of
+Partouneaux's division.</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, while he was thus irresolute, Napoleon, with about five
+thousand guards, and Ney's corps, now reduced to six hundred men,
+crossed the Berezina about two o'clock in the afternoon; he posted
+himself in reserve to Ouidin&ocirc;t, and secured the outlet from the bridges
+against Tchitchakof's future efforts.</p>
+
+<p>He had been preceded by a crowd of baggage and stragglers. Numbers of
+them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted.
+The army of Victor, at the same time, succeeded the guard in its
+position on the heights of Studzianka.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIk" id="CHAP_VIIk"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hitherto all had gone on well. But Victor, in passing through Borizof,
+had left there Partouneaux with his division. That general had orders to
+stop the enemy in the rear of that town, to drive before him the
+numerous stragglers who had taken shelter there, and to rejoin Victor
+before the close of the day. It was the first time that Partouneaux had
+seen the disorder of the grand army. He was anxious, like Davoust at the
+beginning of the retreat, to hide the traces of it from the Cossacks of
+Kutusoff, who were at his heels. This fruitless attempt, the attacks of
+Platof by the high road of Orcha, and those of Tchitchakof by the burnt
+bridge of Borizof, detained him in that place until the close of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>He was preparing to quit it, when an order reached him from the Emperor
+himself, to remain there all night. Napoleon's idea, no doubt, was, in
+that manner to direct the whole attention of the three Russian generals
+upon Borizof, and that Partouneaux's keeping them back upon that point,
+would allow him sufficient time to operate the passage of his whole
+army.</p>
+
+<p>But Wittgenstein left Platof to pursue the French army along the high
+road, and directed his own march more to the right. He debouched the
+same evening on the heights which border the Berezina, between Borizof
+and Studzianka, intercepted the road between these two points, and
+captured all that was found there. A crowd of stragglers, who were
+driven back on Partouneaux, apprised him that he was separated from the
+rest of the army.</p>
+
+<p>Partouneaux did not hesitate: although he had no more than three cannon
+with him, and three thousand five hundred soldiers, he determined to cut
+his way through, made his dispositions accordingly, and began his march.
+He had at first to march along a slippery road, crowded with baggage and
+runaways; with a violent wind blowing directly in his face, and in a
+dark and icy-cold night. To these obstacles were shortly added the fire
+of several thousand enemies, who lined the heights upon his right. As
+long as he was only attacked in flank, he proceeded; but shortly after,
+he had to meet it in front from numberless troops well posted, whose
+bullets traversed his column through and through.</p>
+
+<p>This unfortunate division then got entangled in a shallow; a long file
+of five or six hundred carriages embarrassed all its movements; seven
+thousand terrified stragglers, howling with terror and despair, rushed
+into the midst of its feeble lines. They broke through them, caused its
+platoons to waver, and were every moment involving in their disorder
+fresh soldiers who got disheartened. It became necessary to retreat, in
+order to rally, and take a better position, but in falling back, they
+encountered Platof's cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>Half of our combatants had already perished, and the fifteen hundred
+soldiers who remained found themselves surrounded by three armies and by
+a river.</p>
+
+<p>In this situation, a flag of truce came, in the name of Wittgenstein and
+fifty thousand men, to order the French to surrender. Partouneaux
+rejected the summons. He recalled into his ranks such of his stragglers
+as yet retained their arms; he wanted to make a last effort, and clear a
+sanguinary passage to the bridge of Studzianka; but these men, who were
+formerly so brave, were now so degraded by their miseries, that they
+would no longer make use of their arms.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, the general of his vanguard apprised him that the
+bridges of Studzianka were burnt; an aide-de-camp, named Rochex, who had
+just brought the report, pretended that he had seen them burning.
+Partouneaux believed this false intelligence, for, in regard to
+calamities, misfortune is credulous.</p>
+
+<p>He concluded that he was abandoned and sacrificed; and as the night, the
+incumbrances, and the necessity of facing the enemy on three sides,
+separated his weak brigades, he desired each of them to be told to try
+and steal off, under favour of the darkness, along the flanks of the
+enemy. He himself, with one of these brigades, reduced to four hundred
+men, ascended the steep and woody heights on his right, with the hope of
+passing through Wittgenstein's army in the darkness, of escaping him,
+and rejoining Victor; or, at all events, of getting round by the sources
+of the Berezina.</p>
+
+<p>But at every point where he attempted to pass, he encountered the
+enemy's fires, and he turned again; he wandered about for several hours
+quite at random, in plains of snow, in the midst of a violent hurricane.
+At every step he saw his soldiers transfixed by the cold, emaciated with
+hunger and fatigue, falling half dead into the hands of the Russian
+cavalry, who pursued him without intermission.</p>
+
+<p>This unfortunate general was still struggling with the heavens, with
+men, and with his own despair, when he felt even the earth give way
+under his feet. In fact, being deceived by the snow, he had fallen into
+a lake, which was not frozen sufficiently hard to bear him, and in which
+he would have been drowned. Then only he yielded and gave up his arms.</p>
+
+<p>While this catastrophe was accomplishing, his other three brigades,
+being more and more hemmed in upon the road, lost all power of movement.
+They delayed their surrender till the next morning, first by fighting,
+and then by parleying; they then all fell in their turn; a common
+misfortune again united them with their general.</p>
+
+<p>Of the whole division, a single battalion only escaped: it had been left
+the last in Borizof. It quitted it in the midst of the Russians of
+Platof and of Tchitchakof, who were effecting in that town, and at that
+very moment, the junction of the armies of Moscow and of Moldavia. This
+battalion, being alone and separated from its division, might have been
+expected to be the first to fall, but that very circumstance saved it.
+Several long trains of equipages and disbanded soldiers were flying
+towards Studzianka in different directions; drawn aside by one of these
+crowds, mistaking his road, and leaving on his right that which had been
+taken by the army, the leader of this battalion glided to the borders of
+the river, followed all its windings and turnings, and protected by the
+combat of his less fortunate comrades, by the darkness, and the very
+difficulties of the ground, moved off in silence, escaped from the
+enemy, and brought to Victor the confirmation of Partouneaux's
+surrender.</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon heard the news, he was struck with grief, and exclaimed,
+"How unfortunate it was, that when all appeared to be saved, as if
+miraculously, this <i>defection</i> had happened, to spoil all!" The
+expression was improper, but grief extorted it from him, either because
+he anticipated that Victor, being thus weakened, would be unable to hold
+out long enough next day; or because he had made it a point of honour to
+have left nothing during the whole of his retreat in the hands of the
+enemy, but stragglers, and no armed and organised corps. In fact, this
+division was the first and the only one which laid down its arms.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIk" id="CHAP_VIIIk"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>This success encouraged Wittgenstein. At the same time, after two days
+feeling his way, the report of a prisoner, and the recapture of Borizof
+by Platof had opened Tchitchakof's eyes. From that moment the three
+Russian armies of the north, east, and south, felt themselves united;
+their commanders had mutual communications. Wittgenstein and Tchitchakof
+were jealous of each other, but they detested us still more; hatred, and
+not friendship, was their bond of union. These generals were therefore
+prepared to attack in conjunction the bridges of Studzianka, on both
+sides of the river.</p>
+
+<p>This was on the 28th of November. The grand army had had two days and
+two nights to effect its passage; it ought to have been too late for the
+Russians. But the French were in a state of complete disorder, and
+materials were deficient for two bridges. Twice during the night of the
+26th, the one for the carriages had broke down, and the passage had been
+retarded by it for seven hours: it broke a third time on the 27th, about
+four in the afternoon. On the other hand, the stragglers, who had been
+dispersed in the woods and surrounding villages, had not taken advantage
+of the first night, and on the 27th, when daylight appeared, they all
+presented themselves at once in order to cross the bridges.</p>
+
+<p>This was particularly the case when the guard, by whose movements they
+regulated themselves, began its march. Its departure was like a signal;
+they rushed in from all parts, and crowded upon the bank. Instantly
+there was seen a deep, broad, and confused mass of men, horses, and
+chariots, besieging the narrow entrance of the bridge, and overwhelming
+it. The first, pushed forward by those behind them, and driven back by
+the guards and pontonniers, or stopped by the river, were crushed, trod
+underfoot, or precipitated among the floating ices of the Berezina. From
+this immense and horrible rabble-rout there arose at times a confused
+buzzing noise, at others a loud clamour, mingled with groans and fearful
+imprecations.</p>
+
+<p>The efforts of Napoleon and his lieutenants to save these desperate men
+by restoring order among them, were for a long time completely
+fruitless. The disorder was so great, that, about two o'clock, when the
+Emperor presented himself in his turn, it was necessary to employ force
+to open a passage for him. A corps of grenadiers of the guard, and
+Latour-Maubourg, out of pure compassion, declined clearing themselves a
+way through these poor wretches.</p>
+
+<p>The imperial head-quarters were established at the hamlet of Zaniwki,
+which is situated in the midst of the woods, within a league of
+Studzianka. Ebl&eacute; had just then made a survey of the baggage with which
+the bank was covered; he apprised the Emperor that six days would not be
+sufficient to enable so many carriages to pass over. Ney, who was
+present, immediately called out, "that in that case they had better be
+burnt immediately." But Berthier, instigated by the demon of courts,
+opposed this; he assured the Emperor that the army was far from being
+reduced to that extremity, and the Emperor was led to believe him, from
+a preference for the opinion which flattered him the most, and from a
+wish to spare so many men, whose misfortunes he reproached himself as
+the cause of, and whose provisions and little all these carriages
+contained.</p>
+
+<p>In the night of the 27th the disorder ceased by the effect of an
+opposite disorder. The bridges were abandoned, and the village of
+Studzianka attracted all these stragglers; in an instant, it was pulled
+to pieces, disappeared, and was converted into an infinite number of
+bivouacs. Cold and hunger kept these wretched people fixed around them;
+it was found impossible to tear them from them. The whole of that night
+was again lost for their passage.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Victor, with six thousand men, was defending them against
+Wittgenstein. But with the first dawn of the 28th, when they saw that
+marshal preparing for a battle, when they heard the cannon of
+Wittgenstein thundering over their heads, and that of Tchitchakof at the
+same time on the opposite bank, they rose all at once, they descended,
+precipitated themselves tumultuously, and returned to besiege the
+bridges.</p>
+
+<p>Their terror was not without foundation; the last day of numbers of
+these unfortunate persons was come. Wittgenstein and Platof, with forty
+thousand Russians of the armies of the north and east, attacked the
+heights on the left bank, which Victor, with his small force, defended.
+On the right bank, Tchitchakof, with his twenty-seven thousand Russians
+of the army of the south, debouched from Stachowa against Ouidin&ocirc;t, Ney,
+and Dombrowski. These three could hardly reckon eight thousand men in
+their ranks, which were supported by the sacred squadron, as well as by
+the old and young guard, who then consisted of three thousand eight
+hundred infantry and nine hundred cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>The two Russian armies attempted to possess themselves at once of the
+two outlets from the bridges, and of all who had been unable to push
+forward beyond the marshes of Zembin. More than sixty thousand men, well
+clothed, well fed, and completely armed, attacked eighteen thousand
+half-naked, badly armed, dying of hunger, separated by a river,
+surrounded by morasses, and additionally encumbered with more than fifty
+thousand stragglers, sick or wounded, and by an enormous mass of
+baggage. During the last two days, the cold and misery had been such
+that the old guard had lost two-thirds, and the young guard one-half of
+their effective men.</p>
+
+<p>This fact, and the calamity which had fallen upon Partouneaux's
+division, sufficiently explain the frightful diminution of Victor's
+corps, and yet that marshal kept Wittgenstein in check during the whole
+of that day, the 28th. As to Tchitchakof, he was beaten. Marshal Ney,
+with his eight thousand French, Swiss, and Poles, was a match for
+twenty-seven thousand Russians.</p>
+
+<p>The admiral's attack was tardy and feeble. His cannon cleared the road,
+but he durst not venture to follow his bullets, and penetrate by the
+chasm which they made in our ranks. Opposite to his right, however, the
+legion of the Vistula gave way to the attack of a strong column.
+Ouidin&ocirc;t, Albert, Dombrowski, Claparede, and Kosikowski were then
+wounded; some uneasiness began to be felt. But Ney hastened forward; he
+made Doumerc and his cavalry dash quite across the woods upon the flank
+of that Russian column; they broke through it, took two thousand
+prisoners, cut the rest to pieces, and by this vigorous charge decided
+the fate of the battle, which was dragging on in uncertainty.
+Tchitchakof, thus defeated, was driven back into Stachowa.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 5em;">
+<img src="images/illus008.jpg" alt="Passage of the Berzina"  />
+<a id="illus008" name="illus008"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<p  class="center" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> Passage of the Berezina</p>
+
+<p>On our side, most of the generals of the second corps were wounded; for
+the less troops they had, the more they were obliged to expose their
+persons. Many officers on this occasion took the muskets and the places
+of their wounded men. Among the losses of the day, that of young
+Noailles, Berthier's aide-de-camp, was remarkable. He was struck dead by
+a ball. He was one of those meritorious but too ardent officers, who are
+incessantly exposing themselves, and are considered sufficiently
+rewarded by being employed.</p>
+
+<p>During this combat, Napoleon, at the head of his guard, remained in
+reserve at Brilowa, covering the outlet of the bridges, between the two
+armies, but nearer to that of Victor. That marshal, although attacked in
+a very dangerous position, and by a force quadruple his own, lost very
+little ground. The right of his <i>corps d'arm&eacute;e</i>, mutilated by the
+capture of Partouneaux's division, was protected by the river, and
+supported by a battery which the Emperor had erected on the opposite
+bank. His front was defended by a ravine, but his left was in the air,
+without support, and in a manner lost, in the elevated plain of
+Studzianka.</p>
+
+<p>Wittgenstein's first attack was not made until ten o'clock in the
+morning of the 28th, across the road of Borizof, and along the Berezina,
+which he endeavoured to ascend as far as the passage, but the French
+right wing stopped him, and kept him back for a considerable time, out
+of reach of the bridges. He then deployed, and extended the engagement
+with the whole front of Victor, but without effect. One of his attacking
+columns attempted to cross the ravine, but it was attacked and
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>At last, about the middle of the day, the Russian discovered the point
+where his superiority lay: he overwhelmed the French left wing. Every
+thing would then have been lost had it not been for an effort of
+Fournier, and the devotion of Latour-Maubourg. That general was passing
+the bridges with his cavalry; he perceived the danger, retraced his
+steps, and the enemy was again stopped by a most sanguinary charge.
+Night came on before Wittgenstein's forty thousand men had made any
+impression on the six thousand of the Duke of Belluno. That marshal
+remained in possession of the heights of Studzianka, and still preserved
+the bridges from the attacks of the Russian infantry, but he was unable
+to conceal them from the artillery of their left wing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXk" id="CHAP_IXk"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>During the whole of that day, the situation of the ninth corps was so
+much more critical, as a weak and narrow bridge was its only means of
+retreat; in addition to which its avenues were obstructed by the baggage
+and the stragglers. By degrees, as the action got warmer, the terror of
+these poor wretches increased their disorder. First of all they were
+alarmed by the rumours of a serious engagement, then by seeing the
+wounded returning from it, and last of all by the batteries of the
+Russian left wing, some bullets from which began to fall among their
+confused mass.</p>
+
+<p>They had all been already crowding one upon the other, and the immense
+multitude heaped upon the bank pell-mell with the horses and carriages,
+there formed a most alarming incumbrance. It was about the middle of the
+day that the first Russian bullets fell in the midst of this chaos; they
+were the signal of universal despair.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was, as in all cases of extremity, that dispositions exhibited
+themselves without disguise, and actions were witnessed, most base, and
+others most sublime. According to their different characters, some
+furious and determined, with sword in hand, cleared for themselves a
+horrible passage. Others, still more cruel, opened a way for their
+carriages by driving them without mercy over the crowd of unfortunate
+persons who stood in the way, whom they crushed to death. Their
+detestable avarice made them sacrifice their companions in misfortune to
+the preservation of their baggage. Others, seized with a disgusting
+terror, wept, supplicated, and sunk under the influence of that passion,
+which completed the exhaustion of their strength. Some were observed,
+(and these were principally the sick and wounded,) who, renouncing life,
+went aside and sat down resigned, looking with a fixed eye on the snow
+which was shortly to be their tomb.</p>
+
+<p>Numbers of those who started first among this crowd of desperadoes
+missed the bridge, and attempted to scale it by the sides, but the
+greater part were pushed into the river. There were seen women in the
+midst of the ice, with their children in their arms, raising them as
+they felt themselves sinking, and even when completely immerged, their
+stiffened arms still held them above them.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this horrible disorder, the artillery bridge burst and
+broke down. The column, entangled in this narrow passage, in vain
+attempted to retrograde. The crowds of men who came behind, unaware of
+the calamity, and not hearing the cries of those before them, pushed
+them on, and threw them into the gulf, into which they were precipitated
+in their turn.</p>
+
+<p>Every one then attempted to pass by the other bridge. A number of large
+ammunition waggons, heavy carriages, and cannon crowded to it from all
+parts. Directed by their drivers, and carried along rapidly over a rough
+and unequal declivity, in the midst of heaps of men, they ground to
+powder the poor wretches who were unlucky enough to get between them;
+after which, the greater part, driving violently against each other and
+getting overturned, killed in their fall those who surrounded them.
+Whole rows of these desperate creatures being pushed against these
+obstacles, got entangled among them, were thrown down and crushed to
+pieces by masses of other unfortunates who succeeded each other
+uninterruptedly.</p>
+
+<p>Crowds of them were rolling in this way, one over the other, nothing was
+heard but cries of rage and suffering. In this frightful medley, those
+who were trod under and stifled, struggled under the feet of their
+companions, whom they laid hold of with their nails and teeth, and by
+whom they were repelled without mercy, as if they had been enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Among them were wives and mothers, calling in vain, and in tones of
+distraction, for their husbands and their children, from whom they had
+been separated but a moment before, never more to be united: they
+stretched out their arms and entreated to be allowed to pass in order to
+rejoin them; but being carried backwards and forwards by the crowd, and
+overcome by the pressure, they sunk under without being even remarked.
+Amidst the tremendous noise of a furious hurricane, the firing of
+cannon, the whistling of the storm and of the bullets, the explosion of
+shells, vociferations, groans, and the most frightful oaths, this
+infuriated and disorderly crowd heard not the complaints of the victims
+whom it was swallowing up.</p>
+
+<p>The more fortunate gained the bridge by scrambling over heaps of
+wounded, of women and children thrown down and half suffocated, and whom
+they again trod down in their attempts to reach it. When at last they
+got to the narrow defile, they fancied they were safe, but the fall of a
+horse, or the breaking or displacing of a plank again stopped all.</p>
+
+<p>There was also, at the outlet of the bridge, on the other side, a
+morass, into which many horses and carriages had sunk, a circumstance
+which again embarrassed and retarded the clearance. Then it was, that in
+that column of desperadoes, crowded together on that single plank of
+safety, there arose an internal struggle, in which the weakest and worst
+situated were thrown into the river by the strongest. The latter,
+without turning their heads, and carried away by the instinct of
+self-preservation, pushed on toward the goal with fury, regardless of
+the imprecations of rage and despair, uttered by their companions or
+their officers, whom they had thus sacrificed.</p>
+
+<p>But on the other hand, how many noble instances of devotion! and why are
+time and space denied me to relate them? There were seen soldiers, and
+even officers, harnessing themselves to sledges, to snatch from that
+fatal bank their sick or wounded comrades. Farther off, and out of reach
+of the crowd, were seen soldiers motionless, watching over their dying
+officers, who had entrusted themselves to their care; the latter in vain
+conjured them to think of nothing but their own preservation, they
+refused, and, sooner than abandon their leaders, were contented to wait
+the approach of slavery or death.</p>
+
+<p>Above the first passage, while the young Lauriston threw himself into
+the river, in order to execute the orders of his sovereign more
+promptly, a little boat, carrying a mother and her two children, was
+overset and sunk under the ice; an artilleryman, who was struggling like
+the others on the bridge to open a passage for himself, saw the
+accident; all at once, forgetting himself, he threw himself into the
+river, and by great exertion, succeeded in saving one of the three
+victims. It was the youngest of the two children; the poor little thing
+kept calling for its mother with cries of despair, and the brave
+artilleryman was heard telling it, "not to cry; that he had not
+preserved it from the water merely to desert it on the bank; that it
+should want for nothing; that he would be its father, and its family."</p>
+
+<p>The night of the 28th added to all these calamities. Its darkness was
+insufficient to conceal its victims from the artillery of the Russians.
+Amidst the snow, which covered every thing, the course of the river, the
+thorough black mass of men, horses, carriages, and the noise proceeding
+from them, were sufficient to enable the enemy's artillerymen, to direct
+their fire.</p>
+
+<p>About nine o'clock at night there was a still farther increase of
+desolation, when Victor began his retreat, and his divisions came and
+opened themselves a horrible breach through these unhappy wretches, whom
+they had till then been protecting. A rear-guard, however, having been
+left at Studzianka, the multitude, benumbed with cold, or too anxious to
+preserve their baggage, refused to avail themselves of the last night
+for passing to the opposite side. In vain were the carriages set fire
+to, in order to tear them from them. It was only the appearance of
+daylight, which brought them all at once, but too late, to the entrance
+of the bridge, which they again besieged. It was half-past eight in the
+morning, when Ebl&eacute;, seeing the Russians approaching, at last set fire to
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The disaster had reached its utmost bounds. A multitude of carriages,
+three cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were
+abandoned on the hostile bank. They were seen wandering in desolate
+troops on the borders of the river. Some threw themselves into it in
+order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice
+which were floating along: some there were also who threw themselves
+headlong into the flames of the burning bridge, which sunk under them;
+burnt and frozen at one and the same time, they perished under two
+opposite punishments. Shortly after, the bodies of all sorts were
+perceived collecting together and the ice against the tressels of the
+bridge. The rest awaited the Russians. Wittgenstein did not show himself
+upon the heights until an hour after Ebl&eacute;'s departure, and, without
+having gained a victory, reaped all the fruits of one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Xk" id="CHAP_Xk"></a>CHAP. X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>While this catastrophe was accomplishing, the remains of the grand army
+on the opposite bank formed nothing but a shapeless mass, which
+unravelled itself confusedly, as it took the road to Zembin. The whole
+of this country is a high and woody plain of great extent, where the
+waters, flowing in uncertainty between different inclinations of the
+ground, form one vast morass. Three consecutive bridges, of three
+hundred fathoms in length, are thrown over it; along these the army
+passed, with a mingled feeling of astonishment, fear, and delight.</p>
+
+<p>These magnificent bridges, made of resinous fir, began at the distance
+of a few wersts from the passage. Tchaplitz had occupied them for
+several days. An <i>abatis</i> and heaps of bavins of combustible wood,
+already dry, were laid at their entrance, as if to remind him of the use
+he had to make of them. It would not have required more than the fire
+from one of the Cossacks' pipes to set these bridges on fire. In that
+case all our efforts and the passage of the Berezina would have been
+entirely useless. Caught between the morass and the river, in a narrow
+space, without provisions, without shelter, in the midst of a tremendous
+hurricane, the grand army and its Emperor must have been compelled to
+surrender without striking a blow.</p>
+
+<p>In this desperate situation, in which all France seemed destined to be
+taken prisoner in Russia, where every thing was against us and in favour
+of the Russians, the latter did nothing but by halves. Kutusoff did not
+reach the Dnieper, at Kopis, until the very day that Napoleon approached
+the Berezina. Wittgenstein allowed himself to be kept in check during
+the time that the former required for his passage. Tchitchakof was
+defeated; and of eighty thousand men, Napoleon succeeded in saving sixty
+thousand.</p>
+
+<p>He remained till the last moment on these melancholy banks, near the
+ruins of Brilowa, unsheltered, and at the head of his guards, one-third
+of whom were destroyed by the storm. During the day they stood to arms,
+and were drawn up in order of battle; at night, they bivouacked in a
+square round their leader; there the old grenadiers incessantly kept
+feeding their fires. They sat upon their knapsacks, with their elbows
+planted on their knees, and their hands supporting their head;
+slumbering in this manner doubled upon themselves, in order that one
+limb might warm the other, and that they should feel less the emptiness
+of their stomachs.</p>
+
+<p>During these three days and three nights, spent in the midst of them,
+Napoleon, with his looks and his thoughts wandering on three sides at
+once, supported the second corps by his orders and his presence,
+protected the ninth corps and the passage with his artillery, and united
+his efforts with those of Ebl&eacute; in saving as many fragments as possible
+from the wreck. He at last directed the remains to Zembin, where Prince
+Eugene had preceded him.</p>
+
+<p>It was remarked that he still gave orders to his marshals, who had no
+soldiers to command, to take up positions on that road, as if they had
+still armies at their beck. One of them made the observation to him with
+some degree of asperity, and was beginning an enumeration of his losses;
+but Napoleon, determined to reject all reports, lest they should
+degenerate into complaints, warmly interrupted him with these words:
+"why then do you wish to deprive me of my tranquillity?" and as the
+other was persisting, he shut his mouth at once, by repeating, in a
+reproachful manner, "I ask you, sir, why do you wish to deprive me of my
+tranquillity?" An expression, which in his adversity, explained the
+attitude which he imposed upon himself, and that which he exacted of
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Around him during these mortal days, every bivouac was marked by a heap
+of dead bodies. There were collected men of all classes, of all ranks,
+of all ages; ministers, generals, administrators. Among them was
+remarked an elderly nobleman of the times long passed, when light and
+brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was
+seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of a tree, occupying himself with
+unruffled gaiety every morning with the details of his toilette; in the
+midst of the hurricane, he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered
+with the greatest care, amusing himself in this manner with all the
+calamities, and with the fury of the combined elements which assailed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Near him were officers of the scientific corps still finding subjects of
+discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age, which a few discoveries
+have encouraged to find explanations for every thing, the latter, amidst
+the acute sufferings which were inflicted upon them by the north wind,
+were endeavouring to ascertain the cause of its constant direction.
+According to them, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun,
+by warming the southern hemisphere, converted all its emanations into
+vapour, elevated them, and left on the surface of that zone a vacuum,
+into which the vapours of our hemisphere, which were lower, on account
+of being less rarefied, rushed with violence. From one to another, and
+from a similar cause, the Russian pole, completely surcharged with
+vapours which it had emanated, received, and cooled since the last
+spring, greedily followed that direction. It discharged itself from it
+by an impetuous and icy current, which swept the Russian territory quite
+bare, and stiffened or destroyed every thing which it encountered in its
+passage.</p>
+
+<p>Several others of these officers remarked with curious attention the
+regular hexagonal crystallization of each of the flakes of snow which
+covered their garments.</p>
+
+<p>The phenomenon of parhelias, or simultaneous appearances of several
+images of the sun, reflected to their eyes by means of icicles suspended
+in the atmosphere, was also the subject of their observations, and
+occurred several times to divert them from their sufferings.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIk" id="CHAP_XIk"></a>CHAP. XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 29th the Emperor quitted the banks of the Berezina, pushing on
+before him the crowd of disbanded soldiers, and marching with the ninth
+corps, which was already disorganized. The day before, the second and
+the ninth corps, and Dombrowski's division presented a total of fourteen
+thousand men; and now, with the exception of about six thousand, the
+rest had no longer any form of division, brigade, or regiment.</p>
+
+<p>Night, hunger, cold, the fall of a number of officers, the loss of the
+baggage on the other side of the river, the example of so many runaways,
+and the much more forbidding one of the wounded, who had been abandoned
+on both sides of the river, and were left rolling in despair on the
+snow, which was covered with their blood&mdash;every thing; in short, had
+contributed to discourage them; they were confounded in the mass of
+disbanded men who had come from Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>The whole still formed sixty thousand men, but without the least order
+or unity. All marched pell-mell, cavalry, infantry, artillery, French
+and Germans; there was no longer either wing or centre. The artillery
+and carriages drove on through this disorderly crowd, with no other
+instructions than to proceed as quickly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>On this narrow and hilly causeway, many were crushed to death in
+crowding together through the defiles, after which there was a general
+dispersion to every point where either shelter or provisions were likely
+to be found. In this manner did Napoleon reach Kamen, where he slept,
+along with the prisoners made on the preceding day, who were put into a
+fold like sheep. These poor wretches, after devouring even the dead
+bodies of their fellows, almost all perished of cold and hunger.</p>
+
+<p>On the 30th he reached Pleszezenitzy. Thither the Duke of Reggio, after
+being wounded, had retired the day before, with about forty officers and
+soldiers. He fancied himself in safety, when all at once the Russian
+partizan, Landskoy, with one hundred and fifty hussars, four hundred
+Cossacks, and two cannon, penetrated, into the village, and filled all
+the streets of it.</p>
+
+<p>Ouidin&ocirc;t's feeble escort was dispersed. The marshal saw himself reduced
+to defend himself with only seventeen others, in a wooden house, but he
+did so with such audacity and success, that the enemy was astonished,
+quitted the village, and took position on a height, from which he
+attacked it with his cannon. The relentless destiny of this brave
+marshal so ordered it, that in this skirmish he was again wounded by a
+splinter of wood.</p>
+
+<p>Two Westphalian battalions, which preceded the Emperor, at last made
+their appearance and disengaged him, but not till late, and not until
+these Germans and the marshal's escort (who at first did not recognize
+each other as friends) had taken a long and anxious survey of each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>On the 3d of December, Napoleon arrived in the morning at Malodeczno,
+which was the last point where Tchitchakof was likely to have got the
+start of him. Some provisions were found there, the forage was abundant,
+the day beautiful, the sun shining, and the cold bearable. There also
+the couriers, who had been so long in arrears arrived all at once. The
+Poles were immediately directed forward to Warsaw through Olita, and the
+dismounted cavalry by Merecz to the Niemen; the rest of the army was to
+follow the high road, which they had again regained.</p>
+
+<p>Up to that time, Napoleon seemed to have entertained no idea of quitting
+his army. But about the middle of that day, he suddenly informed Daru
+and Duroc of his determination to set off immediately for Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Daru did not see the necessity of it. He objected, "that the
+communication with France was again opened, and the most dangerous
+crisis passed; that at every retrograde step he would now be meeting the
+reinforcements sent him from Paris and from Germany." The Emperor's
+reply was, "that he no longer felt himself sufficiently strong to leave
+Prussia between him and France. What necessity was there for his
+remaining at the head of a routed army? Murat and Eugene would be
+sufficient to direct it, and Ney to cover its retreat.</p>
+
+<p>"That his return to France was become indispensable, in order to secure
+her tranquillity, and to summon her to arms; to take measures there for
+keeping the Germans steady in their fidelity to him; and finally, to
+return with new and sufficient forces to the assistance of his grand
+army.</p>
+
+<p>"But, in order to attain that object, it was necessary that he should
+travel alone over four hundred leagues of the territories of his allies;
+and to do so without danger, that his resolution should be there
+unforeseen, his passage unknown, and the rumour of his disastrous
+retreat still uncertain; that he should precede the news of it, and
+anticipate the effect which it might produce on them, and all the
+defections to which it might give rise. He had, therefore, no time to
+lose, and the moment of his departure was now arrived."</p>
+
+<p>He only hesitated in the choice of the leader whom he should leave in
+command of the army; he wavered between Murat and Eugene. He liked the
+prudence and devotedness of the latter; but Murat had greater celebrity,
+which would give him more weight. Eugene would remain with that monarch;
+his youth and his inferior rank would be a security for his obedience,
+and his character for his zeal. He would set an example of it to the
+other marshals.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Berthier, the channel, to which they had been so long
+accustomed, of all the imperial orders and rewards, would remain with
+them; there would consequently be no change in the form or the
+organization of the army; and this arrangement, at the same time that it
+would be a proof of the certainty of his speedy return, would serve both
+to keep the most impatient of his own officers in their duty, and the
+most ardent of his enemies in a salutary dread.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the motives assigned by Napoleon. Caulaincourt immediately
+received orders to make secret preparations for their departure. The
+rendezvous was fixed at Smorgoni, and the time, the night of the 5th of
+December.</p>
+
+<p>Although Daru was not to accompany Napoleon, who left him the heavy
+charge of the administration of the army, he listened in silence, having
+nothing to urge in reply to motives of such weight; but it was quite
+otherwise with Berthier. This enfeebled old man, who had for sixteen
+years never quitted the side of Napoleon, revolted at the idea of this
+separation.</p>
+
+<p>The private scene which took place was most violent. The Emperor was
+indignant at his resistance. In his rage he reproached him with all the
+favours with which he had loaded him; the army, he told him, stood in
+need of the reputation which he had made for him, and which was only a
+reflection of his own; but to cut the matter short, he allowed him
+four-and-twenty hours to decide; and if he then persisted in his
+disobedience, he might depart for his estates, where he should order him
+to remain, forbidding him ever again to enter Paris or his presence.
+Next day, the 4th of December, Berthier, excusing himself for his
+previous refusal by his advanced age and impaired health, resigned
+himself sorrowfully to his sovereign's pleasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIk" id="CHAP_XIIk"></a>CHAP. XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>But at the very moment that Napoleon determined on his departure, the
+winter became terrible, as if the Russian atmosphere, seeing him about
+to escape from it, had redoubled its severity in order to overwhelm him
+and destroy us. On the 4th of December, when we reached Bienitza, the
+thermometer was at 26 degrees.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor had left Count Lobau and several hundred men of his old
+guard at Malodeczno, at which place the road to Zembin rejoins the
+high-road from Minsk to Wilna. It was necessary to guard this point
+until the arrival of Victor, who in his turn would defend it until that
+of Ney.</p>
+
+<p>For it was still to this marshal, and to the second corps commanded by
+Maison, that the rear-guard was entrusted. On the night of the 29th of
+November, when Napoleon quitted the banks of the Berezina, Ney, and the
+second and third corps, now reduced to three thousand soldiers, passed
+the long bridges leading to Zembin, leaving at their entrance Maison,
+and a few hundred men to defend and to burn them.</p>
+
+<p>Tchitchakof made a late but warm attack, and not only with musketry, but
+with the bayonet: but he was repulsed. Maison at the same time caused
+these long bridges to be loaded with the bavins, of which Tchaplitz,
+some days before, had neglected to make use. When every thing was ready,
+the enemy completely sickened of fighting, and night and the bivouacs
+well advanced, he rapidly passed the defile, and set fire to them. In a
+few minutes these long causeways were burnt to ashes, and fell into the
+morasses, which the frost had not yet rendered passable.</p>
+
+<p>These quagmires stopped the enemy and compelled him to make a <i>detour</i>.
+During the following day, therefore, the march of Ney and of Maison was
+unmolested. But on the day after, the 1st of December, as they came in
+sight of Pleszezenitzy, lo and behold! the whole of the Russian cavalry
+were seen rushing forward impetuously, and pushing Doumerc and his
+cuirassiers on their right. In an instant they were attacked and
+overwhelmed on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Maison saw that the village through which he had to
+retreat, was entirely filled with stragglers. He sent to warn them to
+flee directly; but these unfortunate and famished wretches, not seeing
+the enemy, refused to leave their meals which they had just begun;
+Maison was driven back upon them into the village. Then only, at the
+sight of the enemy, and the noise of the shells, the whole of them
+started up at once, rushed out, and crowded and encumbered every part of
+the principal street.</p>
+
+<p>Maison and his troop found themselves all at once in a manner lost in
+the midst of this terrified crowd, which pressed upon them, almost
+stifled them, and deprived them of the use of their arms. This general
+had no other remedy than to desire his men to remain close together and
+immoveable, and wait till the crowd had dispersed. The enemy's cavalry
+then came up with this mass, and got entangled with it, but it could
+only penetrate slowly and by cutting down. The crowd having at last
+dispersed, discovered to the Russians, Maison and his soldiers waiting
+for them with a determined countenance. But in its flight, the crowd had
+drawn along with it a portion of our combatants. Maison, in an open
+plain, and with seven or eight hundred men against thousands of enemies,
+lost all hope of safety; he was already seeking only to gain a wood not
+far off, in order to sell their lives more dearly, when he saw coming
+out of it eighteen hundred Poles, a troop quite fresh, which Ney had met
+with and brought to his assistance. This reinforcement stopped the
+enemy, and secured the retreat as far as Malodeczno.</p>
+
+<p>On the 4th of December, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Ney and
+Maison got within sight of that village, which Napoleon had quitted in
+the morning. Tchaplitz followed them close. Ney had now only six hundred
+men remaining with him. The weakness of this rear-guard, the approach of
+night, and the prospect of a place of shelter, excited the ardour of the
+Russian general; he made a warm attack. Ney and Maison, perfectly
+certain that they would die of cold on the high-road, if they allowed
+themselves to be driven beyond that cantonment, preferred perishing in
+defending it.</p>
+
+<p>They halted at its entrance, and as their artillery horses were dying,
+they gave up all idea of saving their cannon; determined however that it
+should do its duty for the last time in crushing the enemy, they formed
+every piece they possessed into a battery, and made a tremendous fire.
+Tchaplitz's attacking column was entirely broken by it, and halted. But
+that general, availing himself of his superior forces, diverted a part
+of them to another entrance, and his first troops had already crossed
+the inclosures of Malodeczno, when all at once, they there encountered a
+fresh enemy.</p>
+
+<p>As good luck would have it, Victor, with about four thousand men, the
+remains of the ninth corps, still occupied this village. The fury on
+both sides was extreme; the first houses were several times taken and
+retaken. The combat on both sides was much less for glory than to keep
+or acquire a refuge against the destructive cold. It was not until
+half-past eleven at night that the Russians gave up the contest, and
+went from it half frozen, to seek for another in the surrounding
+villages.</p>
+
+<p>The following day, December 5th, Ney and Maison had expected that the
+Duke of Belluno would replace them at the rear-guard; but they found
+that that marshal had retired, according to his instructions, and that
+they were left alone in Malodeczno with only sixty men. All the rest had
+fled; the rigour of the climate had completely knocked up their
+soldiers, whom the Russians to the very last moment were unable to
+conquer; their arms fell from their hands, and they themselves fell at a
+few paces distance from their arms.</p>
+
+<p>Maison, who united great vigour of mind with a very strong constitution,
+was not intimidated; he continued his retreat to Bienitza, rallying at
+every step men who were incessantly escaping from him, but still
+continuing to give proofs of the existence of a rear-guard, with a few
+foot-soldiers. This was all that was required; for the Russians
+themselves were frozen, and obliged to disperse before night into the
+neighbouring habitations, which they durst not quit until it was
+completely daylight. They then recommenced their pursuit of us, but
+without making any attack; for with the exception of some numb efforts,
+the violence of the temperature was such as not to allow either party to
+halt with the view of making an attack, or of defending themselves.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, Ney, being surprised at Victor's departure, went after
+him, overtook him, and tried to prevail upon him to halt; but the Duke
+of Belluno, having orders to retreat, refused. Ney then wanted him to
+give him up his soldiers, offering to take the command of them; but
+Victor would neither consent to do that, nor to take the rear-guard
+without express orders. In the altercation which arose in consequence
+between these two, the Prince of the Moskwa gave way to his passion in a
+most violent manner, without producing any effect on the coolness of
+Victor. At last an order of the Emperor arrived; Victor was instructed
+to support the retreat, and Ney was summoned to Smorgoni.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIIk" id="CHAP_XIIIk"></a>CHAP. XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Napoleon had just arrived there amidst a crowd of dying men, devoured
+with chagrin, but not allowing the least emotion to exhibit itself in
+his countenance, at the sight of these unhappy men's sufferings, who, on
+the other hand, had allowed no murmurs to escape them in his presence.
+It is true that a seditious movement was impossible; it would have
+required an additional effort, as the strength of every man was fully
+occupied in struggling with hunger, cold, and fatigue; it would have
+required union, agreement, and mutual understanding, while famine and so
+many evils separated and isolated them, by concentrating every man's
+feelings completely in himself. Far from exhausting themselves in
+provocations or complaints, they marched along silently, exerting all
+their efforts against a hostile atmosphere, and diverted from every
+other idea by a state of continual action and suffering. Their physical
+wants absorbed their whole moral strength; they thus lived mechanically
+in their sensations, continuing in their duty from recollection, from
+the impressions which they had received in better times, and in no
+slight degree from that sense of honour and love of glory which had been
+inspired by twenty years of victory, and the warmth of which still
+survived and struggled within them.</p>
+
+<p>The authority of the commanders also remained complete and respected,
+because it had always been eminently paternal, and because the dangers,
+the triumphs, and the calamities had always been shared in common. It
+was an unhappy family, the head of which was perhaps the most to be
+pitied. The Emperor and the grand army, therefore, preserved towards
+each other a melancholy and noble silence; they were both too proud to
+utter complaints, and too experienced not to feel the inutility of them.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, however, Napoleon had entered precipitately into his last
+imperial head-quarters; he there finished his final instructions, as
+well as the 29th and last bulletin of his expiring army. Precautions
+were taken in his inner apartment, that nothing of what was about to
+take place there should transpire until the following day.</p>
+
+<p>But the presentiment of a last misfortune seized his officers; all of
+them would have wished to follow him. Their hearts yearned after France,
+to be once more in the bosom of their families, and to flee from this
+horrible climate; but not one of them ventured to express a wish of the
+kind; duty and honour restrained them.</p>
+
+<p>While they affected a tranquillity which they were far from tasting, the
+night and the moment which the Emperor had fixed for declaring his
+resolution to the commanders of the army arrived. All the marshals were
+summoned. As they successively entered, he took each of them aside in
+private, and first of all gained their approbation of his plan, of some
+by his arguments, and of others by confidential effusions.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, that on perceiving Davoust, he ran forward to meet him, and
+asked him why it was that he never saw him, and if he had entirely
+deserted him? And upon Davoust's reply that he fancied he had incurred
+his displeasure, the Emperor explained himself mildly, received his
+answers favourably, confided to him the road he meant to travel, and
+took his advice, respecting its details.</p>
+
+<p>His manner was kind and flattering to them all; afterwards, having
+assembled them at his table, he complimented them for their noble
+actions during the campaign. As to himself, the only confession he made
+of his temerity was couched in these words: "If I had been born to the
+throne, if I had been a Bourbon, it would have been easy for me not to
+have committed any faults."</p>
+
+<p>When their entertainment was over, he made Prince Eugene read to them
+his twenty-ninth bulletin; after which, declaring aloud what he had
+already confided to each of them, he told them, "that he was about to
+depart that very night with Duroc, Caulaincourt, and Lobau, for Paris.
+That his presence there was indispensable for France as well as for the
+remains of his unfortunate army. It was there only he could take
+measures for keeping the Austrians and Prussians in check. These nations
+would certainly pause before they declared war against him, when they
+saw him at the head of the French nation, and a fresh army of twelve
+hundred thousand men."</p>
+
+<p>He added, that "he had ordered Ney to proceed to Wilna, there to
+reorganise the army. That Rapp would second him, and afterwards go to
+Dantzic, Lauriston to Warsaw, and Narbonne to Berlin; that his household
+would remain with the army; but that it would be necessary to strike a
+blow at Wilna, and stop the enemy there. There they would find Loison,
+De Wrede, reinforcements, provisions, and ammunition of all sorts;
+afterwards they would go into winter-quarters on the other side of the
+Niemen; that he hoped the Russians would not pass the Vistula before his
+return."</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, "I leave the King of Naples to command the army. I hope
+that you will yield him the same obedience as you would to myself, and
+that the greatest harmony will prevail among you."</p>
+
+<p>As it was now ten o'clock at night, he then rose, squeezed their hands
+affectionately, embraced them, and departed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_XII" id="BOOK_XII"></a>BOOK XII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Il" id="CHAP_Il"></a>CHAP. I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Comrades! I must confess that my spirit, discouraged, refused to
+penetrate farther into the recollection of so many horrors. Having
+arrived at the departure of Napoleon, I had flattered myself that my
+task was completed. I had announced myself as the historian of that
+great epoch, when we were precipitated from the highest summit of glory
+to the deepest abyss of misfortune; but now that nothing remains for me
+to retrace but the most frightful miseries, why should we not spare
+ourselves, you the pain of reading them, and myself that of tasking a
+memory which has now only to rake up embers, nothing but disasters to
+reckon, and which can no longer write but upon tombs?</p>
+
+<p>But as it was our fate to push bad as well as good fortune to the utmost
+verge of improbability, I will endeavour to keep the promise I have made
+you to the conclusion. Moreover, when the history of great men relates
+even their last moments, how can I conceal the last sighs of the grand
+army when it was expiring? Every thing connected with it appertains to
+renown, its dying groans as well as its cries of victory. Every thing in
+it was grand; it will be our lot to astonish future ages with our glory
+and our sorrow. Melancholy consolation! but the only one that remains to
+us; for doubt it not, comrades, the noise of so great a fall will echo
+in that futurity, in which great misfortunes immortalize as much as
+great glory.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon passed through the crowd of his officers, who were drawn up in
+an avenue as he passed, bidding them adieu merely by forced and
+melancholy smiles; their good wishes, equally silent, and expressed only
+by respectful gestures, he carried with him. He and Caulaincourt shut
+themselves up in a carriage; his Mameluke, and Wonsowitch, captain of
+his guard, occupied the box; Duroc and Lobau followed in a sledge.</p>
+
+<p>His escort at first consisted only of Poles; afterwards of the
+Neapolitans of the royal guard. This corps consisted of between six and
+seven hundred men, when it left Wilna to meet the Emperor; it perished
+entirely in that short passage; the winter was its only adversary. That
+very night the Russians surprised and afterwards abandoned Youpranoui,
+(or, as others say, Osmiana,) a town through which the escort had to
+pass. Napoleon was within an hour of falling into that affray.</p>
+
+<p>He met the Duke of Bassano at Miedniki. His first words to him were,
+"that he had no longer an army; that for several days past he had been
+marching in the midst of a troop of disbanded men wandering to and fro
+in search of subsistence; that they might still be rallied by giving
+them bread, shoes, clothing, and arms; but that the Duke's military
+administration had anticipated nothing, and his orders had not been
+executed." But upon Maret replying, by showing him a statement of the
+immense magazines collected at Wilna, he exclaimed, "that he gave him
+fresh life! that he would give him an order to transmit to Murat and
+Berthier to halt for eight days in that capital, there to rally the
+army, and infuse into it sufficient heart and strength to continue the
+retreat less deplorably."</p>
+
+<p>The subsequent part of Napoleon's journey was effected without
+molestation. He went round Wilna by its suburbs, crossed Wilkowiski,
+where he exchanged his carriage for a sledge, stopped during the 10th at
+Warsaw, to ask the Poles for a levy of ten thousand Cossacks, to grant
+them some subsidies, and to promise them he would speedily return at the
+head of three hundred thousand men. From thence he rapidly crossed
+Silesia, visited Dresden, and its monarch, passed through Hanau, Mentz,
+and finally got to Paris, where he suddenly made his appearance on the
+19th of December, two days after the appearance of his twenty-ninth
+bulletin.</p>
+
+<p>From Malo-Yaroslawetz to Smorgoni, this master of Europe had been no
+more than the general of a dying and disbanded army. From Smorgoni to
+the Rhine, he was an unknown fugitive, travelling through a hostile
+country; beyond the Rhine he again found himself the master and the
+conqueror of Europe. A last breeze of the wind of prosperity once more
+swelled his sails.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, his generals, whom he left at Smorgoni, approved of his
+departure, and, far from being discouraged, placed all their hopes in
+it. The army had now only to flee, the road was open, and the Russian
+frontier at a very short distance. They were getting within reach of a
+reinforcement of eighteen thousand men, all fresh troops, of a great
+city, and immense magazines. Murat and Berthier, left to themselves,
+fancied themselves able to regulate the flight. But in the midst of the
+extreme disorder, it required a colossus for a rallying point, and he
+had just disappeared. In the great chasm which he left, Murat was
+scarcely perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>It was then too clearly seen that a great man is not replaced, either
+because the pride of his followers can no longer stoop to obey another,
+or that having always thought of, foreseen, and ordered every thing
+himself, he had only formed good instruments, skilful lieutenants, but
+no commanders.</p>
+
+<p>The very first night, a general refused to obey. The marshal who
+commanded the rear-guard was almost the only one who returned to the
+royal head-quarters. Three thousand men of the old and young guard were
+still there. This was the whole of the grand army, and of that gigantic
+body there remained nothing but the head. But at the news of Napoleon's
+departure, these veterans, spoiled by the habit of being commanded only
+by the conqueror of Europe, being no longer supported by the honour of
+serving him, and scorning to act as guards to another, gave way in their
+turn, and voluntarily fell into disorder.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the colonels of the army, who had hitherto been such subjects of
+admiration, and had marched on, with only four or five officers or
+soldiers around their eagle, preserving their place of battle, now
+followed no orders but their own; each of them fancied himself entrusted
+with his own safety, and looked only to himself for it. Men there were
+who marched two hundred leagues without even looking round. It was an
+almost general <i>sauve-qui-peut</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor's disappearance and Murat's incapacity were not, however,
+the only causes of this dispersion; the principal certainly was the
+severity of the winter, which at that moment became extreme. It
+aggravated every thing, and seemed to have planted itself completely
+between Wilna and the army.</p>
+
+<p>Till we arrived at Malodeczno, and up to the 4th of December, the day
+when it set in upon us with such violence, the march, although painful,
+had been marked by a smaller number of deaths than before we reached the
+Berezina. This respite was partly owing to the vigorous efforts of Ney
+and Maison, which had kept the enemy in check, to the then milder
+temperature, to the supplies which were obtained from a less ravaged
+country, and, finally, to the circumstance that they were the strongest
+men who had escaped from the passage of the Berezina.</p>
+
+<p>The partial organization which had been introduced into the disorder was
+kept up. The mass of runaways kept on their way, divided into a number
+of petty associations of eight or ten men. Many of these bands still
+possessed a horse, which carried their provisions, and was himself
+finally destined to be converted to that purpose. A covering of rags,
+some utensils, a knapsack, and a stick, formed the accoutrements and the
+armour of these poor fellows. They no longer possessed either the arms
+or the uniform of a soldier, nor the desire of combating any other
+enemies than hunger and cold; but they still retained perseverance,
+firmness, the habit of danger and suffering, and a spirit always ready,
+pliant, and quick in making the most of their situation. Finally, among
+the soldiers still under arms, the dread of a nickname, by which they
+themselves ridiculed their comrades who had fallen into disorder,
+retained some influence.</p>
+
+<p>But after leaving Malodeczno, and the departure of Napoleon, when winter
+with all its force, and doubled in severity, attacked each of us, there
+was a complete dissolution of all those associations against misfortune.
+It was no longer any thing but a multitude of isolated and individual
+struggles. The best no longer respected themselves; nothing stopped
+them; no speaking looks detained them; misfortune was hopeless of
+assistance, and even of regret; discouragement had no longer judges to
+condemn, or witnesses to prove it; all were its victims.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforward there was no longer fraternity in arms, there was an end to
+all society, to all ties; the excess of evils had brutified them.
+Hunger, devouring hunger, had reduced these unfortunate men to the
+brutal instinct of self-preservation, all which constitutes the
+understanding of the most ferocious animals, and which is ready to
+sacrifice every thing to itself; a rough and barbarous nature seemed to
+have communicated to them all its fury. Like savages, the strongest
+despoiled the weakest; they rushed round the dying, and frequently
+waited not for their last breath. When a horse fell, you might have
+fancied you saw a famished pack of hounds; they surrounded him, they
+tore him to pieces, for which they quarrelled among themselves like
+ravenous dogs.</p>
+
+<p>The greater number, however, preserved sufficient moral strength to
+consult their own safety without injuring others; but this was the last
+effort of their virtue. If either leader or comrade fell by their side,
+or under the wheels of the cannon, in vain did they call for assistance,
+in vain did they invoke the names of a common country, religion, and
+cause; they could not even obtain a passing look. The cold inflexibility
+of the climate had completely passed into their hearts; its rigour had
+contracted their feelings equally with their countenances. With the
+exception of a few of the commanders, all were absorbed by their
+sufferings, and terror left no room for compassion.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that the same egotism with which excessive prosperity has
+been reproached, was produced by the excess of misfortune, but much more
+excusable in the latter; the first being voluntary, and the last
+compulsive; the first a crime of the heart, and the other an impulse of
+instinct entirely physical; and certainly it was hazarding one's life to
+stop for an instant. In this universal shipwreck, the stretching forth
+one's hand to a dying leader or comrade was a wonderful act of
+generosity. The least movement of humanity became a sublime action.</p>
+
+<p>There were a few, however, who stood firm against both heaven and earth;
+these protected and assisted the weakest; but these were indeed rare.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIl" id="CHAP_IIl"></a>CHAP. II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the 6th of December, the very day after Napoleon's departure, the sky
+exhibited a still more dreadful appearance. You might see icy particles
+floating in the air; the birds fell from it quite stiff and frozen. The
+atmosphere was motionless and silent; it seemed as if every thing which
+possessed life and movement in nature, the wind itself, had been seized,
+chained, and as it were frozen by an universal death. Not the least word
+or murmur was then heard: nothing but the gloomy silence of despair and
+the tears which proclaimed it.</p>
+
+<p>We flitted along in this empire of death like unhappy spirits. The dull
+and monotonous sound of our steps, the cracking of the snow, and the
+feeble groans of the dying, were the only interruptions to this vast and
+doleful silence. Anger and imprecations there were none, nor any thing
+which indicated a remnant of heat; scarcely did strength enough remain
+to utter a prayer; most of them even fell without complaining, either
+from weakness or resignation, or because people only complain when they
+look for kindness, and fancy they are pitied.</p>
+
+<p>Such of our soldiers as had hitherto been the most persevering, here
+lost heart entirely. Sometimes the snow opened under their feet, but
+more frequently its glassy surface affording them no support, they
+slipped at every step, and marched from one fall to another. It seemed
+as if this hostile soil refused to carry them, that it escaped under
+their efforts, that it led them into snares, as if to embarrass and
+slacken their march, and deliver them to the Russians who were in
+pursuit of them, or to their terrible climate.</p>
+
+<p>And really, whenever they halted for a moment from exhaustion, the
+winter, laying his heavy and icy hand upon them, was ready to seize upon
+his prey. In vain did these poor unfortunates, feeling themselves
+benumbed, raise themselves, and already deprived of the power of speech
+and plunged into a stupor, proceed a few steps like automatons; their
+blood freezing in their veins, like water in the current of rivulets,
+congealed their heart, and then flew back to their head; these dying men
+then staggered as if they had been intoxicated. From their eyes, which
+were reddened and inflamed by the continual aspect of the snow, by the
+want of sleep, and the smoke of bivouacs, there flowed real tears of
+blood; their bosom heaved heavy sighs; they looked at heaven, at us, and
+at the earth, with an eye dismayed, fixed and wild; it expressed their
+farewell, and perhaps their reproaches to the barbarous nature which
+tortured them. They were not long before they fell upon their knees, and
+then upon their hands; their heads still wavered for a few minutes
+alternately to the right and left, and from their open mouth some
+agonizing sounds escaped; at last it fell in its turn upon the snow,
+which it reddened immediately with livid blood; and their sufferings
+were at an end.</p>
+
+<p>Their comrades passed by them without moving a step out of their way,
+for fear of prolonging their journey, or even turning their head, for
+their beards and their hair were stiffened with the ice, and every
+moment was a pain. They did not even pity them; for, in short, what had
+they lost by dying? what had they left behind them? They suffered so
+much; they were still so far from France; so much divested of feelings
+of country by the surrounding aspect, and by misery; that every dear
+illusion was broken, and hope almost destroyed. The greater number,
+therefore, were become careless of dying, from necessity, from the habit
+of seeing it, and from fashion, sometimes even treating it
+contemptuously; but more frequently, on seeing these unfortunates
+stretched out, and immediately stiffened, contenting themselves with the
+thought that they had no more wishes, that they were at rest, that their
+sufferings were terminated! And, in fact, death, in a situation quiet,
+certain, and uniform, may be always a strange event, a frightful
+contrast, a terrible revolution; but in this tumult and violent and
+continual movement of a life of constant action, danger, and suffering,
+it appeared nothing more than a transition, a slight change, an
+additional removal, and which excited little alarm.</p>
+
+<p>Such, were the last <i>days</i> of the grand army. Its last <i>nights</i> were
+still more frightful; those whom they surprised marching together, far
+from every habitation, halted on the borders of the woods; there they
+lighted their fires, before which they remained the whole night, erect
+and motionless like spectres. They seemed as if they could never have
+enough of the heat; they kept so close to it as to burn their clothes,
+as well as the frozen parts of their body, which the fire decomposed.
+The most dreadful pain then compelled them to stretch themselves, and
+the next day they attempted in vain to rise.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, such as the winter had almost wholly spared, and who
+still retained some portion of courage, prepared their melancholy meal.
+It consisted, ever since they had left Smolensk, of some slices of
+horse-flesh broiled, and some rye-meal diluted into a <i>bouillie</i> with
+snow water, or kneaded into muffins, which they seasoned, for want of
+salt, with the powder of their cartridges.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of these fires was constantly attracting fresh spectres, who
+were driven back by the first comers. These poor wretches wandered about
+from one bivouac to another, until they were struck by the frost and
+despair together, and gave themselves up for lost. They then laid
+themselves down upon the snow, behind their more fortunate comrades, and
+there expired. Many of them, devoid of the means and the strength
+necessary to cut down the lofty fir trees, made vain attempts to set
+fire to them at the trunk; but death speedily surprised them around
+these trees in every sort of attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Under the vast pent-houses which are erected by the sides of the high
+road in some parts of the way, scenes of still greater horror were
+witnessed. Officers and soldiers all rushed precipitately into them, and
+crowded together in heaps. There, like so many cattle, they squeezed
+against each other round the fires, and as the living could not remove
+the dead from the circle, they laid themselves down upon them, there to
+expire in their turn, and serve as a bed of death to some fresh victims.
+In a short time additional crowds of stragglers presented themselves,
+and being unable to penetrate into these asylums of suffering, they
+completely besieged them.</p>
+
+<p>It frequently happened that they demolished their walls, which were
+formed of dry wood, in order to feed their fires; at other times,
+repulsed and disheartened, they were contented to use them as shelters
+to their bivouacs, the flames of which very soon communicated to these
+habitations, and the soldiers whom they contained, already half dead
+with the cold, were completely killed by the fire. Such of us as these
+places of shelter preserved, found next day our comrades lying frozen
+and in heaps around their extinguished fires. To escape from these
+catacombs, a horrible effort was required to enable them to climb over
+the heaps of these poor wretches, many of whom were still breathing.</p>
+
+<p>At Youpranoui, the same village where the Emperor only missed by an hour
+being taken by the Russian partizan Seslawin, the soldiers burnt the
+houses completely as they stood, merely to warm themselves for a few
+minutes. The light of these fires attracted some of these miserable
+wretches, whom the excessive severity of the cold and their sufferings
+had rendered delirious; they ran to them like madmen, and gnashing their
+teeth and laughing like demons, they threw themselves into these
+furnaces, where they perished in the most horrible convulsions. Their
+famished companions regarded them undismayed; there were even some who
+drew out these bodies, disfigured and broiled by the flames, and it is
+but too true, that they ventured to pollute their mouths with this
+loathsome food!</p>
+
+<p>This was the same army which had been formed from the most civilized
+nation in Europe; that army, formerly so brilliant, which was victorious
+over men to its last moment, and whose name still reigned in so many
+conquered capitals. Its strongest and bravest warriors, who had recently
+been proudly traversing so many scenes of their victories, had lost
+their noble countenance; covered with rags, their feet naked and torn,
+supporting themselves on branches of fir tree, they dragged themselves
+along; all the strength and perseverance which they had hitherto put
+forth in order to conquer, they now made use of to flee.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was, that, like superstitious nations, we also had our
+prognostications, and heard talk of prophecies. Some pretended that a
+comet had enlightened our passage across the Berezina with its
+ill-omened fire; it is true that they added, "that doubtless these stars
+did not foretel the great events of this world, but that they might
+certainly contribute to modify them; at least, if we admitted their
+material influence upon our globe, and all the consequences which that
+influence may exercise upon the human mind, so far as it is dependant on
+the matter which it animates."</p>
+
+<p>There were others who quoted ancient predictions, which, they said, "had
+announced for that period, an invasion of the Tartars as far as the
+banks of the Seine. And, behold! they were already at liberty to pass
+over the overthrown French army, and in a fair way to accomplish that
+prediction."</p>
+
+<p>Some again there were, who were reminding each other of the awful and
+destructive storm which had signalized our entrance on the Russian
+territory. "Then it was heaven itself that spoke! Behold the calamity
+which it predicted! Nature had made an effort to prevent this
+catastrophe! Why had we been obstinately deaf to her voice?" So much did
+this simultaneous fall of four hundred thousand men (an event which was
+not in fact more extraordinary than the host of epidemical disorders and
+of revolutions which are constantly ravaging the globe) appear to them
+an extraordinary and unique event, which must have occupied all the
+powers of heaven and earth; so much is our understanding led to bring
+home every thing to itself; as if Providence, in compassion to our
+weakness, and from the fear of its annihilating itself at the prospect
+of eternity, had so ordered it, that every man, a mere point in space,
+should act and feel as if he himself was the centre of immensity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IIIl" id="CHAP_IIIl"></a>CHAP. III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The army was in this last state of physical and moral distress, when its
+first fugitives reached Wilna. Wilna! their magazine, their dep&ocirc;t, the
+first rich and inhabited city which they had met with since their
+entrance into Russia. Its name alone, and its proximity, still supported
+the courage of a few.</p>
+
+<p>On the 9th of December, the greatest part of these poor soldiers at last
+arrived within sight of that capital. Instantly, some dragging
+themselves along, others rushing forward, they all precipitated
+themselves headlong into its suburbs, pushing obstinately before them,
+and crowding together so fast, that they formed but one mass of men,
+horses, and chariots, motionless, and deprived of the power of movement.</p>
+
+<p>The clearing away of this crowd by a narrow passage became almost
+impossible. Those who came behind, guided by a stupid instinct, added to
+the incumbrance, without the least idea of entering the city by its
+other entrances, of which there were several. But there was such
+complete disorganization, that during the whole of that fatal day, not a
+single staff-officer made his appearance to direct these men to them.</p>
+
+<p>For the space of ten hours, with the cold at 27 and even at 28 degrees,
+thousands of soldiers who fancied themselves in safety, died either from
+cold or suffocation, just as had happened at the gates of Smolensk, and
+at the bridges across the Berezina. Sixty thousand men had crossed that
+river, and twenty thousand recruits had since joined them; of these
+eighty thousand, half had already perished, the greater part within the
+last four days, between Malodeczno and Wilna.</p>
+
+<p>The capital of Lithuania was still ignorant of our disasters, when, all
+at once, forty thousand famished soldiers filled it with groans and
+lamentations. At this unexpected sight, its inhabitants became alarmed,
+and shut their doors. Deplorable then was it to see these troops of
+wretched wanderers in the streets, some furious and others desperate,
+threatening or entreating, endeavouring to break open the doors of the
+houses and the magazines, or dragging themselves to the hospitals.
+Everywhere they were repulsed; at the magazines, from most unseasonable
+formalities, as, from the dissolution of the corps and the mixture of
+the soldiers, all regular distribution had become impossible.</p>
+
+<p>There had been collected there sufficient flour and bread to last for
+forty days, and butcher's meat for thirty-six days, for one hundred
+thousand men. Not a single commander ventured to step forward and give
+orders for distributing these provisions to all that came for them. The
+administrators who had them in charge were afraid of being made
+responsible for them; and the others dreaded the excesses to which the
+famished soldiers would give themselves up, when every thing was at
+their discretion. These administrators besides were ignorant of our
+desperate situation, and when there was scarcely time for pillage, had
+they been so inclined, our unfortunate comrades were left for several
+hours to die of hunger at the very doors of these immense magazines of
+provisions, all of which fell into the enemy's hands the following day.</p>
+
+<p>At the barracks and the hospitals they were equally repulsed, but not by
+the living, for there death held sway supreme. The few who still
+breathed complained that for a long time they had been without beds,
+even without straw, and almost deserted. The courts, the passages, and
+even the apartments were filled with heaps of dead bodies; they were so
+many charnel houses of infection.</p>
+
+<p>At last, the exertions of several of the commanders, such as Eugene and
+Davoust, the compassion of the Lithuanians, and the avarice of the Jews,
+opened some places of refuge. Nothing could be more remarkable than the
+astonishment which these unfortunate men displayed at finding themselves
+once more in inhabited houses. How delicious did a loaf of leavened
+bread appear to them, and how inexpressible the pleasure of eating it
+seated! and afterwards, with what admiration were they struck at seeing
+a scanty battalion still under arms, in regular order, and uniformly
+dressed! They seemed to have returned from the very extremities of the
+earth; so much had the violence and continuity of their sufferings torn
+and cast them from all their habits, so deep had been the abyss from
+which they had escaped!</p>
+
+<p>But scarcely had they begun to taste these sweets, when the cannon of
+the Russians commenced thundering over their heads and upon the city.
+These threatening sounds, the shouts of the officers, the drums beating
+to arms, and the wailings and clamour of an additional multitude of
+unfortunates, which had just arrived, filled Wilna with fresh confusion.
+It was the vanguard of Kutusoff and Tchaplitz, commanded by O'Rourke,
+Landskoy, and Seslawin, which had attacked Loison's division, which was
+protecting the city, as well as the retreat of a column of dismounted
+cavalry, on its way to Olita, by way of Novo&iuml;-Troky.</p>
+
+<p>At first an attempt was made to resist. De Wrede and his Bavarians had
+also just rejoined the army by Naroc-Zwiransky and Niamentchin. They
+were pursued by Wittgenstein, who from Kamen and Vileika hung upon our
+right flank, at the same time that Kutusoff and Tchitchakof pursued us.
+De Wrede had not two thousand men left under his command. As to Loison's
+division and the garrison of Wilna, which had come to meet us as far as
+Smorgoni, and render us assistance, the cold had reduced them from
+fifteen thousand men to three thousand in the space of three days.</p>
+
+<p>De Wrede defended Wilna on the side of Rukoni; he was obliged to fall
+back after a gallant resistance. Loison and his division, on his side,
+which was nearer to Wilna, kept the enemy in check. They had succeeded
+in making a Neapolitan division take arms, and even to go out of the
+city, but the muskets actually slipped from the hands of these "children
+of the sun" transplanted to a region of ice. In less than an hour they
+all returned disarmed, and the best part of them maimed.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, the <i>g&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i> was ineffectually beat in the streets;
+the old guard itself, now reduced to a few platoons, remained dispersed.
+Every one thought much more of disputing his life with famine and the
+cold than with the enemy. But when the cry of "Here are the Cossacks"
+was heard, (which for a long time had been the only signal which the
+greater number obeyed,) it echoed immediately throughout the whole city,
+and the rout again began.</p>
+
+<p>De Wrede presented himself unexpectedly before the king of Naples. He
+said, "the enemy were close at his heels! the Bavarians had been driven
+back into Wilna, which they could no longer defend." At the same time,
+the noise of the tumult reached the king's ears. Murat was astonished;
+fancying himself no longer master of the army, he lost all command of
+himself. He instantly quitted his palace on foot, and was seen forcing
+his way through the crowd. He seemed to be afraid of a skirmish, in the
+midst of a crowd similar to that of the day before. He halted, however,
+at the last house in the suburbs, from whence he despatched his orders,
+and where he waited for daylight and the army, leaving Ney in charge of
+the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Wilna might have been defended for twenty-four hours longer, and many
+men might have been saved. This fatal city retained nearly twenty
+thousand, including three hundred officers and seven generals. Most of
+them had been wounded by the winter more than by the enemy, who had the
+merit of the triumph. Several others were still in good health, to all
+appearance at least, but their moral strength was completely exhausted.
+After courageously battling with so many difficulties, they lost heart
+when they were near the port, at the prospect of four more days' march.
+They had at last found themselves once more in a civilized city, and
+sooner than make up their minds to return to the desert, they placed
+themselves at the mercy of Fortune; she treated them cruelly.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the Lithuanians, although we had compromised them so
+much, and were now abandoning them, received into their houses and
+succoured several; but the Jews, whom we had protected, repelled the
+others. They did even more; the sight of so many sufferers excited their
+cupidity. Had their detestable avarice been contented with speculating
+upon our miseries, and selling us some feeble succours for their weight
+in gold, history would scorn to sully her pages with the disgusting
+detail; but they enticed our unhappy wounded men into their houses,
+stripped them, and afterwards, on seeing the Russians, threw the naked
+bodies of these dying victims from the doors and windows of their houses
+into the streets, and there unmercifully left them to perish of cold;
+these vile barbarians even made a merit in the eyes of the Russians of
+torturing them there; such horrible crimes as these must be denounced to
+the present and to future ages. Now that our hands are become impotent,
+it is probable that our indignation against these monsters may be their
+sole punishment in this world; but a day will come, when the assassins
+will again meet their victims, and there certainly, divine justice will
+avenge us!</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th of December, Ney, who had again voluntarily taken upon
+himself the command of the rear-guard, left that city, which was
+immediately after inundated by the Cossacks of Platof, who massacred all
+the poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way. In the midst of this
+butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from
+the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At
+sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying
+up, besetting them with loud cries, and assailing them on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>But the officer commanding this piquet had already drawn up his soldiers
+in a circle. Without hesitation, he ordered them to fire, and then,
+making them present bayonets, proceeded at the <i>pas de charge</i>. In an
+instant all fled before him; he remained in possession of the city; but
+without feeling more surprise about the cowardice of the Cossacks, than
+he had done at their attack, he took advantage of the moment, turned
+sharply round, and succeeded in rejoining the rear-guard without any
+loss.</p>
+
+<p>The latter was engaged with Kutusoff's vanguard, which it was
+endeavouring to drive back; for another catastrophe, which it vainly
+attempted to cover, detained it at a short distance from Wilna.</p>
+
+<p>There, as well as at Moscow, Napoleon had given no regular order for
+retreat; he was anxious that our defeat should have no forerunner, but
+that it should proclaim itself, and take our allies and their ministers
+by surprise, and that, taking advantage of their first astonishment, it
+might be able to pass through those nations before they were prepared to
+join the Russians and overpower us.</p>
+
+<p>This was the reason why the Lithuanians, foreigners, and every one at
+Wilna, even to the minister himself, had been deceived. They did not
+believe our disaster until they saw it; and in that, the almost
+superstitious belief of Europe in the infallibility of the genius of
+Napoleon was of use to him against his allies. But the same confidence
+had buried his own officers in a profound security; at Wilna, as well as
+at Moscow, not one of them was prepared for a movement of any
+description.</p>
+
+<p>This city contained a large proportion of the baggage of the army, and
+of its treasures, its provisions, a crowd of enormous waggons, loaded
+with the Emperor's equipage, a large quantity of artillery, and a great
+number of wounded men. Our retreat had come upon them like an unexpected
+storm, almost like a thunderbolt. Some were terrified and thrown into
+confusion, while consternation kept others motionless. Orders, men,
+horses, and carriages, were running about in all directions, crossing
+and overturning each other.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this tumult, several of the commanders pushed forward
+out of the city, towards Kowno, with every thing they could contrive to
+carry with them; but at the distance of a league from the latter place
+this heavy and frightened column had encountered the height and the
+defile of Ponari.</p>
+
+<p>During our conquering march, this woody hillock had only appeared to our
+hussars a fortunate accident of the ground, from which they could
+discover the whole plain of Wilna, and take a survey of their enemies.
+Besides, its rough but short declination had scarcely been remarked.
+During a regular retreat it would have presented an excellent position
+for turning round and stopping the enemy: but in a disorderly flight,
+where every thing that might be of service became injurious, where in
+our precipitation and disorder, every thing was turned against
+ourselves, this hill and its defile became an insurmountable obstacle, a
+wall of ice, against which all our efforts were powerless. It detained
+every thing, baggage, treasure, and wounded. The evil was sufficiently
+great in this long series of disasters to form an epoch.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in fact, it was, that money, honour, and every remains of
+discipline and strength were completely lost. After fifteen hours of
+fruitless efforts, when the drivers and the soldiers of the escort saw
+the King of Naples and the whole column of fugitives passing them by the
+sides of the hill, when turning their eyes at the noise of the cannon
+and musquetry which was coming nearer them every instant they saw Ney
+himself retreating with three thousand men (the remains of De Wrede's
+corps and Loison's division); when at last turning their eyes back to
+themselves, they saw the hill completely covered with cannon and
+carriages, broken or overturned, men and horses fallen to the ground,
+and expiring one upon the other,&mdash;then it was, that they gave up all
+idea of saving any thing, and determined only to anticipate the enemy by
+plundering themselves.</p>
+
+<p>One of the covered waggons of treasure, which burst open of itself,
+served as a signal; every one rushed to the others; they were
+immediately broken, and the most valuable effects taken from them. The
+soldiers of the rear-guard, who were passing at the time of this
+disorder, threw away their arms to join in the plunder; they were so
+eagerly engaged in it as neither to hear nor to pay attention to the
+whistling of the balls and the howling of the Cossacks in pursuit of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>It is even said that the Cossacks got mixed among them without being
+observed. For some minutes, French and Tartars, friends and foes, were
+confounded in the same greediness. French and Russians, forgetting they
+were at war, were seen pillaging together the same treasure-waggons. Ten
+millions of gold and silver then disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>But amidst all these horrors, there were noble acts of devotion. Some
+there were, who abandoned every thing to save some unfortunate wounded
+by carrying them on their shoulders; several others, being unable to
+extricate their half-frozen comrades from this medley, lost their lives
+in defending them from the attacks of their countrymen, and the blows of
+their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>On the most exposed part of the hill, an officer of the Emperor, Colonel
+the Count de Turenne, repulsed the Cossacks, and in defiance of their
+cries of rage and their fire, he distributed before their eyes the
+private treasure of Napoleon to the guards whom he found within his
+reach. These brave men, fighting with one hand and collecting the spoils
+of their leader with the other, succeeded in saving them. Long
+afterwards, when they were out of all danger, each man faithfully
+restored the dep&ocirc;t which had been entrusted to him. Not a single piece
+of money was lost.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IVl" id="CHAP_IVl"></a>CHAP. IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>This catastrophe at Ponari was the more disgraceful, as it was easy to
+foresee, and equally easy to prevent it; for the hill could have been
+turned by its sides. The fragments which we abandoned, however, were at
+least of some use in arresting the pursuit of the Cossacks. While these
+were busy in collecting their prey, Ney, at the head of a few hundred
+French and Bavarians, supported the retreat as far as Ev&eacute;. As this was
+his last effort, we must not omit the description of his method of
+retreat which he had followed ever since he left Wiazma, on the 3d of
+November, during thirty-seven days and thirty-seven nights.</p>
+
+<p>Every day, at 5 o'clock in the evening, he took his position, stopped
+the Russians, allowed his soldiers to eat and take some rest, and
+resumed his march at 10 o'clock. During the whole of the night, he
+pushed the mass of the stragglers before him, by dint of cries, of
+entreaties, and of blows. At daybreak, which was about 7 o'clock, he
+halted, again took position, and rested under arms and on guard until 10
+o'clock; the enemy then made his appearance, and he was compelled to
+fight until the evening, gaining as much or as little ground in the rear
+as possible. That depended at first on the general order of march, and
+at a later period upon circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time this rear-guard did not consist of more than two
+thousand, then of one thousand, afterwards about five hundred, and
+finally of sixty men; and yet Berthier, either designedly or from mere
+routine, made no change in his instructions. These were always addressed
+to the commander of a corps of thirty-five thousand men; in them he
+coolly detailed all the different positions, which were to be taken up
+and guarded until the next day, by divisions and regiments which no
+longer existed. And every night, when, in consequence of Ney's urgent
+warnings, he was obliged to go and awake the King of Naples, and compel
+him to resume his march, he testified the same astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner did Ney support the retreat from Wiazma to Ev&eacute;, and a few
+wersts beyond it. There, according to his usual custom, he had stopped
+the Russians, and was giving the first hours of the night to rest, when,
+about ten o'clock, he and De Wrede perceived that they had been left
+alone. Their soldiers had deserted them, as well as their arms, which
+they saw shining and piled together close to their abandoned fires.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately the intensity of the cold, which had just completed the
+discouragement of our people, had also benumbed their enemies. Ney
+overtook his column with some difficulty; it was now only a band of
+fugitives; a few Cossacks chased it before them; without attempting
+either to take or to kill them; either from compassion, for one gets
+tired of every thing in time, or that the enormity of our misery had
+terrified even the Russians themselves, and they believed themselves
+sufficiently revenged, and many of them behaved generously; or, finally,
+that they were satiated and overloaded with booty. It might be also,
+that in the darkness, they did not perceive that they had only to do
+with unarmed men.</p>
+
+<p>Winter, that terrible ally of the Muscovites, had sold them his
+assistance dearly. Their disorder pursued our disorder. We often saw
+prisoners who had escaped several times from their frozen hands and
+looks. They had at first marched in the middle of their straggling
+column without being noticed by it. There were some of them, who, taking
+advantage of a favourable moment, ventured to attack the Russian
+soldiers when isolated, and strip them of their provisions, their
+uniforms, and even their arms, with which they covered themselves. Under
+this disguise, they mingled with their conquerors; and such was the
+disorganization, the stupid carelessness; and the numbness into which
+their army had fallen, that these prisoners marched for a whole month in
+the midst of them without being recognised. The hundred and twenty
+thousand men of Kutusoff's army were then reduced to thirty-five
+thousand. Of Wittgenstein's fifty thousand, scarcely fifteen thousand
+remained. Wilson asserts, that of a reinforcement of ten thousand men,
+sent from the interior of Russia with all the precautions which they
+know how to take against the winter, not more than seventeen hundred
+arrived at Wilna. But a head of a column was quite sufficient against
+our disarmed soldiers. They attempted in vain to tally a few of them,
+and he who had hitherto been almost the only one whose commands had been
+obeyed in the rout, was now compelled to follow it.</p>
+
+<p>He arrived along with it at Kowno, which was the last town of the
+Russian empire. Finally, on the 13th of December, after marching
+forty-six days under a terrible yoke, they once more came in sight of a
+friendly country. Instantly, without halting or looking behind them, the
+greater part plunged into, and dispersed themselves, in the forests of
+Prussian Poland. Some there were, however, who, on their arrival on the
+allied bank of the Niemen, turned round. There, when they, cast a last
+look on that land of suffering from which they were escaping, when they
+found themselves on the same spot, whence five months previously their
+countless eagles had taken their victorious flight, it is said that
+tears flowed from their eyes, and that they uttered exclamations of
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>"This then was the bank which they had studded with their bayonets! this
+the allied country which had disappeared only five months before, under
+the steps of their immense united army, and seemed to them then to be
+metamorphosed into moving hills and valleys of men and horses! These
+were the same valleys, from which, under the rays of a burning sun,
+poured forth the three long columns of dragoons and cuirassiers,
+resembling three rivers of glittering iron and brass. And now men, arms,
+eagles, horses, the sun itself, and even this frontier river, which they
+had crossed replete with ardour and hope, all have disappeared. The
+Niemen is now only a long mass of flakes of ice, caught and chained to
+each other by the increasing severity of the winter. Instead of the
+three French bridges, brought from a distance of five hundred leagues,
+and thrown across it with such audacious promptitude, a Russian bridge
+is alone standing. Finally, in the room of these innumerable warriors,
+of their four hundred thousand comrades, who had been so often their
+partners in victory, and who had dashed forward with such joy and pride
+into the territory of Russia, they saw issuing from these pale and
+frozen deserts, only a thousand infantry and horsemen still under arms,
+nine cannon, and twenty thousand miserable wretches covered with rags,
+with downcast looks, hollow eyes, earthy and livid complexions, long
+beards matted with the frost; some disputing in silence the narrow
+passage of the bridge, which, in spite of their small number was not
+sufficient to the eagerness of their flight; others fleeing dispersed
+over the asperities of the river, labouring and dragging themselves from
+one point of ice to another; and this was the whole grand army! Besides,
+many of these fugitives were recruits who had just joined it."</p>
+
+<p>Two kings, one prince, eight marshals followed by a few officers,
+generals on foot, dispersed, and without any attendants; finally, a few
+hundred men of the old guard, still armed, were its remains; they alone
+represented it.</p>
+
+<p>Or rather, I should say, it still breathed completely and entirely in
+Marshal Ney. Comrades! allies! enemies! here I invoke your testimony;
+let us pay the homage which is due to the memory of an unfortunate hero:
+the facts will be sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>All were flying, and Murat himself, traversing Kowno as he had done
+Wilna, first gave, and then withdrew the order to rally at Tilsit, and
+subsequently fixed upon Gumbinnen. Ney then entered Kowno, accompanied
+only by his aides-de-camp, for all besides had given way, or fallen
+around him. From the time of his leaving Wiazma, this was the fourth
+rear-guard which had been worn out and melted in his hands. But winter
+and famine, still more than the Russians, had destroyed them. For the
+fourth time, he remained alone before the enemy, and still unshaken, he
+sought for a fifth rear-guard.</p>
+
+<p>At Kowno the marshal found a company of artillery, three hundred German
+soldiers who formed its garrison, and General Marchand with four hundred
+men; of these he took the command. He first walked over the town to
+reconnoitre its position, and to rally some additional forces, but he
+found only some sick and wounded, who were endeavouring, in tears, to
+follow our retreat. For the eighth time since we left Moscow, we were
+obliged to abandon these <i>en masse</i> in their hospitals, as they had been
+abandoned singly along the whole march, on all our fields of battle, and
+at all our bivouacs.</p>
+
+<p>Several thousand soldiers covered the marketplace and the neighbouring
+streets; but they were laid out stiff before the magazines of spirits
+which they had broken open, and where they drank the cup of death, from
+which they fancied they were to inhale fresh life. These were the only
+succours which Murat had left him; Ney found himself left alone in
+Russia, with seven hundred foreign recruits. At Kowno, as it had been
+after the disasters of Wiazma, of Smolensk, of the Berezina, and of
+Wilna, it was to him that the honour of our arms and all the peril of
+the last steps of our retreat were again confided.</p>
+
+<p>On the 14th, at daybreak, the Russians commenced their attack. One of
+their columns made a hasty advance from the Wilna road, while another
+crossed the Niemen on the ice above the town, landed on the Prussian
+territory, and, proud of being the first to cross its frontier, marched
+to the bridge of Kowno, to close that outlet upon Ney, and completely
+cut off his retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The first firing was heard at the Wilna gate; Ney ran thither, with a
+view to drive away Platof's artillery with his own; but he found his
+cannon had been already spiked, and that his artillerymen had fled!
+Enraged, he darted forward, and elevating his sword, would have killed
+the officer who commanded them, had it not been for his aide-de-camp,
+who warded off the blow, and enabled this miserable fellow to make his
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>Ney then summoned his infantry, but only one of the two feeble
+battalions of which it was composed had taken up arms; it consisted of
+the three hundred Germans of the garrison. He drew them up, encouraged
+them, and as the enemy was approaching, was just about to give them the
+order to fire, when a Russian cannon ball, grazing the palisade, came
+and broke the thigh of their commanding officer. He fell, and without
+the least hesitation, finding that his wound was mortal, he coolly drew
+out his pistols and blew out his brains before his troop. Terrified at
+this act of despair, his soldiers were completely scared, all of them at
+once threw down their arms, and fled in disorder.</p>
+
+<p>Ney, abandoned by all, neither deserted himself nor his post. After vain
+efforts to detain these fugitives, he collected their muskets, which
+were still loaded, became once more a common soldier, and with only four
+others, kept facing thousands of the Russians. His audacity stopped
+them; it made some of his artillerymen ashamed, who imitated their
+marshal; it gave time to his aide-de-camp Heym&egrave;s, and to General G&eacute;rard
+to embody thirty soldiers, bring forward two or three light pieces, and
+to Generals Ledru and Marchand to collect the only battalion which
+remained.</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment the second attack of the Russians commenced on the
+other side of the Niemen, and near the bridge of Kowno; it was then
+half-past two o'clock. Ney sent Ludru, Marchand, and their four hundred
+men forward to retake and secure that passage. As to himself, without
+giving way, or disquieting himself farther as to what was passing in his
+rear, he kept on fighting at the head of his thirty men, and maintained
+himself until night at the Wilna gate. He then traversed the town and
+crossed the Niemen, constantly fighting, retreating but never flying,
+marching after all the others, supporting to the last moment the honour
+of our arms, and for the hundredth time during the last forty days and
+forty nights, putting his life and liberty in jeopardy to save a few
+more Frenchmen. Finally, he was the last of the grand army who quitted
+that fatal Russia, exhibiting to the world the impotence of fortune
+against great courage, and proving that with heroes every thing turns to
+glory, even the greatest disasters.</p>
+
+<p>It was eight o'clock at night when he reached the allied bank. Then it
+was, that seeing the completion of the catastrophe, Marchand repulsed to
+the entrance of the bridge, and the road of Wilkowiski which Murat had
+taken, completely covered with the enemy's troops, he darted off to the
+right, plunged into the woods, and disappeared.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Vl" id="CHAP_Vl"></a>CHAP. V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Murat reached Gumbinnen, he was exceedingly surprised to find Ney
+already there, and to find, that since it had left Kowno, the army was
+marching without a rear-guard. Fortunately, the pursuit of the Russians,
+after they had reconquered their own territory, became slackened. They
+seemed to hesitate on the Prussian frontier, not knowing whether they
+should enter it as allies or as enemies. Murat took advantage of their
+uncertainty to halt a few days at Gumbinnen, and to direct the remains
+of the different corps to the towns on the borders of the Vistula.</p>
+
+<p>Previous to this dislocation of the army, he assembled the commanders of
+it. I know not what evil genius it was that inspired him at this
+council. One would fain believe that it was the embarrassment he felt
+before these warriors for his precipitate flight, and spite against the
+Emperor, who had left him with the responsibility of it; or it might be
+shame at appearing again, vanquished, in the midst of the nations whom
+our victories had most oppressed; but as his language bore a much more
+mischievous character, which his subsequent actions did not belie, and
+as they were the first symptoms of his defection, history must not pass
+over them in silence.</p>
+
+<p>This warrior, who had been elevated to the throne solely by the right of
+victory, now returned discomfited. From the first step he took upon
+vanquished territory, he fancied he felt it everywhere trembling under
+his feet, and that his crown was tottering on his head. A thousand times
+during the campaign, he had exposed himself to the greatest dangers; but
+he, who, as a king, had shown as little fear of death as the meanest
+soldier of the vanguard, could not bear the apprehension of living
+without a crown. Behold him then, in the midst of the commanders, whom
+his brother had placed under his direction, accusing that brother's
+ambition, which he had shared, in order to free himself from the
+responsibility which its gratification had involved.</p>
+
+<p>He exclaimed, "that it was no longer possible to serve such a madman!
+that there was no safety in supporting his cause; that no monarch in
+Europe could now place any reliance on his word, or in treaties
+concluded with him. He himself was in despair for having rejected the
+propositions of the English; had it not been for that, he would still be
+a great monarch, such as the Emperor of Austria, and the King of
+Prussia."</p>
+
+<p>Davoust abruptly cut him short. "The King of Prussia, the Emperor of
+Austria," said he to him, "are monarchs by the grace of God, of time,
+and the custom of nations. But as to you, you are only a king by the
+grace of Napoleon, and of the blood of Frenchmen; you cannot remain so
+but through Napoleon, and by continuing united to France. You are led
+away by the blackest ingratitude!" And he declared to him that he would
+immediately denounce his treachery to his Emperor; the other marshals
+remained silent. They made allowance for the violence of the king's
+grief, and attributed solely to his inconsiderate heat, the expressions
+which the hatred and suspicious character of Davoust had but too clearly
+comprehended.</p>
+
+<p>Murat was put entirely out of countenance; he felt himself guilty. Thus
+was stifled the first spark of treachery, which at a later period was
+destined to ruin France. It is with regret that history commemorates it,
+as repentance and misfortune have atoned for the crime.</p>
+
+<p>We were soon obliged to carry our humiliation to K&ouml;nigsberg. The grand
+army, which, during the last twenty years, had shown itself successively
+triumphant in all the capitals of Europe, now, for the first time,
+re-appeared mutilated, disarmed, and fugitive, in one of those which had
+been most humiliated by its glory. Its population crowded on our passage
+to count our wounds, and to estimate, by the extent of our disasters,
+that of the hopes they might venture to entertain; we were compelled to
+feast their greedy looks with our miseries, to pass under the yoke of
+their hope, and while dragging our misfortunes through the midst of
+their odious joy, to march under the insupportable weight of hated
+calamity.</p>
+
+<p>The feeble remnant of the grand army did not bend under this burden. Its
+shadow, already almost dethroned, still exhibited itself imposing; it
+preserved its royal air; although vanquished by the elements, it kept
+up, in the presence of men, its victorious and commanding attitude.</p>
+
+<p>On their side, the Germans, either from slowness or fear, received us
+docilely; their hatred restrained itself under an appearance of
+coolness; and as they scarcely ever act from themselves, they were
+obliged to relieve our miseries, during the time that they were looking
+for a signal. K&ouml;nigsberg was soon unable to contain them. Winter, which
+had followed us thither, deserted us there all at once; in one night the
+thermometer fell twenty degrees.</p>
+
+<p>This sudden change was fatal to us. A great number of soldiers and
+generals, whom the tension of the atmosphere had hitherto supported by a
+continued irritation, sunk and fell into decomposition. Lariboissi&egrave;re,
+general-in-chief of the artillery, fell a sacrifice; Ebl&eacute;, the pride of
+the army, followed him. Every day and every hour, our consternation was
+increased by fresh deaths.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this general mourning, a sudden insurrection, and a
+letter from Macdonald, contributed to convert all these sorrows into
+despair. The sick could no longer cherish the expectation of dying free;
+the friend was either compelled to desert his expiring friend, the
+brother his brother, or to drag them in that state to Elbing. The
+insurrection was only alarming as a symptom; it was put down; but the
+intelligence transmitted by Macdonald was decisive.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIl" id="CHAP_VIl"></a>CHAP. VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the side where that marshal commanded, the whole of the war had been
+only a rapid march from Tilsit to Mittau, a display of force from the
+mouth of the Aa to D&uuml;naburg, and finally, a long defensive position in
+front of Riga; the composition of that army being almost entirely
+Prussian, its position and Napoleon's orders so willed it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a piece of great audacity in the Emperor to entrust his left
+wing, as well as his right and his retreat, to Prussians and Austrians.
+It was observed, that at the same time he had dispersed the Poles
+throughout the whole army; many persons thought that it would have been
+preferable to collect in one point the zeal of the latter, and to have
+divided the hatred of the former. But we everywhere required natives as
+interpreters, scouts, or guides, and felt the value of their audacious
+ardour on the true points of attack. As to the Prussians and Austrians,
+it is probable that they would not have allowed themselves to be
+dispersed. On the left, Macdonald, with seven thousand Bavarians,
+Westphalians, and Poles, mixed with twenty-two thousand Prussians,
+appeared sufficient to answer for the latter, as well as for the
+Russians.</p>
+
+<p>In the advance march, there had been at first nothing to do, but to
+drive the Russian posts before them, and to carry off some magazines.
+Afterwards there were a few skirmishes between the Aa and Riga. The
+Prussians, after a rather warm affair, took Eckau from the Russian
+General Lewis; after which both sides remained quiet for twenty days.
+Macdonald employed that time in taking possession of D&uuml;naburg, and in
+getting the heavy artillery brought to Mittau, which was necessary for
+the siege of Riga.</p>
+
+<p>On the intelligence of his approach, on the 23d of August, the
+commander-in-chief at Riga made all his troops march out of the place in
+three columns. The two weakest were to make two false attacks; the first
+by proceeding along the coast of the Baltic sea, and the second directly
+on Mittau; the third, which was the strongest, and commanded by Lewis,
+was at the same time to retake Eckau, drive back the Prussians as far as
+the Aa, cross that river, and either capture or destroy the park of
+artillery.</p>
+
+<p>The plan succeeded as far as beyond the Aa, when Grawert, supported
+latterly by Kleist, repulsed Lewis, and following the Russians closely
+as far as Eckau, defeated them there entirely, Lewis fled in disorder as
+far as the D&uuml;na, which he recrossed by fording it, leaving behind a
+great number of prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far Macdonald was satisfied. It is even said, that at Smolensk,
+Napoleon thought of elevating Yorck to the dignity of a marshal of the
+empire, at the same time that at Vienna he caused Schwartzenberg to be
+named field-marshal. The claims of these two commanders to the honour
+were by no means equal.</p>
+
+<p>In both wings, disagreeable symptoms were manifested; with the
+Austrians, it was among the officers that they were fermenting; their
+general kept them firm in their alliance with us; he even apprised us of
+their bad disposition, and pointed out the means of preventing the
+contagion from spreading among the other allied troops which were mixed
+with his.</p>
+
+<p>The case was quite the contrary with our left wing; the Prussian army
+marched without the least after-thought, at the very time that its
+general was conspiring against us. On the right wing, therefore, during
+the time of combat, it was the leader who drew his troops after him in
+spite of themselves, while, on the left wing, the troops pushed forward
+their commander, almost in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Among the latter, the officers, the soldiers, and Grawert himself, a
+loyal old warrior, who had no political feelings, entered frankly into
+the war. They fought like lions on all occasions when their commander
+left them at liberty to do so; they expressed themselves anxious to wash
+out, in the eyes of the French, the shame of their defeat in 1806, to
+reconquer our esteem, to vanquish in the presence of their conquerors,
+to prove that their defeat was only attributable to their government,
+and that they were worthy of a better fate.</p>
+
+<p>Yorck had higher views. He belonged to the society of the <i>Friends of
+Virtue</i>, whose principle was hatred of the French, and whose object was
+their complete expulsion from Germany. But Napoleon was still
+victorious, and the Prussian afraid to commit himself. Besides, the
+justice, the mildness, and the military reputation of Macdonald had
+completely gained the affection of his troops. They said "they had never
+been so happy as when under the command of a Frenchman." In fact, as
+they were united with the conquerors, and shared the rights of conquest
+with them, they had allowed themselves to be seduced by the all-powerful
+attraction of being on the side of the victor.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing contributed to it. Their administration was directed by an
+intendant and agents taken from their own army. They lived in abundance.
+It was on that very point, however, that the quarrel between Macdonald
+and Yorck began, and that the hatred of the latter found an opening to
+diffuse itself.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, some complaints were made in the country against their
+administration. Shortly after, a French administrator arrived, and
+either from rivalry or a spirit of justice, he accused the Prussian
+intendant of exhausting the country by enormous requisitions of cattle.
+"He sent them," it was said, "into Prussia, which had been exhausted by
+our passage; the army was deprived of them, and a dearth would very soon
+be felt in it." By his account, Yorck was perfectly aware of the
+man&oelig;uvre. Macdonald believed the accusation, dismissed the accused
+person, and confided the administration to the accuser; Yorck, filled
+with spite, thought henceforward of nothing but revenge.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was then at Moscow. The Prussian was on the watch; he joyfully
+foresaw the consequences of that rash enterprise, and it appears as if
+he yielded to the temptation of taking advantage of it, and of getting
+the start of fortune. On the 29th of September, the Russian general
+learned that Yorck had uncovered Mittau; and either from having received
+reinforcements, (two divisions had actually just arrived from Finland,)
+or from confidence of another kind, he adventured himself as far as that
+city, which he retook, and was preparing to push his advantage. The
+grand park of the besiegers' artillery was about to be carried off;
+Yorck, if we are to believe those who were witnesses, had exposed it, he
+remained motionless, he betrayed it.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the chief of his staff felt indignant at this treachery;
+we are assured that he represented to his general in the warmest terms,
+that he would ruin himself, and destroy the honour of the Prussian arms;
+and that, finally, Yorck, moved by his representations, allowed Kleist
+to put himself in movement. His approach was quite sufficient. But on
+this occasion, although there was a regular battle, there were scarcely
+four hundred men put <i>hors du combat</i> on both sides. As soon as this
+petty warfare was over, each army tranquilly resumed its former
+quarters.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIl" id="CHAP_VIIl"></a>CHAP. VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the receipt of this intelligence, Macdonald became uneasy, and very
+much incensed; he hurried from his right wing, where perhaps he had
+remained too long at a distance from the Prussians. The surprise of
+Mittau, the danger which his park of artillery had run of being
+captured, Yorck's obstinacy in refusing to pursue the enemy, and the
+secret details which reached him from the interior of Yorck's
+head-quarters, were all sufficiently alarming. But the more ground there
+was of suspicion, the more it was necessary to dissemble; for as the
+Prussian army was entirely guiltless of the designs of its leader, and
+had fought readily, and as the enemy had given way, appearances had been
+preserved, and it would have been wise policy in Macdonald if he had
+appeared satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>He did quite the contrary. His quick disposition, or his loyalty, were
+unable to dissemble; he burst out into reproaches against the Prussian
+general, at the very moment when his troops, satisfied with their
+victory, were only looking for praise and rewards. Yorck artfully
+contrived to make his soldiers, whose expectations had been frustrated,
+participators in the disgust of a humiliation which had been reserved
+solely for himself.</p>
+
+<p>We find in Macdonald's letters the real causes of his dissatisfaction.
+He wrote to Yorck, "that it was shameful that his posts were continually
+attacked, and that in return he had never once harassed the enemy; that
+ever since he had been in sight of them, he had done no more than repel
+attacks, and in no one instance had ever acted on the offensive,
+although his officers and troops were filled with the best
+dispositions." This last remark was very true, for in general it was
+remarkable to see the ardour of all these Germans for a cause completely
+foreign to them, and which might to them even appear hostile.</p>
+
+<p>They all rivalled each other in eagerness to rush into the midst of
+danger, in order to acquire the esteem of the grand army, and an
+eulogium from Napoleon. Their princes preferred the plain silver star of
+French honour to their richest orders. At that time the genius of
+Napoleon still appeared to have dazzled or subdued every one. Equally
+munificent to reward as prompt and terrible to punish, he appeared like
+one of those great centres of nature, the dispenser of all good. In many
+of the Germans, there was united with this feeling that of a respectful
+admiration for a life which was so completely stamped with the
+marvellous, which so much affects them.</p>
+
+<p>But their admiration was a consequence of victory, and our fatal retreat
+had already commenced; already, from the north to the south of Europe,
+the Russian cries of vengeance replied to those of Spain. They crossed
+and echoed each other in the countries of Germany, which still remained
+under the yoke; these two great fires, lighted up at the two extremities
+of Europe, were gradually extending towards its centre, where they were
+like the dawn of a new day; they covered sparks which were fanned by
+hearts burning with patriotic hatred, and exalted to fanaticism by
+mystic rites. Gradually, as our disaster approached to Germany, there
+was heard rising from her bosom an indistinct rumour, a general, but
+still trembling, uncertain and confused murmur.</p>
+
+<p>The students of the universities, bred up with ideas of independence,
+inspired by their ancient constitutions, which secure them so many
+privileges, full of exalted recollections of the ancient and chivalrous
+glory of Germany, and for her sake jealous of all foreign glory, had
+always been our enemies. Total strangers to all political calculations,
+they had never bent themselves under our victory. Since it had become
+pale, a similar spirit had caught the politicians and even the military.
+The association of the <i>Friends of Virtue</i> gave this insurrection the
+appearance of an extensive plot; some chiefs did certainly conspire, but
+there was no conspiracy; it was a spontaneous movement, a common and
+universal sensation.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander skilfully increased this disposition by his proclamations, by
+his addresses to the Germans, and by the distinction which he made in
+the treatment of their prisoners. As to the monarchs of Europe, he and
+Bernadotte were as yet the only ones who marched at the head of their
+people. All the others, restrained by policy or feelings of honour,
+allowed themselves to be anticipated by their subjects.</p>
+
+<p>This infection even penetrated to the grand army; after the passage of
+the Berezina, Napoleon had been informed of it. Communications had been
+observed to be going on between the Bavarian, Saxon, and Austrian
+generals. On the left, Yorck's bad disposition increased, and
+communicated itself to a part of his troops; all the enemies of France
+had united, and Macdonald was astonished at having to repel the
+perfidious insinuations of an aide-de-camp of Moreau. The impression
+made by our victories was still however so deep in all the Germans, they
+had been so powerfully kept under, that they required a considerable
+time to raise themselves.</p>
+
+<p>On the 15th of November, Macdonald, seeing that the left of the Russian
+line had extended itself too far from Riga, between him and the D&uuml;na,
+made some feigned attacks on their whole front, and pushed a real one
+against their centre, which he broke through rapidly as far as the
+river, near Dahlenkirchen. The whole left of the Russians, Lewis, and
+five thousand men, found themselves cut off from their retreat, and
+thrown back on the D&uuml;na. Lewis vainly sought for an outlet; he found his
+enemy every where, and lost at first two battalions and a squadron. He
+would have infallibly been taken with his whole force, had he been
+pressed closer, but he was allowed sufficient space and time to take
+breath; as the cold increased, and the country offered no means of
+escape, he ventured to trust himself to the weak ice which had begun to
+cover the river. He made his troops lay a bed of straw and boards over
+it, in that manner crossed the D&uuml;na at two points between Friedrichstadt
+and Lindau, and re-entered Riga, at the very moment his comrades had
+begun to despair of his preservation.</p>
+
+<p>The day after this engagement, Macdonald was informed of the retreat of
+Napoleon on Smolensk, but not of the disorganization of the army. A few
+days after, some sinister reports brought him the news of the capture of
+Minsk. He began to be alarmed, when, on the 4th of December, a letter
+from Maret, magnifying the victory of the Berezina, announced to him the
+capture of nine thousand Russians, nine standards, and twelve cannon.
+The admiral, according to this letter, was reduced to thirteen thousand
+men.</p>
+
+<p>On the third of December the Russians were again repulsed in one of
+their sallies from Riga, by the Prussians. Yorck, either from prudence
+or conscience, restrained himself. Macdonald had become reconciled to
+him. On the 19th of December, fourteen days after the departure of
+Napoleon, eight days after the capture of Wilna by Kutusoff, in short
+when Macdonald commenced his retreat, the Prussian army was still
+faithful.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_VIIIl" id="CHAP_VIIIl"></a>CHAP. VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was from Wilna, on the 9th of December, that orders were transmitted
+to Macdonald, of which a Prussian officer was the bearer, directing him
+to retreat slowly upon Tilsit. No care was taken to send these
+instructions by different channels. They did not even think of employing
+Lithuanians to carry a message of that importance. In this manner the
+last army, the only one which remained unbroken, was exposed to the risk
+of destruction. An order, which was written at the distance of only four
+days' journey from Macdonald, lingered so long on the road, that it was
+nine days in reaching him.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal directed his retreat on Tilsit, by passing between Telzs and
+Szawlia. Yorck, with the greatest part of the Prussians, forming his
+rear-guard, marched at a day's distance from him, in contact with the
+Russians, and left entirely to themselves. By some this was regarded as
+a great error on the part of Macdonald; but the majority did not venture
+to decide, alleging that in a situation so delicate, confidence and
+suspicion were alike dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>The latter also said that the French marshal did every thing which
+prudence required of him, by retaining with him one of Yorck's
+divisions; the other, which was commanded by Massenbach, was under the
+direction of the French general Bachelu, and formed the vanguard. The
+Prussian army was thus separated into two corps, Macdonald in the
+middle, and the one seemed to be a guarantee to him for the other.</p>
+
+<p>At first every thing went on well, although the danger was every where,
+in the front, in the rear, and on the flanks; for the grand army of
+Kutusoff had already pushed forward three vanguards, on the retreat of
+the Duke of Tarentum. Macdonald encountered the first at Kelm, the
+second at Piklupenen, and the third at Tilsit. The zeal of the black
+hussars and the Prussian dragoons appeared to increase. The Russian
+hussars of Ysum were sabred and overthrown at Kelm. On the 27th of
+December, at the close of a ten hours' march, these Prussians came in
+sight of Piklupenen, and the Russian brigade of Laskow; without stopping
+to take breath, they charged, threw it into disorder, and cut off two of
+its battalions; next day they retook Tilsit from the Russian commander
+Tettenborn.</p>
+
+<p>A letter from Berthier, dated at Antonowo, on the 14th of December, had
+reached Macdonald several days before, in which he was informed that the
+army no longer existed, and that it was necessary that he should arrive
+speedily on the Pregel, in order to cover K&ouml;nigsberg, and to be able to
+retreat upon Elbing and Marienburg. This news the marshal concealed from
+the Prussians. Hitherto the cold and the forced marches had produced no
+complaints from them; there was no symptom of discontent exhibited by
+these allies; brandy and provisions were not deficient.</p>
+
+<p>But on the 28th, when General Bachelu extended to the right, towards
+Regnitz, in order to drive away the Russians, who had taken refuge there
+after their expulsion from Tilsit, the Prussian officers began to
+complain that their troops were fatigued; their vanguard marched
+unwillingly and carelessly, allowed itself to be surprised, and was
+thrown into disorder. Bachelu, however, restored the fortune of the day,
+and entered Regnitz.</p>
+
+<p>During this time, Macdonald, who had arrived at Tilsit, was waiting for
+Yorck and the rest of the Prussian army, which did not make its
+appearance. On the 29th, the officers, and the orders which he sent
+them, were vainly multiplied; no news of Yorck transpired. On the 30th,
+Macdonald's anxiety was redoubled; it was fully exhibited in one of his
+letters of that day's date, in which, however, he did not yet venture to
+appear suspicious of a defection. He wrote "that he could not understand
+the reason of this delay; that he had sent a number of officers and
+emissaries with orders to Yorck to rejoin him, but that he had received
+no answer. In consequence, when the enemy was advancing against him, he
+was compelled to suspend his retreat; for he could not make up his mind
+to desert this corps, to retreat without Yorck; and yet this delay was
+ruinous." This letter concluded thus:&mdash;"I am lost in conjectures. If I
+retreat, what would the Emperor say? what would be said by France, by
+the army, by Europe? Would it not be an indelible stain on the tenth
+corps, voluntarily to abandon a part of its troops, and without being
+compelled to it otherwise than by prudence? Oh, no; whatever may be the
+result, I am resigned, and willingly devote myself as a victim, provided
+I am the only one:" and he concluded by wishing the French general "that
+sleep which his melancholy situation had long denied him."</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, he recalled Bachelu and the Prussian cavalry, which was
+still at Regnitz, to Tilsit. It was night when Bachelu received the
+order; he wished to execute it, but the Prussian colonels refused; and
+they covered their refusal under different pretexts. "The roads," they
+said, "were not passable. They were not accustomed to make their men
+march in such dreadful weather, and at so late an hour! They were
+responsible to their king for their regiments." The French general was
+astonished, commanded them to be silent, and ordered them to obey; his
+firmness subdued them, they obeyed, but slowly. A Russian general had
+glided into their ranks, and pressed them to deliver up this Frenchman,
+who was alone in the midst of those who commanded them; but the
+Prussians, although fully prepared to abandon Bachelu, could not resolve
+to betray him: at last they began their march.</p>
+
+<p>At Regnitz, at eight o'clock at night, they had refused to mount their
+horses; at Tilsit, where they arrived at two in the morning, they
+refused to alight from them. At five o'clock in the morning, however,
+they had all gone to their quarters, and as order appeared to be
+restored among them, the general went to take some rest. But the
+obedience had been entirely feigned, for no sooner did the Prussians
+find themselves unobserved, than they resumed their arms, went out with
+Massenbach at their head, and escaped from Tilsit in silence, and by
+favour of the night. The first dawn of the last day of the year 1812,
+informed Macdonald that the Prussian army had deserted him.</p>
+
+<p>It was Yorck, who, instead of rejoining him, deprived him of Massenbach,
+whom he had just recalled. His own defection, which had commenced on the
+26th of December, was just consummated. On the 30th of December, a
+convention between Yorck and the Russian general Dibitch was concluded
+at Taurogen. "The Prussian troops were to be cantoned on their own
+frontiers, and remain neutral during two months, even in the event of
+this armistice being disapproved of by their own government. At the end
+of that time, the roads should be open to them to rejoin the French
+troops, should their sovereign persist in ordering them to do so."</p>
+
+<p>Yorck, but more particularly Massenbach, either from fear of the Polish
+division to which they were united, or from respect for Macdonald,
+showed some delicacy in their defection. They wrote to the marshal.
+Yorck announced to him the convention he had just concluded, which he
+coloured with specious pretexts. "He had been reduced to it by fatigue
+and necessity; but," he added, "that whatever judgment the world might
+form of his conduct, he was not at all uneasy about; that his duty to
+his troops, and the most mature reflexion, had dictated it to him; that,
+finally, whatever might be the appearances, he was actuated by the
+purest motives."</p>
+
+<p>Massenbach excused himself for his clandestine departure. "He had wished
+to spare himself a sensation which his heart felt too painfully. He had
+dreaded, lest the sentiments of respect and esteem which he should
+preserve to the end of his life for Macdonald, should have prevented him
+from doing his duty."</p>
+
+<p>Macdonald saw all at once his force reduced from twenty-nine thousand to
+nine thousand, but in the state of anxiety in which he had been living
+for the last two days, any termination to it was a relief.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_IXl" id="CHAP_IXl"></a>CHAP. IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Thus commenced the defection of our allies. I shall not venture to set
+myself up as a judge of the morality of this event; posterity will
+decide upon it. As a contemporaneous historian, however, I conceive
+myself bound not only to state the facts, but also the impression they
+have left, and such as it still remains, in the minds of the principal
+leaders of the two corps of the allied army, either as actors or
+sufferers.</p>
+
+<p>The Prussians only waited for an opportunity to break our alliance,
+which was forced upon them; when the moment arrived, they embraced it.
+Not only, however, did they refuse to betray Macdonald, but they did not
+even wish to quit him, until they had, as it may be said, drawn him out
+of Russia and placed him in safety. On his side, when Macdonald became
+sensible that he was abandoned, but without having positive proofs of
+it, he obstinately remained at Tilsit, at the mercy of the Prussians,
+sooner than give them a motive of defection, by too speedy a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The Prussians did not abuse this noble conduct. There was defection on
+their part, but no treachery; which, in this age, and after the evils
+they had endured, may still appear meritorious; they did not join
+themselves with the Russians. When they arrived on their own frontier,
+they could not resign themselves to aid their conqueror in defending
+their native soil against those who came in the character of their
+deliverers, and who were so; they became neutral, and this was not, I
+must repeat, until Macdonald, disengaged from Russia and the Russians,
+had his retreat free.</p>
+
+<p>This marshal continued it from K&ouml;nigsberg, by Labiau and Tente. His rear
+was protected by Mortier, and Heudelet's division, whose troops, newly
+arrived, still occupied Insterburg, and kept Tchitchakof in check. On
+the 3d of January he effected his junction with Mortier and covered
+K&ouml;nigsberg.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, a happy circumstance for Yorck's reputation, that
+Macdonald, thus weakened, and whose retreat his defection had
+interrupted, was enabled to rejoin the grand army. The inconceivable
+slowness of Wittgenstein's march saved that marshal; the Russian
+general, however, overtook him at Labiau and Tente; and there, but for
+the efforts of Bachelu and his brigade, the valour of the Polish Colonel
+Kameski, and Captain Ostrowski, and the Bavarian Major Mayer, the corps
+of Macdonald, thus deserted, would have been broken or destroyed; in
+that case Yorck would appear to have betrayed him, and history would,
+with justice, have stigimatized him with the name of traitor. Six
+hundred French, Bavarians, and Poles, remained dead on these two fields
+of battle; their blood accuses the Prussians for not having provided, by
+an additional article, for the safe retreat of the leader whom they had
+deserted.</p>
+
+<p>The King of Prussia disavowed Yorck's conduct. He dismissed him,
+appointed Kleist to succeed him in the command, ordered the latter to
+arrest his late commander, and send him, as well as Massenbach, to
+Berlin, there to undergo their trial. But these generals preserved their
+command in spite of him; the Prussian army did not consider their
+monarch at liberty; this opinion was founded on the presence of Augereau
+and some French troops at Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick, however, was perfectly aware of the annihilation of our army.
+At Smorgoni, Narbonne refused to accept the mission to that monarch,
+until Napoleon gave him authority to make the most unreserved
+communication. He, Augereau, and several others have declared that
+Frederick was not merely restrained by his position in the midst of the
+remains of the grand army, and by the dread of Napoleon's re-appearance
+at the head of a fresh one, but also by his plighted faith; for every
+thing is of a mixed character in the moral as well as the physical
+world, and even in the most trifling of our actions there is a variety
+of different motives. But, finally, his good faith yielded to necessity,
+and his dread to a greater dread. He saw himself, it was said,
+threatened with a species of forfeiture by his people and by our
+enemies.</p>
+
+<p>It should be remarked that the Prussian nation, which drew its sovereign
+toward Yorck, only ventured to rise successively, as the Russians came
+in sight, and by degrees, as our feeble remains quitted their territory.
+A single fact, which took place during the retreat, will paint the
+dispositions of the people, and show how much, notwithstanding the
+hatred they bore us, they were curbed under the ascendancy of our
+victories.</p>
+
+<p>When Davoust was recalled to France, he passed, with only two
+attendants, through the town of X * * *. The Russians were daily
+expected there; its population were incensed at the sight of these last
+Frenchmen. Murmurs, mutual excitations, and finally, outcries, rapidly
+succeeded each other; the most violent speedily surrounded the carriage
+of the marshal, and were already about to unharness the horses, when
+Davoust made his appearance, rushed upon the most insolent of these
+insurgents, dragged him behind his carriage, and made his servants
+fasten him to it. Frightened at this action, the people stopped short,
+seized with motionless consternation, and then quietly and silently
+opened a passage for the marshal, who passed through the midst of them,
+carrying off his prisoner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_Xl" id="CHAP_Xl"></a>CHAP. X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In this sudden manner did our left wing fall. On our right wing, on the
+side of the Austrians, whom a well-cemented alliance retained, a
+phlegmatic people, governed despotically by an united aristocracy, there
+was no sudden explosion to be apprehended. This wing detached itself
+from us insensibly, and with the formalities required by its political
+position.</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th of December, Schwartzenberg was at Slonim, presenting
+successively vanguards towards Minsk, Nowogrodeck, and Bienitza. He was
+still persuaded that the Russians were beaten and fleeing before
+Napoleon, when he was informed at the same moment of the Emperor's
+departure, and of the destruction of the grand army, but in so vague a
+manner that he was for some time without any direction.</p>
+
+<p>In his embarrassment he addressed himself to the French ambassador at
+Warsaw. The answer of that minister authorized him "not to sacrifice
+another man." In consequence, he retreated on the 14th of December from
+Slonim towards Bialystok. The instructions which reached him from Murat
+in the middle of this movement were conformable to it.</p>
+
+<p>About the 21st of December, an order from Alexander suspended
+hostilities on that point, and as the interest of the Russians agreed
+with that of the Austrians, there was very soon a mutual understanding.
+A moveable armistice, which was approved by Murat, was immediately
+concluded. The Russian general and Schwartzenberg were to man&oelig;uvre on
+each other, the Russian on the offensive, and the Austrian on the
+defensive, but without coming to blows.</p>
+
+<p>Regnier's corps, now reduced to ten thousand men, was not included in
+the arrangement; but Schwartzenberg, while he yielded to circumstances,
+persevered in his loyalty. He regularly gave an account of every thing
+to the commander of the army; he covered the whole front of the French
+line with his Austrian troops, and preserved it. This prince was not at
+all complaisant towards the enemy; he believed him not upon his bare
+word; at every position he was about to yield, he would actually satisfy
+himself with his own eyes, that he only yielded it to a superior force,
+ready to combat him. In this manner he arrived upon the Bug and the
+Narew, from Nur to Ostrolenka, where the war terminated.</p>
+
+<p>He was in this manner covering Warsaw, when, on the 22d of January, he
+received instructions from his government to abandon the Grand-duchy, to
+separate his retreat from that of Regnier, and to re-enter Gallicia. To
+these instructions he only yielded a tardy obedience; he resisted the
+pressing solicitations and threatening man&oelig;uvres of Miloradowitch
+until the 25th of January; even then, he effected his retreat upon
+Warsaw so slowly, that the hospitals and a great part of the magazines
+were enabled to be evacuated. Finally, he obtained a more favourable
+capitulation for the Warsavians than they could venture to expect. He
+did more; although that city was to have been delivered up on the 5th,
+he only yielded it on the 8th, and thus gave Regnier the start of three
+days upon the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>Regnier was afterwards, it is true, overtaken and surprised at Kalisch,
+but that was in consequence of halting too long to protect the flight of
+some Polish dep&ocirc;ts. In the first disorder occasioned by this unexpected
+attack, a Saxon brigade was separated from the French corps, retreated
+on Schwartzenberg, and was well received by him; Austria allowed it to
+pass through her territory, and restored it to the grand army, when it
+was assembled near Dresden.</p>
+
+<p>On the 1st of January, 1813, however, at K&ouml;nigsberg, where Murat then
+was, the desertion of the Prussians and the intrigues forming by Austria
+were not known, when suddenly Macdonald's despatch, and an insurrection
+of the people of K&ouml;nigsberg, gave information of the beginning of a
+defection, of which it was impossible to foresee the consequences. The
+consternation was excessive. The seditious movement was at first only
+kept down by representations, which Ney very soon changed into threats.
+Murat hastened his departure for Elbing. K&ouml;nigsberg was encumbered with
+ten thousand sick and wounded, most of whom were abandoned to the
+generosity of their enemies. Some of them had no reason to complain of
+it; but prisoners who escaped declared that many of their unfortunate
+companions were massacred and thrown out of the windows into the
+streets; that an hospital which contained several hundred sick was set
+fire to; and they accused the inhabitants of committing these horrid
+deeds.</p>
+
+<p>On another side, at Wilna, more than sixteen thousand of our prisoners
+had already perished. The convent of St. Basil contained the greatest
+number; from the 10th to the 23d of December they had only received some
+biscuits; but not a piece of wood nor a drop of water had been given
+them. The snow collected in the courts, which were covered with dead
+bodies, quenched the burning thirst of the survivors. They threw out of
+the windows such of the dead bodies as could not be kept in the
+passages, on the staircases, or among the heaps of corses which were
+collected in all the apartments. The additional prisoners that were
+every moment discovering were thrown into this horrible place.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of the Emperor Alexander and his brother was the only thing
+that put a stop to these abominations. They had lasted for thirteen
+days, and if a few escaped out of the twenty thousand of our unfortunate
+comrades who were made prisoners, it was to these two princes they owed
+their preservation. But a most violent epidemic had already arisen from
+the poisonous exhalations of so many corses; it passed from the
+vanquished to the victors, and fully avenged us. The Russians, however,
+were living in plenty; our magazines at Smorgoni and Wilna had not been
+destroyed, and they must have found besides immense quantities of
+provisions in the pursuit of our routed army.</p>
+
+<p>But Wittgenstein, who had been detached to attack Macdonald, descended
+the Niemen; Tchitchakof and Platof had pursued Murat towards Kowno,
+Wilkowiski, and Insterburg; shortly after, the admiral was sent towards
+Thorn. Finally, on the 9th of January, Alexander and Kutusoff arrived on
+the Niemen at Merecz. There, as he was about to cross his own frontier,
+the Russian emperor addressed a proclamation to his troops, completely
+filled with images, comparisons, and eulogiums, which the winter had
+much better deserved than his army.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIl" id="CHAP_XIl"></a>CHAP. XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was not until the 22d of January, and the following days, that the
+Russians reached the Vistula. During this tardy march, from the 3d to
+the 11th of January, Murat had remained at Elbing. In this situation of
+extremity, that monarch was wavering from one plan to another, at the
+mercy of the elements which were fermenting around him; sometimes they
+raised his hopes to the highest pitch, at others they sunk him into an
+abyss of disquietude.</p>
+
+<p>He had taken flight from K&ouml;nigsberg in a complete state of
+discouragement, when the suspension in the march of the Russians, and
+the junction of Macdonald with Heudelet and Cavaignac, which doubled his
+forces, suddenly inflamed him with vain hopes. He, who had the day
+before believed that all was lost, wished to resume the offensive, and
+began immediately; for he was one of those dispositions who are making
+fresh resolutions every instant. On that day he determined to push
+forward, and the next to flee as far as Posen.</p>
+
+<p>This last determination, however, was not taken without reason. The
+rallying of the army on the Vistula had been completely illusory; the
+old guard had not altogether more than five hundred effective men; the
+young guard scarcely any; the first corps, eighteen hundred; the second,
+one thousand; the third, sixteen hundred; the fourth, seventeen hundred;
+added to which, most of these soldiers, the remains of six hundred
+thousand men, could scarcely handle their arms.</p>
+
+<p>In this state of impotence, with the two wings of the army already
+detached from us, Austria and Prussia failing us together, Poland became
+a snare which might close around us. On the other hand, Napoleon, who
+never consented to any cession, was anxious that Dantzic should be
+defended; it became necessary, therefore, to throw into it all that
+could keep the field.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, if the truth must be told, when Murat, when at Elbing, talked
+of reconstituting the army, and was even dreaming of victories, he found
+that most of the commanders were themselves worn out and disgusted.
+Misfortune, which leads to fear every thing, and to believe readily all
+that one fears, had penetrated into their hearts. Several of them were
+already uneasy about their rank and their grades, about the estates
+which they had acquired in the conquered countries, and the greater part
+only sighed to recross the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>As to the recruits who arrived, they were a mixture of men from several
+of the German nations. In order to join us they had passed through the
+Prussian states, from whence arose the exhalation of so much hatred. As
+they approached, they encountered our discouragement and our long train
+of disorder; when they entered into line, far from being put into
+companies with, and supported by old soldiers, they found themselves
+left alone, to fight with every kind of scourge, to support a cause
+which was abandoned by those who were most interested in its success;
+the consequence was, that at the very first bivouac, most of these
+Germans disbanded themselves. At sight of the disasters of the army
+returning from Moscow, the tried soldiers of Macdonald were themselves
+shaken. Notwithstanding this corps d'arm&eacute;e, and the completely fresh
+division of Heudelet preserved their unity. All these remains were
+speedily collected into Dantzic; thirty-five thousand soldiers from
+seventeen different nations, were shut up in it. The remainder, in small
+numbers, did not begin rallying until they got to Posen and upon the
+Oder.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto it was hardly possible for the King of Naples to regulate our
+flight any better; but at the moment he passed through Marienwerder on
+his way to Posen, a letter from Naples again unsettled all his
+resolutions. The impression which it made upon him was so violent, that
+by degrees as he read it, the bile mixed itself with his blood so
+rapidly, that he was found a few minutes after with a complete jaundice.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that an act of government which the queen had taken upon
+herself had wounded him in one of his strongest passions. He was not at
+all jealous of that princess, notwithstanding her charms, but furiously
+so of his royal authority; and it was particularly of the queen, as
+sister of the Emperor, that he was suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>Persons were astonished at seeing this prince, who had hitherto appeared
+to sacrifice every thing to glory in arms, suffering himself to be
+mastered all at once by a less noble passion; but they forgot that, with
+certain characters, there must be always a ruling passion.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, it was still the same ambition under different forms, and
+always entering completely into each of them; for such are passionate
+characters. At that moment his jealousy of his authority triumphed over
+his love of glory; it made him proceed rapidly to Posen, where, shortly
+after his arrival, he disappeared, and abandoned us.</p>
+
+<p>This defection took place on the 16th of January, twenty-three days
+before Schwartzenberg detached himself from the French army, of which
+Prince Eugene took the command.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander arrested the march of his troops at Kalisch. There, the
+violent and continued war, which had followed us all the way from
+Moscow, slackened: it became only, until the spring, a war of fits, slow
+and intermittent. The strength of the evil appeared to be exhausted; but
+it was merely that of the combatants; a still greater struggle was
+preparing, and this halt was not a time allowed to make peace, but
+merely given to the premeditation of slaughter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAP_XIIl" id="CHAP_XIIl"></a>CHAP. XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Thus did the star of the North triumph over that of Napoleon. Is it then
+the fate of the South to be vanquished by the North? Cannot that subdue
+it in its turn? Is it against nature that that aggression should be
+successful? and is the frightful result of our invasion a fresh proof of
+it?</p>
+
+<p>Certainly the human race does not march in that direction; its
+inclination is towards the south, it turns its back to the north; the
+sun attracts its regards, its wishes, and its steps. We cannot with
+impunity turn back this great current of men; the attempt to make them
+return, to repel them, and confine them within their frozen regions, is
+a gigantic enterprise. The Romans exhausted themselves by it.
+Charlemagne, although he rose when one of these great invasions was
+drawing to a termination, could only check it for a short time; the rest
+of the torrent, driven back to the east of the empire, penetrated it
+through the north, and completed the inundation.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand years have since elapsed; the nations of the north have
+required that time to recover from that great migration, and to acquire
+the knowledge which is now indispensable to a conquering nation. During
+that interval, it was not without reason that the Hanse Towns opposed
+the introduction of the warlike arts into the immense camp of the
+Scandinavians. The event has justified their fears. Scarcely had the
+science of modern war penetrated among them, when Russian armies were
+seen on the Elbe, and shortly after in Italy; they came to reconnoitre
+these countries, some day they will come and settle there.</p>
+
+<p>During the last century, either from philanthropy or vanity, Europe was
+eager in contributing to civilize these men of the north, of whom Peter
+had already made formidable warriors. She acted wisely, in so far as she
+diminished for herself the danger of falling back into fresh barbarism;
+if we allow that a second relapse into the darkness of the middle ages
+is possible, war having become so scientific, that mind predominates in
+it, so that to succeed in it, a degree of instruction is required, which
+nations that still remain barbarous can only acquire by civilization.</p>
+
+<p>But, in hastening the civilization of these Normans, Europe has probably
+hastened the epoch of their next invasion. For let no one believe that
+their pompous cities, their exotic and forced luxury, will be able to
+retain them; that by softening them, they will be kept stationary, or
+rendered less formidable. The luxury and effeminacy which are enjoyed in
+spite of a barbarous climate, can only be the privilege of a few. The
+masses, which are incessantly increasing by an administration which is
+gradually becoming more enlightened, will continue sufferers by their
+climate, barbarous like that, and always more and more envious; and the
+invasion of the south by the north, recommenced by Catherine II. will
+continue.</p>
+
+<p>Who is there that can fancy that the great struggle between the North
+and the South is at an end? Is it not, in its full grandeur, the war of
+privation against enjoyment, the eternal war of the poor against the
+rich, that which devours the interior of every empire?</p>
+
+<p>Comrades, whatever was the motive of our expedition, this was the point
+which made it of importance to Europe. Its object was to wrest Poland
+from Russia, its result would have been to throw the danger of a fresh
+invasion of the men of the north, at a greater distance, to weaken the
+torrent, and oppose a new barrier to it; and was there ever a man, or a
+combination of circumstances, so well calculated to ensure the success
+of so great an enterprise?</p>
+
+<p>After fifteen hundred years of victories, the revolution of the fourth
+century, that of the kings and nobles against the people, was, in its
+turn, vanquished by the revolution of the nineteenth century, that of
+the people against the nobles and kings. Napoleon was born of this
+conflagration; he obtained such complete power over it, that it seemed
+as if that great convulsion had only been that of the bringing into the
+world one man. He commanded the Revolution as if he had been the genius
+of that terrible element. At his voice she became tranquil. Ashamed of
+her excesses, she admired herself in him, and precipitating herself into
+his glory, she had united Europe under his sceptre, and obedient Europe
+rose at his call to drive back Russia within her ancient limits. It
+seemed as if the North was in his turn about to be vanquished, even
+among his own ices.</p>
+
+<p>And yet this great man, with these great circumstances in his favour,
+could not subdue nature! In this powerful effort to re-ascend that rapid
+declivity, so many forces failed him! After reaching these icy regions
+of Europe, he was precipitated from their very summit. The North,
+victorious over the South in her defensive war, as she had been in the
+middle ages in her offensive one, now believes herself invulnerable and
+irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>Comrades, believe it not! Ye might have triumphed over that soil and
+these spaces, that climate, and that rough and gigantic nature, as ye
+had conquered its soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>But some errors were punished by great calamities! I have related both
+the one and the other. On that ocean of evils I have erected a
+melancholy beacon of gloomy and blood-red light; and if my feeble hand
+has been insufficient for the painful task, at least I have exhibited
+the floating wrecks, in order that those who come after us may see the
+peril and avoid it.</p>
+
+<p>Comrades, my task is finished; it is now for you to bear your testimony
+to the truth of the picture. Its colours will no doubt appear pale to
+your eyes and to your hearts, which are still full of these great
+recollections. But which of you is ignorant that an action is always
+more eloquent than its description; and that if great historians are
+produced by great men, the first are still more rare than the last?</p>
+
+
+<p style="margin-top: 5em;"><small>Volume I</small></p>
+
+<p><small>
+London: Printed by Thomas Davison,<br />
+Whitefriars.<br /></small>
+</p>
+
+<p><small>Volume II</small></p>
+
+<p><small>
+London: Printed by C. Roworth.<br />
+Bell yard, Temple Bar.<br /></small>
+</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+
+<p>This was a book of two volumes, written by a Frenchman and printed in
+English by different printers. As a result there was a wide variation in
+spelling.</p>
+
+<p>Original spelling was retained except where noted.</p>
+
+<p>Thus corses for corpses, tressels for trestles, Dantzic for Danzig.</p>
+
+<p>Table of Contents, Volume II, Book IX, Chapter II, Jaroslavetz changed
+to Yaroslawetz to conform to text. Also for Chapters IV and V of same.</p>
+
+<p>Table of Contents, Winkowo changed to Vinkowo to conform to much of
+text.</p>
+
+<p>Table of Contents, Doubrowna changed to Dombrowna.</p>
+
+<p>The use of Chap. and Chapter was retained reflecting the original work.</p>
+
+<p>Book II. Chap. II., Arriere changed to Arri&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p>Book V. Chap. I, D&uuml;naburg changed to D&uuml;nabourg to match rest of Volume.</p>
+
+<p>Book VIII. Chapter XI, Francaise changed to Fran&ccedil;aise.</p>
+
+<p>Book X. Chapter III, Karsno&euml; changed to Krasno&euml;.</p>
+
+<p>One instance each of Yuknow, Yuknof and Yucknow appears in the text
+as does Vilkomir/Wilkomer and Doukhowtchina/Dukhowtchina.</p>
+
+<div class="u"><h3>Differences that were retained between Volumes I and II:</h3></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Volume Differences">
+<tr><td align='left'><b>Volume I</b></td><td align='left'><b>Volume II</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Saint-Cyr</td><td align='left'>Saint Cyr (also in Table of Contents for Vol. II)</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Oudinot</td><td align='left'>Oudin&ocirc;t</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>journeys</td><td align='left'>journies</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dubrowna&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align='left'>Dombrowna</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>D&uuml;nabourg&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align='left'>D&uuml;naburg</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by 
+Count Philip de Segur
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@@ -0,0 +1,20688 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by
+Count Philip de Segur
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History of the Expedition to Russia
+       Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812
+
+Author: Count Philip de Segur
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #18113]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE EXPEDITION TO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs, Graeme Mackreth and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF THE
+
+EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,
+
+UNDERTAKEN BY THE
+
+EMPEROR NAPOLEON,
+
+IN THE YEAR 1812.
+
+
+
+
+BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.
+
+
+
+  Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,
+  Incipiam--.
+
+VIRGIL.
+
+
+_SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED._
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES,
+
+WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+LONDON:
+
+TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, JUN. AND RICHTER,
+30, SOHO-SQUARE.
+
+1825.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of Napoleon]
+
+
+
+
+TO THE
+
+VETERANS OF THE GRAND ARMY.
+
+
+COMRADES,
+
+I have undertaken the task of tracing the History of the Grand Army and
+its Leader during the year 1812. I address it to such of you as the ices
+of the North have disarmed, and who can no longer serve their country,
+but by the recollections of their misfortunes and their glory. Stopped
+short in your noble career, your existence is much more in the past than
+in the present; but when the recollections are so great, it is allowable
+to live solely on them. I am not afraid, therefore, of troubling that
+repose which you have so dearly purchased, by placing before you the
+most fatal of your deeds of arms. Who is there of us but knows, that
+from the depth of his obscurity the looks of the fallen man are
+involuntarily directed towards the splendor of his past existence--even
+when its light illuminates the shoal on which the bark of his fortune
+struck, and when it displays the fragments of the greatest of
+shipwrecks?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For myself, I will own, that an irresistible feeling carries me back
+incessantly to that disastrous epoch of our public and private
+calamities. My memory feels a sort of melancholy pleasure in
+contemplating and renewing the painful traces which so many horrors have
+left in it. Is the soul, also, proud of her deep and numerous wounds?
+Does she delight in displaying them? Are they a property of which she
+has reason to be proud? Is it rather, that after the desire of knowing
+them, her first wish is to impart her sensations? To feel, and to excite
+feeling, are not these the most powerful springs of our soul?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But in short, whatever may be the cause of the sentiment which actuates
+me, I have yielded to the desire of retracing the various sensations
+which I experienced during that fatal war. I have employed my leisure
+hours in separating, arranging, and combining with method my scattered
+and confused recollections. Comrades! I also invoke yours! Suffer not
+such great remembrances, which have been so dearly purchased, to be
+lost; for us they are the only property which the past leaves to the
+future. Single, against so many enemies, ye fell with greater glory than
+they rose. Learn, then, that there was no shame in being vanquished!
+Raise once more those noble fronts, which have been furrowed with all
+the thunders of Europe! Cast not down those eyes, which have seen so
+many subject capitals, so many vanquished kings! Fortune, doubtless,
+owed you a more glorious repose; but, such as it is, it depends on
+yourselves to make a noble use of it. Let history inscribe your
+recollections. The solitude and silence of misfortune are propitious to
+her labours; and let truth, which is always present in the long nights
+of adversity, at last enlighten labours that may not prove unproductive.
+
+As for me, I will avail myself of the privilege, sometimes painful,
+sometimes glorious, of telling what I have seen, and of retracing,
+perhaps with too scrupulous attention, its most minute details; feeling
+that nothing was too minute in that prodigious Genius and those gigantic
+feats, without which we should never have known the extent to which
+human strength, glory, and misfortune, may be carried.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+VOLUME FIRST.
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+CHAP. I.--Political relations of France and Russia since 1807       1
+
+II.--Prussia.--Frederick William                                    6
+
+III.--Turkey.--Sultans Selim--Mustapha--Mahmoud                    18
+
+IV.--Sweden.--Bernadotte                                           32
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAP. I.--Feelings of Napoleon's grandees at the approaching
+contest--their objections, with Napoleon's replies--real motives which
+urged him to the struggle                                          49
+
+II.--Arguments against the war by the Dukes of Frioul and Vicenza and
+the Count de Segur.--Napoleon's replies                            56
+
+III.--His manner of gaining proselytes to his opinions--his avowals to
+his own family--his discussions with Cardinal Fesch--his declaration to
+Prince Kourakin                                                    67
+
+IV.--Circumstances inclining him to delay the contest--his proposals to
+England and to Russia--Russian ultimatum                           75
+
+V.--Preparations for commencement--Talleyrand--opinions of the
+military--of Napoleon's ministers and generals--fresh obstacles to his
+departure                                                          80
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+CHAP. I.--Napoleon's departure from Paris--dispositions of the
+east of France--of the Germans--assemblage of sovereigns at
+Dresden                                                            86
+
+II.--Arrival in Poland--complaints by the inhabitants of the disorders
+of his troops--his ineffectual attempts to check them--meeting with
+Davoust--quarrel between that officer and Berthier--unfavourable
+impression of Napoleon against the former--arrival at Koenigsberg   97
+
+III.--March from the Vistula to the Niemen--Napoleon's manners with
+the soldiers--positions of the different corps--dispositions of the
+army                                                              105
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+CHAP. I.--Addresses of Napoleon and Alexander to their
+respective armies--Position of the Russian forces--Napoleon's plans in
+consequence--Sketch of the operations of his left and right wings during
+the campaign                                                      115
+
+II.--Passage of the Niemen--Dreadful storm and its fatal
+effects--Melancholy catastrophe--Napoleon's arrival at Wilna--Political
+arrangements                                                      121
+
+III.--Feelings of the Lithuanians--Napoleon's answer to the address of
+the Polish confederation--Coolness of the Lithuanians, and discussion of
+its causes                                                        131
+
+IV.--Distress of the army and its excesses--Manner in which Napoleon was
+affected by them                                                  143
+
+V.--Arrival of Balachoff from Alexander--Quarrel between Napoleon and
+Caulaincourt--Progress of the invading army to the 10th of July   149
+
+VI.--Operations of the King of Westphalia's and of Davoust's
+divisions--Perilous situation and narrow escape of Bagration      157
+
+VII.--Napoleon's departure from Wilna--Retreat of the Russian army from
+Drissa to Witepsk--Arrival of the different French corps at
+Beszenkowiczi--Different partial actions near Witepsk             166
+
+VIII.--General engagement before Witepsk--French attack ordered to
+cease in expectation of a decisive battle on the following day--Retreat
+of the Russians--Napoleon's disappointment--Position of his different
+corps                                                             177
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+CHAP. I.--Napoleon's first plans for halting at Witepsk--afterwards
+abandoned, and his determination to proceed to Smolensk           188
+
+II.--Discussions with the officers of his household--their reasons for
+dissuading him from advancing further, and his replies--Feelings of the
+army in general                                                   199
+
+III.--Operations of Oudinot's corps against that of Wittgenstein--partial
+successes on both sides--Napoleon determines to change his line of
+operation                                                         210
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+CHAP. I.--Manner in which this manoeuvre was effected--The
+army crosses the Boristhenes--Character of the Jewish and native
+population                                                        216
+
+II.--Surprise of Newerowskoi's corps beyond Krasnoe--Bold retreat of
+that officer                                                      222
+
+III.--Movements of the main Russian army--Plans of Barclay--his
+dissension with Bagration--hastens to the relief of Smolensk--about to
+be surprised by Napoleon--Unsuccessful attack of the French on Smolensk
+                                                                  227
+
+IV.--Retreat of the Russian army, and fresh disappointment of
+Napoleon--Ineffectual attempts of Murat to dissuade his farther
+advance--Capture of Smolensk                                      234
+
+V.--Napoleon's reflections on the conduct of the Russians--Intelligence
+of Regnier's victory over Tormasof--Opinions of the Emperor's principal
+officers as to the impolicy of proceeding farther                 240
+
+VI.--State of the allied army--its immense losses from various causes,
+independent of the enemy--Napoleon's professed intention to stop, but
+real determination to proceed                                     248
+
+VII.--Final evacuation of Smolensk by the Russians after setting it on
+fire--their army overtaken by Murat and Ney--Death of General
+Gudin--Battle of Valoutina--Narrow escape of the Russians in consequence
+of Junot's irresolution                                           254
+
+VIII.--Results of the battle--Recompenses and rewards conferred by
+Napoleon--Enthusiasm of the army--Melancholy state of the
+wounded--Animosity of the Russian population                      264
+
+IX.--Napoleon's plans of moving the Russian peasantry to
+insurrection--Conduct of their nobles to ward off the danger--Napoleon's
+hesitation as to the plan he should pursue                        271
+
+X.--Saint Cyr's victory over Wittgenstein on the 18th of
+August--Dissension between Murat and Davoust--Discord in the Russian
+camp in consequence of Barclay's continued retreat--Napoleon's advance
+to Dorogobouje                                                    276
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+CHAP. I.--Manner in which the allied army was supplied on its
+march--Details of the organization of Davoust's corps             285
+
+II.--Napoleon's bulletin and decrees at Slawkowo--Fresh quarrels
+between Murat and Davoust--Description of the Russian mode of retreat
+and of Murat's method of pursuit                                  290
+
+III.--Advance to Wiazma and to Gjatz--Refusal of Davoust to obey
+Murat--Full development of the Russian plan of destroying their cities
+and towns                                                         297
+
+IV.--Clamours of the Russians against Barclay--Kutusof sent to supersede
+him--Great merit of Barclay's plan of retreat                     304
+
+V.--Near prospect of a battle--Character of Kutusof--Sanguinary and
+partial action on the 4th of September--Anecdote of Murat--Napoleon's
+survey of the ground                                              309
+
+VI.--Disposition of the Russian army on the field of Borodino--Napoleon's
+plan of battle                                                    317
+
+VII.--Plan proposed by Davoust rejected by Napoleon--Feelings of the
+French army--Proclamation of Napoleon                             322
+
+VIII.--Preparations of the Russians--Feelings of their
+soldiery--Napoleon's anxiety--his indisposition on the night before the
+battle                                                            328
+
+IX. X. XI.--Battle of Borodino on the 7th of September            334
+
+XII.--Results of the battle--immense loss on both sides--faults
+committed by Napoleon--how accounted for--incompleteness of his victory
+                                                                  356
+
+XIII.--Advance to, and skirmish before Mojaisk--Gallantry of fifty
+voltigeurs of the 33d--Surprising order in the Russian retreat--Napoleon's
+distress                                                          364
+
+
+
+VOLUME SECOND.
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+CHAP. I.--The Emperor Alexander's arrival at Moscow after his
+retreat from Drissa--Description of that city--Sacrifices voted by the
+nobility and the merchants to meet the threatened danger            1
+
+II.--Alarm in consequence of the advance of the French
+army--Determination of the Governor, Count Rostopchin, and his
+preparations for destroying the capital--Evacuation of Moscow by the
+principal part of the inhabitants on the 3d of September           10
+
+III.--State of that city just before and after the battle of
+Borodino--The Governor's departure                                 18
+
+IV.--Napoleon advances to Moscow on the 14th of September--Feelings of
+the army on approaching it--Disappointment at finding it deserted  27
+
+V.--Murat's entrance into the city                                 34
+
+VI.--Napoleon's entrance into the Kremlin--Discovery of the
+conflagration of the city                                          38
+
+VII.--Danger which he ran in escaping through the flames to
+Petrowsky--Hesitation as to his future plans                       47
+
+VIII.--His return to the Kremlin--Description of the camps outside the
+city--System of general plunder--Reproaches made to the army, and
+vindication of it                                                  52
+
+IX.--Conduct of Kutusof after abandoning Moscow--Rostopchin sets fire to
+his seat at Woronowo--Partial actions at Czerikowo and Vinkowo--Anxiety
+and uneasiness of Napoleon--consultation with his chief officers--Sends
+Lauriston to the Emperor                                           60
+
+X.--Conference of Lauriston with Kutusof--Artful conduct of the
+latter--Armistice--Infatuation of Murat--Distress of the French
+army--Warnings of the impending danger--Napoleon's obstinacy in
+remaining                                                          71
+
+XI.--Illusions by which he kept up his own and his army's
+hopes--Count Daru's advice--Rupture of the armistice--Incapacity
+of Berthier--Disastrous engagement at Vinkowo--Napoleon determines
+to leave Moscow                                                    82
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+CHAP. I.--Departure from Moscow--Composition of the army           94
+
+II.--Battle of Malo-Yaroslawetz                                    98
+
+III.--Distress of the Emperor--Danger which he ran from a sudden attack
+of the Cossacks                                                   107
+
+IV.--Field of Malo-Yaroslawetz--Council held by the Emperor--Opinions of
+Murat, Bessieres, and Davoust--Napoleon determines to retreat     113
+
+V.--Kutusoff's similar determination to retreat from Malo-Yaroslawetz,
+ineffectually opposed by Sir Robert Wilson--Napoleon's projected plan of
+retreat                                                           118
+
+VI.--Mortier's proceedings at Moscow after the departure of the main
+army--Blowing up of the Kremlin--Devastations committed by both
+armies--Capture of General Winzingerode--Napoleon's behaviour to him 126
+
+VII.--Arrival at Mojaisk--Alarming news of the Russian army--View of
+the field of Borodino                                             134
+
+VIII.--Abandonment of the wounded in the Abbey of Kolotskoi--Horrible
+conduct of the suttlers--Massacre of 2000 Russian prisoners--Arrival at
+Gjatz                                                             139
+
+IX.--Napoleon's arrival at Wiazma--Reproaches to Davoust for his tardy
+mode of retreat, and that officer's vindication--Danger of the latter
+and Eugene--Arrival of Miloradowitch                              144
+
+X.--Battle between Eugene and Davoust and Miloradowitch, near Wiazma, on
+the 3d November--heavy loss of the French                         149
+
+XI.--Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November--its effects upon the
+troops                                                            155
+
+XII.--Arrival of the intelligence of Mallet's conspiracy--impression
+produced by it upon Napoleon and his officers--Message from
+Ney--Perilous situation of that marshal                           160
+
+XIII.--Defeat and entire dissolution of the Viceroy's corps at the
+passage of the Wop                                                167
+
+XIV.--Arrival at Smolensk--Dreadful sufferings of the troops--Bad
+arrangements of the administrators--Reasons assigned by the latter in
+their vindication                                                 175
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+CHAP. I.--Wittgenstein's attack upon Saint Cyr at Polotsk--Retreat of
+the latter--Want of concert in the movements of the Russian generals
+                                                                  183
+
+II.--Junction of the corps of Saint Cyr and Victor at Smoliantzy on the
+31st October--Opportunity lost by the latter of defeating the
+enemy--General view of the state of the army--Errors committed by
+Napoleon and his commanders                                       192
+
+III.--Napoleon's departure from Smolensk--Dispositions of the Russian
+army to interrupt his farther retreat--Bravery of Excelmans--Arrival at
+Krasnoe                                                           205
+
+IV.--March of Eugene from Smolensk to Krasnoe with the remains of his
+corps--his narrow escape                                          211
+
+V.--Successful nocturnal attack by Roguet on the Russian camp at
+Chickowa--Desperate situation of Napoleon--Wilson's fruitless efforts to
+induce Kutusof to surround and destroy him--Battle of Krasnoe--Bravery
+of the guard under Mortier                                        219
+
+VI.--Napoleon's arrival at Dombrowna--Nocturnal false alarm--General
+disorganization of the army--Davoust's ineffectual efforts to check it
+                                                                  231
+
+VII.--Council held at Orcha to determine the farther course of
+retreat--Opinion of Jomini--Napoleon decides on Borizof--Quits Orcha on
+the 20th of November without hearing any thing of Ney--Re-appearance of
+that Marshal after his departure                                  239
+
+VIII. IX.--Details of Ney's retreat from Smolensk until his arrival at
+Orcha                                                             248
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+CHAP. I.--Capture of Minsk by the Russians--Different opinions
+in the army as to the causes of their disasters--Rumoured treachery of
+Schwartzenberg--Napoleon's reproaches to him and Schwartzenberg's reply
+                                                                  270
+
+II.--Details of the loss of Minsk--Movements of Dombrowski, Oudinot, and
+Victor--Distress and malady of Napoleon--Remarkable conversation with
+Count Daru                                                        278
+
+III.--Passage through the Forest of Minsk--Junction of the remains of
+the grand army with Victor and Oudinot's corps--State of the former
+                                                                  284
+
+IV. V.--Preparations for crossing the Berezina                    289
+
+VI.--Circumstances which led the Russian general, Tchaplitz, into error
+as to the point where Napoleon was to cross the Berezina, and
+consequences of that error--Napoleon crosses that river at Studzianka on
+the 27th November                                                 299
+
+VII.--Capture and destruction of Partouneaux's division           304
+
+VIII.--Attack made by the Russians under Wittgenstein and Platof on the
+left side, and by Tchitchakof on the right side of the Berezina, and
+repelled by the French                                            308
+
+IX.--The burning of the bridge over the Berezina                  315
+
+X.--Napoleon's situation during the preceding actions--Passage over the
+morasses--His manners to his officers                             321
+
+XI.--Napoleon's arrival at Malodeczno--Announcement on the 3d of
+December of his intention to set out for France                   325
+
+XII.--Increased severity of the winter--Partial actions of Ney and
+Maison with the Russians between Pleszezenitzy and Malodeczno--Quarrel
+between Ney and Victor                                            330
+
+XIII.--Napoleon's arrival at Smorgony--his parting interview with his
+marshals                                                          335
+
+
+BOOK XII.
+
+CHAP. I.--Napoleon's journey from Smorgony to Paris--Impression
+produced in the army by his departure--Dreadful effects of the increased
+cold                                                             339
+
+II.--Picture of the sufferings of the army from the cold and the climate
+                                                                 346
+
+III.--Arrival at Wilna--Consternation of the inhabitants--Fatal effects
+of not distributing the provisions collected among the troops--State of
+the wounded in the hospitals--Arrival of the Russians--Flight of
+Murat--Evacuation of Wilna--Immense losses which that occasioned--Disaster
+at Ponari                                                        353
+
+IV.--Details of Ney's mode of retreat--Losses occasioned to the Russians
+by the severity of the winter--Arrival at Kowno--Ney's defence and
+evacuation of that place                                         364
+
+V.--First symptoms of Murat's defection--Arrival at Koenigsberg   372
+
+VI. VII. VIII. IX.--Marshal Macdonald's retreat from Riga--Details of
+the defection of the Prussian Army under Yorck                   377
+
+X.--Conduct of Schwartzenberg and defection of the Austrians--Atrocities
+committed on the French prisoners at Wilna and Koenigsberg        396
+
+XI.--Defection of Murat                                          401
+
+XII.--Conclusion                                                 403
+
+
+
+
+DIRECTIONS FOR PLACING THE PLATES.
+
+I. Portrait of Napoleon                  to face Title, Vol. I.
+
+II. Map of the countries between Paris and Moscow        page 1
+
+III. Passage of the Niemen                                  124
+
+IV. Portrait of Murat, King of Naples                       311
+
+V. Portrait of the Emperor Alexander    to face Title, Vol. II.
+
+VI. Conflagration of Moscow                                  48
+
+VII. Portrait of Marshal Ney                                268
+
+VIII. Passage of the Berezina                               315
+
+[Illustration: Map of the countries between Paris and Moscow]
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF
+
+NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION
+
+TO
+
+RUSSIA.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+Ever since 1807, when the space between the Rhine and the Niemen had
+been overrun, the two great empires of which these rivers were the
+boundaries had become rivals. By his concessions at Tilsit, at the
+expense of Prussia, Sweden, and Turkey, Napoleon had only satisfied
+Alexander. That treaty was the result of the defeat of Russia, and the
+date of her submission to the continental system. Among the Russians, it
+was regarded by some as attacking their honour; and by all it was felt
+to be ruinous to their interests.
+
+By the continental system Napoleon had declared eternal war against the
+English; to that system he attached his honour, his political existence,
+and that of the nation under his sway. That system banished from the
+Continent all merchandise which was English, or had paid duty in any
+shape to England. He could not succeed in establishing it but by the
+unanimous consent of the continental nations, and that consent could not
+be hoped for but under a single and universal dominion.
+
+France had besides alienated the nations of Europe from her by her
+conquests, and the monarchs by her revolution and her new dynasty.
+Henceforward she could no longer look forward to have either friends or
+rivals, but merely subjects; for the first would have been false, and
+the second implacable: it followed that all must be subject to her, or
+she to all.
+
+With feelings of this kind, her leader, influenced by his position, and
+urged on by his enterprising character, filled his imagination with the
+vast project of becoming the sole master of Europe, by overwhelming
+Russia, and wresting Poland from her dominion. He had so much difficulty
+in concealing this project, that hints of it began to escape him in all
+directions. The immense preparations which so distant an enterprise
+required, the enormous quantities of provisions and ammunition
+collecting, the noise of arms, of carriages, and the march of such
+numbers of soldiers--the universal movement the majestic and terrible
+course of all the forces of the West against the East--every thing
+announced to Europe that her two colossuses were about to measure their
+strength with each other.
+
+But, to get within reach of Russia, it was necessary to go beyond
+Austria, to cross Prussia, and to march between Sweden and Turkey; an
+offensive alliance with these four powers was therefore indispensable.
+Austria was as much subject to the influence of Napoleon as Prussia was
+to his arms: to them he had only to declare his intentions; Austria
+voluntarily and eagerly entered into his plans, and Prussia he easily
+prevailed on to join him.
+
+Austria, however, did not act blindly. Situated between the two great
+colossuses of the North and the West, she was not displeased to see them
+at war: she looked to their mutually weakening each other, and to the
+increase of her own strength by their exhaustion. On the 14th of March,
+1812, she promised France 30,000 men; but she prepared prudent secret
+instructions for them. She obtained a vague promise of an increase of
+territory, as an indemnity for her share of the expenses of the war, and
+the possession of Gallicia was guaranteed to her. She admitted, however,
+the future possibility of a cession of part of that province to the
+kingdom of Poland; but in exchange for that she would have received the
+Illyrian provinces. The sixth article of the secret treaty establishes
+that fact.
+
+The success of the war, therefore, in no degree depended on the cession
+of Gallicia, or the difficulties arising from the Austrian jealousy of
+that possession. Napoleon, consequently, might on his entrance into
+Wilna, have publicly proclaimed the liberation of the whole of Poland,
+instead of betraying the expectations of her people, astonishing and
+rendering them indifferent by expressions of wavering import.
+
+This, however, was one of those prominent points, which in politics as
+well as in war are decisive, with which every thing is connected, and
+from which nothing ought to have made him swerve. But whether it was
+that Napoleon reckoned too much on the ascendancy of his genius, or the
+strength of his army, and the weakness of Alexander; or that,
+considering what he left behind him, he felt it too dangerous to carry
+on so distant a war slowly and methodically; or whether, as we shall
+presently be told by himself, he had doubts of the success of his
+undertaking; certain it is, that he either neglected, or could not yet
+determine to proclaim the liberation of that country whose freedom he
+had come to restore.
+
+And yet he had sent an ambassador to her Diet. When this inconsistency
+was remarked to him, he replied, that "that nomination was an act of
+war, which only bound him during the war, while by his words he would be
+bound both in war and peace." Thus it was, that he made no other reply
+to the enthusiasm of the Lithuanians than evasive expressions, at the
+very time he was following up his attack on Alexander to the very
+capital of his empire.
+
+He even neglected to clear the southern Polish provinces of the feeble
+hostile armies which kept the patriotism of their inhabitants in check,
+and to secure, by strongly organizing their insurrection, a solid basis
+of operation. Accustomed to short methods, and to rapid attacks, he
+wished to imitate himself, in spite of the difference of places and
+circumstances; for such is the weakness of man, that he is always led
+by imitation, either of others, or of himself, which in the latter case,
+that of great men, is habit; for habit is nothing more than the
+imitation of one's self. So true it is, that by their strongest side
+these extraordinary men are undone!
+
+The one in question committed himself to the fortune of battles. Having
+prepared an army of six hundred and fifty thousand men, he fancied that
+that was doing sufficient to secure victory, from which he expected
+every thing. Instead of sacrificing every thing to obtain victory, it
+was by that he looked to obtain every thing; he made use of it as a
+_means_, when it ought to have been his _end_. In this manner he made it
+too necessary; it was already rather too much so. But he confided so
+much of futurity to it, he overloaded it with so much responsibility,
+that it became urgent and indispensable to him. Hence his precipitation
+to get within reach of it, in order to extricate himself from so
+critical a position.
+
+But we must not be too hasty in condemning a genius so great and
+universal; we shall shortly hear from himself by what urgent necessity
+he was hurried on; and even admitting that the rapidity of his
+expedition was only equalled by its rashness, success would have
+probably crowned it, if the premature decline of his health had left the
+physical constitution of this great man all the vigour which his mind
+still retained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+As to Prussia, of which Napoleon was completely master, it is not known
+whether it was from his uncertainty as to the fate which he reserved for
+her, or as to the period at which he should commence the war, that he
+refused, in 1811, to contract the alliance which she herself proposed to
+him, and of which he dictated the conditions, in 1812.
+
+His aversion to Frederick William was remarkable. Napoleon had been
+frequently heard to speak reproachfully of the cabinet of Prussia for
+its treaties with the French republic. He said, "It was a desertion of
+the cause of kings; that the negotiations of the court of Berlin with
+the Directory displayed a timid, selfish, and ignoble policy, which
+sacrificed its dignity, and the general cause of monarchs, to petty
+aggrandizements." Whenever he followed with his finger the traces of the
+Prussian frontiers upon the map, he seemed to be angry at seeing them
+still so extensive, and exclaimed, "Is it possible that I have left this
+man so large a territory?"
+
+This dislike to a mild and pacific monarch was surprising. As there is
+nothing in the character of Napoleon unworthy of historical remembrance,
+it is worth while to examine the cause of it. Some persons trace back
+the origin of it to the rejection which he experienced, when First
+Consul, from Louis XVIII. of the propositions which he made to him
+through the medium of the king of Prussia; and they suppose that
+Napoleon laid the blame of this refusal upon the mediator. Others
+attribute it to the seizure of Rumbold, the English agent at Hamburgh,
+by the orders of Napoleon, and to his being compelled to give him up by
+Frederick, as protector of the neutrality of the north of Germany.
+Before that time, Frederick and Napoleon had carried on a secret
+correspondence, which was of so intimate a nature, that they used to
+confide to each other even the details of their household; that
+circumstance, it is said, put an end to it.
+
+At the beginning of 1805, however, Russia, Austria, and England, made
+ineffectual attempts to engage Frederick in their third coalition
+against France. The court of Berlin, the queen, the princes, the
+minister Hardenberg, and all the young Prussian military, excited by the
+ardour of displaying the inheritance of glory which had been left them
+by the great Frederick, or by the wish of blotting out the disgrace of
+the campaign of 1792, entered heartily into the views of the allied
+powers; but the pacific policy of the king, and of his minister
+Haugwitz, resisted them, until the violation of the Prussian territory,
+near Anspach, by the march of a corps of French troops, exasperated the
+passions of the Prussians to such a degree, that their cry for immediate
+war prevailed.
+
+Alexander was then in Poland; he was invited to Potsdam, and repaired
+thither immediately; and on the 3d of November, 1805, he engaged
+Frederick in the third coalition. The Prussian array was immediately
+withdrawn from the Russian frontiers, and M. de Haugwitz repaired to
+Bruenn to threaten Napoleon with it. But the battle of Austerlitz shut
+his mouth; and within a fortnight after, the wily minister, having
+quickly turned round to the side of the conqueror, signed with him the
+participation of the fruits of victory.
+
+Napoleon, however, dissembled his displeasure; for he had his army to
+re-organize, to give the grand duchy of Berg to Murat, his
+brother-in-law, Neufchatel to Berthier, to conquer Naples for his
+brother Joseph, to mediatize Switzerland, to dissolve the Germanic body,
+and to create the Rhenish confederation, of which he declared himself
+protector; to change the republic of Holland into a kingdom, and to give
+it to his brother Louis. These were the reasons which induced him, on
+the 15th of December, to cede Hanover to Prussia, in exchange for
+Anspach, Cleves, and Neufchatel.
+
+The possession of Hanover at first tempted Frederick, but when the
+treaty was to be signed, he appeared to feel ashamed, and to hesitate;
+he wished only to accept it by halves, and to retain it merely as a
+deposit. Napoleon had no idea of such timid policy. "What!" said he,
+"does this monarch dare neither to make peace nor war? Does he prefer
+the English to me? Is there another coalition preparing? Does he despise
+my alliance?" Indignant at the idea, by a fresh treaty, on the 8th of
+March, 1806, he compelled Frederick to declare war against England, to
+take possession of Hanover, and to admit French garrisons into _Wesel_
+and _Hameln_.
+
+The king of Prussia alone submitted; his court and his subjects were
+exasperated; they reproached him with allowing himself to be vanquished
+without attempting to fight; and elevating themselves on the remembrance
+of their past glory, they fancied that for them alone was reserved the
+honour of triumphing over the conqueror of Europe. In their impatience
+they insulted the minister of Napoleon; they sharpened their swords on
+the threshold of his gate. Napoleon himself they loaded with abuse. Even
+the queen, so distinguished by her graces and attractions, put on a
+warlike attitude. Their princes, one of them particularly (whose
+carriage and features, spirit and intrepidity, seemed to promise them a
+hero), offered to be their leaders. A chivalrous ardour and fury
+animated the minds of all.
+
+It is asserted, that at the same time there were persons, either
+treacherous or deceived, who persuaded Frederick that Napoleon was
+obliged to show himself pacific, that that warrior was averse to war;
+they added, that he was perfidiously treating for peace with England, on
+the terms of restoring Hanover, which he was to take back from Prussia.
+Drawn in at last by the general feeling, the king allowed all these
+passions to burst forth. His army advanced, and threatened Napoleon;
+fifteen days afterwards he had neither army nor kingdom; he fled alone;
+and Napoleon dated from Berlin his decrees against England.
+
+Humbled and conquered as Prussia thus was, it was impossible for
+Napoleon to abandon his hold of her; she would have immediately rallied,
+under the cannon of the Russians. Finding it impossible to gain her to
+his interests, like Saxony, by a great act of generosity, the next plan
+was to divide her; and yet, either from compassion, or the effect of
+Alexander's presence, he could not resolve to dismember her. This was a
+mistaken policy, like most of those where we stop half-way; and Napoleon
+was not long before he became sensible of it. When he exclaimed,
+therefore, "Is it possible that I have left this man so large a
+territory?" it is probable that he did not forgive Prussia the
+protection of Alexander; he hated her, because he felt that she hated
+him.
+
+In fact, the sparks of a jealous and impatient hatred escaped from the
+youth of Prussia, whose ideas were exalted by a system of education,
+national, liberal, and mystical. It was among them that a formidable
+power arose in opposition to that of Napoleon. It included all whom his
+victories had humbled or offended; it had all the strength of the weak
+and the oppressed, the law of nature, mystery, fanaticism, and revenge!
+Wanting support on earth, it looked up for aid to Heaven, and its moral
+forces were wholly out of the reach of the material power of Napoleon.
+Animated by the devoted and indefatigable spirit of an ardent sect, it
+watched the slightest movements and weakest points of its enemy,
+insinuated itself into all the interstices of his power, and holding
+itself ready to strike at every opportunity, it waited quietly with the
+patience and phlegm which are the peculiar characteristics of the
+Germans, which were the causes of their defeat, and against which our
+victory wore itself out.
+
+This vast conspiracy was that of the _Tugendbund_[1], or _Friends of
+Virtue_. Its head, in other words, the person who first gave a precise
+and definite direction to its views, was _Stein_. Napoleon perhaps might
+have gained him over to his interests, but preferred punishing him. His
+plan happened to be discovered by one of those chances to which the
+police owes the best part of its miracles; but when conspiracies enter
+into the interests, passions, and even the consciences of men, it is
+impossible to seize their ramifications: every one understands without
+communicating; or rather, all is communication--a general and
+simultaneous sympathy.
+
+[Footnote 1: In 1808, several literary men at Koenigsberg, afflicted with
+the evils which desolated their country, ascribed it to the general
+corruption of manners. According to these philosophers, it had stifled
+true patriotism in the citizens, discipline in the army, and courage in
+the people. Good men therefore were bound to unite to regenerate the
+nation, by setting the example of every sacrifice. An association was in
+consequence formed by them, which took the title of _Moral and
+Scientific Union_. The government approved of it, merely interdicting it
+from political discussions. This resolution, noble as it was, would
+probably have been lost, like many others, in the vagueness of German
+metaphysics; but about that time William, Duke of Brunswick, who had
+been stripped of his duchy, had retired to his principality of Oels in
+Silesia. In the bosom of this retreat he is said to have observed the
+first progress of the _Moral Union_ among the Prussians. He became a
+member of it; and his heart swelling with hatred and revenge, he formed
+the idea of another association, which was to consist of men resolved to
+overthrow the confederation of the Rhine, and to drive the French
+entirely out of Germany. This society, whose object was more real and
+positive than that of the first, soon swallowed up the other; and from
+these two was formed that of the _Tugendbund_, or _Friends of Virtue_.
+
+About the end of May, 1809, three enterprises--those of Katt, Doernberg,
+and Schill--had already given proofs of its existence. That of Duke
+William began on the 14th of May. He was at first supported by the
+Austrians. After a variety of adventures, this leader, abandoned to his
+own resources in the midst of subjugated Europe, and left with only 2000
+men to combat with the whole power of Napoleon, refused to yield: he
+stood his ground, and threw himself into Saxony and Hanover; but finding
+it impossible to raise them into insurrection, he cut his way through
+several French corps, which he defeated, to Elsfleth, where he found an
+English vessel waiting to receive and to convey him to England, with the
+laurels he had acquired.]
+
+This focus spread its fires and gained new partizans every day; it
+attacked the power of Napoleon in the opinion of all Germany, extended
+itself into Italy, and threatened its complete overthrow. It was already
+easy to see that, if circumstances became unfavourable to us, there
+would be no want of men to take advantage of them. In 1809, even before
+the disaster of Esslingen, the first who had ventured to raise the
+standard of independence against Napoleon were Prussians. He sent them
+to the galleys; so important did he feel it to smother that cry of
+revolt, which seemed to echo that of the Spaniards, and might become
+general.
+
+Independently of all these causes of hatred, the position of Prussia,
+between France and Russia, compelled Napoleon to remain her master; he
+could not reign there but by force--he could not be strong there but by
+her weakness.
+
+He ruined the country, although he must have known well that poverty
+creates audacity; that the hope of gain becomes the moving principle of
+those who have nothing more to lose; and finally, that in leaving them
+nothing but the sword, he in a manner obliged them to turn it against
+himself. In consequence, on the approach of the year 1812, and of the
+terrible struggle which it was to produce, Frederick, uneasy and tired
+of his subservient position, was determined to extricate himself from
+it, either by an alliance or by war. In March, 1811, he offered himself
+to Napoleon as an auxiliary in the expedition which he was preparing. In
+the month of May, and again in the month of August, he repeated that
+offer; and as he received no satisfactory answer, he declared, that as
+the great military movements which surrounded, crossed, or drained his
+kingdom, were such as to excite his apprehension that his entire
+destruction was meditated, "he took up arms, because circumstances
+imperiously called upon him to do so, deeming it far preferable to die
+sword in hand than to fall with disgrace."
+
+It was said at the same time, that Frederick secretly offered to
+Alexander to give him possession of Graudentz, and his magazines, and
+to put himself at the head of his insurgent subjects, if the Russian
+army should advance into Silesia. If the same authorities are to be
+believed, Alexander received this proposition, very favourably. He
+immediately sent to Bagration and Wittgenstein sealed marching orders.
+They were instructed not to open them until they received another letter
+from their sovereign, which he never wrote, having changed his
+resolution. A variety of causes might have dictated that change; 1st, a
+wish not to be the first to commence so great a war, and his anxiety to
+have divine justice and the opinion of mankind on his side, by not
+appearing the aggressor; 2d, that Frederick, becoming less uneasy as to
+the plans of Napoleon, had resolved to follow his fortunes. It is
+probable, after all, that the noble sentiments which Alexander expressed
+in his reply to the king were his only motives: we are assured that he
+wrote to him, "That in a war which might begin by reverses, and in which
+perseverance was required, he only felt courageous for himself, and that
+the misfortunes of an ally might shake his resolution; that it would
+grieve him to chain Prussia to his fortune if it was bad; that if it was
+good he should always be ready to share it with her, whatever line of
+conduct necessity might oblige her to pursue."
+
+These details have been certified to us by a witness, although an
+inferior one. However, whether this counsel proceeded from the
+generosity or the policy of Alexander, or Frederick was determined
+solely by the necessity of the case, it is certain that it was high
+time for him to come to a decision; for in February, 1812, these
+communications with Alexander, _if there were such_, or the hope of
+obtaining better terms from France having made him hesitate in replying
+to the definitive propositions of Napoleon, the latter, becoming
+impatient, sent additional forces to Dantzic, and made Davoust enter
+Pomerania. His orders for this invasion of a Swedish province were
+repeated and pressing; they were grounded on the illicit commerce
+carried on by the Pomeranians with the English, and subsequently on the
+necessity of compelling Prussia to accede to his terms. The Prince of
+Eckmuehl even received orders to hold himself in readiness to take
+immediate possession of that kingdom, and to seize the person of her
+sovereign, if within eight days from the date of these orders the latter
+had not concluded the offensive alliance dictated to him by France; but
+while the marshal was tracing the few marches necessary for this
+operation, he received intelligence that the treaty of the 21st of
+February, 1812, had been ratified.
+
+This submission did not altogether satisfy Napoleon. To his strength he
+added artifice; his suspicions still led him to covet the occupation of
+the fortresses, which he was ashamed not to leave in Frederick's hands;
+he required the king to keep only 50 or 80 invalids in some, and desired
+that some French officers should be admitted into others; all of whom
+were to send their reports to him, and to follow his orders. His
+solicitude extended to every thing. "Spandau," said he, in his letters
+to Davoust, "is the citadel of Berlin, as Pillau is that of Koenigsberg;"
+and French troops had orders to be ready to introduce themselves at the
+first signal: the manner he himself pointed out. At Potsdam, which the
+king had reserved for himself, and which our troops were interdicted
+from entering, his orders were, that the French officers should
+frequently show themselves, in order to observe, and to accustom the
+people to the sight of them. He recommended every degree of respect to
+be shown, both to the king and his subjects; but at the same time he
+required that every sort of arms should be taken from the latter, which
+might be of use to them in an insurrection; and he pointed out every
+thing of the kind, even to the smallest weapon. Anticipating the
+possibility of the loss of a battle, and the chances of Prussian
+_vespers_, he ordered that his troops should be either put into barracks
+or encampments, with a thousand other precautions of the minutest
+description. As a final security, in case of the English making a
+descent between the Elbe and the Vistula, although Victor, and
+subsequently Augereau, were to occupy Prussia with 50,000 men, he
+engaged by treaty the assistance of 10,000 Danes.
+
+All these precautions were still insufficient to remove his distrust;
+when the Prince of Hatzfeld came to require of him a subsidy of 25
+millions of francs to meet the expenses of the war which was preparing,
+his reply to Daru was, "that he would take especial care not to furnish
+an enemy with arms against himself." In this manner did Frederick,
+entangled as it were in a net of iron, which surrounded and held him
+tight in every part, put between 20 and 30,000 of his troops, and his
+principal fortresses and magazines, at the disposal of Napoleon[2].
+
+[Footnote 2: By this treaty, Prussia agreed to furnish two hundred
+thousand quintals of rye, twenty-four thousand of rice, two million
+bottles of beer, four hundred thousand quintals of wheat, six hundred
+and fifty thousand of straw, three hundred and fifty thousand of hay,
+six million bushels of oats, forty-four thousand oxen, fifteen thousand
+horses, three thousand six hundred waggons, with harness and drivers,
+each carrying a load of fifteen hundred weight; and finally, hospitals
+provided with every thing necessary for twenty thousand sick. It is
+true, that all these supplies were to be allowed in deduction of the
+remainder of the taxes imposed by the conquest.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+These two treaties opened the road to Russia to Napoleon; but in order
+to penetrate into the interior of that empire, it was necessary to make
+sure of Sweden and Turkey.
+
+Military combinations were then so much aggrandized, that in order to
+sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the
+configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course
+of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were
+contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the
+general and relative position of every state with a universal _coup
+d'oeil_; it was no longer on single maps, but on that of the whole
+globe, that their policy had to trace its plans of hostility.
+
+Russia is mistress of the heights of Europe; her flanks are supported by
+the seas of the north and south. Her government can only with great
+difficulty be driven into a straight, and forced to submit, in a space
+almost beyond the imagination to conceive: the conquest of which would
+require long campaigns, to which her climate is completely opposed. From
+this, it follows, that without the concurrence of Turkey and Sweden,
+Russia is less vulnerable. The assistance of these two powers was
+therefore requisite in order to surprise her, to strike her to the heart
+in her modern capital, and to turn at a distance, in the rear of its
+left, her grand army of the Niemen,--and not merely to precipitate
+attacks on a part of her front, in plains where the extent of space
+prevented confusion, and left a thousand roads open to the retreat of
+that army.
+
+The meanest soldier in our ranks, therefore, expected to hear of the
+combined march of the Grand Vizir towards Kief, and of Bernadotte
+against Finland. Eight sovereigns were already enlisted under the
+banners of Napoleon; but the two who had the greatest interest in the
+quarrel were still deaf to his call. It was an idea worthy of the great
+emperor to put all the governments and all the religions of Europe in
+motion for the accomplishment of his great designs: their triumph would
+have been then secured; and if the voice of another Homer had been
+wanting to this king of so many kings, the voice of the nineteenth
+century, the great century, would have supplied it; and the cry of
+astonishment of a whole age, penetrating and piercing through futurity,
+would have echoed from generation to generation, to the latest
+posterity!
+
+So much glory was not in reserve for us.
+
+Which of us, in the French army, can ever forget his astonishment, in
+the midst of the Russian plains, on hearing the news of the fatal
+treaties of the Turks and Swedes with Alexander; and how anxiously our
+looks were turned towards our right uncovered, towards our left
+enfeebled, and upon our retreat menaced? _Then_ we only looked at the
+fatal effects of the peace between our allies and our enemy; _now_ we
+feel desirous of knowing the causes of it.
+
+The treaties concluded about the end of the last century, had subjected
+the weak sultan of the Turks to Russia; the Egyptian expedition had
+armed him against us. But ever since Napoleon had assumed the reins of
+power, a well-understood common interest, and the intimacy of a
+mysterious correspondence, had reconciled Selim with the first consul: a
+close connexion was established between these two princes, and they had
+exchanged portraits with each other. Selim attempted to effect a great
+revolution in the Turkish customs. Napoleon encouraged him, and was
+assisting him in introducing the European discipline into the Ottoman
+army, when the victory of Jena, the war of Poland, and the influence of
+Sebastiani, determined the sultan to throw off the yoke of Alexander.
+The English made hasty attempts to oppose this, but they were driven
+from the sea of Constantinople. Then it was that Napoleon wrote the
+following letter to Selim.
+
+"_Osterode, April_ 3, 1807.
+
+"My ambassador informs me of the bravery and good conduct of the
+Mussulmans against our common enemies. Thou hast shown thyself the
+worthy descendant of the Selims and the Solimans. Thou hast asked me for
+some officers; I send them to thee. I regretted that thou hadst not
+required of me some thousand men,--thou hast only asked for five
+hundred; I have given orders for their immediate departure. It is my
+intention that they shall be paid and clothed at my expense, and that
+thou shalt be reimbursed the expenses which they may occasion thee. I
+have given orders to the commander of my troops in Dalmatia to send thee
+the arms, ammunition, and every thing thou shalt require of me. I have
+given the same orders at Naples; and artillery has been already placed
+at the disposal of the pasha of Janina. Generals, officers, arms of
+every description, even money--I place all at thy disposal. Thou hast
+only to ask: do so in a distinct manner, and all which thou shalt
+require I will send thee on the instant. Arrange matters with the shah
+of Persia, who is also the enemy of the Russians; encourage him to stand
+fast, and to attack warmly the common enemy. I have beaten the Russians
+in a great battle; I have taken from them seventy-five pieces of cannon,
+sixteen standards, and a great number of prisoners. I am at the distance
+of eighty leagues beyond Warsaw, and am about to take advantage of the
+fifteen days' repose which I have given to my army, to repair thither,
+and there to receive thy ambassador. I am sensible of the want thou hast
+of artillerymen and troops; I have offered both to thy ambassador; but
+he has declined them, from a fear of alarming the delicacy of the
+Mussulmans. Confide to me all thy wants; I am sufficiently powerful, and
+sufficiently interested in thy prosperity, both from friendship and
+policy, to have nothing to refuse thee. Peace has been proposed to me
+here. I have been offered all the advantages which I could desire; but
+they wished that I should ratify the state of things established
+between the Porte and Russia by the treaty of Sistowa, and I refused. My
+answer was, _that it was necessary that the Porte should be secured in
+complete independence; and that all the treaties extorted from her,
+during the time that France was asleep, should be revoked_."
+
+This letter of Napoleon had been preceded and followed by verbal but
+formal assurances, that he would not sheath the sword, until the Crimea
+was restored to the dominion of the crescent. He had even authorized
+Sebastiani to give the divan a copy of his instructions, which contained
+these promises.
+
+Such were his words, with which his actions at first corresponded.
+Sebastiani demanded a passage through Turkey for an army of 25,000
+French, which he was to command, and which was to join the Ottoman army.
+An unforeseen circumstance, it is true, deranged this plan; but Napoleon
+then made Selim the promise of an auxiliary force of 9000 French,
+including 5000 artillerymen, who were to be conveyed in eleven vessels
+of the line to Constantinople. The Turkish ambassador was at the same
+time treated with the greatest distinction in the French camp; he
+accompanied Napoleon in all his reviews: the most flattering attentions
+were paid to him, and the grand-equerry (Caulaincourt,) was already
+treating with him for an alliance, offensive and defensive, when a
+sudden attack by the Russians interrupted the negotiation.
+
+The ambassador returned to Warsaw, where the same respect continued to
+be shown him, up to the day of the decisive victory of Friedland. But
+on the following day his illusion was dissipated; he saw himself
+neglected; for it was no longer Selim whom he represented. A revolution
+had just hurled from the throne the monarch who had been the friend of
+Napoleon, and with him all hope of giving the Turks a regular army, upon
+which he could depend. Napoleon, therefore, judging that he could no
+longer reckon upon the assistance of these barbarians, changed his
+system. Henceforward it was Alexander whom he wished to gain; and as his
+was a genius which never hesitated, he was already prepared to abandon
+the empire of the East to that monarch, in order that he might be left
+at liberty to possess himself of that of the West.
+
+As his great object was the extension of the continental system, and to
+make it surround Europe, the co-operation of Russia would complete its
+development. Alexander would shut out the English from the North, and
+compel Sweden to go to war with them; the French would expel them from
+the centre, from the south, and from the west of Europe. Napoleon was
+already meditating the expedition to Portugal, if that kingdom would not
+join his coalition. With these ideas floating in his brain, Turkey was
+now only an accessary in his plans, and he agreed to the armistice, and
+to the conferences at Tilsit.
+
+But a deputation had just come from Wilna, soliciting the restoration of
+their national independence, and professing the same devotion to his
+cause as had been shown by Warsaw; Berthier, whose ambition was
+satisfied, and who began to be tired of war, dismissed these envoys
+rudely, styling them traitors to their sovereign. The Prince of Eckmuehl,
+on the contrary, favoured their object, and presented them to Napoleon,
+who was irritated with Berthier for his treatment of these Lithuanians,
+and received them graciously, without, however, promising them his
+support. In vain did Davoust represent to him that the opportunity was
+favourable, owing to the destruction of the Russian army; Napoleon's
+reply was, "that Sweden had just declared her armistice to him; that
+Austria offered her mediation between France and Russia, which he looked
+upon as a hostile step; that the Prussians, seeing him at such a
+distance from France, might recover from their intimidation; and
+finally, that Selim, his faithful ally, had just been dethroned, and his
+place filled by Mustapha IV., of whose dispositions he knew nothing."
+
+The emperor of France continued, therefore, to negotiate with Russia;
+and the Turkish ambassador, neglected and forgotten, wandered about our
+camp, without being summoned to take any part in the negotiations which
+terminated the war; he returned to Constantinople soon after, in great
+displeasure. Neither the Crimea, nor even Moldavia and Wallachia, were
+restored to that barbarous court by the treaty of Tilsit; the
+restitution of the two latter provinces was only stipulated by an
+armistice, the conditions of which were never meant to be executed. But
+as Napoleon professed to be the mediator between Mustapha and Alexander,
+the ministers of the two powers repaired to Paris. But there, during
+the long continuance of that feigned mediation, the Turkish
+plenipotentiaries were never admitted to his presence.
+
+If we must even tell the whole truth, it is asserted, that at the
+interview at Tilsit, and subsequently, a treaty for the partition of
+Turkey was under discussion. It was proposed to Russia to take
+possession of Wallachia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, and a part of Mount Hemus.
+Austria was to have Servia and a part of Bosnia; France the other part
+of that province, Albania, Macedonia, and all Greece as far as
+Thessalonica: Constantinople, Adrianople, and Thrace, were to be left to
+the Turks.
+
+Whether the conferences respecting this partition were really of a
+serious nature, or merely the communication of a great idea, is
+uncertain; so much is certain, that shortly after the interview at
+Tilsit, Alexander's ambition was very sensibly moderated. The
+suggestions of prudence had shown him the danger of substituting for the
+ignorant, infatuated, and feeble Turkey, an active, powerful, and
+unaccommodating neighbour. In his conversations on the subject at that
+time, he remarked, "that he had already too much desert country; that he
+knew too well, by the occupation of the Crimea, which was still
+depopulated, the value of conquest over foreign and hostile religions
+and manners; that besides, France and Russia were too strong to become
+such near neighbours; that two such powerful bodies coming into
+immediate contact, would be sure to jostle; and that it was much better
+to leave intermediate powers between them."
+
+On the other side, the French emperor urged the matter no further; the
+Spanish insurrection diverted his attention, and imperiously required
+his presence with all his forces. Even previous to the interview at
+Erfurt, after Sebastiani's return from Constantinople, although Napoleon
+still seemed to adhere to the idea of dismembering Turkey in Europe, he
+had admitted the correctness of his ambassador's reasoning: "That in
+this partition, the advantages would be all against him; that Russia and
+Austria would acquire contiguous provinces, which would make their
+dominions more complete, while we should be obliged to keep 80,000 men
+continually in Greece to retain it in subjection; that such an army,
+from the distance and losses it would sustain from long marches, and the
+novelty and unhealthiness of the climate, would require 30,000 recruits
+annually, a number which would quite drain France: that a line of
+operation extending from Athens to Paris, was out of all proportion;
+that besides, it was strangled in its passage at Trieste, at which point
+only two marches would enable the Austrians to place themselves across
+it, and thereby cut off our army of observation in Greece from all
+communication with Italy and France."
+
+Here Napoleon exclaimed, "that Austria certainly complicated every
+thing; that she was there like a dead weight; that she must be got rid
+off; and Europe must be divided into two empires: that the Danube, from
+the Black Sea to Passau, the mountains of Bohemia to Koenigsgratz, and
+the Elbe to the Baltic, should be their lines of demarcation. Alexander
+should become the emperor of the north, and he of the south of Europe."
+Abandoning, subsequently, these lofty ideas, and reverting to
+Sebastiani's observations on the partition of European Turkey, he
+terminated the conferences, which had lasted three days, with these
+words: "You are right, and no answer can be given to that! I give it up.
+Besides, that accords with my views on Spain, which I am going to unite
+to France."--"What do I hear?" exclaimed Sebastiani, astonished, "unite
+it! And your brother!"--"What signifies my brother?" retorted Napoleon;
+"does one give away a kingdom like Spain? I am determined to unite it to
+France. I will give that nation a great national representation. I will
+make the emperor Alexander consent to it, by allowing him to take
+possession of Turkey to the Danube, and I will evacuate Berlin. As to
+Joseph, I will indemnify him."
+
+The congress at Erfurt took place just after this. He could have no
+motive at that time for supporting the rights of the Turks. The French
+army, which had advanced imprudently into the very heart of Spain, had
+met with reverses. The presence of its leader, and that of his armies of
+the Rhine and the Elbe, became there every day more and more necessary,
+and Austria had availed herself of the opportunity to take up arms.
+Uneasy respecting the state of Germany, Napoleon was therefore anxious
+to make sure of the dispositions of Alexander, to conclude an alliance
+offensive and defensive with him, and even to engage him in a war. Such
+were the reasons which induced him to abandon Turkey as far as the
+Danube to that emperor.
+
+The Porte therefore had very soon reason to reproach us for the war
+which was renewed between it and Russia. Notwithstanding, in July, 1808,
+when Mustapha was dethroned, and succeeded by Mahmoud, the latter
+announced his accession to the French emperor; but Napoleon had then to
+keep upon terms with Alexander, and felt too much regret at the death of
+Selim, detestation of the barbarity of the Mussulmans, and contempt for
+their unstable government, to allow him to notice the communication. For
+three years he had returned no reply to the sultan, and his silence
+might be interpreted into a refusal to acknowledge him.
+
+He was in this ambiguous position with the Turks, when all of a sudden,
+on the 21st of March, 1812, only six weeks before the war with Russia
+commenced, he solicited an alliance with Mahmoud: he demanded that,
+within five days from the period of the communication, all negotiation
+between the Turks and Russians should be broken off; and that an army of
+100,000 men, commanded by the sultan himself, should march to the Danube
+within nine days. The return which he proposed to make for this
+assistance was, to put the Porte in possession of the very same Moldavia
+and Wallachia, which, under the circumstances, the Russians were but too
+happy to restore as the price of a speedy peace; and the promise of
+procuring the restoration of the Crimea, which he had made six years
+before to Selim, was again renewed.
+
+We know not whether the time which this despatch would take to arrive at
+Constantinople had been badly calculated, whether Napoleon believed the
+Turkish army to be stronger than it really was, or whether he had
+flattered himself with surprising and captivating the determination of
+the divan by so sudden and advantageous a proposition. It can hardly be
+supposed that he was ignorant of the long invariable custom of the
+Mussulmans, which prevented the grand signor from ever appearing in
+person at the head of his army.
+
+It appears as if the genius of Napoleon could not stoop so low as to
+impute to the divan the brutish ignorance which it exhibited of its real
+interests. After the manner in which he had abandoned the interests of
+Turkey in 1807, perhaps he did not make sufficient allowance for the
+distrust which the Mussulmans were likely to entertain of his new
+promises; he forgot that they were too ignorant to appreciate the change
+which recent circumstances had effected in his political views; and that
+barbarians like them could still less comprehend the feelings of dislike
+with which they had inspired him, by their deposition and murder of
+Selim, to whom he was attached, and in conjunction with whom he had
+hoped to make European Turkey a military power capable of coping with
+Russia.
+
+Perhaps he might still have gained over Mahmoud to his cause, if he had
+sooner made use of more potent arguments; but, as he has since expressed
+himself, it revolted his pride to make use of corruption. We shall
+besides shortly see him hesitating about beginning a war with Alexander,
+or laying too much stress on the alarm with which his immense
+preparations would inspire that monarch. It is also possible, that the
+last propositions which he made to the Turks, being tantamount to a
+declaration of war against the Russians, were delayed for the express
+purpose of deceiving the Czar as to the period of his invasion. Finally,
+whether it was from all these causes, from a confidence founded on the
+mutual hatred of the two nations, and on his treaty of alliance with
+Austria, which had just guaranteed Moldavia and Wallachia to the Turks,
+he detained the ambassador whom he sent to them on his road, and waited,
+as we have just seen, to the very last moment.
+
+But the divan was surrounded by the Russian, English, Austrian, and
+Swedish envoys, who with one voice represented to it, "that the Turks
+were indebted for their existence in Europe solely to the divisions
+which existed among the Christian monarchs; that the moment these were
+united under one influence, the Mahometans in Europe would be
+overwhelmed; and that as the French emperor was advancing rapidly to the
+attainment of universal empire, it was him whom the Turks had most
+reason to dread."
+
+To these representations were added the intrigues of the two Greek
+princes Morozi. They were of the same religion with Alexander, and they
+looked to him for the possession of Moldavia and Wallachia. Grown rich
+by his favours and by the gold of England, these dragomans enlightened
+the unsuspecting ignorance of the Turks, as to the occupation and
+military surveys of the Ottoman frontiers by the French. They did a
+great deal more; the first of them influenced the dispositions of the
+divan and the capital, and the second those of the grand vizir and the
+army; and as the proud Mahmoud resisted, and would only accept an
+honourable peace, these treacherous Greeks contrived to disband his
+army, and compelled him, by insurrections, to sign the degrading treaty
+of Bucharest with the Russians.
+
+Such is the power of intrigue in the seraglio; two Greeks whom the Turks
+despised, there decided the fate of Turkey, in spite of the sultan
+himself. As the latter depended for his existence on the intrigues of
+his palace, he was, like all despots who shut themselves up in them,
+obliged to yield: the Morozi carried the day; but afterwards he had them
+both beheaded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+In this manner did we lose the support of Turkey; but Sweden still
+remained to us; her monarch had sprung from our ranks; a soldier of our
+army, it was to that he owed his glory and his throne: was it likely
+that he would desert our cause on the first opportunity he had of
+showing his gratitude? It was impossible to anticipate such ingratitude;
+still less, that he would sacrifice the real and permanent interests of
+Sweden to his former jealousy of Napoleon, and perhaps to a weakness too
+common among the upstart favourites of fortune; unless it be that the
+submission of men who have newly attained to greatness to those who
+boast of a transmitted rank, is a necessity of their position rather
+than an error of their self-love.
+
+In this great contest between aristocracy and democracy, the ranks of
+the former had been joined by one of its most determined enemies.
+Bernadotte being thrown almost singly among the ancient courts and
+nobility, did every thing to merit his adoption by them, and succeeded.
+But his success must have cost him dear, as in order to obtain it, he
+was first obliged to abandon his old companions, and the authors of his
+glory, in the hour of peril. At a later period he did more; he was seen
+marching over their bleeding corses, joining with all their, and
+formerly his, enemies, to overwhelm the country of his birth, and
+thereby lay that of his adoption at the mercy of the first czar who
+should be ambitious of reigning over the Baltic.
+
+On the other hand, it would appear that the character of Bernadotte, and
+the importance of Sweden in the decisive struggle which was about to
+commence, were not sufficiently weighed in the political balance of
+Napoleon. His ardent and exclusive genius hazarded too much; he
+overloaded a solid foundation so much that he sank it. Thus it was, that
+after justly appreciating the Swedish interests as naturally bound up
+with his, the moment he wished to weaken the power of Russia, he fancied
+that he could exact every thing from the Swedes without promising them
+any thing in return: his pride did not make any allowance for theirs,
+judging that they were too much interested in the success of his cause,
+for them ever to think of separating themselves from it.
+
+We must, however, take up the history a little earlier; facts will prove
+that the defection of Sweden was as much attributable to the jealous
+ambition of Bernadotte as to the unbending pride of Napoleon. It will be
+seen that her new monarch assumed to himself a great part of the
+responsibility of the rupture, by offering his alliance at the price of
+an act of treachery.
+
+When Napoleon returned from Egypt, he did not become the chief of his
+equals with all their concurrence. Such of them as were already jealous
+of his glory then became still more envious of his power. As they could
+not dispute the first, they attempted to refuse obedience to the second.
+Moreau, and several other generals, either by persuasion or surprise,
+had co-operated in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire: they afterwards
+repented having done so. Bernadotte had refused all participation in it.
+Alone, during the night, in Napoleon's own residence, amidst a thousand
+devoted officers, waiting only for the conqueror's orders, Bernadotte,
+then a strenuous republican, was daring enough to oppose his arguments,
+to refuse the second place in the republic, and to retort upon his anger
+by threats. Napoleon saw him depart, bearing himself proudly, and pass
+through the midst of his partizans, carrying with him his secrets, and
+declaring himself his enemy, and even his denouncer. Either from respect
+to his brother, to whom Bernadotte was allied by marriage, from
+moderation, the usual companion of strength, or from astonishment, he
+suffered him to depart quietly.
+
+In the course of the same night, a conventicle, consisting of ten
+deputies of the Council of Five Hundred, met at the house of S----;
+thither Bernadotte repaired. They settled, that at nine o'clock next
+morning the Council should hold a sitting, to which those only should be
+invited who were of the same way of thinking; that there a decree should
+be passed, that in imitation of the Council of Ancients, which had
+prudently named Bonaparte general of its guard, the Council of Five
+Hundred had appointed Bernadotte to command theirs; and that the latter,
+properly armed, should be in readiness to be summoned to it. It was at
+S----'s house that this plan was formed. S---- himself immediately
+afterwards ran to Napoleon, and disclosed the whole to him. A threat
+from the latter was quite sufficient to keep the conspirators in order;
+not one of them dared show his face at the Council, and the next day the
+revolution of the 18th Brumaire was completed.
+
+Bernadotte was prudent enough afterwards to feign submission, but
+Napoleon had not forgotten his opposition. He kept a watchful eye on all
+his movements. Not long after, he suspected his being at the head of a
+republican conspiracy which had been forming against him in the west. A
+premature proclamation discovered it; an officer who had been arrested
+for other causes, and an accomplice of Bernadotte, denounced the
+authors. On that occasion Bernadotte's ruin would have been sealed, if
+Napoleon had been able to convict him of it.
+
+He was satisfied with banishing him to America, under the title of
+minister of the Republic. But fortune favoured Bernadotte, who was
+already at Rochefort, by delaying his embarkation until the war with
+England was renewed. He then refused to go, and Napoleon could no longer
+compel him.
+
+All the relations between them had thus been those of hatred; and this
+check only served to aggravate them. Soon after, Napoleon was heard
+reproaching Bernadotte with his envious and treacherous inaction during
+the battle of Auerstadt, and his order of the day at Wagram, in which
+he had assumed the honour of that victory. He also spoke reproachfully
+of his character, as being much more ambitious than patriotic; and
+perhaps of the fascination of his manners,--all of them things
+considered dangerous to a recently established government; and yet he
+had showered rank, titles, and distinctions upon him, while Bernadotte,
+always ungrateful, seemed to accept them merely as in justice due to his
+merits, or to the want which was felt of him. These complaints of
+Napoleon were not without foundation.
+
+Bernadotte, on his side, abusing the emperor's moderation and desire to
+keep on terms with him, gradually incurred an increase of his
+displeasure, which his ambition was pleased to call enmity. He demanded
+why Napoleon had placed him in such a dangerous and false position at
+Wagram? why the report of that victory had been so unfavourable to him?
+to what was he to attribute the jealous anxiety to weaken his eulogium
+in the journals by artful notes? Up to that time, however, the obscure
+and underhand opposition of this general to his emperor had been of no
+importance; but a much wider field was then opened to their
+misunderstanding.
+
+By the treaty of Tilsit, Sweden, as well as Turkey, had been sacrificed
+to Russia and the continental system. The mistaken or mad politics of
+Gustavus IV. had been the cause of this. Ever since 1804 that monarch
+appeared to have enlisted himself in the pay of England; it was he also
+who had been the first to break the ancient alliance between France and
+Sweden. He had obstinately persevered in that false policy to such an
+extent at first, as to contend against France when she was victorious
+over Russia, and afterwards with Russia and France united. The loss of
+Pomerania, in 1807, and even that of Finland and the islands of Aland,
+which were united to Russia in 1808, were not sufficient to shake his
+obstinacy.
+
+It was then that his irritated subjects resumed that power which had
+been wrested from them, in 1772 and 1788, by Gustavus III., and of which
+his successor made so bad a use. Gustavus Adolphus IV. was imprisoned
+and dethroned; his lineal descendants were excluded from the throne; his
+uncle was put in his place, and the prince of Holstein-Augustenburg
+elected hereditary prince of Sweden. As the war had been the cause of
+this revolution peace was the result of it; it was concluded with Russia
+in 1809; but the newly-elected hereditary prince then died suddenly.
+
+In the beginning of 1810, France restored Pomerania and the Island of
+Rugen to Sweden, as the price of her accession to the continental
+system. The Swedes, worn out, impoverished, and become almost islanders,
+in consequence of the loss of Finland, were very loath to break with
+England, and yet they had no remedy; on the other side they stood in awe
+of the neighbouring and powerful government of Russia. Finding
+themselves weak and isolated, they looked round for support.
+
+Bernadotte had just been appointed to the command of the French army
+which took possession of Pomerania; his military reputation, and still
+more that of his nation and its sovereign, his fascinating mildness, his
+generosity, and his flattering attentions to the Swedes, with whom he
+had to treat, induced several of them to cast their eyes upon him. They
+appeared to know nothing of the misunderstanding between this marshal
+and the emperor; they fancied that by electing him for their prince,
+they should not only obtain an able and experienced general, but also a
+powerful mediator between France and Sweden, and a certain protector in
+the emperor: it happened quite the contrary.
+
+During the intrigues to which this circumstance gave rise, Bernadotte
+fancied that to his previous complaints against Napoleon he had to add
+others. When, in opposition to the king, and the majority of the members
+of the diet, he was proposed as successor to the crown of Sweden; when
+his pretensions were supported by Charles's prime minister, (a man of no
+family, who owed, like him, all his illustration to himself,) and the
+count de Wrede, the only member of the diet who had reserved his vote
+for him; when he came to solicit Napoleon's interference, why did he,
+when Charles XIII. desired to know his wishes, exhibit so much
+indifference? Why did he prefer the union of the three northern crowns
+on the head of a prince of Denmark? If he, Bernadotte, succeeded in the
+enterprise, he was not at all indebted for it to the emperor of France;
+he owed it to the pretensions of the king of Denmark, which
+counteracted those of the duke of Augustenburg[3], his most dangerous
+rival; to the grateful audacity of the baron de Moerner, who was the
+first to come to him, and offer to put him on the lists, and to the
+aversion of the Swedes to the Danes; above all he owed it to a passport
+which had been adroitly obtained by his agent from Napoleon's minister.
+It was said that this document was audaciously produced by Bernadotte's
+secret emissary, as a proof of an autograph mission with which he
+pretended to be charged, and of the formal desire of the French emperor
+to see one of his lieutenants, and the relation of his brother, placed
+upon the throne of Sweden.
+
+[Footnote 3: Brother of the deceased prince of that name.]
+
+Bernadotte also felt that he owed this crown to the chance, which
+brought him in communication with the Swedes, and made them acquainted
+with his characteristic qualities; to the birth of his son, which
+secured the heredity succession; to the address of his agents, who,
+either with or without his authority, dazzled the poverty of the
+Scandinavians with the promise of fourteen millions with which his
+election was to enrich their treasury; and finally to his flattering
+attentions, which had gained him the voices of several Swedish officers
+who had been his prisoners. But as to Napoleon, what did he owe to him?
+What was his reply to the news of the offer of several Swedes, when he
+himself waited upon him to inform him of it? "I am at too great a
+distance from Sweden, to mix myself up in her affairs. You must not
+reckon upon my support." At the same time it is true, that either from
+necessity, from his dreading the election of the duke of Oldenburg; or
+finally from respect for the wishes of fortune, Napoleon declared that
+he would leave it to her to decide: and Bernadotte was in consequence
+elected crown prince of Sweden.
+
+The newly-elected prince immediately paid his respects to the emperor,
+who received him frankly. "As you are offered the crown of Sweden, I
+permit you to accept it. I had another wish, as you know; but, in short,
+it is your sword which has made you a king, and you are sensible that it
+is not for me to stand in the way of your good fortune." He then entered
+very fully with him into the whole plan of his policy, in which
+Bernadotte appeared entirely to concur; every day he attended the
+emperor's levee together with his son, mixing with the other courtiers.
+By such marks of deference, he completely gained the heart of Napoleon.
+He was about to depart, poor. Unwilling that he should present himself
+to the Swedish throne in that necessitous state, like a mere adventurer,
+the emperor generously gave him two millions out of his own treasury; he
+even granted to his family the dotations which as a foreign prince he
+could no longer retain himself; and they parted on apparent terms of
+mutual satisfaction.
+
+It was natural that the expectations of Napoleon as to the alliance with
+Sweden should be heightened by this election, and by the favours which
+he had bestowed. At first Bernadotte's correspondence with him was that
+of a grateful inferior, but the very moment he was fairly out of France,
+feeling himself as it were relieved from a state of long and painful
+constraint, it is said that his hatred to Napoleon vented itself in
+threatening expressions, which, whether true or false, were reported to
+the emperor.
+
+On his side, that monarch, forced to be absolute in his continental
+system, cramped the commerce of Sweden; he wished her even to exclude
+American vessels from her ports; and at last he declared that he would
+only regard as friends the enemies of Great Britain. Bernadotte was
+obliged to make his election; the winter and the sea separated him from
+the assistance, or protected him from the attacks, of the English; the
+French were close to his ports; a war with France therefore would be
+real and effective; a war with England would be merely on paper. The
+prince of Sweden adopted the latter alternative.
+
+Napoleon, however, being as much a conqueror in peace as in war, and
+suspecting the intentions of Bernadotte, had demanded from Sweden
+several supplies of rigging for his Brest fleet, and the despatch of a
+body of troops, which were to be in his pay; in this manner weakening
+his allies to subdue his enemies, so as to allow him to be the master of
+both. He also required that colonial produce should be subjected in
+Sweden, the same as in France, to a duty of five per cent. It is even
+affirmed that he applied to Bernadotte to allow French custom-house
+officers to be placed at Gottenburg. These demands were eluded.
+
+Soon after, Napoleon proposed an alliance between Sweden, Denmark, and
+the grand duchy of Warsaw; a northern confederation, of which he would
+have declared himself protector, like that of the Rhine. The answer of
+Bernadotte, without being absolutely negative, had the same effect; it
+was the same with the offensive and defensive treaty which Napoleon
+again proposed to him. Bernadotte has since declared, that in four
+successive letters written with his own hand, he had frankly stated the
+impossibility he was under of complying with his wishes, and repeated
+his protestations of attachment to his former sovereign, but that the
+latter never deigned to give him any reply. This impolitic silence (if
+the fact be true,) can only be attributed to the pride of Napoleon,
+which was piqued at Bernadotte's refusals. No doubt he considered his
+protestations as too false to deserve any answer.
+
+The irritation increased; the communications became disagreeable; they
+were interrupted by the recall of Alquier, the French minister in
+Sweden. As the pretended declaration of war by Bernadotte against
+England remained a dead letter, Napoleon, who was not to be denied or
+deceived with impunity, carried on a sharp war against the Swedish
+commerce by means of his privateers. By them, and the invasion of
+Swedish Pomerania on the 27th of January, 1812, he punished Bernadotte
+for his deviations from the continental system, and obtained as
+prisoners several thousand Swedish soldiers and sailors, whom he had in
+vain demanded as auxiliaries.
+
+Then also our communications with Russia were broken off. Napoleon
+immediately addressed himself to the prince of Sweden; his notes were
+couched in the style of a lord paramount who fancies he speaks in the
+interest of his vassal, who feels the claims he has upon his gratitude
+or submission, and who calculates upon his obedience. He demanded that
+Bernadotte should declare a real war against England, shut her out from
+the Baltic, and send an army of 40,000 Swedes against Russia. In return
+for this, he promised him his protection, the restoration of Finland,
+and twenty millions, in return for an equal amount of colonial produce,
+which the Swedes were first to deliver. Austria undertook to support
+this proposition; but Bernadotte, already feeling himself settled on the
+throne, answered like an independent monarch. Ostensibly he declared
+himself neutral, opened his ports to all nations, proclaimed his rights
+and his grievances, appealed to humanity, recommended peace, and offered
+himself as a mediator; secretly, he offered himself to Napoleon at the
+price of Norway, Finland, and a subsidy.
+
+At the reading of a letter conceived in this new and unexpected style,
+Bonaparte was seized with rage and astonishment. He saw in it, and not
+without reason, a premeditated defection on the part of Bernadotte, a
+secret agreement with his enemies! He was filled with indignation; he
+exclaimed, striking violently on the letter, and the table on which it
+lay open: "He! the rascal! he presume to give me advice! to dictate the
+law to me! to dare propose such an infamous act[4] to me! And this from
+a man who owes every thing to my bounty! What ingratitude!" Then, pacing
+the room with rapid strides, at intervals he gave vent to such
+expressions as these: "I ought to have expected it! he has always
+sacrificed every thing to his interests! This is the same man, who,
+during his short ministry, attempted the resurrection of the infamous
+Jacobins! When he looked only to gain by disorder, he opposed the 18th
+Brumaire! He it was who was conspiring in the west against the
+re-establishment of law and religion! Has not his envious and perfidious
+inaction already betrayed the French army at Auerstadt? How many times,
+from regard to Joseph, have I pardoned his intrigues and concealed his
+faults! And yet I have made him general-in-chief, marshal, duke, prince,
+and finally king! But see how all these favours and the pardon of so
+many injuries, are thrown away on a man like this! If Sweden, half
+devoured by Russia, for a century past, has retained her independence,
+she owes it to the support of France. But it matters not; Bernadotte
+requires the baptism of the ancient aristocracy! a baptism of blood, and
+of French blood! and you will soon see, that to satisfy his envy and
+ambition, he will betray both his native and adopted country."
+
+[Footnote 4: Napoleon no doubt spoke of the proposal which Bernadotte
+made to him to take Norway from Denmark, his faithful ally, in order by
+this act of treachery to purchase the assistance of Sweden.]
+
+In vain did they attempt to calm him. They represented the difficulties
+which Bernadotte's new situation had imposed on him; that the cession of
+Finland to Russia had separated Sweden from the continent, almost made
+an island of that country, and thereby enlisted her in the English
+system.--In such critical circumstances, all the need which he had of
+this ally was unable to vanquish his pride, which revolted at a
+proposition which he regarded as insulting; perhaps also in the new
+prince of Sweden he still saw the same Bernadotte who was lately his
+subject, and his military inferior, and who at last affected to have cut
+out for himself a destiny independent of his. From that moment his
+instructions to his minister bore the impress of that disposition; the
+latter, it is true, softened the bitterness of them, but a rupture
+became inevitable.
+
+It is uncertain which contributed most to it, the pride of Napoleon, or
+the ancient jealousy of Bernadotte; it is certain that on the part of
+the former the motives of it were honourable. "Denmark" he said, "was
+his most faithful ally; her attachment to France had cost her the loss
+of her fleet and the burning of her capital. Must he repay a fidelity
+which had been so cruelly tried, by an act of treachery such as that of
+taking Norway from her to give to Sweden?"
+
+As to the subsidy which Sweden required of him, he answered, as he had
+done to Turkey, "that if the war was to be carried on with money,
+England would always be sure to outbid him;" and above all, "that there
+was weakness and baseness in triumphing by corruption." Reverting by
+this to his wounded pride, he terminated the conference by exclaiming,
+"Bernadotte impose conditions on me! Does he fancy then that I have need
+of him? I will soon bind him to my victorious career, and compel him to
+follow my sovereign impulse."
+
+But the active and speculative English, who were out of his reach, made
+a judicious estimate of the weak points of his system, and found the
+Russians ready to act upon their suggestions. They it was who had been
+endeavouring for the last three years to draw the forces of Napoleon
+into the defiles of Spain, and to exhaust them; it was they also who
+were on the watch to take advantage of the vindictive enmity of the
+prince of Sweden.
+
+Knowing that the active and restless vanity of men newly risen from
+obscurity is always uneasy and susceptible, in the presence of ancient
+_parvenus_, George and Alexander were lavish of their promises and
+flattery, in order to cajole Bernadotte. It was thus that they caressed
+him, at the time that the irritated Napoleon was threatening him; they
+promised him Norway and a subsidy, when the other, forced to refuse him
+that province of a faithful ally, took possession of Pomerania. While
+Napoleon, a monarch deriving his elevation from himself, relying on the
+faith of treaties, on the remembrance of past benefits, and on the real
+interests of Sweden, required succours from Bernadotte, the hereditary
+monarchs of London and Petersburgh required his opinion with deference,
+and submitted themselves by anticipation to the counsels of his
+experience. Finally, while the genius of Napoleon, the grandeur of his
+elevation, the importance of his enterprise, and the habit of their
+former relations, still classed Bernadotte as his lieutenant, these
+monarchs appeared already to treat him as their general. How was it
+possible for him not to seek to escape on the one hand from this sense
+of inferiority, and on the other to resist a mode of treatment, and
+promises so seductive? Thus the future prospects of Sweden were
+sacrificed, and her independence for ever laid at the mercy of Russian
+faith by the treaty of Petersburgh, which Bernadotte signed on the 24th
+of March, 1812. That of Bucharest, between Alexander and Mahmoud, was
+concluded on the 28th of May.--Thus did we lose the support of our two
+wings.
+
+Nevertheless, the emperor of the French, at the head of more than six
+hundred thousand men, and already too far advanced to think of
+retreating, flattered himself that his strength would decide every
+thing; that a victory on the Niemen would cut the knot of all these
+diplomatic difficulties, which he despised, probably too much; that
+then all the monarchs of Europe, compelled to acknowledge his
+ascendancy, would be eager to return into his system, and that all those
+satellites would be drawn into its vortex.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Napoleon meanwhile was still at Paris, in the midst of his great
+officers, who were alarmed by the terrible encounter which was
+preparing. The latter had nothing more to acquire, but much to preserve;
+their personal interest, therefore, was united with the general desire
+of nations, which were fatigued with war; and without disputing the
+utility of this expedition, they dreaded its approach. But they only
+confessed this to each other in secret, either from fear of giving
+umbrage, of impairing the confidence of nations, or of being proved
+wrong by the result. For that reason, in Napoleon's presence they
+remained silent, and even appeared to be uninformed as to a war, which
+for a considerable time had furnished a subject of conversation to the
+whole of Europe.
+
+But at length this respectful taciturnity, which he himself had taken
+pains to impose, became disagreeable; he suspected that it proceeded
+more from disapprobation than reserve. Obedience was not sufficient for
+him; it was his wish to combine it with conviction: that was like
+another conquest. Besides, no one was more convinced than himself of
+the power of public opinion, which, according to him, _created or
+destroyed sovereigns_. In short, whether through policy or self-love, it
+was his desire to persuade.
+
+Such were the dispositions of Napoleon and of the grandees who
+surrounded him, when the veil being about to be rent, and war evident,
+their silence towards him assumed a greater appearance of indiscretion
+than hazarding a few timely words. Some of them, therefore, commenced
+the task, and the emperor anticipated the others.
+
+A show was made[5] at first of comprehending all the emergencies of his
+position. "It was necessary to complete what had been begun; it was
+impossible to stop in the midst of so rapid an acclivity, and so near
+the summit. The empire of Europe was adapted to his genius; France would
+become its centre and its base; great and entire, she would perceive
+around her none but states so feeble and so divided, that all coalition
+among them would become contemptible or impossible; but with such an
+object why did he not commence the task by subjecting and partitioning
+the states immediately around him?"
+
+[Footnote 5: The arch-chancellor.]
+
+To this objection Napoleon replied, "That such had been his project in
+1809, in the war with Austria, but that the misfortune of Esslingen had
+deranged his plan; that that event, and the doubtful dispositions which
+Russia had since exhibited, had led him to marry an Austrian princess,
+and strengthen himself by an alliance with the Austrian against the
+Russian emperor.
+
+"That he did not create circumstances, but that he would not allow them
+to escape him; that he comprehended them all, and held himself in as
+much readiness as possible for their appearance; that in order to
+accomplish his designs, he was fully aware that twelve years were
+necessary, but that he could not afford to wait so long.
+
+"That besides, he had not provoked this war; that he had been faithful
+to his engagements with Alexander; proofs of which were to be found in
+the coldness of his relations with Turkey and Sweden, which had been
+delivered up to Russia, one almost entirely, the other shorn of Finland,
+and even of the Isle of Aland, which was so near Stockholm. That he had
+only replied to the distressed appeal of the Swedes, by advising them to
+make the cession.
+
+"That, nevertheless, since 1809, the Russian army destined to act in
+concert with Poniatowski in Austrian Gallicia had come forward too late,
+was too weak, and had acted perfidiously; that since that time,
+Alexander, by his ukase of the 31st of December, 1810, had abandoned the
+continental system, and by his prohibitions declared an actual war
+against French commerce; that he was quite aware that the interest and
+national spirit of the Russians might have compelled him to that, but
+that he had then communicated to their emperor that he was aware of his
+position, and would enter into every kind of arrangement which his
+repose required; in spite of which, Alexander, instead of modifying his
+ukase, had assembled 80,000 men, under pretence of supporting his
+custom-house officers; that he had suffered himself to be seduced by
+England; that, lastly, he even now refused to recognize the
+thirty-second military division, and demanded the evacuation of Prussia
+by the French; which was equivalent to a declaration of war."
+
+Through all these complaints, some persons thought they perceived that
+the pride of Napoleon was wounded by the independent attitude which
+Russia was daily resuming. The dispossession of the Russian Princess of
+Oldenburg of her duchy led to other conjectures; it was said that hints
+had been given both at Tilsit and Erfurt about a divorce, after which a
+closer alliance might be contracted with Russia; that these hints had
+not been encouraged, and that Napoleon retained a resentful remembrance
+of it. This fact is affirmed by some, and denied by others.
+
+But all those passions which so despotically govern other men, possessed
+but a feeble influence over a genius so firm and vast as his: at the
+utmost, they may have imparted the first momentum which impelled him
+into action earlier than he would have wished; but without penetrating
+so deeply beneath the folds of his great mind, a single idea, an obvious
+fact, was enough to hurry him, sooner or later, into that decisive
+struggle,--that was, the existence of an empire, which rivalled his own
+in greatness, but was still young, like its prince, and growing every
+day; while the French empire, already mature, like its emperor, could
+scarcely anticipate any thing but its decrease.
+
+Whatever was the height to which Napoleon had raised the throne of the
+south and west of Europe, he perceived the northern throne of Alexander
+ever ready to overshadow him by its eternally menacing position. On
+those icy summits of Europe, whence, in former times, so many floods of
+barbarians had rushed forth, he perceived all the elements of a new
+inundation collecting and maturing. Till then, Austria and Prussia had
+opposed sufficient barriers; but these he himself had humbled and
+overthrown: he stood, therefore, single, front to front with what he
+feared; he alone remained the champion of the civilization, the riches,
+and the enjoyments of the nations of the south, against the rude
+ignorance, and the fierce cupidity, of the poorer people of the north,
+and against the ambition of their emperor and his nobility.
+
+It was obvious, that war alone could decide this great
+arbitrament,--this great and eternal struggle between the poor and the
+rich; and, nevertheless, this war, with reference to us, was neither
+European, nor even national. Europe entered into it against her
+inclination, because the object of the expedition was to add to the
+strength of her conqueror. France was exhausted, and anxious for repose;
+her grandees, who formed the court of Napoleon, were alarmed at the
+double-headed character of the war, at the dispersion of our armies from
+Cadiz to Moscow; and even when admitting the _eventual_ necessity of the
+struggle, its _immediate_ urgency did not appear to them so
+legitimately proved.
+
+They knew that it was more especially by an appeal to his political
+interest that they had any chance of shaking the resolution of a prince,
+whose principle was, "that there exist individuals whose conduct can but
+rarely be regulated by their private sentiments, but always by
+surrounding circumstances." In this persuasion, one of his ministers[6]
+said to him, "that his finances required tranquillity;" but he replied,
+"On the contrary, they are embarrassed, and require war." Another[7]
+added, "that the state of his revenues never, in fact, had been more
+flourishing; that, independent of a furnished account of from three to
+four millions, it was really wonderful to find France unencumbered with
+any urgent debts; but that this prosperous condition was approaching its
+termination, since it appeared that with the year 1812 a ruinous
+campaign was to commence; that hitherto, war had been made to support
+the expense of war; that we had every where found the table laid out;
+but that, in future, we could no longer live at the expense of Germany,
+since she had become our ally; but, on the contrary, it would be
+necessary to support her contingents, and that without any hope of
+remuneration, whatever the result might be; that we should have to pay
+at Paris for every ration of bread which would be consumed at Moscow, as
+the new scenes of action offered us no harvest to reap, independent of
+glory, but cordage, pitch, and shipping-tackle, which would certainly go
+but a small way towards the discharge of the expenses of a continental
+war. That France was not in a condition to subsidize all Europe in this
+manner, especially at a moment when her resources were drained by the
+war in Spain; that it was like lighting a fire at both ends at once,
+which, gaining ground upon the centre, exhausted by so many
+efforts,--would probably end in consuming ourselves."
+
+[Footnote 6: Count Mollien.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The Duke of Gaeta.]
+
+This minister was listened to; the emperor surveyed him with a smiling
+air, accompanied with one of his familiar caresses. He imagined that he
+had secured conviction, but Napoleon said to him,--"So you think that I
+shall not be able to find a paymaster to discharge the expenses of the
+war?" The duke endeavoured to learn upon whom the burden was to fall,
+when the emperor, by a single word, disclosing all the grandeur of his
+designs, closed the lips of his astonished minister.
+
+He estimated, however, but too accurately all the difficulties of his
+enterprise. It was that, perhaps, which drew upon him the reproach of
+availing himself of a method which he had rejected in the Austrian war,
+and of which the celebrated Pitt had set the example in 1793.
+
+Towards the end of 1811, the prefect of police at Paris learnt, it was
+said, that a printer was secretly counterfeiting Russian bank-bills; he
+ordered him to be arrested; the printer resisted; but in the result his
+house was broken into, and himself taken before the magistrate, whom he
+astonished by his assurance, and still more by his appeal from the
+minister of police. This printer was instantly released: it has even
+been added, that he continued his counterfeiting employment; and that,
+from the moment of our first advance into Lithuania, we propagated the
+report that we had gained possession at Wilna of several millions of
+Russian bank-bills in the military chests of the hostile army.
+
+Whatever may have been the origin of this counterfeit money, Napoleon
+contemplated it with extreme repugnance; it is even unknown whether he
+resolved on making any use of it; at least, it is certain that during
+the period of our retreat, and when we abandoned Wilna, the greater part
+of these bills were found there untouched, and burnt by his orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Prince Poniatowski, however, to whom this expedition appeared to hold
+out the prospect of a throne, generously united his exertions with those
+of the emperor's ministers in the attempt to demonstrate its danger.
+Love of country was in this Polish prince a great and noble passion; his
+life and death have proved it; but it never infatuated him. He depicted
+Lithuania as an impracticable desert; its nobility as already become
+half Russian; the character of its inhabitants as cold and backward:
+but the impatient emperor interrupted him; he required information for
+the sake of conducting the enterprise, and not to be deterred from it.
+
+It is true that the greater part of these objections were but a feeble
+repetition of all those which, for a long time past, had presented
+themselves to his own mind. People were not aware of the extent to which
+he had appreciated the danger; of his multiplied exertions, from the
+30th of December 1810, to ascertain the nature of the territory which,
+sooner or later, was destined to become the theatre of a decisive war;
+how many emissaries he had despatched for the purpose of survey; the
+multitude of memorials which he caused to be prepared for him respecting
+the roads to Petersburgh and Moscow; respecting the dispositions of the
+inhabitants, especially of the mercantile class; and, finally, the
+resources of every kind which the country was enabled to supply. If he
+persevered, it was because, far from deceiving himself as to the extent
+of his force, he did not share in that confidence which, perhaps,
+precluded others from perceiving of how much consequence the humiliation
+of Russia was to the future existence of the great French empire.
+
+In this spirit, he once more addressed himself to three[8] of his great
+officers, whose well-known services and attachment authorized a tone of
+frankness. All three, in the capacity of ministers, envoys, and
+ambassadors, had become acquainted with Russia at different epochs. He
+exerted himself to convince them of the utility, justice, and necessity
+of this war; but one[9] of them, in particular, often interrupted him
+with impatience; for when a discussion had once commenced, Napoleon
+submitted to all its little breaches of decorum.
+
+[Footnote 8: The Duke of Frioul, the Count de Segur, (the author's
+father,) the Duke of Vicenza.]
+
+[Footnote 9: The Duke of Vicenza.]
+
+That great officer, yielding to the inflexible and impetuous frankness
+which he derived from his character, from his military education, and,
+perhaps, from the province which gave him birth, exclaimed, "That it was
+useless to deceive himself, or pretend to deceive others; that after
+possessing himself of the Continent, and even of the states belonging to
+the family of his ally, that ally could not be accused of abandoning the
+continental system. While the French armies covered all Europe, how
+could the Russians be reproached for increasing their army? Did it
+become the ambition of Napoleon to denounce the ambition of Alexander?
+
+"That, in addition to this, the determination of that prince was made
+up; that, Russia once invaded, no peace could be expected, while a
+single Frenchman remained upon her soil; that, in that respect, the
+national and obstinate pride of the Russians was in perfect harmony with
+that of their emperor.
+
+"That, it was true, his subjects accused Alexander of weakness, but very
+erroneously; that he was not to be judged of by the complacency which,
+at Tilsit and at Erfurt, his admiration, his inexperience, and some
+tincture of ambition, had extorted from him. That this prince loved
+justice; that he was anxious to have right on his side, and he might,
+indeed, hesitate till he thought it was so, but then he became
+inflexible; that, finally, looking to his position with reference to his
+subjects, he incurred more danger by making a disgraceful peace, than by
+sustaining an unfortunate war.
+
+"How was it possible, moreover, to avoid seeing that in this war every
+thing was to be feared, even our allies? Did not Napoleon hear their
+discontented kings murmuring that they were only his prefects? When
+they, all of them, only waited a suitable occasion in order to turn
+against him, why run the risk of giving that occasion birth?"
+
+At the same time, supported by his two colleagues, the duke added, "that
+since 1805 a system of war which compelled the most disciplined soldier
+to plunder, had sown the seeds of hatred throughout the whole of that
+Germany, which the emperor now designed to traverse. Was he then going
+to precipitate himself and his army beyond all those nations whose
+wounds, for which they were indebted to us, were not yet healed? What an
+accumulation of enmity and revenge would he not, by so doing, interpose
+between himself and France!
+
+"And upon whom did he call, to be his _points d'appui_?--on Prussia,
+whom for five years we had been devouring, and whose alliance was hollow
+and compulsive? He was about, therefore, to trace the longest line of
+military operations ever drawn, through countries whose fear was
+taciturn, supple, and perfidious, and which, like the ashes of
+volcanoes, hid terrific flames, the eruption of which might be provoked
+by the smallest collision[10].
+
+[Footnote 10: The Duke of Vicenza, the Count de Segur.]
+
+"To sum up all[11], what would be the result of so many conquests? To
+substitute lieutenants for kings, who, more ambitious than those of
+Alexander, would, perhaps, imitate their example, without, like them,
+waiting for the death of their sovereign,--a death, moreover, which he
+would inevitably meet among so many fields of battle; and that, before
+the consolidation of his labours, each war reviving in the interior of
+France the hopes of all kinds of parties, and reviving discussions which
+had been regarded as at an end.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Count de Segur.]
+
+"Did he wish to know the opinion of the army? That opinion pronounced
+that his best soldiers were then in Spain; that the regiments, being too
+often recruited, wanted unity; that they were not reciprocally
+acquainted; that each was uncertain whether, in case of danger, it could
+depend upon the other; that the front rank vainly concealed the weakness
+of the two others; that already, from youth and weakness, many of them
+sank in their first march beneath the single burden of their knapsacks
+and their arms.
+
+"And, nevertheless, in this expedition, it was not so much the war
+which was disliked, as the country where it was to be carried on[12].
+The Lithuanians, it was said, desired our presence; but on what a soil?
+in what a climate? in the midst of what peculiar manners? The campaign
+of 1806 had made those circumstances too well known! Where could they
+ever halt, in the midst of these level plains, divested of every species
+of position fortified by nature or by art?
+
+[Footnote 12: The Duke of Frioul, the Count de Segur, the Duke of
+Vicenza.]
+
+"Was it not notorious, that all the elements protected these countries
+from the first of October to the first of June? that, at any other time
+than the short interval comprised between these two epochs, an army
+engaged in those deserts of mud and ice might perish there entirely, and
+ingloriously?" And, they added, "that Lithuania was much more Asiatic
+than Spain was African; and that the French army, already all but
+banished from France by a perpetual war, wished at least to preserve its
+European character.
+
+"Finally, when face to face with the enemy in these deserts, what
+different motives must actuate the different armies! On the side of the
+Russians were country, independence, every description of interest,
+private and public, even to the secret good wishes of our allies! On our
+side, and in the teeth of so many obstacles, glory alone, unassociated
+even with that desire of gain, to which the frightful poverty of these
+countries offered no attraction.
+
+"And what is the end of so many exertions? The French already no longer
+recognized each other, in the midst of a country now uncircumscribed by
+any natural frontier; and in which the diversity was so great in
+manners, persons, and languages." On this particular point, the
+eldest[13] of these great officers added, "That such an extension was
+never made without proportionate exhaustion; that it was blotting out
+France to merge it in Europe; for, in fact, when France should become
+Europe, it would be France no longer. Would not the meditated departure
+leave her solitary, deserted, without a ruler, without an army,
+accessible to every diversion? Who then was there to defend her?" "_My
+renown!_" exclaimed the emperor: "_I leave my name behind me, and the
+fear inspired by a nation in arms._"
+
+[Footnote 13: M. de Segur.]
+
+And, without appearing in the least shaken by so many objections, he
+announced "that he was about to organize the empire into cohorts of
+_Ban_ and _Arriere Ban_; and without mistrust to leave to Frenchmen the
+protection of France, of his crown, and of his glory.
+
+"That as to Prussia, he had secured her tranquillity by the
+impossibility in which he had placed her of moving, even in case of his
+defeat, or of a descent of the English on the coasts of the North Sea,
+and in our rear; that he held in his hands the civil and military power
+of that kingdom; that he was master of Stettin, Custrin, Glogau, Torgau,
+Spandau, and Magdeburg; that he would post some clear-sighted officers
+at Colberg, and an army at Berlin; and that with these means, and
+supported by the fidelity of Saxony, he had nothing to fear from
+Prussian hatred.
+
+"That as for the rest of Germany, an ancient system of policy, as well
+as the recent intermarriages with Baden, Bavaria, and Austria, attached
+her to the interest of France; that he made sure of such of her kings as
+were indebted to him for their new titles: that after having suppressed
+anarchy, and ranged himself on the side of kings, strong as he was, the
+latter could not attack him without inciting their people by the
+principles of democracy; but that it was scarcely probable that
+sovereigns would ally themselves with that natural enemy of thrones--an
+enemy, which, had it not been for him, would have overthrown them, and
+against which he alone was capable of defending them.
+
+"That, besides, the Germans were a tardy and methodical people, and that
+in dealing with them he should always have time on his side; that he
+commanded all the fortresses of Prussia; that Dantzic was a second
+Gibraltar." This was incorrect, especially in winter. "That Russia ought
+to excite the apprehension of all Europe, by her military and conquering
+government, as well as by her savage population, already so numerous,
+and which augmented annually in the proportion of half a million. Had
+not her armies been seen in all parts of Italy, in Germany, and even on
+the Rhine? That by demanding the evacuation of Prussia, she required an
+impossible concession; since to abandon Prussia, morally ulcerated as
+she was, was to surrender her into the hands of Russia, in order to be
+turned against ourselves."
+
+Proceeding afterwards with more animation, he exclaimed, "Why menace my
+absence with the different parties still alleged to exist in the
+interior of the empire? Where are they? I see but a single one against
+me; that of a few royalists, the principal part of the ancient
+_noblesse_, superannuated and inexperienced. But they dread my downfall
+more than they desire it. This is what I told them in Normandy. I am
+cried up as a great captain, as an able politician, but I am scarcely
+mentioned as an administrator: that which I have, however, accomplished,
+of the most difficult and most beneficial description, is the stemming
+the revolutionary torrent; it would have swallowed up every thing,
+Europe and yourselves. I have united the most opposite parties,
+amalgamated rival classes, and yet there exist among you some obstinate
+nobles who resist; they refuse my places! Very well! what is that to me?
+It is for your advantage, for your security, that I offer them to you.
+What would you do singly by yourselves, and without me? You are a mere
+handful opposed to masses. Do you not see that it is necessary to put an
+end to the struggle between the _tiers-etat_ and the _noblesse_, by a
+complete fusion of all that is best worth preservation in the two
+classes? I offer you the hand of amity, and you reject it! but what need
+have I of you? While I support you, I do myself an injury in the eyes of
+the people; for what am I but the king of the _tiers-etat_: is not that
+sufficient?"
+
+Passing more calmly to another question: "He was quite aware," he said,
+"of the ambition of his generals; but it was diverted by war, and would
+never be sanctioned in its excesses by French soldiers, who were too
+proud of, and too much attached to their country. That if war was
+dangerous, peace had also its dangers: that in bringing back his armies
+into the interior, it would enclose and concentrate there too many
+daring interests and passions, which repose and their association would
+tend to ferment, and which he should no longer be able to keep within
+bounds: that it was necessary to give free vent to all such aspirations;
+and that, after all, he dreaded them less without the empire than within
+it."
+
+He concluded thus: "Do you dread the war, as endangering my life? It was
+thus that, in the times of conspiracy, attempts were made to frighten me
+about Georges; he was said to be every where upon my track: that
+wretched being was to fire at me. Well! suppose he had! He would at the
+utmost have killed my _aide-de-camp_: but to kill me was impossible! Had
+I at that time accomplished the decrees of fate? I feel myself impelled
+towards a goal of which I am ignorant. As soon as I shall have reached
+it, so soon shall I no longer be of service,--an atom will then suffice
+to put me down; but till then, all human efforts can avail nothing
+against me. Whether I am in Paris, or with the army, is, therefore,
+quite indifferent. When my hour comes, a fever, or a fall from my horse
+in hunting, will kill me as effectually as a bullet: our days are
+numbered."
+
+This opinion, useful as it may be in the moment of danger, is too apt to
+blind conquerors to the price at which the great results which they
+obtain are purchased. They indulge a belief in pre-destination, either
+because they have experienced, more than other men, whatever is most
+unexpected in human destiny, or because it relieves their consciences of
+too heavy a load of responsibility. It was like a return to the times of
+the crusades, when these words, _it is the will of God_, were considered
+a sufficient answer to all the objections of a prudent and pacific
+policy.
+
+Indeed, the expedition of Napoleon into Russia bears a mournful
+resemblance to that of St. Louis into Egypt and Africa. These invasions,
+the one undertaken for the interests of Heaven, the other for those of
+the earth, terminated in a similar manner; and these two great examples
+admonish the world, that the vast and profound calculations of this age
+of intelligence may be followed by the same results as the irregular
+impulses of religious frenzy in ages of ignorance and superstition.
+
+In these two expeditions, however, there can be no comparison between
+their opportunities or their chances of success. The last was
+indispensable to the completion of a great design on the point of being
+accomplished: its object was not out of reach; the means for reaching it
+were not inadequate. It may be, that the moment for its execution was
+ill chosen; that the progress of it was sometimes too precipitate, at
+other times unsteady; but on these points facts will speak sufficiently:
+it is for them to decide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+In this manner did Napoleon reply to all objections. His skilful hand
+was able to comprehend and turn to his purpose every disposition; and,
+in fact, when he wanted to persuade, there was a kind of charm in his
+deportment which it was impossible to resist. One felt overpowered by
+his superior strength, and compelled, as it were, to submit to his
+influence. It was, if it may be so expressed, a kind of magnetic
+influence; for his ardent and variable genius infused itself entirely
+into all his desires, the least as well as the greatest: whatever he
+willed, all his energies and all his faculties united to effect: they
+appeared at his beck; they hastened forward; and, obedient to his
+dictation, simultaneously assumed the forms which he desired.
+
+It was thus that the greater part of those whom he wished to gain over
+found themselves, as it were, fascinated by him in spite of themselves.
+It was flattering to your vanity to see the master of Europe appearing
+to have no other ambition, no other desire than that of convincing you;
+to behold those features, so formidable to multitudes, expressing
+towards you no other feeling but a mild and affecting benevolence; to
+hear that mysterious man, whose every word was historical, yielding, as
+if for your sake alone, to the irresistible impulse of the most frank
+and confiding disclosure; and that voice, so caressing while it
+addressed you, was it not the same, whose lowest whisper rang throughout
+all Europe, announced wars, decided battles, settled the fate of
+empires, raised or destroyed reputations? What vanity could resist a
+charm of so great potency? Any defensive position was forced on all
+points; his eloquence was so much more persuasive, as he himself
+appeared to be persuaded.
+
+On this occasion, there was no variety of tints with which his brilliant
+and fertile imagination did not adorn his project, in order to convince
+and allure. The same text supplied him with a thousand different
+commentaries, with which the character and position of each of his
+interlocutors inspired him; he enlisted each in his undertaking, by
+presenting it to him under the form and colour, and point of view, most
+likely to gratify him.
+
+We have just seen in what way he silenced the one who felt alarmed at
+the expenses of the conquest of Russia, which he wished him to approve,
+by holding out the perspective, that another would be made to defray
+them.
+
+He told the military man, who was astonished by the hazard of the
+expedition, but likely to be easily seduced by the grandeur of ambitious
+ideas, that peace was to be conquered at Constantinople; that is to say,
+at the extremity of Europe; the individual was thus free to anticipate,
+that it was not merely to the staff of a marshal, but to a royal
+sceptre, that he might elevate his pretensions.
+
+To a minister[14] of high rank under the ancient _regime_, whom the idea
+of shedding so much blood, to gratify ambition, filled with dismay, he
+declared "that it was a war of policy exclusively; that it was the
+English alone whom he meant to attack through Russia; that the campaign
+would be short; that afterwards France would be at rest; that it was the
+fifth act of the drama--the _denouement_."
+
+[Footnote 14: Count Mole.]
+
+To others, he pleaded the ambition of Russia, and the force of
+circumstances, which dragged him into the war in spite of himself. With
+superficial and inexperienced individuals, to whom he neither wished to
+explain nor dissemble, he cut matters short, by saying, "You understand
+nothing of all this; you are ignorant of its antecedents and its
+consequents."
+
+But to the princes of his own family he had long revealed the state of
+his thoughts; he complained that they did not sufficiently appreciate
+his position. "Can you not see," said he to them, "that as I was not
+born upon a throne, I must support myself on it, as I ascended it, by
+my renown? that it is necessary for it to go on increasing; that a
+private individual, become a sovereign like myself, can no longer stop;
+that he must be continually ascending, and that to remain stationary
+will be his ruin?"
+
+He then depicted to them all the ancient dynasties armed against his,
+devising plots, preparing wars, and seeking to destroy, in his person,
+the dangerous example of a _roi parvenu_. It was on that account that
+every peace appeared in his eyes a conspiracy of the weak against the
+strong, of the vanquished against the victor; and especially of the
+great by birth against the great by their own exertions. So many
+successive coalitions had confirmed him in that apprehension! Indeed, he
+often thought of no longer tolerating an ancient power in Europe, of
+constituting himself into an epoch, of becoming a new era for thrones;
+in short, of making every thing take its date from him.
+
+It was in this manner that he disclosed his inmost thoughts to his
+family by those vivid pictures of his political position, which, at the
+present day, will probably appear neither false nor over-coloured: and
+yet the gentle Josephine, always occupied with the task of restraining
+and calming him, often gave him to understand "that, along with the
+consciousness of his superior genius, he never seemed to possess
+sufficient consciousness of his own power: that, like all jealous
+characters, he incessantly required fresh proofs of its existence. How
+came it, amidst the noisy acclamations of Europe, that his anxious ear
+could hear the few solitary voices which disputed his legitimacy? that
+in this manner his troubled spirit was always seeking agitation as its
+element: that strong as he was to desire, but feeble to enjoy, he
+himself, therefore, would be the only one whom he could never conquer."
+
+But in 1811 Josephine was separated from Napoleon, and although he still
+continued to visit her in her seclusion, the voice of that empress had
+lost the influence which continual intercourse, familiar habits of
+affection, and the desire of mutual confidence, impart.
+
+Meanwhile, fresh disagreements with the pope complicated the relations
+of France. Napoleon then addressed himself to cardinal Fesch. Fesch was
+a zealous churchman, and overflowing with Italian vivacity: he defended
+the papal pretensions with obstinate ardour; and such was the warmth of
+his discussions with the emperor, on a former occasion, that the latter
+got into a passion, and told him, "that he would compel him to obey."
+"And who contests your power?" returned the cardinal: "but force is not
+argument; for if I am right, not all your power can make me wrong.
+Besides, your majesty knows that I do not fear martyrdom."--"Martyrdom!"
+replied Buonaparte, with a transition from violence to laughter; "do not
+reckon on that, I beseech you, M. le Cardinal: martyrdom is an affair in
+which there must be two persons concerned; and as to myself, I have no
+desire to make a martyr of any individual."
+
+It is said that these discussions assumed a more serious character
+towards the end of 1811. An eye-witness asserts that the cardinal, till
+that time a stranger to politics, then began to mix them up with his
+religious controversies; that he conjured Napoleon not thus to fly in
+the face of men, the elements, religion, earth and heaven, at the same
+time; and that, at last, he expressed his apprehension of seeing him
+sink under such a weight of enmity.
+
+The only reply which the emperor made to this vehement attack was to
+take him by the hand, and leading him to the window, to open it, and
+inquire, "Do you see that star above us?"--"No, sire."--"Look
+again."--"Sire, I do not see it."--"Very well! _I_ see it!" replied
+Napoleon. The cardinal, seized with astonishment, remained silent,
+concluding that there was no human voice sufficiently loud to make
+itself heard by an ambition so gigantic, that it already reached the
+heavens.
+
+As to the witness of this singular scene, he understood in quite a
+different sense these words of his sovereign. They did not appear to him
+like the expression of an overweening confidence in his destiny, but
+rather of the great distinction which Napoleon meant to infer as
+existing between the grasp of his genius and that of the cardinal's
+policy.
+
+But granting even that Napoleon's soul was not exempt from a tendency to
+superstition, his intellect was both too strong and too enlightened to
+permit such vast events to depend upon a weakness. One great inquietude
+possessed him; it was the idea of that same death, which he appeared so
+much to brave. He felt his strength decaying; and he dreaded that when
+he should be no more, the French empire, that sublime trophy of so many
+labours and victories, would fall a prey to dismemberment.
+
+"The Russian emperor," he said, "was the only sovereign who pressed upon
+the summit of that colossal edifice. Replete with youth and animation,
+the strength of his rival was constantly augmenting, while his was
+already on the decline." It seemed to him that Alexander, on the banks
+of the Niemen, only waited the intelligence of his death, to possess
+himself of the sceptre of Europe, and snatch it from the hands of his
+feeble successor. "While all Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, and
+the whole of Germany, were marching under his banners, why should he
+delay to anticipate the danger, and consolidate the fabric of the great
+empire, by driving back Alexander and the Russian power, enfeebled as
+they would be by the loss of all Poland, beyond the Boristhenes?"
+
+Such were his sentiments, pronounced in secret confidence; they,
+doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his
+precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the
+instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his
+blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which,"
+added he, "battles are not to be gained,") undermined his constitution.
+
+A profound knowledge of the organization and mysteries of the human
+frame would probably enable us to decide whether this concealed malady
+was not one of the causes of that restless activity which hurried on the
+course of events, and in which originated both his elevation and his
+fall.
+
+This internal enemy testified its presence, more and more, by an
+internal pain, and by the violent spasms of the stomach which it
+inflicted. Even in 1806, at Warsaw, during one of its agonizing crises,
+Napoleon was[15] heard to exclaim, "that he carried about with him the
+germ of premature dissolution; and that he should die of the same malady
+as his father."
+
+[Footnote 15: By the count Lobau.]
+
+Short rides in hunting, even the most gentle gallop of his horse,
+already began to fatigue him: how then was he to support the long
+journeys, and the rapid and violent movements preparatory to battles?
+Thus it was, that while the greater part of those who surrounded him
+concluded him to be impelled into Russia by his vast ambition, by his
+restless spirit and his love of war, he in solitude, and almost
+unobserved, was poising the fearful responsibilities of the enterprise,
+and urged by necessity, he only made up his mind to it after a course of
+painful hesitation.
+
+At length, on the 3d of August, 1811, at an audience in the midst of all
+the ambassadors of Europe, he declared himself; but the burst of
+indignation which was the presage of war, was an additional proof of his
+repugnance to commence it. It might be that the defeat which the
+Russians had just sustained at Routschouk had inflated his hopes;
+perhaps he imagined that he might, by menace, arrest the preparations of
+Alexander.
+
+It was prince Kourakin whom he addressed. That ambassador having just
+made protestations of the pacific intentions of his master, he
+interrupted him: "No," exclaimed he, "your master desires war; I know,
+through my generals, that the Russian army is hurrying towards the
+Niemen! The emperor Alexander deludes, and gains all my envoys!" Then,
+perceiving Caulaincourt, he rapidly traversed the hall, and violently
+appealing to him, said: "Yes, and you too have become a Russian: you
+have been seduced by the emperor Alexander." The duke firmly replied,
+"Yes, sire; because, in this question, I consider him to be a
+Frenchman." Napoleon was silent; but from that moment, he treated that
+great dignitary coldly, without, however, absolutely repelling him:
+several times he even essayed, by fresh arguments, intermixed with
+familiar caresses, to win him over to his opinion, but ineffectually; he
+always found him inflexible; ready to serve him, but without approving
+the nature of the service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+While Napoleon, prompted by his natural character, by his position, and
+by circumstances, thus appeared to wish for, and to accelerate the
+period of conflict, he preserved the secret of his embarrassment. The
+year 1811 was wasted in parleys about peace, and preparations for war.
+1812 had just begun, and the horizon was already obscured. Our armies in
+Spain had given way; Ciudad Rodrigo was taken by the English (on the
+19th of January, 1812); the discussions of Napoleon with the Pope
+increased in bitterness; Kutusof had destroyed the Turkish army on the
+Danube (on the 8th of December, 1811); France even became alarmed about
+her means of subsistence; every thing, in short, appeared to divert the
+attention of Napoleon from Russia; to recall it to France, and fix it
+there; while he, far from blinding his judgment, recognized in these
+contrarieties the indications of his ever-faithful fortune.
+
+It was, especially in the midst of those long winter nights, when
+individuals are left more than usually to their own reflections, that
+his star seemed to enlighten him with its most brilliant illumination:
+it exhibited to him the different ruling genii of the vanquished
+nations, in silence awaiting the moment for avenging their wrongs; the
+dangers which he was about to confront, those which he left behind him,
+even in his own family: it showed him, that like the returns of his
+army, the census of the population of his empire was delusive, not so
+much in respect to its numerical as to its real strength; scarcely any
+men were included in it but those who were old in years, or worn out in
+the service, and children--few men in the prime of life. Where were
+they? The tears of wives, the cries of mothers answered! bowed in
+sadness to the earth, which, but for them, would remain uncultivated,
+they cursed the scourge of war as identified in his person.
+
+Nevertheless, he was about to attack Russia, without having subjected
+Spain; forgetting the principle of which he himself so often supplied
+both the precept and example, "never to strike at two points at once;
+but on one only, and always in mass." Wherefore, in fact, should he
+abandon a brilliant, though uncertain position, in order to throw
+himself into so critical a situation, that the slightest check might
+ruin every thing; and where every reverse would be decisive?
+
+At that moment, no necessity of position, no sentiment of self-love,
+could prompt Napoleon to combat his own arguments, and prevent him from
+listening to himself. Hence he became thoughtful and agitated. He
+collected accounts of the actual condition of the different powers of
+Europe; he ordered an exact and complete summary of them to be made; and
+buried himself in the perusal: his anxiety increased; to him of all men,
+irresolution was a punishment.
+
+Frequently was he discovered half reclined on a sofa, where he remained
+for hours, plunged in profound meditation; then he would start up,
+convulsively, and with an ejaculation, fancying he heard his name, he
+would exclaim, "Who calls me?" Then rising, and walking about with
+hurried steps, he at length added, "No! beyond a doubt, nothing is yet
+sufficiently matured round me, even in my own family, to admit of so
+distant a war. It must be delayed for three years!" And he gave orders
+that the summary which reminded him of the dangers of his position
+should be constantly left on his table. It was his frequent subject of
+consultation, and every time he did so, he approved and repeated his
+first conclusions.
+
+It is not known what dictated so salutary an inspiration; but it is
+certain, that about that epoch (the 25th of March, 1812), Czernicheff
+was the bearer of new proposals to his sovereign. Napoleon offered to
+make a declaration that he would contribute, neither directly nor
+indirectly, to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Poland; and to
+come to an understanding about the other subjects in dispute.
+
+At a later period, (on the 17th of April,) the Duke of Bassano proposed
+to Lord Castlereagh an arrangement relative to the Peninsula, and the
+kingdom of the Two Sicilies; and in other respects offered to negotiate
+on the basis, that each of the two powers should keep all that war could
+not wrest from it. But Castlereagh replied, that the engagements of good
+faith would not permit England to treat without making the recognition
+of Ferdinand VII. as king of Spain a preliminary of the negotiation.
+
+On the 25th of April, Maret, in apprising Count Romanzoff of this
+communication, recapitulated a portion of the complaints which Napoleon
+made against Russia;--firstly, the ukase of the 31st of December, 1810,
+which prohibited the entry into Russia of the greater part of French
+productions, and destroyed the continental system; secondly, the protest
+of Alexander against the union of the duchy of Oldenburg; and thirdly,
+the armaments of Russia.
+
+This minister referred to the fact of Napoleon having offered to grant
+an indemnity to the Duke of Oldenburg, and to enter into a formal
+engagement not to concur in any undertaking for the re-establishment of
+Poland; that, in 1811, he had proposed to Alexander, to give Prince
+Kourakin the requisite powers to treat with the duke of Bassano
+respecting all matters in dispute; but that the Russian emperor had
+eluded the overture, by promising to send Nesselrode to Paris; a promise
+which was never fulfilled.
+
+The Russian ambassador, almost at the same time, transmitted the emperor
+Alexander's ultimatum, which required the entire evacuation of Prussia;
+that of Swedish Pomerania; a reduction of the garrison of Dantzic. On
+the other hand, he offered to accept an indemnity for the duchy of
+Oldenburg; he was willing to enter into commercial arrangements with
+France; and finally promised empty modifications of the ukase of the
+31st December, 1810.
+
+But it was too late: besides, at the point to which both parties were
+now arrived, that ultimatum necessarily led to war. Napoleon was too
+proud, both of himself and of France, he was too much overruled by his
+position, to yield to a menacing negotiator, to leave Prussia at liberty
+to throw herself into the open arms of Russia, and thus to abandon
+Poland. He was too far advanced; he would be obliged to retrograde, in
+order to find a resting point; and in his situation, Napoleon considered
+every retrograde step as the incipient point of a complete downfall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+His wishes for delay being thus frustrated, he surveyed the enormous
+volume of his military strength; the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt
+were revived; he received with complacency delusive information
+respecting the character of his rival. At one time, he hoped that
+Alexander would give way at the approach of so menacing an invasion; at
+another, he gave the reins to his conquering imagination; he indulgently
+allowed it to deploy its masses from Cadiz to Cazan, and to cover the
+whole of Europe. In the next moment his fancy rioted in the pleasure of
+being at Moscow. That city was eight hundred leagues from him, and
+already he was collecting information with respect to it, as if he was
+on the eve of occupying it. A French physician having recently arrived
+from that capital, he sent for, and interrogated him as to the diseases
+there prevalent; he even went back to the plague which had formerly
+desolated it; he was anxious to learn its origin, progress, and
+termination. The answers of this physician were so satisfactory, that
+he immediately attached him to his service.
+
+Fully impressed, however, with a sense of the peril in which he was
+about to embark, he sought to surround himself with all his friends.
+Even Talleyrand was recalled; he was to have been sent to Warsaw, but
+the jealousy of a rival and an intrigue again involved him in disgrace;
+Napoleon, deluded by a calumny, adroitly circulated, believed that he
+had been betrayed by him. His anger was extreme; its expression
+terrible. Savary made vain efforts to undeceive him, which were
+prolonged up to the epoch of our entry into Wilna; there that minister
+again sent a letter of Talleyrand to the emperor; it depicted the
+influence of Turkey and Sweden on the Russian war, and made an offer of
+employing his most zealous efforts in negotiating with those two powers.
+
+But Napoleon only replied to it by an exclamation of contempt: "Does
+that man believe himself to be so necessary? Does he expect to teach
+me?" He then compelled his secretary to send that letter to the very
+minister who stood most in dread of Talleyrand's influence.
+
+It would not be correct to say, that all those about Napoleon beheld the
+war with an anxious eye. Inside the palace, as well as without it, many
+military men were found who entered with ardour into the policy of their
+chief. The greater part agreed as to the possibility of the conquest of
+Russia, either because their hopes discerned in it a means of acquiring
+something, according to their position, from the lowest distinction up
+to a throne; or that they suffered themselves to participate in the
+enthusiasm of the Poles; or that the expedition, if conducted with
+prudence, might fairly look to success; or, to sum up all, because they
+conceived every thing possible to Napoleon.
+
+Among the ministers of the emperor, several disapproved it; the greater
+number preserved silence: one alone was accused of flattery, and that
+without any ground. It is true he was heard to repeat, "That the emperor
+was not sufficiently great; that it was necessary for him to become
+greater still, in order to be able to stop." But that minister was, in
+reality, what so many courtiers wished to appear; he had a real and
+absolute faith in the genius and fortune of his sovereign.
+
+In other respects, it is wrong to impute to his counsels a large portion
+of our misfortunes. Napoleon was not a man to be influenced. So soon as
+his object was marked out, and he had made advances towards its
+acquisition, he admitted of no farther contradiction. He then appeared
+as if he would hear nothing but what flattered his determination; he
+repelled with ill-humour, and even with apparent incredulity, all
+disagreeable intelligence, as if he feared to be shaken by it. This mode
+of acting changed its name according to his fortune; when fortunate, it
+was called force of character; when unfortunate, it was designated as
+infatuation.
+
+The knowledge of such a disposition induced some subalterns to make
+false reports to him. Even a minister himself felt occasionally
+compelled to maintain a dangerous silence. The former inflated his hopes
+of success, in order to imitate the proud confidence of their chief, and
+in order, by their countenance, to stamp upon his mind the impression of
+a happy omen; the second sometimes declined communicating bad news, in
+order, as he said, to avoid the harsh rebuffs which he had then to
+encounter.
+
+But this fear, which did not restrain Caulaincourt and several others,
+had as little influence upon Duroc, Daru, Lobau, Rapp, Lauriston, and
+sometimes even Berthier. These ministers and generals, each in his
+sphere, did not spare the emperor when the truth was to be told. If it
+so happened that he was enraged by it, Duroc, without yielding, assumed
+an air of indifference; Lobau resisted with roughness; Berthier sighed,
+and retired with tears in his eyes; Caulaincourt and Daru, the one
+turning pale, the other reddening with anger, repelled the vehement
+contradictions of the emperor; the first with impetuous obstinacy, and
+the second with short and dry determination.
+
+It should, however, be added here, that these warm discussions were
+never productive of bad consequences; good temper was restored
+immediately after, apparently without leaving any other impression than
+redoubled esteem on the part of Napoleon, for the noble frankness which
+they had displayed.
+
+I have entered into these details, because they are either not known, or
+imperfectly known; because Napoleon in his closet was quite different
+from the emperor in public; and because this portion of the palace has
+hitherto remained secret; for, in that new and serious court, there was
+little conversation: all were rigorously classed, so that one _salon_
+knew not what passed in another; finally, because it is difficult to
+comprehend the great events of history, without a perfect knowledge of
+the character and manners of the principal personages.
+
+Meantime a famine threatened France. The universal panic quickly
+aggravated the evil, by the precautions which it suggested. Avarice,
+always prompt in seizing the means of enriching itself, monopolized the
+corn while at a low price, and waited till hunger should repurchase it
+at an exorbitant rate. The alarm then became general. Napoleon was
+compelled to suspend his departure; he impatiently urged his council;
+but the steps to be taken were important, his presence necessary; and
+that war, in which the loss of every hour was irreparable, was delayed
+for two months longer.
+
+The emperor did not give way to this obstacle; the delay, besides, gave
+the new harvests of the Russians time to grow. These would supply his
+cavalry; his army would require fewer transports in its train: its
+progress being lightened, would be more rapid; he would sooner reach the
+enemy; and this great expedition, like so many others, would be
+terminated by a battle.
+
+Such were his anticipations; for, without deceiving himself as to his
+good fortune, he reckoned on its influence upon others; it entered into
+his estimate of his forces. It was for this reason that he always
+pushed it forward where other things failed, making up by that whatever
+was deficient in his means, without fearing to wear it out by constant
+use, in the conviction that his enemies would place even more faith in
+it than himself. However, it will be seen in the sequel of this
+expedition, that he placed too much reliance on its power, and that
+Alexander was able to evade it.
+
+Such was Napoleon! Superior to the passions of men by his native
+greatness, and also by the circumstance of being controlled by a still
+greater passion! for when, indeed, are these masters of the world ever
+entirely masters of themselves? Meantime blood was again about to flow;
+and thus, in their great career, the founders of empires press forward
+to their object, like Fate, whose ministers they seem, (and whose march
+neither wars nor earthquakes, nor all the scourges which Providence
+permits, ever arrest,) without deigning to make the utility of their
+purposes comprehensible to their victims.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The time for deliberation had passed, and that for action at last
+arrived. On the 9th of May, 1812, Napoleon, hitherto always triumphant,
+quitted a palace which he was destined never again to enter victorious.
+
+From Paris to Dresden his march was a continued triumph. The east of
+France, which he first traversed, was a part of the empire entirely
+devoted to him; very different from the west and the south, she was only
+acquainted with him by means of benefits and victories. Numerous and
+brilliant armies, attracted by the fertility of Germany, and which
+imagined themselves marching to a prompt and certain glory, proudly
+traversed those countries, scattering their money among them, and
+consuming their productions. War, in that quarter, always bore the
+semblance of justice.
+
+At a later period, when our victorious bulletins reached them, the
+imagination, astonished to see itself surpassed by the reality, caught
+fire; enthusiasm possessed these people, as in the times of Austerlitz
+and Jena; numerous groups collected round the couriers, whose tidings
+were listened to with avidity; and the inhabitants, in a transport of
+joy, never separated without exclamations of "Long live the emperor!
+Long live our brave army!"
+
+It is, besides, well known, that this portion of France has been warlike
+from time immemorial. It is frontier ground; its inhabitants are nursed
+amidst the din of arms; and arms are, consequently, held there in
+honour. It was the common conversation in that quarter, that this war
+would liberate Poland, so much attached to France; that the barbarians
+of Asia, with whom Europe was threatened, would be driven back into
+their native deserts; that Napoleon would once more return, loaded with
+all the fruits of victory. Would not the eastern departments profit most
+by that event? Up to that time, were they not indebted for their wealth
+to war, which caused all the commerce of France with Europe to pass
+through their hands? Blockaded, in fact, in every other quarter, the
+empire only breathed and received its supplies through its eastern
+provinces.
+
+For ten years, their roads had been covered with travellers of all
+ranks, hastening to admire the great nation, its daily embellished
+metropolis, the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of all the arts, and of all ages,
+which victory had there assembled; and especially that extraordinary man
+who seemed destined to carry the national glory beyond every degree of
+glory hitherto known. Gratified in their interests, flattered in their
+vanity, the people of the east of France owed every thing to victory.
+Neither were they ungrateful; they followed the emperor with their
+warmest wishes: on all sides were acclamations and triumphal arches; on
+all sides the same intensity of devotion.
+
+In Germany, there was less affection, but, perhaps, more homage.
+Conquered and subjected, the Germans, either as soothing to their
+vanity, or from habitual inclination for the marvellous, were tempted to
+consider Napoleon as a supernatural being. Astonished, beside
+themselves, and carried along by the universal impulse, these worthy
+people exerted themselves to _be_, sincerely, all that it was requisite
+to _seem_.
+
+They hurried forward to line both sides of the long road by which the
+emperor passed. Their princes quitted their capitals, and thronged the
+towns, where the great arbiter of their destiny was to pass a few short
+moments of his journey. The empress, and a numerous court, followed
+Napoleon; he proceeded to confront the terrible risks of a distant and
+perilous war, as if he were returning victorious and triumphant. This
+was not the mode in which he was formerly accustomed to meet a conflict.
+
+He had expressed a wish that the Emperor of Austria, several kings, and
+a crowd of princes, should meet him at Dresden on his way: his desire
+was fulfilled; all thronged to meet him--some led by hope, others
+prompted by fear: for himself, his motives were to make sure of his
+power, to exhibit and to enjoy it.
+
+In this approximation with the ancient house of Austria, his ambition
+delighted in exhibiting to Germany a family meeting. He imagined that
+so brilliant an assemblage of sovereigns would advantageously contrast
+with the isolated state of the Russian monarch; and that he would
+probably be alarmed by so general a desertion. In fact, this assembly of
+coalesced monarchs seemed to announce that this war with Russia was
+European.
+
+He was then in the centre of Germany, exhibiting to it his consort, the
+daughter of its emperors, sitting by his side. Whole nations had quitted
+their homes to throng his path; rich and poor, nobles and plebeians,
+friends and enemies, all hurried to the scene. Their curious and anxious
+groups were seen crowding together in the streets, the roads, and the
+public places; they passed whole days and nights with their eyes fixed
+on the door and windows of his palace. It was not his crown, his rank,
+the luxury of his court, but him only, on whom they desired to feast
+their eyes; it was a memento of his features which they were anxious to
+obtain: they wished to be able to tell their less fortunate countrymen
+and posterity, that they had seen Napoleon.
+
+On the stage, poets so far degraded themselves as to make him a
+divinity. It was in this manner that whole nations became his
+flatterers.
+
+There was, in fact, little difference between kings and people in the
+homage of admiration; no one waited for the example of imitation; the
+agreement was unanimous. Nevertheless, the inward sentiments were very
+different.
+
+At this important interview, we were attentive in observing the
+different degrees of zeal which these princes exhibited, and the various
+shades of our chieftain's pride. We had hoped that his prudence, or the
+worn-out feeling of displaying his power, would prevent him from abusing
+it; but was it to be expected that he, who, while yet an inferior, never
+spoke, even to his superiors, but in the language of command, now that
+he was the conqueror and master of them all, could submit to tedious and
+minute details of ceremony? He, however, displayed moderation, and even
+tried to make himself agreeable; but it was obviously an effort, and not
+without allowing the fatigue it gave him to be perceived. Among these
+princes, he had rather the air of receiving them, than of being by them
+received.
+
+As to them, it might be said, that, knowing his pride, and become
+hopeless of subduing him, except by means of himself, these monarchs and
+their people only humbled themselves before him, in order to aggravate
+the disproportion of his elevation, and by so doing, to dazzle his moral
+vision. In their assemblies, their attitude, their words, even the tone
+of their voice, attested his ascendancy over them. All were assembled
+there for his sake alone! They scarcely hazarded an objection, so
+impressed were they with the full conviction of that superiority, of
+which he was himself too well aware. A feudal lord could not have
+exacted more of his vassal chiefs.
+
+His levee presented a still more remarkable spectacle! Sovereign princes
+came to it in order to wait for an audience of the conqueror of Europe.
+They were so intermingled with his officers, that the latter were
+frequently warning each other to take care, and not to crowd upon these
+new courtiers, who were confounded with them. It was thus that the
+presence of Napoleon made distinctions disappear; he was as much their
+chief as ours. This common dependency appeared to put all around him on
+a level. It is probable that, even then, the ill-disguised military
+pride of several French generals gave offence to these princes, with
+whom they conceived themselves raised to an equality; and, in fact,
+whatever may be the noble blood and rank of the vanquished, his victor
+becomes his equal.
+
+The more prudent among us, however, began to be alarmed; they said, but
+in an under-tone, that a man must fancy himself more than human to
+denaturalize and displace every thing in this manner, without fearing to
+involve himself in the universal confusion. They saw these monarchs
+quitting the palace of Napoleon with their eyes inflamed, and their
+bosoms swoln with the most poignant resentment. They pictured them,
+during the night, when alone with their ministers, giving vent to the
+heartfelt chagrin by which they were devoured. Every thing was
+calculated to render their suffering more acute! How importunate was the
+crowd which it was necessary to pass through, in order to reach the gate
+of their proud master, while their own remained deserted! Indeed, all
+things, even their own people, appeared to betray them. While boasting
+of his good fortune, was it not evident that he was insulting their
+misfortunes? They had, therefore, come to Dresden in order to swell the
+pomp of Napoleon's triumph--for it was over them that he thus triumphed:
+each cry of admiration offered to him was a cry of reproach to them; his
+grandeur was their humiliation, his victory their defeat.
+
+Doubtless they, in this manner, gave vent to their bitter feelings; and
+hatred, day after day, sank more deeply into their hearts. One prince
+was first observed to withdraw precipitately from this painful position.
+The Empress of Austria, whose ancestors General Buonaparte had
+dispossessed in Italy, made herself remarked by her aversion, which she
+vainly endeavoured to disguise; it escaped from her by an involuntary
+impulse, which Napoleon instantly detected, and subdued by a smile: but
+she employed her understanding and attraction in gently winning hearts
+to her opinion, in order to sow them afterwards with the seeds of her
+hatred.
+
+The Empress of France unintentionally aggravated this fatal disposition.
+She was observed to eclipse her mother-in-law by the superior
+magnificence of her costume: if Napoleon required more reserve, she
+resisted, and even wept, till the emperor, either through affection,
+fatigue, or absence of mind, was induced to give way. It is also
+asserted that notwithstanding her origin, remarks calculated to wound
+German pride escaped that princess, in extravagant comparisons between
+her native and her adopted country. Napoleon rebuked her for this, but
+gently; he was pleased with a patriotism which he had himself inspired;
+and he fancied he repaired her imprudent language by the munificence of
+his presents.
+
+This assemblage, therefore, could not fail of irritating a variety of
+feelings: the vanity of many was wounded by the collision. Napoleon,
+however, having exerted himself to please, thought that he had given
+general satisfaction: while waiting at Dresden the result of the marches
+of his army, the numerous columns of which were still traversing the
+territories of his allies, he more especially occupied himself with his
+political arrangements.
+
+General Lauriston, ambassador from France at Petersburgh, received
+orders to apply for the Russian emperor's permission to proceed to
+Wilna, in order to communicate definitive proposals to him. General
+Narbonne, aid-de-camp of Napoleon, departed for the imperial
+head-quarters of Alexander, in order to assure that prince of the
+pacific intentions of France, and to invite him to Dresden. The
+archbishop of Malines was despatched in order to direct the impulses of
+Polish patriotism. The King of Saxony made up his mind to the loss of
+the grand duchy; but he was flattered with the hope of a more
+substantial indemnity.
+
+Meantime, ever since the first days of meeting, surprise was expressed
+at the absence of the King of Prussia from the imperial court; but it
+was soon understood that he was prohibited from coming. This prince was
+the more alarmed in proportion as he had less deserved such treatment.
+His presence would have been embarrassing. Nevertheless, encouraged by
+Narbonne, he resolved on making his appearance. When his arrival was
+announced to the emperor, the latter grew angry, and at first refused to
+see him:--"What did this prince want of him? Was not the constant
+importunity of his letters, and his continual solicitations sufficient?
+Why did he come again to persecute him with his presence? What need had
+he of him?" But Duroc insisted; he reminded Napoleon of the want that he
+would experience of Prussia, in a war with Russia; and the doors of the
+emperor were opened to the monarch. He was received with the respect due
+to his superior rank. His renewed assurances of fidelity, of which he
+gave numerous proofs, were accepted.
+
+It was reported at that time, that this monarch was led to expect the
+possession of the Russo-German provinces, which his troops were to be
+commissioned to invade. It is even affirmed that, after their conquest,
+he demanded their investiture from Napoleon. It has been added, but in
+vague terms, that Napoleon allowed the Prince-Royal of Prussia to aspire
+to the hand of one of his nieces. This was to be the remuneration for
+the services which Prussia was to render him in this new war. He
+promised, so he expressed himself, that he would go and sound her. It
+was thus that Frederick, by becoming the relation of Napoleon, would be
+enabled to preserve his diminished power; but proofs are wanting, to
+show that the idea of this marriage seduced the King of Prussia, as the
+hope of a similar alliance had seduced the Prince of Spain.
+
+Such at that time was the submission of sovereigns to the power of
+Napoleon. It offers a striking example of the empire of necessity over
+all persons, and shows to what lengths the prospect of gain and the fear
+of loss will lead princes as well as private persons.
+
+Meanwhile, Napoleon still waited the result of the negotiations of
+Lauriston and of Narbonne. He hoped to vanquish Alexander by the mere
+aspect of his united army, and, above all, by the menacing splendour of
+his residence at Dresden. He himself expressed this opinion, when, some
+days after, at Posen, he said to General Dessolles, "The assemblage at
+Dresden not having persuaded Alexander to make peace, it was now solely
+to be expected from war."
+
+On that day he talked of nothing but his former victories. It seemed as
+if, doubtful of the future, he recurred to the past, and that he found
+it necessary to arm himself with all his most glorious recollections, in
+order to confront a peril of so great a magnitude. In fact, then, as
+since, he felt the necessity of deluding himself with the alleged
+weakness of his rival's character. As the period of so great an invasion
+approached, he hesitated in considering it as certain; for he no longer
+possessed the consciousness of his infallibility, nor that warlike
+assurance which the fire and energy of youth impart, nor that feeling of
+success which makes it certain.
+
+In other respects, these parleys were not only attempts to preserve
+peace, but an additional _ruse de guerre_. By them he hoped to render
+the Russians either sufficiently negligent, to let themselves be
+surprised, dispersed, or, if united, sufficiently presumptuous to
+venture to wait his approach. In either case, the war would be finished
+by a _coup-de-main_, or by a victory. But Lauriston was not received.
+Narbonne, when he returned, stated, "that he had found the Russians in a
+state of mind as remote from dejection as from boasting. From their
+emperor's reply to him, it appeared that they preferred war to a
+dishonourable peace; that they would take care not to expose themselves
+to the hazards of a battle against too formidable an enemy; and that, in
+short, they were resolved on making every sacrifice, in order to spin
+out the war, and to baffle Napoleon."
+
+This answer, which reached the emperor in the midst of the greatest
+display of his glory, was treated with contempt. To say the truth, I
+must add, that a great Russian nobleman had contributed to deceive him:
+either from mistaken views, or from artifice, this Muscovite had
+persuaded him, that his own sovereign would recede at the sight of
+difficulties, and be easily discouraged by reverses. Unfortunately, the
+remembrance of Alexander's obsequiousness to him at Tilsit and at Erfurt
+confirmed the French emperor in that fallacious opinion.
+
+He remained till the 29th of May at Dresden, proud of the homage which
+he knew how to appreciate, exhibiting to Europe princes and kings,
+sprung from the most ancient families of Germany, forming a numerous
+court round a prince deriving all distinction from himself. He appeared
+to take a pleasure in multiplying the chances of the great game of
+fortune, as if to encircle with them, and render less extraordinary,
+that which placed him on the throne, and thus to accustom others as well
+as himself to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+At length, impatient to conquer the Russians, and escape from the homage
+of the Germans, Napoleon quitted Dresden. He only remained at Posen long
+enough to satisfy the Poles. He neglected Warsaw, whither the war did
+not imperiously call him, and where he would have again been involved in
+politics. He stopped at Thorn, in order to inspect his fortifications,
+his magazines, and his troops. There the complaints of the Poles, whom
+our allies pillaged without mercy, and insulted, reached him. Napoleon
+addressed severe reproaches, and even threats, to the King of
+Westphalia: but it is well known that these were thrown away; that their
+effect was lost in the midst of too rapid a movement; that, besides, his
+fits of anger, like all other fits, were followed by exhaustion; that
+then, with the return of his natural good humour, he regretted, and
+frequently tried, to soften the pain he had occasioned; that, finally,
+he might reproach himself as the cause of the disorders which provoked
+him; for, from the Oder to the Vistula, and even to the Niemen, if
+provisions were abundant and properly stationed, the less portable
+foraging supplies were deficient. Our cavalry were already forced to cut
+the green rye, and to strip the houses of their thatch, in order to feed
+their horses. It is true, that all did not stop at that; but when one
+disorder is authorized, how can others be forbidden?
+
+The evil augmented on the other side of the Niemen. The emperor had
+calculated upon a multitude of light cars and heavy waggons, each
+destined to carry several thousand pounds weight, through a sandy
+region, which carts, with no greater weight than some quintals, with
+difficulty traversed. These conveyances were organized in battalions and
+squadrons. Each battalion of light cars, called _comtoises_, consisted
+of six hundred, and might carry six thousand quintals of flour. The
+battalion of heavy vehicles, drawn by oxen, carried four thousand eight
+hundred quintals. There were besides twenty-six squadrons of waggons,
+loaded with military equipages; a great quantity of waggons with tools
+of all kinds, as well as thousands of artillery and hospital waggons,
+one siege and six bridge equipages.
+
+The provision-waggons were to take in their loading at the magazines
+established on the Vistula. When the army passed that river, it was
+ordered to provide itself, without halting, with provisions for
+twenty-five days, but not to use them till they were beyond the Niemen.
+In conclusion, the greater part of these means of transport failed,
+either because the organization of soldiers, to act as conductors of
+military convoys, was essentially vicious, the motives of honour and
+ambition not being called into action to maintain proper discipline; or
+chiefly because these vehicles were too heavy for the soil, the
+distances too considerable, and the privations and fatigues too great;
+certain it is that the greater number of them scarcely reached the
+Vistula.
+
+The army, therefore, provisioned itself on its match. The country being
+fertile, waggons, cattle, and provisions of all kinds, were swept off;
+every thing was taken, even to such of the inhabitants as were necessary
+to conduct these convoys. Some days after, at the Niemen, the
+embarrassment of the passage, and the celerity of the first hostile
+marches, caused all the fruits of these requisitions to be abandoned
+with an indifference only equalled by the violence with which they had
+been seized.
+
+The importance of the object, however, was such as might excuse the
+irregularity of these proceedings. That object was to surprise the
+Russian army, either collected or dispersed; in short, to make a
+_coup-de-main_ with 400,000 men. War, the worst of all scourges, would
+thus have been shortened in its duration. Our long and heavy
+baggage-waggons would have encumbered our march. It was much more
+convenient to live on the supplies of the country, as we should be able
+to indemnify the loss afterwards. But superfluous wrong was committed as
+well as necessary wrong, for who can stop midway in the commission of
+evil? What chief could be responsible for the crowd of officers and
+soldiers who were scattered through the country in order to collect its
+resources? To whom were complaints to be addressed? Who was to punish?
+All was done in the course of a rapid march; there was neither time to
+try, nor even to find out the guilty. Between the affair of the day
+before, and that of the following day, how many others had sprung up!
+for at that time the business of a month was crowded into a single day.
+
+Moreover, some of the leaders set the example; there was a positive
+emulation in evil. In that respect, many of our allies surpassed the
+French. We were their teachers in every thing; but in copying our
+qualities, they caricatured our defects. Their gross and brutal plunder
+was perfectly revolting.
+
+But the emperor was desirous to have order kept in the middle of
+disorder. Pressed by the accusing reproaches of two allied nations, two
+names were more especially distinguished by his indignation. In his
+letters are found these words; "I have suspended generals ---- and ----. I
+have suppressed the brigade ----; I have cashiered it in the face of the
+army, that is to say, of Europe.--I have written to ----, informing him
+that he ran great risks of being broke, if he did not take care." Some
+days after he met this ----, at the head of his troops, and still
+indignant, he called to him, "You disgrace yourself; you set the example
+of plunder. Be silent, or go back to your father; I do not want your
+services any further."
+
+From Thorn, Napoleon descended the Vistula. Graudentz belonged to
+Prussia; he avoided passing it; but as that fortress was important to
+the safety of the army, an officer of artillery and some fireworkers
+were sent thither, with the ostensible motive of making cartridges; the
+real motive remained a secret; the Prussian garrison, however, was
+numerous, and stood on its guard, and the emperor, who had proceeded
+onward, thought no more of it.
+
+It was at Marienburg that the emperor again met Davoust. That marshal,
+whether through pride, natural or acquired, was not well pleased to
+recognize as his leader any other individual than the master of Europe.
+His character, besides, was despotic, obstinate, and tenacious; and as
+little inclined to yield to circumstances as to men. In 1809, Berthier
+was his commander for some days, during which Davoust gained a battle,
+and saved the army, by disobeying him. Hence arose a terrible hatred
+between them: during the peace it augmented, but secretly; for they
+lived at a wide distance from each other, Berthier at Paris, Davoust at
+Hamburgh; but this Russian war again brought them together.
+
+Berthier was getting enfeebled. Ever since 1805, war had become
+completely odious to him. His talent especially lay in his activity and
+his memory. He could receive and transmit, at all hours of the day and
+night, the most multiplied intelligence and orders; but on this occasion
+he had conceived himself entitled to give orders himself. These orders
+displeased Davoust. Their first interview was a scene of violent
+altercation; it occurred at Marienburg, where the emperor had just
+arrived, and in his presence.
+
+Davoust expressed himself harshly, and even went so far as to accuse
+Berthier of incapacity or treachery. They both threatened each other,
+and when Berthier was gone, Napoleon, influenced by the naturally
+suspicious character of the marshal, exclaimed, "It sometimes happens
+that I entertain doubts of the fidelity of my oldest companions in arms;
+but at such times my head turns round with chagrin, and I do my utmost
+to banish so heart-rending a suspicion."
+
+While Davoust was probably enjoying the dangerous pleasure of having
+humbled his enemy, the emperor proceeded to Dantzic, and Berthier, stung
+by resentment, followed him there. From that time, the zeal, the glory
+of Davoust, the exertions he had made for this new expedition, all that
+ought to have availed him, began to be looked upon unfavourably. The
+emperor had written to him "that as the war was about to be carried into
+a barren territory, where the enemy would destroy every thing, it was
+requisite to prepare for such a state of things, by providing every
+thing within ourselves:" Davoust had replied to this by an enumeration
+of his preparations--"He had 70,000 men, who were completely organized;
+they carried with them twenty-five days' provisions. Each company
+comprised swimmers, masons, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, armourers, and
+workmen of every class. They carried every thing they required with
+them; his army was like a colony; hand-mills followed. He had
+anticipated every want; all means of supplying them were ready."
+
+Such great exertions ought to have pleased; they, however, displeased;
+they were misrepresented. Insidious observations were overheard by the
+emperor. "This marshal," said they to him, "wishes to have it thought
+that he has foreseen, arranged, and executed every thing. Is the
+emperor, then, to be no more than a spectator of this expedition? Must
+the glory of it devolve on Davoust?"--"In fact," exclaimed the emperor,
+"one would think it was he that commanded the army."
+
+They even went further, and awakened some of his dormant fears: "Was it
+not Davoust who, after the victory of Jena, drew the emperor into
+Poland? Is it not he who is now anxious for this new Polish war?--He who
+already possesses such large property in that country, whose accurate
+and severe probity has won over the Poles, and who is suspected of
+aspiring to their throne?"
+
+It is not easy to say whether the pride of Napoleon was shocked by
+seeing that of his lieutenants encroaching so much on his own; or
+whether, in the course of this irregular war, he felt himself thwarted
+more and more by the methodical genius of Davoust; certain it is, the
+unfavourable impression against him struck deeper; it was productive of
+fatal consequences; it removed from his confidence a bold, tenacious and
+prudent warrior, and favoured his predilection for Murat, whose rashness
+was much more flattering to his ambitious hopes. In other respects,
+these dissensions between his great officers did not displease Napoleon;
+they gave him information; their harmony would have made him uneasy.
+
+From Dantzic the emperor proceeded, on the 12th of June, to Koenigsberg.
+At that place ended the inspection of his immense magazines, and of the
+second resting-point and pivot of his line of operations. Immense
+quantities of provisions, adequate to the immensity of the undertaking,
+were there accumulated. No detail had been neglected. The active and
+impassioned genius of Napoleon was then entirely directed towards that
+most important and difficult department of his expedition. In that he
+was profuse of exhortations, orders, and even money, of which his
+letters are a proof. His days were occupied in dictating instructions on
+that subject; at night he frequently rose to repeat them again. One
+general received, on a single day, six despatches from him, all
+distinguished by the same solicitude.
+
+In one, these words were remarked, "For masses like these, if
+precautions be not taken, the grain of no country can suffice." In
+another, "It will be requisite for all the provision-waggons to be
+loaded with flour, bread, rice, vegetables, and brandy, besides what is
+necessary for the hospital service. The result of all my movements will
+assemble 400,000 men on a single point. There will be nothing then to
+expect from the country, and it will be necessary to have every thing
+within ourselves." But, on the one hand, the means of transport were
+badly calculated; and, on the other, he allowed himself to be hurried on
+as soon as he was put in motion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+From Koenigsberg to Gumbinnen, he reviewed several of his armies;
+conversing with the soldiers in a gay, frank, and often abrupt style;
+well aware that, with such unsophisticated and hardy characters,
+abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness
+as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers
+bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than
+weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign
+language, which they do not understand, and the accents of which strike
+them as ridiculous.
+
+According to his usual custom, he promenaded before the ranks. Knowing
+in which of his wars each regiment had been with him, at the sight of
+the oldest soldiers he occasionally halted; to one he recalled the
+battle of the Pyramids; another he reminded of Marengo, Austerlitz,
+Jena, or Friedland, and always by a single word, accompanied by a
+familiar caress. The veteran who believed himself personally recognized
+by his emperor, rose in consequence in the estimation of his junior
+companions, who regarded him as an object of envy.
+
+Napoleon, in this manner, continued his inspection; he overlooked not
+even the youngest soldiers: it seemed as if every thing which concerned
+them was to him matter of deep interest; their least wants seemed known
+to him. He interrogated them: Did their captains take care of them? had
+they received their pay? were they in want of any requisite? he wished
+to see their knapsacks.
+
+At length he stopped at the centre of the regiment; there being apprised
+of the places that were vacant, he required aloud the names of the most
+meritorious in the ranks; he called those who were so designated before
+him, and questioned them. How many years' service? how many campaigns?
+what wounds? what exploits? He then appointed them officers, and caused
+them to be immediately installed, himself prescribing the forms;--all
+particularities which delighted the soldier! They told each other how
+this great emperor, the judge of nations in the mass, occupied himself
+with them in their minutest details; that they composed his oldest and
+his real family! Thus it was that he instilled into them the love of
+war, of glory and himself.
+
+The army, meantime, marched from the Vistula to the Niemen. This last
+river, from Grodno as far as Kowno, runs parallel with the Vistula. The
+river Pregel, which unites the two, was loaded with provisions: 220,000
+men repaired thither from four different points; there they found bread
+and some foraging provisions. These provisions ascended that river with
+them, as far as its direction would allow.
+
+When the army was obliged to quit the flotilla, its select corps took
+with them sufficient provisions to reach and cross the Niemen, to
+prepare for a victory, and to arrive at Wilna. There, the emperor
+calculated on the magazines of the inhabitants, on those of the enemy
+and on his own, which he had ordered to be brought from Dantzic, by the
+Frischhaff, the Pregel, the Deine, the canal Frederic, and the Vilia.
+
+We were upon the verge of the Russian frontier; from right to left, or
+from south to north, the army was disposed in the following manner, in
+front of the Niemen. In the first place, on the extreme right, and
+issuing from Gallicia, on Drogiczin, Prince Schwartzenberg and 34,000
+Austrians; on their left, coming from Warsaw, and marching on Bialystok
+and Grodno, the King of Westphalia, at the head of 79,200 Westphalians,
+Saxons, and Poles; by the side of them was the Viceroy of Italy, who had
+just effected the junction, near Marienpol and Pilony, of 79,500
+Bavarians, Italians and French; next, the emperor, with 220,000 men,
+commanded by the King of Naples, the Prince of Eckmuehl, the Dukes of
+Dantzic, Istria, Reggio, and Elchingen. They advanced from Thorn,
+Marienwerder, and Elbing, and, on the 23d of June, had assembled in a
+single mass near Nogarisky, a league above Kowno. Finally, in front of
+Tilsit, was Macdonald, and 32,500 Prussians, Bavarians, and Poles,
+composing the extreme left of the grand army.
+
+Every thing was now ready. From the banks of the Guadalquivir, and the
+shores of the Calabrian sea, to the Vistula, were assembled 617,000 men,
+of whom 480,000 were already present; one siege and six bridge
+equipages, thousands of provision-waggons, innumerable herds of oxen,
+1372 pieces of cannon, and thousands of artillery and hospital-waggons,
+had been directed, assembled, and stationed at a short distance from the
+Russian frontier river. The greatest part of the provision-waggons were
+alone behind.
+
+Sixty thousand Austrians, Prussians, and Spaniards, were preparing to
+shed their blood for the conqueror of Wagram, of Jena, and of Madrid;
+for the man who had four times beaten down the power of Austria, who had
+humbled Prussia, and invaded Spain. And yet all were faithful to him.
+When it was considered that one-third of the army of Napoleon was either
+foreign to him or hostile, one hardly knew at which most to be
+astonished,--the audacity of one party, or the resignation of the other.
+It was in this manner that Rome made her conquests contribute to her
+future means for conquering.
+
+As to us Frenchmen, he found us all full of ardour. Habit, curiosity,
+and the pleasure of exhibiting themselves in the character of masters in
+new countries, actuated the soldiers; vanity was the great stimulant of
+the younger ones, who thirsted to acquire some glory which they might
+recount, with the attractive quackery peculiar to soldiers; these
+inflated and pompous narratives of their exploits being moreover
+indispensable to their relaxation when no longer under arms. To this
+must certainly be added, the hope of plunder; for the exacting ambition
+of Napoleon had as often disgusted his soldiers, as the disorders of the
+latter tarnished his glory. A compromise was necessary: ever since 1805,
+there was a sort of mutual understanding, on his part to wink at their
+plunder--on theirs, to suffer his ambition.
+
+This plunder, however, or rather, this marauding system, was generally
+confined to provisions, which, in default of supplies, were exacted of
+the inhabitants, but often too extravagantly. The most culpable
+plunderers were the stragglers, who are always numerous in frequent
+forced marches. These disorders, indeed, were never tolerated. In order
+to repress them, Napoleon left _gendarmes_ and flying columns on the
+track of the army; and when these stragglers subsequently rejoined their
+corps, their knapsacks were examined by their officers; or, as was the
+case at Austerlitz, by their comrades; and strict justice was then
+executed among themselves.
+
+The last levies were certainly too young and too feeble; but the army
+had still a stock of brave and experienced men, used to critical
+situations, and whom nothing could intimidate. They were recognizable at
+the first glance by their martial countenances, and by their
+conversation; they had no other past nor future but war; and they could
+talk of nothing else. Their officers were worthy of them, or at least
+were becoming so; for, in order to preserve the due authority of their
+rank over such men, it was necessary for them to have wounds to show,
+and to be able to appeal to their own exploits.
+
+Such was, at that period, the life of those men; all was action within
+its sphere, even to words. They often boasted too much, but even that
+had its advantage; for as they were incessantly put to the proof, it was
+then necessary for them to be what they wished to appear. Such
+especially is the character of the Poles; they boast in the first
+instance of being more than they have been, but not more than they are
+capable of being. Poland in fact is a nation of heroes! pawning their
+words for exploits beyond the truth, but subsequently redeeming them
+with honour, in order to verify what at first was neither true nor even
+probable.
+
+As to the old generals, some of them were no longer the hardy and simple
+warriors of the republic; honours, hard service, age, and the emperor
+particularly, had contributed to soften many of them down. Napoleon
+compelled them to adopt a luxurious style of living by his example and
+his orders; according to him, it was a means of influencing the
+multitude. It might be also, that such habits prevented them from
+accumulating property, which might have made them independent; for,
+being himself the source of riches, he was glad to to keep up the
+necessity of repairing to it, and in this manner to bring them back
+within his influence. He had, therefore, pushed his generals into a
+circle from which it was difficult to escape; forcing them to pass
+incessantly from want to prodigality, and from prodigality to want,
+which he alone was able to relieve.
+
+Several had nothing but their appointments, which accustomed them to an
+ease of living with which they could no longer dispense. If he made them
+grants of land, it was out of his conquests, which were exposed to
+insecurity by war, and which war only could preserve.
+
+But in order to retain them in dependence, glory, which with some was a
+habit, with others a passion, with all a want, was the all-sufficient
+stimulant; and Napoleon, absolute master as he was of his own century,
+and even dictating to history, was the distributor of that glory. Though
+he fixed it at a high price, there was no rejecting his conditions; one
+would have felt ashamed to confess one's weakness in presence of his
+strength, and to stop short before a man whose ambition was still
+mounting, great as was the elevation which he had already attained.
+
+Besides, the renown of so great an expedition was full of charm; its
+success seemed certain; it promised to be nothing but a military march
+to Petersburgh and Moscow. With this last effort his wars would probably
+be terminated. It was a last opportunity, which one would repent to have
+let escape; one would be annoyed by the glorious narratives which others
+would give of it. The victory of to-day would make that of yesterday so
+old! And who would wish to grow old with it?
+
+And then, when war was kindled in all quarters, how was it possible to
+avoid it? The scenes of action were not indifferent; here Napoleon would
+command in person; elsewhere, though the cause might be the same, the
+contest would be carried on under a different commander. The renown
+shared with the latter would be foreign to Napoleon, on whom,
+nevertheless, depended glory, fortune, every thing; and it was well
+known, whether from preference or policy, that he was only profuse in
+his favours to those whose glory was identified with his glory; and that
+he rewarded less generously such exploits as were not his. It was
+requisite, therefore, to serve in the army which he commanded; hence the
+anxiety of young and old to fill its ranks. What chief had ever before
+so many means of power? There was no hope which he could not flatter,
+excite, or satiate.
+
+Finally, we loved him as the companion of our labours; as the chief who
+had conducted us to renown. The astonishment and admiration which he
+inspired flattered our self-love; for all these we shared in common with
+him.
+
+With respect to that youthful _elite_, which in those times of glory
+filled our camps, its enthusiasm was natural. Who is there amongst us
+who, in his early years, has not been fired by the perusal of the
+warlike exploits of the ancients and of our ancestors? Should we not
+have all desired, at that time, to be the heroes whose real or
+fictitious history we were perusing? During that state of enthusiasm, if
+those recollections had been suddenly realized before us; if our eyes,
+instead of reading, had witnessed the performance of those wonders; if
+we had felt their sphere of action within our reach, and if employments
+had been offered to us by the side of those brave paladins, whose
+adventurous lives and brilliant renown our young and vivid imaginations
+had so much envied; which of us would have hesitated? Who is there that
+would not have rushed forward, replete with joy and hope, and disdaining
+an odious and scandalous repose?
+
+Such were the rising generations of that day. At that period every one
+was free to be ambitious! a period of intoxication and prosperity,
+during which the French soldier, lord of all things by victory,
+considered himself greater than the nobleman, or even the sovereign,
+whose states he traversed! To him it appeared as if the kings of Europe
+only reigned by permission of his chief and of his arms.
+
+Thus it was that habit attracted some, disgust at camp service others;
+novelty prompted the greater part, and especially the thirst of glory:
+but all were stimulated by emulation. In fine, confidence in a chief who
+had been always fortunate, and hope of an early victory, which would
+terminate the war at a blow, and restore us to our firesides; for a war,
+to the entire army of Napoleon (as it was to some volunteers of the
+court of Louis XIV.) was often no more than a single battle, or a short
+and brilliant journey.
+
+We were now about to reach the extremity of Europe, where never European
+army had been before! We were about to erect new columns of Hercules.
+The grandeur of the enterprise; the agitation of co-operating Europe;
+the imposing spectacle of an army of 400,000 foot and 80,000 horse: so
+many warlike reports and martial clamours, kindled the minds of veterans
+themselves. It was impossible for the coldest to remain unmoved amid the
+general impulse; to escape from the universal attraction.
+
+In conclusion;--independent of all these motives for animation, the
+composition of the army was good, and every good army is desirous of
+war.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Napoleon, satisfied with his preparations, at length declared himself.
+"Soldiers," said he, "the second Polish war is commenced. The first was
+concluded at Friedland and at Tilsit. At Tilsit, Russia swore eternal
+alliance with France, and war with England. She now violates her oaths.
+She will give no explanation of her capricious conduct, until the French
+eagles have repassed the Rhine; by that means leaving our allies at her
+mercy. Russia is hurried away by fatality; her destiny must be
+accomplished. Does she then believe us to be degenerated? Are we not
+still the soldiers of Austerlitz? She places us between war and
+dishonour; the choice cannot be doubtful. Let us advance, then; let us
+pass the Niemen, and carry the war into her territory! The second Polish
+war will be as glorious for the French arms as the first; but the peace
+we shall this time conclude will carry with it its own guarantee; it
+will put an end to the fatal influence which Russia for the last fifty
+years has exercised over the affairs of Europe."
+
+This tone, which was at that time deemed prophetic, befitted an
+expedition of an almost fabulous character. It was quite necessary to
+invoke Destiny, and give credit to its empire, when the fate of so many
+human beings, and so much glory, were about to be consigned to its
+mercy.
+
+The Emperor Alexander also harangued his army, but in a very different
+manner. The difference between the two nations, the two sovereigns, and
+their reciprocal position, were remarked in these proclamations. In
+fact, the one which was defensive was unadorned and moderate; the other,
+offensive, was replete with audacity and the confidence of victory. The
+first sought support in religion, the other in fatality; the one in love
+of country, the other in love of glory; but neither of them referred to
+the liberation of Poland, which was the real cause of contention.
+
+We marched towards the east, with our left towards the north, and our
+right towards the south. On our right, Volhynia invoked us with all her
+prayers; in the centre, were Wilna, Minsk, and the whole of Lithuania,
+and Samogitia; in front of our left, Courland and Livonia awaited their
+fate in silence.
+
+The army of Alexander, composed of 300,000 men, kept those provinces in
+awe. From the banks of the Vistula, from Dresden, from Paris itself,
+Napoleon had critically surveyed it. He had ascertained that its centre,
+commanded by Barclay, extended from Wilna and Kowno to Lida and Grodno,
+resting its right on Vilia, and its left on the Niemen.
+
+That river protected the Russian front by the deviation which it makes
+from Grodno to Kowno; for it was only in the interval between these two
+cities, that the Niemen, running toward the north, intersected the line
+of our attack, and served as a frontier to Lithuania. Before reaching
+Grodno, and on quitting Kowno, it flows westward.
+
+To the south of Grodno was Bagration, with 65,000 men, in the direction
+of Wolkowisk; to the north of Kowno, at Rossiana and Keydani,
+Wittgenstein, with 26,000 men, substituted their bayonets for that
+natural frontier.
+
+At the same time, another army of 50,000 men, called the reserve, was
+assembled at Lutsk, in Volhynia, in order to keep that province in
+check, and observe Schwartzenberg; it was confided to Tormasof, till the
+treaty about to be signed at Bucharest permitted Tchitchakof, and the
+greater part of the army in Moldavia, to unite with it.
+
+Alexander, and, under him, his minister of war, Barclay de Tolly,
+directed all these forces. They were divided into three armies, called,
+the first western army, under Barclay; the second western army, under
+Bagration; and the army of reserve, under Tormasof. Two other corps were
+forming; one at Mozyr, in the environs of Bobruisk; and the other at
+Riga and Duenabourg. The reserves were at Wilna and Swentziany. In
+conclusion, a vast entrenched camp was erected before Drissa, within an
+elbow of the Duena.
+
+The French emperor's opinion was, that this position behind the Niemen
+was neither offensive nor defensive, and that the Russian army was no
+better off for the purpose of effecting a retreat; that this army, being
+so much scattered over a line of sixty leagues, might be surprised and
+dispersed, as actually happened to it; that, with still more certainty,
+the left of Barclay, and the entire army of Bagration, being stationed
+at Lida and at Wolkowisk, in front of the marshes of the Berezina, which
+they covered, instead of being covered by them, might be thrown back on
+them and taken; or, at least, that an abrupt and direct attack on Kowno
+and Wilna would cut them off from their line of operation, indicated by
+Swentziany and the entrenched camp at Drissa.
+
+In fact, Doctorof and Bagration were already separated from that line;
+for, instead of remaining in mass with Alexander, in front of the roads
+leading to the Duena, to defend them and profit by them, they were
+stationed forty leagues to the right.
+
+For this reason it was that Napoleon separated his forces into five
+armies. While Schwartzenberg, advancing from Gallicia with his 30,000
+Austrians, (whose numbers he had orders to exaggerate,) would keep
+Tormasof in check, and draw the attention of Bagration towards the
+south; while the King of Westphalia, with his 80,000 men, would employ
+that general in front, towards Grodno, without pressing him too
+vehemently at first; and while the Viceroy of Italy, in the direction of
+Pilony, would be in readiness to interpose between the same Bagration
+and Barclay; in fine, while at the extreme left, Macdonald, debouching
+from Tilsit, would invade the north of Lithuania, and fall on the right
+of Wittgenstein; Napoleon himself, with his 200,000 men, was to
+precipitate himself on Kowno, on Wilna, and on his rival, and destroy
+him at the first shock.
+
+Should the Emperor of Russia give way, he would press him hard, and
+throw him back upon Drissa, and as far as the commencement of his line
+of operations; then, all at once, propelling his detachments to the
+right, he would surround Bagration, and the whole of the corps of the
+Russian left, which, by this rapid irruption, would be separated from
+their right.
+
+I will shortly sketch a brief and rapid summary of the history of our
+two wings, being anxious to return to the centre, and to be enabled
+uninterruptedly to exhibit the great scenes which were enacted there.
+Macdonald commanded the left wing; his invasion, supported by the
+Baltic, overcame the right wing of the Russians; it threatened Revel
+first, next Riga, and even Petersburgh. He soon reached Riga. The war
+became stationary under its walls; although of little importance, it was
+conducted by Macdonald with prudence, science, and glory, even in his
+retreat, to which he was neither compelled by the winter nor by the
+enemy, but solely by Napoleon's orders.
+
+With regard to his right wing, the emperor had counted on the support of
+Turkey, which failed him. He had inferred that the Russian army of
+Volhynia would follow the general movement of Alexander's retreat; but,
+on the contrary, Tormasof advanced upon our rear. The French army was
+thus uncovered, and menaced with being turned on those vast plains.
+Nature not supplying it in that quarter with any support, as she did on
+the left wing, it was necessarily compelled to rely entirely on itself.
+Forty thousand Saxons, Austrians, and Poles, remained there in
+observation.
+
+Tormasof was beaten; but another army, rendered available by the treaty
+of Bucharest, arrived and formed a junction with the remnant of the
+first. From that moment, the war upon that point became defensive. It
+was carried on feebly, as was to be expected, notwithstanding some
+Polish troops and a French general were left with the Austrian army.
+That general had been long and strenuously cried up for ability,
+although he had met with reverses, and his reputation was not
+undeserved.
+
+No decisive advantage was gained on either side. But the position of
+this corps, almost entirely Austrian, became more and more important, as
+the grand army retreated upon it. It will be seen whether Schwartzenberg
+deceived its confidence,--whether he left us to be surrounded on the
+Berezina,--and whether it be true, that he seemed on that occasion to
+aspire to no other character than that of an armed witness to the great
+dispute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Between these two wings, the grand army marched to the Niemen, in three
+separate masses. The king of Westphalia, with 80,000 men, moved upon
+Grodno; the viceroy of Italy, with 75,000 men, upon Pilony; Napoleon,
+with 220,000 men, upon Nogaraiski, a farm situated three leagues beyond
+Kowno. The 23d of June, before daylight, the imperial column reached the
+Niemen, but without seeing it. The borders of the great Prussian forest
+of Pilwisky, and the hills which line the river, concealed the great
+army, which was about to cross it.
+
+Napoleon, who had travelled in a carriage as far as that, mounted his
+horse at two o'clock in the morning. He reconnoitred the Russian river,
+without disguising himself, as has been falsely asserted, but under
+cover of the night crossing this frontier, which five months afterwards
+he was only enabled to repass under cover of the same obscurity. When he
+came up to the bank, his horse suddenly stumbled, and threw him on the
+sand. A voice exclaimed, "This is a bad omen; a Roman would recoil!" It
+is not known whether it was himself, or one of his retinue, who
+pronounced these words.
+
+His task of reconnoitring concluded, he gave orders that, at the close
+of the following day, three bridges should be thrown over the river,
+near the village of Poniemen; he then retired to his head-quarters,
+where he passed the whole day, sometimes in his tent, sometimes in a
+Polish house, listlessly reclined, in the midst of a breathless
+atmosphere, and a suffocating heat, vainly courting repose.
+
+On the return of night, he again made his approaches to the river. The
+first who crossed it were a few sappers in a small boat. They approached
+the Russian side with some degree of apprehension, but found no obstacle
+to oppose their landing. There they found peace; the war was entirely on
+their own side; all was tranquil on that foreign soil, which had been
+described to them as so menacing. A single officer of cossacks, however,
+on patrole, presented himself to their view. He was alone, and appeared
+to consider himself in full peace, and to be ignorant that the whole of
+Europe in arms was at hand. He inquired of the strangers who they
+were?--"Frenchmen!" they replied.--"What do you want?" rejoined the
+officer; "and wherefore do you come into Russia?"--A sapper briskly
+replied, "To make war upon you; to take Wilna; to deliver Poland."--The
+cossack then withdrew; he disappeared in the woods, into which three of
+our soldiers, giving vent to their ardour, and with a view to sound the
+forest, discharged their fire-arms.
+
+Thus it was, that the feeble report of three muskets, to which there was
+no reply, apprised us of the opening of a new campaign, and the
+commencement of a great invasion.
+
+Either from a feeling of prudence, or from presentiment, this first
+signal of war threw the emperor into a state of violent irritation.
+Three hundred voltigeurs immediately passed the river, in order to cover
+the erection of the bridges.
+
+The whole of the French columns then began to issue from the valleys and
+the forest. They advanced in silence to the river, under cover of thick
+darkness. It was necessary to touch them in order to recognize their
+presence. Fires, even to sparks, were forbidden; they slept with arms in
+their hands, as if in the presence of an enemy. The crops of green rye,
+moistened with a profuse dew, served as beds to the men, and provender
+to the horses.
+
+The night, its coolness preventing sleep, its obscurity prolonging the
+hours, and augmenting wants; finally, the dangers of the following day,
+every thing combined to give solemnity to this position. But the
+expectation of a great battle supported our spirits. The proclamation of
+Napoleon had just been read; the most remarkable passages of it were
+repeated in a whisper, and the genius of conquest kindled our
+imagination.
+
+Before us was the Russian frontier. Our ardent gaze already sought to
+invade the promised land of our glory athwart the shades of night. We
+seemed to hear the joyful acclamations of the Lithuanians, at the
+approach of their deliverers. We pictured to ourselves the banks of the
+river lined with their supplicating hands. Here, we were in want of
+every thing; there, every thing would be lavished upon us! The
+Lithuanians would hasten to supply our wants; we were about to be
+encircled by love and gratitude. What signified one unpleasant night?
+The day would shortly appear, and with it its warmth and all its
+illusions. The day did appear! and it revealed to us dry and desert
+sands, and dark and gloomy forests. Our eyes then reverted sadly upon
+ourselves, and we were again inspired by pride and hope, on observing
+the imposing spectacle of our united army.
+
+[Illustration: Passage of the Niemen]
+
+Three hundred yards from the river, on the most elevated height, the
+tent of the emperor was visible. Around it the hills, their slopes, and
+the subjacent valleys, were covered with men and horses. As soon as the
+earth exhibited to the sun those moving masses, clothed with glittering
+arms, the signal was given, and instantly the multitude began to defile
+off in three columns, towards the three bridges. They were observed to
+take a winding direction, as they descended the narrow plain which
+separated them from the Niemen, to approach it, to reach the three
+passages, to compress and prolong their columns, in order to traverse
+them, and at last reach that foreign soil, which they were about to
+devastate, and which they were soon destined to cover with their own
+enormous fragments.
+
+So great was their ardour, that two divisions of the advanced guard
+disputed for the honour of being the first to pass, and were near coming
+to blows; and some exertions were necessary to quiet them. Napoleon
+hastened to plant his foot on the Russian territory. He took this first
+step towards his ruin without hesitation. At first, he stationed
+himself near the bridge, encouraging the soldiers with his looks. The
+latter all saluted him with their accustomed acclamations. They
+appeared, indeed, more animated than he was; whether it was that he felt
+oppressed by the weight of so great an aggression, or that his enfeebled
+frame could not support the effect of the excessive heat, or that he was
+already intimidated by finding nothing to conquer.
+
+At length he became impatient; all at once he dashed across the country
+into the forest which girt the sides of the river. He put his horse to
+the extremity of his speed; he appeared on fire to come singly in
+contact with the enemy. He rode more than a league in the same
+direction, surrounded throughout by the same solitude; upon which he
+found it necessary to return in the vicinity of the bridges, whence he
+re-descended the river with his guard towards Kowno.
+
+Some thought they heard the distant report of cannon. As we marched, we
+endeavoured to distinguish on which side the battle was going on. But,
+with the exception of some troops of cossacks on that, as well as the
+ensuing days, the atmosphere alone displayed itself in the character of
+an enemy. In fact, the emperor had scarcely passed the river, when a
+rumbling sound began to agitate the air. In a short time the day became
+overcast, the wind rose, and brought with it the inauspicious mutterings
+of a thunder-storm. That menacing sky and unsheltered country filled us
+with melancholy impressions. There were even some amongst us, who,
+enthusiastic as they had lately been, were terrified at what they
+conceived to be a fatal presage. To them it appeared that those
+combustible vapours were collecting over our heads, and that they would
+descend upon the territory we approached, in order to prevent us from
+entering it.
+
+It is quite certain, that the storm in question was as great as the
+enterprise in which we were engaged. During several hours, its black and
+heavy masses accumulated and hung upon the whole army: from right to
+left, over a space of fifty leagues, it was completely threatened by its
+lightnings, and overwhelmed by its torrents: the roads and fields were
+inundated; the insupportable heat of the atmosphere was suddenly changed
+to a disagreeable chillness. Ten thousand horses perished on the march,
+and more especially in the bivouacs which followed. A large quantity of
+equipages remained abandoned on the sands; and great numbers of men
+subsequently died.
+
+A convent served to shelter the emperor against the first fury of the
+tempest. From hence he shortly departed for Kowno, where the greatest
+disorder prevailed. The claps of thunder were no longer noticed; those
+menacing reports, which still murmured over our heads, appeared
+forgotten. For, though this common phenomenon of the season might have
+shaken the firmness of some few minds, with the majority the time of
+omens had passed away. A scepticism, ingenious on the part of some,
+thoughtless or coarse on the part of others, earth-born passions and
+imperious wants, have diverted the souls of men from that heaven whence
+they are derived, and to which they should return. The army, therefore,
+recognized nothing but a natural and unseasonable accident in this
+disaster; and far from interpreting it as the voice of reprobation
+against so great an aggression, for which, moreover, it was not
+responsible, found in it nothing but a motive of indignation against
+fortune or the skies, which whether by chance, or otherwise, offered it
+so terrible a presage.
+
+That very day, a particular calamity was added to this general disaster.
+At Kowno, Napoleon was exasperated, because the bridge over the Vilia
+had been thrown down by the cossacks, and opposed the passage of
+Oudinot. He affected to despise it, like every thing else that opposed
+him, and ordered a squadron of his Polish guard to swim the river. These
+fine fellows threw themselves into it without hesitation. At first, they
+proceeded in good order, and when out of their depth redoubled their
+exertions. They soon reached the middle of the river by swimming. But
+there, the increased rapidity of the current broke their order. Their
+horses then became frightened, quitted their ranks, and were carried
+away by the violence of the waves. They no longer swam, but floated
+about in scattered groups. Their riders struggled, and made vain
+efforts; their strength gave way, and they, at last, resigned themselves
+to their fate. Their destruction was certain; but it was for their
+country; it was in her presence, and for the sake of their deliverer,
+that they had devoted themselves; and even when on the point of being
+engulphed for ever, they suspended their unavailing struggles, turned
+their faces toward Napoleon, and exclaimed, "_Vive l'Empereur!_" Three
+of them were especially remarked, who, with their heads still above the
+billows, repeated this cry and perished instantly. The army was struck
+with mingled horror and admiration.
+
+As to Napoleon, he prescribed with anxiety and precision the measures
+necessary to save the greater number, but without appearing affected:
+either from the habit of subduing his feelings; from considering the
+ordinary emotions of the heart as weaknesses in times of war, of which
+it was not for him to set the example, and therefore necessary to
+suppress; or finally, that he anticipated much greater misfortunes,
+compared with which the present was a mere trifle.
+
+A bridge thrown over this river conveyed Marshal Oudinot and the second
+corps to Keydani. During that time, the rest of the army was still
+passing the Niemen. The passage took up three entire days. The army of
+Italy did not pass it till the 29th, in front of Pilony. The army of the
+king of Westphalia did not enter Grodno till the 30th.
+
+From Kowno Napoleon proceeded in two days as far as the defiles which
+defend the plain of Wilna. He waited, in order to make his appearance
+there, for news from his advanced posts. He was in hopes that Alexander
+would contest with him the possession of that capital. The report,
+indeed, of some musketry, encouraged him in that hope; when intelligence
+was brought him that the city was undefended. Thither he advanced,
+ruminating and dissatisfied. He accused his generals of the advanced
+guard of suffering the Russian army to escape. It was the most active of
+them, Montbrun, whom he reproached, and against whom his anger rose to
+the point of menace. A menace without effect, a violence without result!
+and less blameable than remarkable, in a warrior, because they
+contributed to prove all the importance which he attached to an
+immediate victory.
+
+In the midst of his anger, he displayed address in his dispositions for
+entering Wilna. He caused himself to be preceded and followed by Polish
+regiments. But more occupied by the retreat of the Russians than the
+grateful and admiring acclamations of the Lithuanians, he rapidly passed
+through the city, and hurried to the advanced posts. Several of the best
+hussars of the 8th, having ventured themselves in a wood, without proper
+support, had just perished in an action with the Russian guard;
+Segur[16], who commanded them, after a desperate defence, had fallen,
+covered with wounds.
+
+[Footnote 16: Brother of the Author.]
+
+The enemy had burnt his bridges and his magazines, and was flying by
+different roads, but all in the direction of Drissa. Napoleon ordered
+all which the fire had spared to be collected, and restored the
+communications. He sent forward Murat and his cavalry, to follow the
+track of Alexander: and after throwing Ney upon his left, in order to
+support Oudinot, who had that day driven back the lines of
+Wittgenstein, from Deweltowo as far as Wilkomir, he returned to occupy
+the place of Alexander at Wilna. There, his unfolded maps, military
+reports, and a crowd of officers requiring his orders, awaited his
+arrival. He was now on the theatre of war, and at the moment of its most
+animated operations; he had prompt and urgent decisions to make; orders
+of march to give; hospitals, magazines, and lines of operations, to
+establish.
+
+It was necessary to interrogate, to read, and then compare; and at last
+to discover and grasp the truth, which always appeared to fly and
+conceal itself in the midst of a thousand contradictory answers and
+reports.
+
+This was not all: Napoleon, at Wilna, had a new empire to organize; the
+politics of Europe, the war of Spain, and the government of France, to
+direct. His political, military, and administrative correspondence,
+which he had suffered to accumulate for some days, imperiously demanded
+his attention. Such, indeed, was his custom, on the eve of a great
+event, as that would necessarily decide the character of many of his
+replies, and impart a colouring to all. He therefore established himself
+at his quarters, and in the first instance threw himself on a bed, less
+for the sake of sleep than of quiet meditation; whence, abruptly
+starting up shortly after, he rapidly dictated the orders which he had
+conceived.
+
+Intelligence was just then brought him from Warsaw and the Austrian
+army. The discourse at the opening of the Polish diet displeased the
+emperor; and he exclaimed, as he threw it from him, "This is French! It
+ought to be Polish!" As to the Austrians, it was never dissembled to him
+that, in their whole army, there was no one on whom he could depend but
+its commander. The certainty of that seemed sufficient for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+Meantime, every thing was rekindling at the bottom of the hearts of the
+Lithuanians a patriotism which was still burning, though almost
+extinguished. On one side, the precipitate retreat of the Russians, and
+the presence of Napoleon; on the other, the cry of independence emitted
+by Warsaw, and more especially the sight of those Polish heroes, who
+returned with liberty to the soil whence they had been expelled along
+with her. The first days, therefore, were entirely devoted to joy: the
+happiness appeared general--the display of feeling universal.
+
+The same sentiments were thought to be traceable everywhere; in the
+interior of the houses, as well as at the windows, and in the public
+places. The people congratulated and embraced each other on the
+high-roads; the old men once more resumed their ancient costume,
+reviving ideas of glory and independence. They wept with joy at the
+sight of the national banners which had been just re-erected; an
+immense crowd followed them, rending the air with their acclamations.
+But this enthusiasm, unreflecting in some, and the mere effect of
+excitement in others, was but of short duration.
+
+On their side, the Poles of the grand duchy were always animated by the
+noblest enthusiasm: they were worthy of liberty, and sacrificed to it
+that property for which liberty is sacrificed by the greater part of
+mankind. Nor did they belie themselves on this occasion: the diet of
+Warsaw constituted itself into a general confederation, and declared the
+kingdom of Poland restored; it convened the dietins; invited all Poland
+to unite; summoned all the Poles in the Russian army to quit Russia;
+caused itself to be represented by a general council; maintained the
+established order; and, finally, sent a deputation to the king of
+Saxony, and an address to Napoleon.
+
+The senator Wibicki presented this address to him at Wilna. He told him
+"that the Poles had neither been subjected by peace nor by war, but by
+treason; that they were therefore free _de jure_, before God and man;
+that being so now _de facto_, that right became a duty; that they
+claimed the independence of their brethren, the Lithuanians, who were
+still slaves; that they offered themselves to the entire Polish nation
+as the centre of a general union; but that it was to him who dictated
+his history to the age, in whom resided the force of Providence, they
+looked to support the efforts which he could not but approve; that on
+that account they came to solicit Napoleon the Great to pronounce these
+few words, "_Let the kingdom of Poland exist!_" and that it then would
+exist; that all the Poles would devote themselves to the orders of the
+founder of the fourth French dynasty, to whom ages were but as a moment,
+and space no more than a point."
+
+Napoleon replied: "Gentlemen deputies of the confederation of Poland, I
+have listened with deep interest to what you have just told me. Were I a
+Pole, I should think and act like you; I should have voted with you in
+the assembly of Warsaw: the love of his country is the first duty of
+civilized man.
+
+"In my position, I have many interests to reconcile, and many duties to
+fulfil. Had I reigned during the first, second, or third partition of
+Poland, I would have armed my people in her defence. When victory
+supplied me with the means of re-establishing your ancient laws, in your
+capital, and a portion of your provinces, I did so without seeking to
+prolong the war, which might have continued to waste the blood of my
+subjects.
+
+"I love your nation! For sixteen years I have found your soldiers by my
+side on the plains of Italy and Spain. I applaud what you have done; I
+authorize your future efforts; I will do all which depends on me to
+second your resolutions. If your efforts be unanimous, you may cherish
+the hope of compelling your enemies to recognize your rights; but in
+countries so distant and extensive, it must be entirely on the exertions
+of the population which inhabits them, that you can justly ground hopes
+of success.
+
+"From the first moment of my entering Poland, I have used the same
+language to you. To this it is my duty to add, that I have guaranteed to
+the emperor of Austria the integrity of his dominions, and that I cannot
+sanction any manoeuvre, or the least movement, tending to disturb the
+peaceable possession of what remains to him of the Polish provinces.
+
+"Only provide that Lithuania, Samogitia, Witepsk, Polotsk, Mohilef,
+Volhynia, the Ukraine, Podolia, be animated by the same spirit which I
+have witnessed in the Greater Poland; and Providence will crown your
+good cause with success. I will recompense that devotion of your
+provinces which renders you so interesting, and has acquired you so many
+claims to my esteem and protection, by every means that can, under the
+circumstances, depend upon me."
+
+The Poles had imagined that they were addressing the sovereign arbiter
+of the world, whose every word was a law, and whom no political
+compromise was capable of arresting. They were unable to comprehend the
+cause of the circumspection of this reply. They began to doubt the
+intentions of Napoleon; the zeal of some was cooled; the lukewarmness of
+others confirmed; all were intimidated. Even those around him asked each
+other what could be the motives of a prudence which appeared so
+unseasonable, and with him so unusual. "What, then, was the object of
+this war? Was he afraid of Austria? Had the retreat of the Russians
+disconcerted him? Did he doubt his good fortune, or was he unwilling to
+contract, in the face of Europe, engagements which he was not sure of
+being able to fulfil?
+
+"Had the coldness of the Lithuanians infected him? or rather, did he
+dread the explosion of a patriotism which he might not be able to
+master? Was he still undecided as to the destiny he should bestow upon
+them?"
+
+Whatever were his motives, it was obviously his wish that the
+Lithuanians should appear to liberate themselves; but as, at the same
+time, he created a government for them, and gave a direction to their
+public feeling, that circumstance placed him, as well as them, in a
+false position, wherein every thing terminated in errors,
+contradictions, and half measures. There was no reciprocal understanding
+between the parties; a mutual distrust was the result. The Poles desired
+some positive guarantees in return for the many sacrifices they were
+called upon to make. But their union in a single kingdom not having been
+pronounced, the alarm which is common at the moment of great decisions
+increased, and the confidence which they had just lost in him, they also
+lost in themselves. It was then that he nominated seven Lithuanians to
+the task of composing the new government. This choice was unlucky in
+some points; it displeased the jealous pride of an aristocracy at all
+times difficult to satisfy.
+
+The four Lithuanian provinces of Wilna, Minsk, Grodno, and Bialystok,
+had each a government commission and national sub-prefects. Each commune
+was to have its municipality; but Lithuania was, in reality, governed by
+an imperial commissioner, and by four French auditors, with the title of
+intendants.
+
+In short, from these, perhaps inevitable, faults, and from the disorders
+of an army placed between the alternative of famishing, or plundering
+its allies, there resulted a universal coolness. The emperor could not
+remain blind to it; he had calculated on four millions of Lithuanians; a
+few thousands were all that joined him! Their pospolite, which he had
+estimated at more than 100,000 men, had decreed him a guard of honour;
+only three horsemen attended him! The population of Volhynia remained
+immoveable, and Napoleon again appealed from them to victory. When
+fortunate, this coolness did not disturb him sufficiently; when
+unfortunate, whether through pride or justice, he did not complain of
+it.
+
+As for us, ever confident in him and in ourselves, the disposition of
+the Lithuanians at first affected us very little; but when our forces
+diminished, we looked about us, and our attention was awakened by our
+danger. Three Lithuanian generals, distinguished by their names, their
+property, and their sentiments, followed the emperor. The French
+generals at last reproached them with the coolness of their countrymen.
+The ardour of the people of Warsaw, in 1806, was held out to them as an
+example. The warm discussion which ensued, passed, like several others
+similar, which it is necessary to record, at Napoleon's quarters, near
+the spot where he was employed; and as there was truth on both sides;
+as, in these conversations, the opposite allegations contended without
+destroying each other; and as the first and last causes of the coolness
+of the Lithuanians were therein revealed, it is impossible to omit them.
+
+These generals then replied, "That they considered they had received
+becomingly the liberty which we brought them; that, moreover, every one
+expressed regard according to his habitual character; that the
+Lithuanians were more cold in their manner than the Poles, and
+consequently less communicative; that, after all, the sentiment might be
+the same, though the expression was different.
+
+"That, besides, there was no similarity in the cases; that in 1806, it
+was after having conquered the Prussians, that the French had delivered
+Poland; that now, on the contrary, if they delivered Lithuania from the
+Russian yoke, it was before they had subjugated Russia. That, in this
+manner, it was natural for the first to receive a victorious and certain
+freedom with transport; and equally natural for the last to receive an
+uncertain and dangerous liberty with gravity; that a benefit was not
+purchased with the same air as if it were gratuitously accepted; that
+six years back, at Warsaw, there was nothing to be done but to prepare
+festivals; while at Wilna, where the whole power of Russia had just been
+exhibited, where its army was known to be untouched, and the motives of
+its retreat understood, it was for battles that preparation was to be
+made.
+
+"And with what means? Why was not that liberty offered to them in 1807?
+Lithuania was then rich and populous. Since that time the continental
+system, by sealing up the only vent for its productions, had
+impoverished it, while Russian foresight had depopulated it of recruits,
+and more recently of a multitude of nobles, peasants, waggons, and
+cattle, which the Russian army had carried away with it."
+
+To these causes they added "the famine resulting from the severity of
+the season in 1811, and the damage to which the over-rich wheats of
+those countries are subject. But why not make an appeal to the provinces
+of the south? In that quarter there were men, horses, and provisions of
+all kinds. They had nothing to do but to drive away Tormasof and his
+army from them. Schwartzenberg was, perhaps, marching in that direction;
+but was it to the Austrians, the uneasy usurpers of Gallicia, that they
+ought to confide the liberation of Volhynia? Would they station liberty
+so near slavery? Why did not they send Frenchmen and Poles there? But
+then it would be necessary to halt, to carry on a more methodical war,
+and allow time for organization; while Napoleon, doubtless urged by his
+distance from his own territory, by the daily expense of provisioning
+his immense army, depending on that alone, and hurrying after victory,
+sacrificed every thing to the hope of finishing the war at a single
+blow."
+
+Here the speakers were interrupted: these reasons, though true,
+appeared insufficient excuses. "They concealed the most powerful cause
+of the immobility of their countrymen; it was to be discovered in the
+interested attachment of their grandees to the crafty policy of Russia,
+which flattered their self-love, respected their customs, and secured
+their right over the peasants, whom the French came to set free.
+Doubtless, national independence appeared too dear a purchase at such a
+price."
+
+This reproach was well founded, and although it was not personal, the
+Lithuanian generals became irritated at it. One of them exclaimed, "You
+talk of our independence; but it must be in great peril, since you, at
+the head of 400,000 men, are afraid to commit yourselves by its
+recognition; indeed, you have not recognized it either by your words or
+actions. You have placed auditors, men quite new, at the head of an
+administration equally new, to govern our provinces. They levy heavy
+contributions, but they forget to inform us for whom it is that we make
+such sacrifices, as are only made for our country. They exhibit to us
+the emperor everywhere, but the republic hitherto nowhere. You have held
+out no object to set us in motion, and you complain of our being
+unsteady. Persons whom we do not respect as our countrymen, you set over
+us as our chiefs. Notwithstanding our entreaties, Wilna remains
+separated from Warsaw; disunited as we thus are, you require of us that
+confidence in our strength which union alone can give. The soldiers you
+expect from us are offered you; 30,000 would be now ready; but you have
+refused them arms, clothing, and the money in which we are deficient."
+
+All these imputations might still have been combated; but he added:
+"True, we do not market for liberty, but we find that in fact it is not
+disinterestedly offered. Wherever you go, the report of your disorders
+precedes your march; nor are they partial, since your army marches upon
+a line of fifty leagues in front. Even at Wilna, notwithstanding the
+multiplied orders of your emperor, the suburbs have been pillaged, and
+it is natural that a liberty which brings such licence with it should be
+mistrusted.
+
+"What then do you expect from our zeal? A happy countenance,
+acclamations of joy, accents of gratitude?--when every day each of us is
+apprised that his villages and granaries are devastated; for the little
+which the Russians did not carry away with them, your famishing columns
+have devoured. In their rapid marches, a multitude of marauders of all
+nations, against whom it is necessary to keep on the watch, detach
+themselves from their wings.
+
+"What do you require more? that our countrymen should throng your
+passage; bring you their grain and cattle; that they should offer
+themselves completely armed and ready to follow you? Alas! what have
+they to give you? Your pillagers take all; there is not even time for
+them to make you the offer. Turn your eyes round towards the entrance of
+the imperial head-quarters. Do you see that man? He is all but naked; he
+groans and extends towards you a hand of supplication. That unhappy man
+who excites your pity, is one of those very nobles whose assistance you
+look for: yesterday, he was hurrying to meet you, full of ardour, with
+his daughter, his vassals, and his wealth; he was coming to present
+himself to your emperor; but he met with some Wurtemberg pillagers on
+his way, and was robbed of every thing; he is no longer a father,--he is
+scarcely a man."
+
+Every one shuddered, and hurried to assist him; Frenchmen, Germans,
+Lithuanians, all agreed in deploring those disorders, for which no one
+could suggest a remedy. How, in fact, was it possible to restore
+discipline among such immense masses, so precipitately propelled,
+conducted by so many leaders of different manners, characters, and
+countries, and forced to resort to plunder for subsistence?
+
+In Prussia, the emperor had only caused the army to supply itself with
+provisions for twenty days. This was as much as was necessary for the
+purpose of gaining Wilna by a battle. Victory was to have done the rest,
+but that victory was postponed by the retreat of the enemy. The emperor
+might have waited for his convoys; but as by surprising the Russians he
+had separated them, he did not wish to forego his grasp and lose his
+advantage. He, therefore, pushed forward on their track 400,000 men,
+with twenty days' provisions, into a country which was incapable of
+feeding the 20,000 Swedes of Charles XII.
+
+It was not for want of foresight; for immense convoys of oxen followed
+the army, either in herds, or attached to the provision cars. Their
+drivers had been organized into battalions. It is true that the latter,
+wearied with the slow pace of these heavy animals, either slaughtered
+them, or suffered them to die of want. A great number, however, got as
+far as Wilna and Minsk; some reached Smolensk, but too late; they could
+only be of service to the recruits and reinforcements which followed us.
+
+On the other hand, Dantzic contained so much corn, that she alone might
+have fed the whole army; she also supplied Koenigsberg. Its provisions
+had ascended the Pregel in large barges up to Vehlau, and in lighter
+craft as far as Insterburg. The other convoys went by land-carriage from
+Koenigsberg to Labiau, and from thence, by means of the Niemen and the
+Vilia, to Kowno and Wilna. But the water of the Vilia having shrunk so
+much through drought as to be incapable of floating these transports, it
+became necessary to find other means of conveyance.
+
+Napoleon hated jobbers. It was his wish that the administration of the
+army should organize the Lithuanian waggons; 500 were assembled, but the
+appearance of them disgusted him. He then permitted contracts to be made
+with the Jews, who are the only traders in the country; and the
+provisions stopped at Kowno at last arrived at Wilna, but the army had
+already left it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+It was the largest column, that of the centre, which suffered most; it
+followed the road which the Russians had ruined, and of which the French
+advanced guard had just completed the spoliation. The columns which
+proceeded by lateral routes found necessaries there, but were not
+sufficiently careful in collecting and in economizing them.
+
+The responsibility of the calamities which this rapid march occasioned
+ought not, therefore, to be laid entirely on Napoleon, for order and
+discipline were maintained in the army of Davoust; it suffered less from
+dearth: it was nearly the same with that of Prince Eugene. When pillage
+was resorted to in these two corps, it was always with method, and
+nothing but necessary injury was inflicted; the soldiers were obliged to
+carry several days' provisions, and prevented from wasting them. The
+same precautions should have been taken elsewhere; but, whether it was
+owing to the habit of making war in fertile countries, or to habitual
+ardour of constitution, many of the other chiefs thought much less of
+administering than of fighting.
+
+On that account, Napoleon was frequently compelled to shut his eyes to a
+system of plunder which he vainly prohibited: too well aware, also, of
+the attraction which that mode of subsistence had for the soldier; that
+it made him love war, because it enriched him; that it pleased him, in
+consequence of the authority which it frequently gave him over classes
+superior to his own; that in his eyes it had all the charm of a war of
+the poor against the rich; finally, that the pleasure of being, and
+proving that he was the strongest, was under such circumstances
+incessantly repeated and brought home to him.
+
+Napoleon, however, grew indignant at the intelligence of these excesses.
+He issued a threatening proclamation, and he directed moveable columns
+of French and Lithuanians to see to its execution. We, who were
+irritated at the sight of the pillagers, were eager to pursue and punish
+them; but when we had stripped them of the bread, or of the cattle which
+they had been robbing, and when we saw them, slowly retiring, sometimes
+eyeing us with a look of condensed despair, sometimes bursting into
+tears; and when we heard them murmuring, that, "not content with giving
+them nothing, we wrested every thing from them, and that, consequently,
+our intention must be to let them perish of hunger;" We, then, in our
+turn, accusing ourselves of barbarity to our own people, called them
+back, and restored their prey to them. Indeed, it was imperious
+necessity which impelled to plunder. The officers themselves had no
+other means of subsistence than the share which the soldiers allowed
+them.
+
+A position of so much excess engendered fresh excesses. These rude men,
+with arms in their hands, when assailed by so many immoderate wants,
+could not remain moderate. When they arrived near any habitations, they
+were famished; at first they asked, but, either for want of being
+understood, or from the refusal or impossibility of the inhabitants to
+satisfy their demands, and of their inability to wait, altercations
+generally arose; then, as they became more and more exasperated with
+hunger, they became furious, and after tumbling either cottage or palace
+topsy-turvy, without finding the subsistence they were in quest of,
+they, in the violence of their despair, accused the inhabitants of being
+their enemies, and revenged themselves on the proprietors by destroying
+their property.
+
+There were some who actually destroyed themselves, rather than proceed
+to such extremities; others did the same after having done so: these
+were the youngest. They placed their foreheads on their muskets, and
+blew out their brains in the middle of the high-road. But many became
+hardened; one excess led them to another, as people often grow angry
+with the blows which they inflict. Among the latter, some vagabonds took
+vengeance of their distresses upon persons; in the midst of so
+inauspicious an aspect of nature, they became denaturalized; abandoned
+to themselves at so great a distance from home, they imagined that every
+thing was allowed them, and that their own sufferings authorized them in
+making others suffer.
+
+In an army so numerous, and composed of so many nations, it was natural
+also to find more malefactors than in smaller ones: the causes of so
+many evils induced fresh ones; already enfeebled by famine, it was
+necessary to make forced marches in order to escape from it, and to
+reach the enemy. At night when they halted, the soldiers thronged into
+the houses; there, worn out with fatigue and want, they threw themselves
+upon the first dirty straw they met with.
+
+The most robust had barely spirits left to knead the flour which they
+found, and to light the ovens with which all those wooden houses were
+supplied; others had scarcely strength to go a few paces in order to
+make the fires necessary to cook some food; their officers, exhausted
+like themselves, feebly gave orders to take more care, and neglected to
+see that their orders were obeyed. A piece of burnt wood, at such times
+escaping from an oven, or a spark from the fire of the bivouacs, was
+sufficient to set fire to a castle or a whole village, and to cause the
+deaths of many unfortunate soldiers who had taken refuge in them. In
+other respects, these disorders were very rare in Lithuania.
+
+The emperor was not ignorant of these details, but he had committed
+himself too far. Even at Wilna, all these disorders had taken place; the
+Duke of Treviso, among others, informed him, "that he had seen, from the
+Niemen to the Vilia, nothing but ruined habitations, and baggage and
+provision-waggons abandoned; they were found dispersed on the highways
+and in the fields, overturned, broke open, and their contents scattered
+here and there, and pillaged, as if they had been taken by the enemy: he
+should have imagined himself following a defeated army. Ten thousand
+horses had been killed by the cold rains of the great storm, and by the
+unripe rye, which had become their new and only food. Their carcases
+were lying encumbering the road: they sent forth a mephitic smell
+impossible to breathe: it was a new scourge, which some compared to
+famine, but much more terrible: several soldiers of the young guard had
+already perished of hunger."
+
+Up to that point Napoleon listened with calmness, but here he abruptly
+interrupted the speaker. Wishing to escape from distress by incredulity,
+he exclaimed, "It is impossible! where are their twenty days' provisions?
+Soldiers well commanded never die of hunger."
+
+A general, the author of this last report, was present. Napoleon turned
+towards him; appealed to him, and pressed him with questions; and that
+general, either from weakness or uncertainty, replied, "that the
+individuals referred to had not died of hunger, but of intoxication."
+
+The emperor then remained convinced that the privations of the soldiers
+had been exaggerated to him. As to the rest, he exclaimed, "The loss of
+the horses must be borne with; of some equipages, and even some
+habitations; it was a torrent that rolled away: it was the worst side of
+the picture of war; an evil exchanged for a good; to misery her share
+must be given; his treasures, his benefits would repair the loss: one
+great result would make amends for all; he only required a single
+victory; if sufficient means remained for accomplishing that, he should
+be satisfied."
+
+The duke remarked, that a victory might be overtaken by a more
+methodical march, followed by the magazines; but he was not listened to.
+Those to whom this marshal (who had just returned from Spain,)
+complained, replied to him, "That, in fact the emperor grew angry at the
+account of evils, which he considered irremediable, his policy imposing
+on him the necessity of a prompt and decisive victory."
+
+They added, "that they saw too clearly that the health of their leader
+was impaired; and that being compelled, notwithstanding, to throw
+himself into positions more and more critical, he could not survey,
+without ill temper, the difficulties which he passed by, and suffered to
+accumulate behind him; difficulties which he then affected to treat with
+contempt, in order to disguise their importance, and preserve the energy
+of mind which he himself required to surmount them. This was the reason
+that, being already disturbed and fatigued by the new and critical
+situation into which he had thrown himself, and impatient to escape from
+it, he kept marching on, always pushing his army forward, in order to
+bring matters sooner to a termination."
+
+Thus it was that Napoleon was constrained to shut his eyes to facts. It
+is well known that the greater part of his ministers were not
+flatterers. Both facts and men spoke sufficiently; but what could they
+teach him? Of what was he ignorant? Had not all his preparations been
+dictated by the most clear-sighted foresight? What could be said to him,
+which he had not himself said and written a hundred times? It was after
+having anticipated the minutest details; having prepared for every
+inconvenience, having provided every thing for a slow and methodical
+war, that he divested himself of all these precautions, that he
+abandoned all these preparations, and suffered himself to be hurried
+away by habit, by the necessity of short wars, of rapid victories, and
+sudden treaties of peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+It was in the midst of these grave circumstances that Balachoff, a
+minister of the Russian emperor, presented himself with a flag of truce
+at the French advanced posts. He was received, and the army, now become
+less ardent, indulged anticipations of peace.
+
+He brought this message from Alexander to Napoleon, "That it was not yet
+too late to negotiate; a war which the soil, the climate, and the
+character of Russia, rendered interminable, was begun; but all
+reconciliation was not become impossible, and from one bank of the
+Niemen to the other they might yet come to an understanding." He,
+moreover, added, "that his master declared, in the face of Europe, that
+he was not the aggressor; that his ambassador at Paris, in demanding his
+passports, did not consider himself as having broken the peace; that
+thus, the French had entered Russia without a declaration of war." There
+were, however, no fresh overtures, either verbal or written, presented
+by Balachoff.
+
+The choice of this flag of truce had been remarked; he was the minister
+of the Russian police; that office required an observant spirit, and it
+was thought that he was sent to exercise it amongst us. What rendered us
+more mistrustful of the character of the negotiator was, that the
+negotiation appeared to have no character, unless it were that of great
+moderation, which, under the actual circumstances, was taken for
+weakness.
+
+Napoleon did not hesitate. He would not stop at Paris; how could he then
+retreat at Wilna? What would Europe think? What result could he exhibit
+to the French and allied armies as a motive for so many fatigues; for
+such vast movements; for such enormous individual and national
+expenditure: it would be confessing himself vanquished. Besides, his
+language before so many princes, since his departure from Paris, had
+pledged him as much as his actions; so that, in fact, he found himself
+as much compromised on the score of his allies as of his enemies. Even
+then, it is said, the warmth of conversation with Balachoff hurried him
+away. "What had brought him to Wilna? What did the Emperor of Russia
+want with him? Did he pretend to resist him? He was only a parade
+general. As to himself, his head was his counsellor; from that every
+thing proceeded. But as to Alexander,--who was there to counsel him?
+Whom had he to oppose to him? He had only three generals,--Kutusof, whom
+he did not like, because he was a Russian; Beningsen, superannuated six
+years ago, and now in his second childhood; and Barclay: the last could
+certainly manoeuvre; he was brave; he understood war; but he was a
+general only good for a retreat." And he added, "You all believe
+yourselves to understand the art of war, because you have read Jomini;
+but if his book could have taught it you, do you think that I should
+have allowed it to be published?" In this conversation, of which the
+above is the Russian version, it is certain that he added, "that,
+however, the Emperor Alexander had friends even in the imperial
+head-quarters." Then, pointing out Caulaincourt to the Russian minister,
+"There," said he, "is a knight of your emperor; he is a Russian in the
+French camp."
+
+Probably Caulaincourt did not sufficiently comprehend, that by that
+expression Napoleon only wished to point him out as a negotiator who
+would be agreeable to Alexander; for as soon as Balachoff was gone, he
+advanced towards the emperor, and in an angry tone, asked him why he had
+insulted him? exclaiming, "that he was a Frenchman! a true Frenchman!
+that he had proved it already; and would prove it again by repeating,
+that this war was impolitic and dangerous; that it would destroy his
+army, France, and himself. That, as to the rest, as he had just insulted
+him, he should quit him; that all that he asked of him was a division in
+Spain, where nobody wished to serve, and the furthest from his presence
+possible." The emperor attempted to appease him; but not being able to
+obtain a hearing, he withdrew, Caulaincourt still pursuing him with his
+reproaches. Berthier, who was present at this scene, interposed without
+effect. Bessieres, more in the back-ground, had vainly tried to detain
+Caulaincourt by holding him by the coat.
+
+The next day, Napoleon was unable to bring his grand equerry into his
+presence, without formal and repeated orders. At length he appeased him
+by caresses, and by the expression of an esteem and attachment which
+Caulaincourt well deserved. But he dismissed Balachoff with verbal and
+inadmissible proposals.
+
+Alexander made no reply to them; the full importance of the step he had
+just taken was not at the time properly comprehended. It was his
+determination neither to address nor even answer Napoleon any more. It
+was a last word before an irreparable breach; and that circumstance
+rendered it remarkable.
+
+Meantime, Murat pursued the flying steps of that victory which was so
+much coveted; he commanded the cavalry of the advanced guard; he at last
+reached the enemy on the road to Swentziani, and drove him in the
+direction of Druia. Every morning, the Russian rear-guard appeared to
+have escaped him; every evening he overtook it again, and attacked it,
+but always in a strong position, after a long march, too late, and
+before his men had taken any refreshment; there were, consequently,
+every day fresh combats, producing no important results.
+
+Other chiefs, by other routes, followed the same direction. Oudinot had
+passed the Vilia beyond Kowno, and already in Samogitia, to the north of
+Wilna, at Deweltowo, and at Vilkomir, had fallen in with the enemy, whom
+he drove before him towards Duenabourg. In this manner he marched on, to
+the left of Ney and the King of Naples, whose right was flanked by
+Nansouty. From the 15th of July, the river Duena, from Disna to
+Duenabourg, had been approached by Murat, Montbrun, Sebastiani, and
+Nansouty, by Oudinot and Ney, and by three divisions of the 1st corps,
+placed under the orders of the Count de Lobau.
+
+It was Oudinot who presented himself before Duenabourg: he made an
+attempt on that town, which the Russians had vainly attempted to
+fortify. This too eccentric march of Oudinot displeased Napoleon. The
+river separated the two armies. Oudinot re-ascended it in order to put
+himself in communication with Murat; and Wittgenstein, in order to form
+a junction with Barclay. Duenabourg remained without assailants and
+without defenders.
+
+On his march, Wittgenstein had a view, from the right bank, of Druia,
+and a vanguard of French cavalry, which occupied that town with too
+negligent a security. Encouraged by the approach of night, he made one
+of his corps pass the river, and on the 15th, in the morning, the
+advanced posts of one of our brigades were surprised, sabred, and
+carried off. After this, Wittgenstein recalled his people to the right
+bank, and pursued his way with his prisoners, among whom was a French
+general. This _coup-de-main_ gave Napoleon reason to hope for a battle:
+believing that Barclay was resuming the offensive, he suspended, for a
+short time, his march upon Witepsk, in order to concentrate his troops
+and direct them according to circumstances. This hope, however, was of
+short duration.
+
+During these events, Davoust, at Osmiana, to the south of Wilna, had got
+sight of some scouts of Bagration, who was already anxiously seeking an
+outlet towards the north. Up to that time, short of a victory, the plan
+of the campaign adopted at Paris had completely succeeded. Aware that
+the enemy was extended over too long a defensive line, Napoleon had
+broken it by briskly attacking it in one direction, and by so doing had
+thrown it back and pursued its largest mass upon the Duena; while
+Bagration, whom he had not brought into contact till five days later,
+was still upon the Niemen. During an interval of several days, and over
+a front of eighty leagues, the manoeuvre was the same as that which
+Frederic the Second had often employed upon a line of two leagues, and
+during an interval of some few hours.
+
+Already Doctorof, and several scattered divisions of each of these two
+separated masses had only escaped by favour of the extent of the
+country, of chance, and of the usual causes of that ignorance, which
+always exists during war, as to what passes close at hand in the ranks
+of an enemy.
+
+Several persons have pretended that there was too much circumspection or
+too much negligence in the first operations of the invasion; that from
+the Vistula, the assailing army had received orders to march with all
+the precaution of one attacked; that the aggression once commenced, and
+Alexander having fled, the advanced guard of Napoleon ought to have
+re-ascended the two banks of the Vilia with more celerity and more in
+advance, and that the army of Italy should have followed this movement
+more closely. Perhaps Doctorof, who commanded the left wing of Barclay,
+being forced to cross our line of attack, in order to fly from Lida
+toward Swentziany, might then have been made prisoner. Pajol repulsed
+him at Osmiana; but he escaped by Smorgony. Nothing but his baggage was
+taken; and Napoleon laid the blame of his escape on Prince Eugene,
+although he had himself prescribed to him every one of his movements.
+
+But the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, the 1st corps and the guard,
+very soon occupied and surrounded Wilna. There it was that, stretched
+out over his maps (which he was obliged to examine in that manner, on
+account of his short sight, which he shared with Alexander the Great and
+Frederic the Second), Napoleon followed the course of the Russian army;
+it was divided into two unequal masses: one with its emperor towards
+Drissa, the other with Bagration, who was still in the direction of Myr.
+
+Eighty leagues in front of Wilna, the Duena and the Boristhenes separate
+Lithuania from old Russia. At first, these two rivers run parallel to
+each other from east to west, leaving between them an interval of about
+twenty-five leagues of an unequal, woody, and marshy soil. They arrive
+in that manner from the interior of Russia, on its frontiers; at this
+point, at the same time, and as if in concert, they turn off; the one
+abruptly at Orcha towards the south; the other, near Witepsk, towards
+the north-west. It is in that new direction that their course traces the
+frontiers of Lithuania and old Russia.
+
+The narrow space which these two rivers leave between them before taking
+this opposite direction seems to constitute the entrance, and as it were
+the gates of Muscovy. It is the focus of the roads which lead to the two
+capitals of that empire.
+
+Napoleon's whole attention was directed to that point. By the retreat of
+Alexander upon Drissa, he foresaw that which Bagration would attempt to
+make from Grodno towards Witepsk, through Osmiana, Minsk, and
+Docktzitzy, or by Borizof; he determined to prevent it, and instantly
+pushed forward Davoust towards Minsk, between these two hostile bodies,
+with two divisions of infantry, the cuirassiers of Valence, and several
+brigades of light cavalry.
+
+On his right, the king of Westphalia was to drive Bagration on Davoust,
+who would cut off his communication with Alexander, make him surrender,
+and get possession of the course of the Boristhenes; on his left, Murat,
+Oudinot, and Ney, already before Drissa, were directed to keep Barclay
+and his emperor in their front; he himself with the _elite_ of his army,
+the army of Italy, the Bavarian army, and three divisions detached from
+Davoust, was to march upon Witepsk between Davoust and Murat, ready to
+join one or the other of them; in this manner penetrating and
+interposing between the two hostile armies, forcing himself between them
+and beyond them; finally, keeping them separate, not only by that
+central position, but by the uncertainty which it would create in
+Alexander as to which of his two capitals it would be requisite for him
+to defend. Circumstances would decide the rest.
+
+Such was Napoleon's plan on the 10th of July at Wilna; it was written in
+this form on that very day under his dictation, and corrected by his own
+hand, for one of his chiefs, the individual who was most concerned in
+its execution. Immediately, the movement, which was already begun,
+became general.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+The king of Westphalia then went along the Niemen at Grodno, with a view
+to repass it at Bielitza, to overpower the right of Bagration, put it to
+the rout, and pursue it.
+
+This Saxon, Westphalian, and Polish army had in front of it a general
+and a country both difficult to conquer. It fell to its lot to invade
+the elevated plain of Lithuania: there are the sources of the rivers
+which empty their waters into the Black and Baltic seas. But the soil
+there is slow in determining their inclination and their current, so
+that the waters stagnate and overflow the country to a great extent.
+Some narrow causeways had been thrown over those woody and marshy
+plains; they formed there long defiles, which Bagration was easily
+enabled to defend against the king of Westphalia. The latter attacked
+him carelessly; his advanced guard only three times encountered the
+enemy, at Nowogrodeck, at Myr, and at Romanof. The first rencontre was
+entirely to the advantage of the Russians; in the two others,
+Latour-Maubourg remained master of a sanguinary and contested field of
+battle.
+
+At the same time, Davoust, proceeding from Osmiana, extended his force
+towards Minsk and Ygumen, behind the Russian general, and made himself
+master of the outlet of the defiles, in which the king of Westphalia was
+compelling Bagration to engage himself.
+
+Between this general and his retreat was a river which takes its source
+in an infectious marsh; its uncertain, slow, and languid current, across
+a rotten soil, does not belie its origin; its muddy waters flow towards
+the south-east; its name possesses a fatal celebrity, for which it is
+indebted to our misfortunes.
+
+The wooden bridges, and long causeways, which, in order to approach it,
+had been thrown over the adjacent marshes, abut upon a town named
+Borizof, situated on its left bank, on the Russian side. This bank is
+generally higher than the right; a remark applicable to all the rivers
+which in this country run in the direction of one pole to the other,
+their eastern bank commanding their western bank, as Asia does Europe.
+
+This passage was important; Davoust anticipated Bagration there by
+taking possession of Minsk on the 8th of July, as well as the entire
+country from the Vilia to the Berezina; accordingly when the Russian
+prince and his army, summoned by Alexander, to the north, pushed forward
+their piquets, in the first instance upon Lida, and afterwards
+successively upon Olzania, Vieznowo, Troki, Bolzoi, and Sobsnicki, they
+came in contact with Davoust, and were forced to fall back upon their
+main body. They then bent their course a little more in the rear and to
+the right, and made a new attempt on Minsk, but there again they found
+Davoust. A scanty platoon of that marshal's vanguard was entering by one
+gate, when the advanced guard of Bagration presented itself at another;
+on which, the Russian retreated once more into his marshes, towards the
+south.
+
+At this intelligence, observing Bagration and 40,000 Russians cut off
+from the army of Alexander, and enveloped by two rivers and two armies,
+Napoleon exclaimed, "I have them!" In fact, it only required three
+marches more to have hemmed in Bagration completely. But Napoleon, who
+since accused Davoust of suffering the escape of the left wing of the
+Russians by remaining four days in Minsk, and afterwards, with more
+justice, the king of Westphalia, had just then placed that monarch under
+the orders of the marshal. It was this change, which was made too late,
+and in the midst of an operation, which destroyed the unity of it.
+
+This order arrived at the very moment when Bagration, repulsed from
+Minsk, had no other retreat open to him than a long and narrow causeway.
+It occurs on the marshes of Nieswig, Shlutz, Glusck, and Bobruisk.
+Davoust wrote to the king to push the Russians briskly into this defile,
+the outlet of which at Glusck he was about to occupy. Bagration would
+never have been able to get out of it. But the king, already irritated
+by the reproaches which the uncertainty and dilatoriness of his first
+operations had brought upon him, could not suffer a subject to be his
+commander; he quitted his army, without leaving any one to replace him,
+or without even communicating, if we are to credit Davoust, to any of
+his generals, the order which he had just received. He was permitted to
+retire into Westphalia without his guard; which he accordingly did.
+
+Meanwhile Davoust vainly waited for Bagration at Glusck. That general,
+not being sufficiently pressed by the Westphalian army, had the option
+of making a new _detour_ towards the south, to get to Bobruisk, and
+there cross the Berezina, and reach the Boristhenes near Bickof. There
+again, if the Westphalian army had had a commander, if that commander
+had pressed the Russian leader more closely, if he had replaced him at
+Bickof, when he came in collision with Davoust at Mohilef, it is certain
+that in that case Bagration, enclosed between the Westphalians, Davoust,
+the Boristhenes, and the Berezina, would have been compelled to conquer
+or to surrender We have seen that the Russian prince could not pass the
+Berezina but at Bobruisk, nor reach the Boristhenes, except in the
+direction of Novoi-Bikof, forty leagues to the south of Orcha, and sixty
+leagues from Witepsk, which it was his object to reach.
+
+Finding himself driven so far out of his track, he hastened to regain it
+by reascending the Boristhenes, to Mohilef. But there again he found
+Davoust, who had anticipated him at Lida by passing the Berezina at the
+very point at which Charles XII. had formerly done so.
+
+This marshal, however, had not expected to find the Russian prince on
+the road to Mohilef. He believed him to be already on the left bank of
+the Boristhenes. Their mutual surprise turned in the first instance to
+the advantage of Bagration, who cut off a whole regiment of his light
+cavalry. At that time Bagration had with him 35,000 men, Davoust 12,000.
+On the 23d of July, the latter chose an elevated ground, defended by a
+ravine, and flanked by two woods. The Russians had no means of extending
+themselves on this field of battle; they, nevertheless, accepted the
+challenge. Their numbers were there useless; they attacked like men sure
+of victory; they did not even think of profiting by the woods, in order
+to turn Davoust's right.
+
+The Muscovites say that, in the middle of the contest they were seized
+with a panic at the idea of finding themselves in the presence of
+Napoleon; for each of the enemy's generals imagined him to be opposed
+to them, Bagration at Mohilef; and Barclay at Drissa. He was believed to
+be in all places at once: so greatly does renown magnify the man of
+genius! so strangely does it fill the world with its fame! and convert
+him into an omnipresent and supernatural being!
+
+The attack was violent and obstinate on the part of the Russians, but
+without scientific combination. Bagration was roughly repulsed, and
+again compelled to retrace his steps. He finally crossed the Boristhenes
+at Novoi-Bikof, where he re-entered the Russian interior, in order
+finally to unite with Barclay, beyond Smolensk.
+
+Napoleon disdained to attribute this disappointment to the ability of
+the enemy's general; he referred it to the incapacity of his own. He
+already discovered that his presence was necessary every where, which
+rendered it every where impossible. The circle of his operations was so
+much enlarged, that, being compelled to remain in the centre, his
+presence was wanting on the whole of the circumference. His generals,
+exhausted like himself, too independent of each other, too much
+separated, and at the same time too dependent upon him, ventured to do
+less of themselves, and frequently waited for his orders. His influence
+was weakened over so great an extent. It required too great a soul for
+so great a body; his, vast as it was, was not sufficient for the
+purpose.
+
+But at length, on the 16th of July, the whole army was in motion. While
+all were hurrying and exerting themselves in this manner, he was still
+at Wilna, which he caused to be fortified. He there ordered a levy of
+eleven Lithuanian regiments. He established the duke of Bassano as
+governor of Lithuania, and as the centre of administrative, political,
+and even military communication between him, Europe, and the generals
+commanding the _corps de armee_ which were not to follow him to Moscow.
+
+This ostensible inactivity of Napoleon at Wilna lasted twenty days. Some
+thought that, finding himself in the centre of his operations with a
+strong reserve, he awaited the event, in readiness to direct his motions
+either towards Davoust, Murat, or Macdonald; others thought that the
+organization of Lithuania, and the politics of Europe, to which he was
+more proximate at Wilna, retained him in that city; or that he did not
+anticipate any obstacles worthy of him till he reached the Duena; a
+circumstance in which he was not deceived, but by which he was too much
+flattered. The precipitate evacuation of Lithuania by the Russians
+seemed to dazzle his judgment; of this Europe will be the best judge;
+his bulletins repeated his words.
+
+"Here then is that Russian empire, so formidable at a distance! It is a
+desert, for which its scattered population is wholly insufficient. They
+will be vanquished by its very extent, which ought to defend them. They
+are barbarians. They are scarcely possessed of arms. They have no
+recruits in readiness. Alexander will require more time to collect them
+than he will take to reach Moscow. It is true that, from the moment of
+the passage of the Niemen, the atmosphere has been incessantly deluging
+or drying up the unsheltered soil; but this calamity is less an obstacle
+to the rapidity of our advance, than an impediment to the flight of the
+Russians. They are conquered without a combat by their weakness alone;
+by the memory of our victories; by the remorse which dictates the
+restitution of that Lithuania, which they have acquired neither by peace
+nor war, but solely by treachery."
+
+To these motives of the stay, perhaps too protracted, which Napoleon
+made at Wilna, those who were nearest to his person have added another.
+They remarked to each other, "that a genius so vast as his, and always
+increasing in activity and audacity, was not now seconded as it had been
+formerly by a vigorous constitution. They were alarmed at finding their
+chief no longer insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they
+remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to
+corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished; the sure sign of a
+premature debility of system."
+
+Some of them attributed this to his frequent use of the bath. They were
+ignorant, that, far from being a habit of luxury, this had become to him
+an indispensable relief from a bodily ailment of a serious and alarming
+character[17], which his policy carefully concealed, in order not to
+excite cruel expectations in his adversaries.
+
+[Footnote 17: The _dysuria_, or retention of urine.]
+
+Such is the inevitable and unhappy influence of the most trivial causes
+over the destiny of nations. It will be shortly seen, when the
+profoundest combinations, which ought to have secured the success of the
+boldest, and perhaps the most useful enterprise in a European point of
+view, come to be developed;--how, at the decisive moment, on the plains
+of the Moskwa, nature paralysed the genius, and the man was wanting to
+the hero. The numerous battalions of Russia could not have defended her;
+a stormy day, a sudden attack of fever, were her salvation.
+
+It will be only just and proper to revert to this observation, when, in
+examining the picture which I shall be forced to trace of the battle of
+the Moskwa, I shall be found repeating all the complaints, and even the
+reproaches, which an unusual inactivity and languor extorted from the
+most devoted friends and constant admirers of this great man. Most of
+them, as well as those who have subsequently given an account of the
+battle, were unaware of the bodily sufferings of a chief, who, in the
+midst of his depression, exerted himself to conceal their cause. That
+which was eminently a misfortune, these narrators have designated as a
+fault.
+
+Besides, at 800 leagues' distance from one's home, after so many
+fatigues and sacrifices, at the instant when they saw the victory escape
+from their grasp, and a frightful prospect revealed itself, it was
+natural for them to be severe; and they had suffered too much, to be
+quite impartial.
+
+As for myself, I shall not conceal what I witnessed, in the persuasion
+that truth is of all tributes that which is alone worthy of a great
+man; of that illustrious captain, who had so often contrived to extract
+prodigious advantages from every occurrence, not excepting his reverses;
+of that man who raised himself to so great an eminence, that posterity
+will scarcely be enabled to distinguish the clouds scattered over a
+glory so brilliant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Meantime, he was apprised that his orders were fulfilled, his army
+united, and that a battle claimed his presence. He at length departed
+from Wilna on the 16th of July, at half-past eleven at night; he stopped
+at Swentziani, while the heat of the 17th was most oppressive; on the
+18th he was at Klubokoe: taking up his residence at a monastery, whence
+he observed that the village which it commanded bore more resemblance to
+an assemblage of savage huts than to European habitations.
+
+An address of the Russians to the French soldiers had just been
+dispersed throughout his army. He found in it some idle abuse, coupled
+with a nugatory and unskilful invitation to desert. His anger was
+excited at its perusal; in his first agitation, he dictated a reply,
+which he tore; then a second, which experienced the same fate; at length
+a third, with which he expressed himself satisfied. It was that which
+was, at the time, read in the journals, under the signature of a French
+grenadier. In this manner he dictated even the most trivial letters,
+which issued from his cabinet or from his staff; he perpetually reduced
+his ministers and Berthier to the condition of being mere secretaries;
+his mind still retained its activity, notwithstanding his sinking frame;
+their union, however, began to fail; and this was one cause of our
+misfortunes.
+
+In the midst of this occupation, he learned that Barclay had, on the
+18th, abandoned his camp at Drissa, and that he was marching towards
+Witepsk. This movement opened his eyes. Detained by the check which
+Sebastiani had received near Druia, and more especially by the rains and
+bad state of the roads, he found (though perhaps too late) that the
+occupation of Witepsk was urgent and decisive; that that city alone was
+eminently aggressive, inasmuch as it separated the two hostile rivers
+and armies. From that position, he would be enabled to turn the broken
+army of his rival, cut him off from his southern provinces, and crush
+his weakness with superior force. He concluded that, if Barclay had
+anticipated him in reaching that capital, he would doubtless defend it:
+and there, perhaps, he was to expect that so-much-coveted victory which
+had escaped him on the Vilia. He, therefore, instantly directed all his
+corps on Beszenkowiczi; thither he summoned Murat and Ney, who were then
+near Polotsk, where he left Oudinot. For himself, he proceeded from
+Klubokoe (where he was surrounded by his guard, the Italian army, and
+three divisions detached from Davoust), to Kamen, always in a carriage,
+except during the night, either from necessity, or, perhaps, with a view
+to keep his soldiers in ignorance of the inability of their chief to
+share their fatigues.
+
+Till that time, the greater part of the army had proceeded with
+astonishment, at finding no enemy; they had now become habituated to the
+circumstance. By day the novelty of the places, and impatience to get to
+their journey's end, occupied their attention; at night the necessity of
+choosing or making for themselves a place of shelter; of finding food,
+and dressing it. The soldiers were so much engaged by so many cares,
+that they considered themselves less employed in making war than a
+troublesome journey; but if the war and the enemy were to fall back
+always thus, how much farther should they have to go in search of them?
+At length, on the 25th, the report of cannon was heard, and the army, as
+well as the emperor, indulged their hopes of a victory and peace.
+
+This was in the direction of Beszenkowiczi, Prince Eugene had there
+encountered Doctorof, who commanded Barclay's rear-guard. In following
+his leader from Polotsk to Witepsk, he cleared his way on the left bank
+of the Duena to Beszenkowiczi, the bridge of which he burnt as he
+retired. The viceroy, on capturing this town, came in sight of the Duena,
+and re-established the passage; the few Russian troops left in
+observation on the other side feebly opposed the operation. When
+Napoleon contemplated, for the first time, this river, his new
+conquest, he censured sharply, and not unjustly, the defective
+construction of the bridge which made him master of the two banks.
+
+It was no puerile vanity which induced him then to cross that river, but
+anxiety to see with his own eyes how far the Russian army had proceeded
+on its march from Drissa to Witepsk, and whether he might not attack it
+on its passage, or anticipate its arrival at the latter city. But the
+direction taken by the enemy's rear-guard, and the information obtained
+from some prisoners, convinced him that Barclay had been beforehand with
+him; that he had left Wittgenstein in front of Oudinot, and that the
+Russian general-in-chief was in Witepsk. He was, indeed, already
+prepared to dispute the possession of the defiles which cover that
+capital with Napoleon.
+
+Napoleon having observed on the right bank of the river nothing but the
+remains of a rear-guard, returned to Beszenkowiczi. His various
+divisions arrived there at the same time by the northern and western
+roads. His orders of march had been executed with so much precision,
+that all the corps which had left the Niemen, at different epochs, and
+by different routes, notwithstanding obstacles of every description,
+after a month of separation, and at a hundred leagues' distance from the
+point of their departure, found themselves all reunited at
+Beszenkowiczi, where they arrived on the same day, and nearly at the
+same hour.
+
+Great disorder was naturally the result; numerous columns of cavalry,
+infantry, and artillery presented themselves on all sides; contests
+took place for precedence; and each corps, exasperated with fatigue and
+hunger, was impatient to get to its destination. Meanwhile, the streets
+were blocked up with a crowd of orderlies, staff-officers, valets,
+saddle-horses, and baggage. They ran through the city in tumultuous
+groups; some looking for provisions, others for forage, and a few for
+lodgings; there was a constant crossing and jostling; and as the influx
+augmented every instant, chaos in a short time reigned throughout.
+
+In one quarter, _aides-de-camp_, the bearers of urgent orders, vainly
+sought to force a passage; the soldiers were deaf to their
+remonstrances, and even to their orders: hence arose quarrels and
+outcries; the noise of which, united with the beating of drums, the
+oaths of the waggoners, the rumbling of the baggage-carts and cannon,
+the commands of the officers, and, finally, with the tumult of the
+regular contests which took place in the houses, the entrances of which,
+while one party attempted to force, others, already established there,
+prepared to defend.
+
+At length, towards midnight, all these masses, which were nearly
+confounded together, got disentangled; the accumulation of troops
+gradually moved off in the direction of Ostrowno, or were distributed in
+Beszenkowiczi; and the most profound silence succeeded the most
+frightful tumult.
+
+This great concentration, the multiplied orders which came from all
+parts, the rapidity with which the various corps were pushed forward,
+even during the night--all announced the expectation of a battle on the
+following day. In fact, Napoleon not having been able to anticipate the
+Russians in the possession of Witepsk, was determined to force them from
+that position; but the latter, after having entered by the right bank of
+the Duena, had passed through that city, and were now come to meet him,
+in order to defend the long defiles which protect it.
+
+On the 25th of July, Murat proceeded towards Ostrowno with his cavalry.
+At the distance of two leagues from that village, Domon, Du Coetlosquet,
+Carignan, and the 8th hussars, were advancing in column upon a broad
+road, lined by a double row of large birch trees. These hussars were
+near reaching the summit of a hill, on which they could only get a
+glimpse of the weakest portion of a corps, composed of three regiments
+of cavalry of the Russian guard, and six pieces of cannon. There was not
+a single rifleman to cover their line.
+
+The colonels of the 8th imagined themselves preceded by two regiments of
+their division, which had marched across the fields on the right and
+left of the road, and from the view of which they were precluded by the
+bordering trees. But these corps had halted; and the 8th, already
+considerably in advance of them, still kept marching on, persuaded that
+what it perceived through the trees, at 150 paces' distance, in its
+front, were these two regiments, of which, without being aware of it, it
+had got the start.
+
+The immobility of the Russians completed the error into which the
+chiefs of the 8th had fallen. The order to charge seemed to them to be a
+mistake; they sent an officer to reconnoitre the troop which was before
+them, and still marched on without any distrust. Suddenly they beheld
+their officer sabred, knocked down, made prisoner, and the enemy's
+cannon bringing down their hussars. They now hesitated no longer, and
+without losing time to extend their line under the enemy's fire, they
+dashed through the trees, and rushed forward to extinguish it. At the
+first onset they seized the cannon, dispersed the regiment that was in
+the centre of the enemy's line, and destroyed it. During the disorder of
+this first success, they observed the Russian regiment on the right,
+which they had passed, remaining motionless with astonishment; upon this
+they returned, and attacking it in the rear dispersed it. In the midst
+of this second victory, they perceived the third regiment on the enemy's
+left, which was giving way in confusion, and seeking to retreat; towards
+this third enemy they briskly returned, with all the men they could
+muster, and attacked and dispersed it in the midst of its retreat.
+
+Animated by this success, Murat drove the enemy into the wood of
+Ostrowno, where he seemed to conceal himself. That monarch endeavoured
+to penetrate the wood, but a strong resistance obstructed the attempt.
+
+The position of Ostrowno was well chosen and commanding; those posted
+there could see without being seen; it intersected the main road; it had
+the Duena on the right, a ravine in front, and thick woods on its
+surface and on the left. It was, moreover, in communication with
+magazines; it covered them, as well as Witepsk, the capital of these
+regions, which Ostermann had hurried to defend.
+
+On his side, Murat, always as prodigal of his life, which was now that
+of a victorious king, as he had formerly been when only an obscure
+soldier, persisted in attacks upon these woods, notwithstanding the
+heavy fire which proceeded from them. But he was soon made sensible that
+a furious onset was fruitless here. The ground carried by the hussars of
+the 8th was disputed with him, and his advance-column, composed of the
+divisions Bruyeres and Saint Germain, and of the 8th corps of infantry,
+was compelled to maintain itself there against an army.
+
+They defended themselves as victors always do, by attacking. Each
+hostile corps, as it presented itself to assail our flanks, was in turn
+assaulted. Their cavalry were driven back into the woods, and their
+infantry broken at the point of the sabre. Our troops, nevertheless,
+were getting fatigued with victory, when the division Delzons arrived;
+the king promptly pushed it forward on the right, toward the line of the
+enemy's retreat, who now became uneasy, and no longer disputed the
+victory.
+
+These defiles are several leagues in length. The same evening the
+viceroy rejoined Murat, and the next day they found the Russians in a
+new position. Pahlen and Konownitzin had united with Ostermann. After
+having repulsed the Russian left, the two French princes were pointing
+out to the troops of their right wing the position which was to serve
+them as a _point d'appui_, from which they were to make the attack, when
+suddenly a great clamour arose on their left: their eyes were instantly
+turned that way; the cavalry and infantry of that wing had twice
+attacked the enemy, and been twice repulsed; the Russians, emboldened by
+this success, were issuing in multitudes, and with frightful cries, from
+their woods. The audacity and fervour of attack had passed over to them,
+while the French exhibited the uncertainty and timidity of defence.
+
+A battalion of Croats, and the 84th regiment, vainly attempted to make a
+stand; their line gradually decreased; the ground in front of them was
+strewed with their dead; behind them, the plain was covered with their
+wounded, who had retired from the battle, with those who carried them,
+and with many others, who, under the plea of supporting the wounded, or
+being wounded themselves, successively abandoned their ranks. A rout
+accordingly began. Already the artillery corps, who are always picked
+men, perceiving themselves no longer supported, began retiring with
+their pieces; a few minutes longer, and the troops of all arms, in their
+flight towards the same defile, would have there met each other; thence
+would have resulted a confusion, in which the voices and the efforts of
+their officers would have been lost, where all the elements of
+resistance would have been confounded and rendered useless.
+
+It is said that Murat, on seeing this, darted forward in front of a
+regiment of Polish lancers; and that the latter, excited by the presence
+of the king, animated by his words, and, moreover, transported with rage
+at the sight of the Russians, followed him precipitately. Murat had only
+wished to stimulate them and impel them against the enemy; he had no
+intention of throwing himself with them into the midst of a conflict, in
+which he would neither be able to see nor to command; but the Polish
+lances were ready couched and condensed behind him; they covered the
+whole width of the ground; and they pushed him before them with all the
+rapidity of their steeds; he could neither detach himself from them nor
+stop; he had no resource but to charge in front of the regiment, just
+where he had stationed himself in order to harangue it; a resource to
+which, like a true soldier, he submitted with the best possible grace.
+
+At the same time, general Anthouard ran to his artillerymen, and general
+Girardin to the 106th regiment, which he halted, rallied, and led back
+against the Russian right wing, whose position he carried, as well as
+two pieces of cannon and the victory; on his side, general Pire
+encountered and turned the left of the enemy. Fortune having again
+changed sides, the Russians withdrew into their forests.
+
+Meanwhile, they persevered on the left in defending a thick wood, the
+advanced position of which broke our line. The 92d regiment,
+intimidated by the heavy fire which issued from it, and bewildered by a
+shower of balls, remained immoveable, neither daring to advance nor
+retreat, restrained by two opposite fears--the dread of danger and the
+dread of shame--and escaping neither; but general Belliard hastened to
+reanimate them by his words, and general Roussel by his example; and the
+wood was carried.
+
+By this success, a strong column which had advanced on our right, in
+order to turn it, was itself turned; Murat perceived this, and instantly
+drawing his sword, exclaimed, "Let the bravest follow me!" But this
+territory is intersected with ravines which protected the retreat of the
+Russians, who all plunged into a forest of two leagues in depth, which
+was the last natural curtain which concealed Witepsk from our view.
+
+After so warm a contest, the king of Naples and the viceroy were
+hesitating about committing themselves to so covered a country, when the
+emperor came up: both hastened to his presence, in order to show him
+what had been done, and what still remained to be done. Napoleon
+immediately ascended the highest rising ground, which was nearest to the
+enemy. From thence his genius, soaring over every obstacle, soon
+penetrated the mystery of the forests, and the depths of the mountains
+before him; he gave his orders without hesitation; and the same woods
+which had arrested the audacity of the two princes, were traversed from
+end to end. In short, that very evening, Witepsk might have discerned
+from the summit of her double eminence our light troops emerging into
+the plain by which she is surrounded.
+
+Here, every thing contributed to stop the emperor; the night, the
+multitude of hostile fires which covered the plain, an unknown country,
+which it was necessary to reconnoitre, in order to direct his divisions
+across it, and especially the time requisite to enable the crowd of
+soldiers to disengage themselves from the long and narrow defile through
+which they had to pass. A halt was therefore ordered, for the purpose of
+taking breath, reconnoitring, rallying, refreshing, and getting their
+arms ready for the next day. Napoleon slept in his tent, on an eminence
+to the left of the main road, and behind the village of Kukowiaczi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+On the 27th, the emperor appeared at the advanced posts before daylight;
+its first rays exhibited to him at last the Russian army encamped on an
+elevated plain, which commands all the avenues of Witepsk. The river
+Luczissa, which has worn itself a deep channel, marked the foot of this
+position. In advance of it 10,000 horse and some infantry made a show of
+defending its approaches; the infantry was in the centre, on the main
+road; its left in woody uplands; all the cavalry to the right in double
+lines, supported by the Duena.
+
+The front of the Russians was no longer opposite to our column, but upon
+our left; it had changed its direction with that of the river, which a
+winding had removed from us. The French column, after having crossed, by
+means of a narrow bridge, the ravine which divided it from the new field
+of battle, was obliged to deploy by a change of front to the left, with
+the right wing foremost, in order to preserve the support of the river
+on that side, and so confront the enemy: on the banks of this ravine,
+near the bridge, and to the left of the main-road, there was an isolated
+hillock which had already attracted the notice of the emperor. From that
+point he could see both armies, being stationed on the flank of the
+field of battle, like the second in a duel.
+
+Two hundred Parisian _voltigeurs_ of the 9th regiment of the line were
+the first to debouch; they were immediately pushed forward to the left,
+in front of the whole Russian cavalry, like them supporting themselves
+by the Duena, and marking the left of the new line; the 16th horse
+chasseurs followed, and then some light pieces. The Russians coolly
+allowed us to defile before them, and mature our attack.
+
+Their inactivity was favourable to us; but the king of Naples, whose
+brain was intoxicated by the general notice he attracted, yielding to
+his usual impetuosity, urged the chasseurs of the 16th on the whole body
+of the Russian cavalry. All eyes beheld with terror that feeble French
+line, broken on its march by the deep ravines which intersected the
+ground, advance to attack the enemy's masses. These unfortunate men,
+feeling themselves sacrificed, proceeded with hesitating steps to
+certain destruction. In consequence, at the first movement made by the
+lancers of the Russian guard, they took to flight; but the ravine, which
+it was necessary to pass, obstructed their flight; they were overtaken,
+and precipitated into these shoals, where many of them perished.
+
+At sight of this, Murat, grieved beyond measure, precipitated himself,
+sabre in hand, in the midst of this medley, with the sixty officers and
+horsemen surrounding him. His audacity so astonished the Russian
+lancers, that they halted. While this prince was engaged, and the
+_piqueur_ who followed him saved his life by striking down an enemy
+whose arm was raised over his head, the remains of the 16th rallied, and
+went to seek shelter close to the 53d regiment, which protected them.
+
+This successful charge of the lancers of the Russian guard had carried
+them as far as the foot of the hillock from which Napoleon was directing
+the different corps. Some chasseurs of the French guard had just
+dismounted from their horses, according to custom, in order to form a
+circle around him; a few discharges from their carabines drove off the
+assailant lancers. The latter, being thus repulsed, encountered on their
+return the two hundred Parisian _voltigeurs_, whom the flight of the
+16th horse chasseurs had left alone between the two armies. These they
+attacked, and all eyes were instantly fixed on the engagement.
+
+Both armies concluded these foot soldiers to be lost; but though
+single-handed, they did not despair of themselves. In the first
+instance, their captains, by dint of hard fighting, obtained possession
+of a ground intersected by cavities and thickets which bordered on the
+Duena; there the whole party instantly united, urged by their warlike
+habits, by the desire of mutual support, and by the danger which stared
+them in the face. In this emergency, as always happens in imminent
+dangers, each looked to his neighbour; the young to their elders, and
+all of them to their chiefs, in order to read in their countenances what
+they had to hope, to fear, or to perform; each aspect was replete with
+confidence, and all, relying on their comrades, relied at the same time
+more upon themselves.
+
+The ground was skilfully turned to account. The Russian lancers,
+entangled in the bushes, and obstructed by the crevices, couched their
+long lances in vain; they were struck by our people's balls while they
+were endeavouring to penetrate their ranks, and fell, wounded, to the
+earth; their bodies, and those of their horses, added to the
+difficulties of the ground. At length they became discouraged, and took
+to flight. The joyful shouts of our army, the crosses of honour, which
+the emperor instantly sent to the bravest of the group, his words,
+afterwards perused by all Europe,--all taught these valiant soldiers the
+extent of a glory, which they had not yet estimated; noble actions
+generally appearing quite ordinary to those who perform them. They
+imagined themselves on the point of being killed or taken; and found
+themselves almost at the same instant victorious and rewarded.
+
+Meanwhile, the army of Italy and the cavalry of Murat, followed by three
+divisions of the first corps, which had been confided, since they left
+Wilna, to count Lobau, attacked the main-road and the woods which formed
+the support of the enemy's left. The engagement was, in the first
+instance, very animated; but it terminated abruptly. The Russian
+vanguard retreated precipitately behind the ravine of the Luczissa, to
+escape being thrown into it. The enemy's army was then entirely
+collected on the opposite bank, and presented a united body of 80,000
+men.
+
+Their determined countenance, in a strong position, and in front of a
+capital, deceived Napoleon; he conceived that they would regard it as a
+point of honour to maintain their ground. It was only eleven o'clock; he
+ordered the attack to cease, in order to have an opportunity of
+exploring the whole front of the line, and preparing for a decisive
+battle on the following day. In the first instance, he proceeded to post
+himself on a rising ground among the light troops, in the midst of whom
+he breakfasted. Thence he observed the enemy's army, a ball from which
+wounded an officer very near him. The subsequent hours he spent in
+reconnoitring the ground, and in waiting for the arrival of the other
+corps.
+
+Napoleon announced a battle for the following day. His parting words to
+Murat were these:--"To-morrow at five o'clock, the sun of Austerlitz!"
+They explain the cause of that suspension of hostilities in the middle
+of the day, in the midst of a success which filled the army with
+enthusiasm. They were astonished at this inactivity at the moment of
+overtaking an army, the pursuit of which had completely exhausted them.
+Murat, who had been daily deluded by a similar expectation, remarked to
+the emperor that Barclay only made a demonstration of boldness at that
+hour, in order to be enabled more tranquilly to effect his retreat
+during the night. Finding himself unable to convince his chief, he
+rashly proceeded to pitch his tent on the banks of the Luczissa, almost
+in the midst of the enemy. It was a position which gratified his desire
+of hearing the first symptoms of their retreat, his hope of disturbing
+it, and his adventurous character.
+
+Murat was deceived, and yet he appeared to have been most clear-sighted;
+Napoleon was in the right, and yet, the event placed him in the wrong;
+such are the freaks of fortune! The emperor of the French had correctly
+appreciated the designs of Barclay. The Russian general, believing
+Bagration to be still near Orcha, had resolved upon fighting, in order
+to give him time to rejoin him. It was the intelligence which he
+received that very evening, of the retreat of Bagration by Novoi-Bikof
+towards Smolensk, which suddenly changed his determination.
+
+In fact, by daybreak on the 28th, Murat sent word to the emperor that he
+was about to pursue the Russians, who had already disappeared. Napoleon
+still persisted in his opinion, obstinately affirming that the whole
+enemy's army was in front of him, and that it was necessary to advance
+with circumspection; this occasioned a considerable delay. At length he
+mounted his horse; every step he took destroyed his illusion; and he
+soon found himself in the midst of the camp which Barclay had just
+deserted.
+
+Every thing about it exhibited the science of war; its advantageous
+site; the symmetry of all its parts; the exact and exclusive nicety in
+the use to which each of them had been destined; the order and neatness
+which thence resulted; in fine, nothing left behind, not one weapon, nor
+a single valuable; no trace, nothing in short, in this sudden nocturnal
+march, which could demonstrate, beyond the bounds of the camp, the route
+which the Russians had taken; there appeared more order in their defeat,
+than in our victory! Though conquered, their flight left us lessons by
+which conquerors never profit; whether it be that good fortune is
+contemptuous, or that it waits for misfortune to correct it.
+
+A Russian soldier, who was surprised asleep under a bush, was the
+solitary result of that day, which was expected to be so decisive. We
+entered Witepsk, which was found equally deserted with the camp of the
+Russians. Some filthy Jews, and some Jesuits, were all that remained;
+they were interrogated, but without effect. All the roads were
+abortively reconnoitred. Were the Russians gone to Smolensk? Had they
+re-ascended the Duena? At length, a band of irregular cossacks attracted
+us in the latter direction, while Ney explored the former. We marched
+six leagues over a deep sand, through a thick dust, and a suffocating
+heat. Night arrested our march in the neighbourhood of Aghaponovcht-china.
+
+While parched, fevered, and exhausted by fatigue and hunger, the army
+met with nothing there but muddy water. Napoleon, the King of Naples,
+the Viceroy, and the Prince of Neufchatel, held a council in the
+imperial tents, which were pitched in the court-yard of a castle,
+situated upon an eminence to the left of the main road.
+
+"That victory which was so fervently desired, so rapidly pursued, and
+rendered more necessary by the lapse of every succeeding day, had, it
+seemed, just escaped from our grasp, as it had at Wilna. True, we had
+come up with the Russian rear-guard; but was it that of their army? Was
+it not more likely that Barclay had fled towards Smolensk by way of
+Rudnia? Whither, then, must we pursue the Russians, in order to compel
+them to fight? Did not the necessity of organizing reconquered
+Lithuania, of establishing magazines and hospitals, of fixing a new
+centre of repose, of defence, and departure for a line of operations
+which prolonged itself in so alarming a manner;--did not every thing,
+in short, decidedly prove the necessity of halting on the borders of old
+Russia?"
+
+An affray had just happened, not far from that, respecting which Murat
+was silent. Our vanguard had been repulsed; some of the cavalry had been
+obliged to dismount, in order to effect their retreat; others had been
+unable to bring off their extenuated horses, otherwise than by dragging
+them by the bridle. The emperor having interrogated Belliard on the
+subject, that general frankly declared, that the regiments were already
+very much weakened, that they were harassed to death, and stood in
+absolute need of rest; and that if they continued to march for six days
+longer, there would be no cavalry remaining, and that it was high time
+to halt.
+
+To these motives were added, the effects of a consuming sun reflected
+from burning sands. Exhausted as he was, the emperor now decided; the
+course of the Duena and of the Boristhenes marked out the French line.
+The army was thus quartered on the banks of these two rivers, and in the
+interval between them; Poniatowski and his Poles at Mohilef; Davoust and
+the first corps at Orcha, Dubrowna, and Luibowiczi; Murat, Ney, the army
+of Italy and the guard, from Orcha and Dubrowna to Witepsk and Suraij.
+The advanced posts at Lyadi, Vinkowo, and Velij, opposite to those of
+Barclay and Bagration; for these two hostile armies, the one flying from
+Napoleon, across the Duena, by Drissa and Witepsk, the other, escaping
+Davoust across the Berezina and the Boristhenes, by way of Bobruisk,
+Bickof, and Smolensk, succeeded in forming a junction in the interval
+bounded by these two rivers.
+
+The great divisions of the army detached from the central body were then
+stationed as follows: To the right, Dombrowski, in front of Bobruisk and
+opposed to the corps of 12,000 men commanded by the Russian general
+Hoertel.
+
+To the left, the Duke of Reggio, and St. Cyr, at Polotsk and at Bieloe,
+on the Petersburgh road, which was defended by Wittgenstein and 30,000
+men.
+
+At the extreme left were Macdonald and 38,000 Prussians and Poles,
+before Riga. They extended their line towards the right upon the Aa, and
+in the direction of Duenabourg.
+
+At the same time, Schwartzenberg and Regnier, at the head of the Saxon
+and Austrian corps, occupied, towards Slonim, the interval between the
+Niemen and the Bug, covering Warsaw and the rear of the grand army,
+which was menaced by Tormasof. The Duke of Belluno was on the Vistula
+with a reserve of 40,000 men; while Augereau assembled an eleventh army
+at Stettin.
+
+As to Wilna, the Duke of Bassano remained there, surrounded by the
+envoys of several courts. That minister governed Lithuania, communicated
+with all the chiefs, sent them the instructions which he received from
+Napoleon, and forwarded the provisions, recruits, and stragglers, as
+fast as they arrived.
+
+As soon as the emperor had made up his mind, he returned to Witepsk
+with his guard: there, on the 28th of July, in entering the imperial
+head-quarters, he laid down his sword, and abruptly depositing it on his
+maps, with which his tables were covered, he exclaimed; "Here I stop!
+here I must look round me; rally; refresh my army, and organize Poland.
+The campaign of 1812 is finished; that of 1813 will do the rest."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+With the conquest of Lithuania, the object of the war was attained, and,
+yet, the war appeared scarcely to have commenced; for places only had
+been vanquished, and not men. The Russian army was unbroken; its two
+wings, which had been separated by the vivacity of the first onset, had
+now united. We were in the finest season of the year. It was in this
+situation that Napoleon believed himself irrevocably decided to halt on
+the banks of the Boristhenes and the Duena. At that time, he could much
+more easily deceive others as to his intentions, as he actually deceived
+himself.
+
+His line of defence was already traced upon his maps; the siege-equipage
+was proceeding towards Riga; the left of the army would rest on that
+strong place; hence, proceeding to Duenabourg and Polotsk, it would
+maintain a menacing defensive. Witepsk, so easy to fortify, and its
+woody heights, would serve as an entrenched camp for the centre. Thence,
+towards the south, the Berezina and its marshes, covered by the
+Boristhenes, supply no other passage but a few defiles; a very few
+troops would be sufficient to guard them. Further on, Bobruisk marked
+out the right of this great line, and orders were given to obtain
+possession of that fortress. In addition, an insurrection of the
+populous provinces of the south was calculated on; they would assist
+Schwartzenberg in expelling Tormasof, and the army would be increased by
+their numerous cossacks. One of the greatest proprietors of these
+provinces, a nobleman in whom every thing was distinguished, even to his
+external appearance, hastened to join the liberators of his country. He
+it was whom the emperor intended for the leader of this insurrection.
+
+In this position nothing would be wanting. Courland would support
+Macdonald; Samogitia, Oudinot; the fertile plains of Klubokoe, the
+emperor; the southern provinces would effect the rest. In addition, the
+grand magazine of the army was at Dantzic; its intermediate ones at
+Wilna and Minsk. In this manner the army would be connected with the
+country which it had just set free; and all things appertaining to that
+country--its rivers, marshes, productions, and inhabitants, would be
+united with us: all things would be agreed for the purposes of defence.
+
+Such was Napoleon's plan. He was at that time seen exploring Witepsk and
+its environs, as if to reconnoitre places where he was likely to make a
+long residence. Establishments of all kinds were formed there.
+Thirty-six ovens, capable of baking at once 29,000 pounds of bread, were
+constructed. Neither was utility alone attended to; embellishment was
+also considered. Some stone houses spoiled the appearance of the square
+of the palace; the emperor ordered his guard to pull them down, and to
+clear away the rubbish. Indeed, he was already anticipating the
+pleasures of winter; Parisian actors must come to Witepsk; and as that
+city was abandoned, fair spectators must be attracted from Warsaw and
+Wilna.
+
+His star at that time enlightened his path: happy had it been for him,
+if he had not afterwards mistaken the movements of his impatience for
+the inspirations of genius. But, whatever may be said, it was by himself
+alone that he suffered himself to be hurried on; for in him every thing
+proceeded from himself; and it was a vain attempt to seduce his
+prudence. In vain did one of his marshals then promise him an
+insurrection of the Russians, in consequence of the proclamations which
+the officers of his advanced guard had been instructed to disseminate.
+Some Poles had intoxicated that general with inconsiderate promises,
+dictated by the delusive hope common to all exiles, with which they
+flatter the ambition of the leaders who rely upon them.
+
+But Murat was the individual whose incitements were most frequent and
+animated. Tired of repose, and insatiable of glory, that monarch, who
+considered the enemy to be within his grasp, was unable to repress his
+emotions. He quitted the advanced guard, went to Witepsk, and in a
+private interview with the emperor, gave way to his impetuosity. "He
+accused the Russian army of cowardice; according to him it had failed
+in the _rendezvous_ before Witepsk, as if it had been an affair of a
+duel. It was a panic-struck army, which his light cavalry alone was
+sufficient to put to flight." This ebullition extorted a smile from
+Napoleon; but in order to moderate his fervour, he said to him, "Murat!
+the first campaign in Russia is finished; let us here plant our eagles.
+Two great rivers mark out our position; let us raise block-houses on
+that line; let our fires cross each other on all sides; let us form in
+square battalion; cannons at the angles and the exterior; let the
+interior contain our quarters and our magazines: 1813 will see us at
+Moscow--1814 at Petersburgh. The Russian war is a war of three years!"
+
+It was thus that his genius conceived every thing in masses, and his eye
+expatiated over an army of 400,000 men as if it were a regiment.
+
+That very day he loudly addressed an administrator in the following
+words: "As for you, sir, you must take care to provide subsistence for
+us in these quarters; for," added he, in a loud voice, and addressing
+himself to some of his officers, "we shall not repeat the folly of
+Charles the Twelfth." But his actions in a short time belied his words;
+and there was a general astonishment at his indifference to giving the
+necessary orders for so great an establishment. To the left no
+instructions were sent to Macdonald, nor was he supplied with the means
+of obtaining possession of Riga. To the right, it was Bobruisk which it
+was necessary to capture; this fortress stands in the midst of an
+extensive and deep marsh; and it was to a body of cavalry that the task
+of besieging it was committed.
+
+Napoleon, in former times, scarcely ever gave orders without the
+possibility of being obeyed; but the prodigies of the war of Prussia had
+since occurred, and from that time the idea of impossibility was not
+admitted. His orders were always, that every thing must be attempted,
+because up to that time every thing had succeeded. This at first gave
+birth to great exertions, all of which, however, were not equally
+fortunate. Persons got discouraged; but their chief persevered; he had
+become accustomed to command every thing; those whom he commanded got
+accustomed not to execute every thing.
+
+Meantime Dombrowski was left before that fortress with his Polish
+division, which Napoleon stated at 8000 men, although he knew very well
+that it did not at that time amount to more than 1200; but such was his
+custom; either because he calculated on his words being repeated, and
+that they would deceive the enemy; or that he wished, by this
+exaggerated estimate, to make his generals feel all that he expected
+from them.
+
+Witepsk remained for survey. From the windows of its houses the eye
+looked down perpendicularly into the Duena, or to the very bottom of the
+precipices by which its walls are surrounded. In these countries the
+snow remains long upon the ground; it filters through its least solid
+parts, which it penetrates to a great depth, and which it dilutes and
+breaks down. Hence those deep and unexpected ravines, which no
+declination of the soil gives reason to foresee, which are imperceptible
+at some paces from their edge, and which on those vast plains surprised
+and suddenly arrested the charges of cavalry.
+
+The French would not have required more than a month to render that city
+sufficiently strong as even to stand a regular siege: the natural
+strength of the place was such as to require little assistance from art,
+but that little was denied it. At the same time a few millions, which
+were indispensable to effect the levy of the Lithuanian troops, were
+refused to them. Prince Sangutsko was to have gone and commanded the
+insurrection in the South, but he was retained in the imperial
+head-quarters.
+
+But the moderation of the first discourses of Napoleon had not deceived
+the members of his household. They recollected that, at the first view
+of the deserted camp of Barclay, and of Witepsk abandoned, when he heard
+them congratulating each other on this conquest, he turned sharply round
+to them and exclaimed, "Do you think then that I have come so far to
+conquer these huts?" They also knew perfectly, that when he had a great
+object in view, he never devised any other than a vague plan, preferring
+to take counsel of opportunity; a system more conformable to the
+promptitude of his genius.
+
+In other respects, the whole army was loaded with the favours of its
+commander. If he happened to meet with convoys of wounded, he stopped
+them, informed himself of their condition, of their sufferings, of the
+actions in which they had been wounded, and never quitted them without
+consoling them by his words, or making them partakers of his bounty.
+
+He bestowed particular attention on his guard; he himself daily reviewed
+some part of them, lavishing commendation, and sometimes blame; but the
+latter seldom fell on any but the administrators; which pleased the
+soldiers, and diverted their complaints.
+
+Every day he went and visited the ovens, tasted the bread, and satisfied
+himself of the regularity of all the distributions. He frequently sent
+wine from his table to the sentinel who was nearest to him. One day he
+assembled the _elite_ of his guards for the purpose of giving them a new
+leader; he made them a speech, and with his own hand and sword
+introduced him to them; afterwards he embraced him in their presence. So
+many attentions were ascribed by some, to his gratitude for the past; by
+others, to his exigency for the future.
+
+The latter saw clearly that Napoleon had at first flattered himself with
+the hope of receiving fresh overtures of peace from Alexander, and that
+the misery and debility of his army had occupied his attention. It was
+requisite to allow the long train of stragglers and sick sufficient
+time, the one for joining their corps, and the latter for reaching the
+hospitals. Finally, to establish these hospitals, to collect provisions,
+recruit the horses, and wait for the hospital-waggons, the artillery,
+and the pontoons, which were still laboriously dragging after us across
+the Lithuanian sands. His correspondence with Europe must also have
+been a source of occupation to him. To conclude, a destructive
+atmosphere stopped his progress! Such, in fact, is that climate; the
+atmosphere is always in the extreme--always excessive; it either parches
+or inundates, burns up or freezes, the soil and its inhabitants, for
+whose protection it appears expressly framed; a perfidious climate, the
+heat of which debilitated our bodies, in order to render them more
+accessible to the frosts by which they were shortly to be pierced.
+
+The emperor was not the least sensible of its effects; but when he found
+himself somewhat refreshed by repose, when no envoy from Alexander made
+his appearance, and his first dispositions were completed, he was seized
+with impatience. He was observed to grow restless; whether it was that
+inactivity annoyed him, as it does all men of active habits, and that he
+preferred danger to the weariness of expectation, or that he was
+agitated by that desire of acquisition, which, with the greater part of
+mankind, has stronger efficacy than the pleasure of preserving, or the
+fear of losing.
+
+It was then especially that the image of captive Moscow besieged him; it
+was the boundary of his fears, the object of his hopes: possessed of
+that, he would possess every thing. From that time it was foreseen that
+an ardent and restless genius, like his, and accustomed to short cuts,
+would not wait eight months, when he felt his object within his reach,
+and when twenty days were sufficient to attain it.
+
+We must not, however, be too hasty in judging this extraordinary man by
+the weaknesses common to all men. We shall presently hear from
+himself;--we shall see how much his political position tended to
+complicate his military position. At a later period, we shall be less
+tempted to blame the resolution he was now about to take, when it is
+seen that the fate of Russia depended upon only one more day's health,
+which failed Napoleon, even on the very field of the Moskwa.
+
+Meantime, he at first appeared hardly bold enough to confess to himself
+a project of such great temerity. But by degrees, he assumed courage to
+look it in the face. He then began to deliberate, and the state of great
+irresolution which tormented his mind affected his whole frame. He was
+observed to wander about his apartments, as if pursued by some dangerous
+temptation. Nothing could rivet his attention; he every moment began,
+quitted, and resumed his labour; he walked about without any object;
+inquired the hour, and looked at his watch; completely absorbed, he
+stopped, hummed a tune with an absent air, and again began walking
+about.
+
+In the midst of his perplexity, he occasionally addressed the persons
+whom he met with such half sentences as "Well! what shall we do? Shall
+we stay where we are, or advance? How is it possible to stop short in
+the midst of so glorious a career?" He did not wait for their reply; but
+still kept wandering about, as if he was looking for something or
+somebody to terminate his indecision.
+
+At length, quite overwhelmed with the weight of such an important
+consideration, and oppressed with so great an uncertainty, he would
+throw himself on one of the beds which he had caused to be laid on the
+floor of his apartments. His frame, exhausted by the heat, and the
+struggles of his mind, could only bear a covering of the slightest
+texture; it was in that state that he passed a portion of his days at
+Witepsk.
+
+But when his body was at rest, his spirit was only the more active. "How
+many motives urged him towards Moscow! How support at Witepsk the
+_ennui_ of seven winter months?--he, who till then had always been the
+assailant, was about to be reduced to a defensive position; a part
+unworthy of him, of which he had no experience, and adverse to his
+genius.
+
+"Moreover, at Witepsk, nothing had been decided, and yet, at what a
+distance was he already from France! Europe, then, would at length
+behold him stopped, whom nothing had been able to stop. Would not the
+duration of the enterprise augment its danger? Ought he to allow Russia
+time to arm herself entirely? How long could he protract this uncertain
+condition without impairing the charm of his infallibility, (which the
+resistance of Spain had already enfeebled) and without engendering
+dangerous hopes in Europe? What would be thought, if it were known that
+a third of his army, dispersed or sick, were no longer in the ranks? It
+was indispensable, therefore, to dazzle the world speedily by the eclat
+of a great victory, and hide so many sacrifices under a heap of
+laurels."
+
+Then, if he remained at Witepsk, he considered that he should have the
+_ennui_, the whole expense, all the inconveniences and anxieties of a
+defensive position to bear; while at Moscow there would be peace,
+abundance, a reimbursement of the expenses of the war, and immortal
+glory. He persuaded himself that audacity for him was henceforth the
+greatest prudence; that it is the same with all hazardous undertakings,
+as with faults, in which there is always risk at the beginning, but
+frequently gain at the conclusion; that the more inexcusable they are,
+the more they require to be successful. That it was indispensable,
+therefore, to consummate this undertaking, to push it to the utmost,
+astonish the universe, beat down Alexander by his audacity, and carry
+off a prize which should be a compensation for so many losses.
+
+Thus it was, that the same danger which perhaps ought to have recalled
+him to the Niemen, or kept him stationary on the Duena, urged him towards
+Moscow! Such is the nature of false positions; every thing in them is
+perilous; temerity is prudence; there is no choice left but of errors;
+there is no hope but in the errors of the enemy, and in chance.
+
+Having at last determined, he hastily arose, as if not to allow time to
+his own reflections to renew so painful a state of uncertainty; and
+already quite full of the plan which was to secure his conquest, he
+hastened to his maps; they presented to his view the cities of Smolensk
+and Moscow; "the great Moscow, the holy city;" names which he repeated
+with complacency, and which served to add new fuel to his ambitious
+flame. Fired with this prospect, his spirit, replete with the energy of
+his mighty conception, appears possessed by the genius of war. His voice
+deepens; his eye flashes fire; and his countenance darkens; his
+attendants retreat from his presence, struck with mingled awe and
+respect; but at length his plan is fixed; his determination taken; his
+order of march traced out. Instantly, the internal struggle by which he
+had been agitated subsided; and no sooner was he delivered of his
+terrible conception, than his countenance resumed its usual mild and
+tranquil character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+His resolution once taken, he was anxious that it should satisfy his
+friends; he conceived that by persuading them, they would be actuated by
+greater zeal, than by commanding their obedience. It was, moreover, by
+their sentiments that he was enabled to judge of those of the rest of
+his army; in short, like all other men, the silent discontent of his
+household disturbed him. Surrounded by disapproving countenances, and
+opinions contrary to his own, he felt himself uncomfortable. And,
+besides, to obtain their assent to his plan, was in some degree to make
+them share the responsibility which possibly weighed upon his mind.
+
+But all the officers of his household opposed his plan, each in the way
+that marked his peculiar character; Berthier, by a melancholy
+countenance, by lamentations, and even tears; Lobau and Caulaincourt, by
+a frankness, which in the first was stamped by a cold and haughty
+roughness, excusable in so brave a warrior; and which in the second was
+persevering even to obstinacy, and impetuous even to violence. The
+emperor repelled their observations with some ill-humour; he exclaimed,
+addressing himself more especially to his aid-de-camp, as well as to
+Berthier, "that he had enriched his generals too much; that all they now
+aspired to was to follow the pleasures of the chase, and to display
+their brilliant equipages in Paris: and that, doubtless, they had become
+disgusted with war." When their honour was thus attacked, there was no
+longer any reply to be made; they merely bowed and remained silent.
+During one of his impatient fits, he told one of the generals of his
+guard, "you were born in a _bivouac_, and in a _bivouac_ you will die."
+
+As to Duroc, he first signified his disapprobation by a chilling
+silence, and afterwards by terse replies, reference to accurate reports,
+and brief remarks. To him the emperor replied, "that he saw clearly
+enough that the Russians wanted to draw him on; but that, nevertheless,
+he must proceed as far as Smolensk; that there he would establish his
+head-quarters; and that in the spring of 1813, if Russia did not
+previously make peace, she would be ruined; that Smolensk was the key
+of the two roads to Petersburgh and Moscow; that he must get possession
+of it; and that he would then be able to march on both those capitals at
+the same time, in order to destroy every thing in the one, and preserve
+every thing in the other."
+
+Here the grand marshal observed to him, that he was not more likely to
+make peace at Smolensk, or even at Moscow, than he was at Witepsk; and
+that in removing to such a distance from France, the Prussians
+constituted an intermediate body, on whom little reliance could be
+placed. But the emperor replied, that on that supposition, as the
+Russian war no longer offered him any advantageous result, he ought to
+renounce it; and if so, he must turn his arms against Prussia, and
+compel her to pay the expenses of the war.
+
+It was now Daru's turn. This minister is straightforward even to
+stiffness, and possesses immoveable firmness. The great question of the
+march upon Moscow produced a discussion which lasted during eight
+successive hours, and at which only Berthier was present. The emperor
+having desired his minister's opinion of the war, "It is not a national
+war," replied Daru; "the introduction of some English merchandize into
+Russia, and even the restoration of the kingdom of Poland, are not
+sufficient reasons for engaging in so distant a war; neither your troops
+nor ourselves understand its necessity or its objects, and to say the
+least, all things recommend the policy of stopping where we now are."
+
+The emperor rejoined, "Did they take him for a madman? Did they imagine
+he made war from inclination? Had they not heard him say that the wars
+of Spain and Russia were two ulcers which ate into the vitals of France,
+and that she could not bear them both at once?
+
+"He was anxious for peace; but in order to negotiate, two persons were
+necessary, and he was only one. Had a single letter from Alexander yet
+reached him?
+
+"What, then, should he wait for at Witepsk? Two rivers, it was true,
+traced out the line of position; but, during the winter, there were no
+longer any rivers in this country. It was, therefore, a visionary line
+which they traced out; it was rather a line of demarcation than of
+separation. It was requisite, therefore, to constitute an artificial
+line; to construct towns and fortresses capable of defying the elements,
+and every species of scourge; to create every thing, land and
+atmosphere; for every thing was deficient, even provisions, unless,
+indeed, he chose to drain Lithuania, and render her hostile, or ruin
+ourselves; that if they were at Moscow, they might take what they
+pleased; here it was necessary to purchase every thing. Consequently,"
+continued he, "you cannot enable me to live at Witepsk, nor shall I be
+able to defend you here: both of us, therefore, are here out of our
+proper element.
+
+"That if he returned to Wilna, he might there indeed, be more easily
+supplied, but that he should not be in a better condition to defend
+himself; that in that case it would be necessary for him to fall back to
+the Vistula, and lose Lithuania. Whereas at Smolensk, he would be sure
+to gain either a decisive battle, or at least, a fortress and a position
+on the Dnieper.
+
+"That he perceived clearly that their thoughts were dwelling on Charles
+the Twelfth; but that if the expedition to Moscow wanted a fortunate
+precedent, it was because it was deficient in a man capable of making it
+succeed; that in war, fortune went for one-half in every thing; that if
+people always waited for a complete assemblage of favourable
+circumstances, nothing would ever be undertaken; that we must begin, in
+order to finish; that there was no enterprise in which every thing
+concurred, and that, in all human projects, chance had its share; that,
+in short, it was not the rule which created the success, but the success
+the rule; and that, if he succeeded by new means, that success would
+create new principles.
+
+"Blood has not yet been spilled," he added, "and Russia is too great to
+yield without fighting. Alexander can only negotiate after a great
+battle. If it is necessary, I will even proceed to the holy city in
+search of that battle, and I will gain it. Peace waits for me at the
+gates of Moscow. But with his honour thus saved, if Alexander still
+persists, I will negotiate with the Boyards, or even with the population
+of that capital; it is numerous, united, and consequently enlightened.
+It will understand its own interests, and comprehend the value of
+liberty." He concluded by saying, that "Moscow hated Petersburgh; that
+he would take advantage of their rivalry; that the results of such a
+jealousy were incalculable."
+
+It was in this manner that the emperor, when animated by conversation
+and the banquet, revealed the nature of his hopes. Daru replied, "That
+war was a game which he played well, in which he was always the winner,
+and that it was natural to infer, that he took a pleasure in playing it.
+But that, in this case, it was not so much men as nature which it was
+necessary to conquer; that already the army was diminished one-third by
+desertion, sickness, or famine.
+
+"If provisions failed at Witepsk, what would be the case farther on? The
+officers whom he had sent to procure them, either never re-appeared, or
+returned with empty hands. That the small quantity of flour, or the few
+cattle which they had succeeded in collecting, were immediately consumed
+by the imperial guard; that the other divisions of the army were heard
+to murmur, that it exacted and absorbed every thing, that it
+constituted, as it were, a privileged class. The hospital and
+provision-waggons, as well as the droves of cattle, were not able to
+come up. The hospitals were insufficient for the sick; provisions, room,
+and medicines, were all wanting in them.
+
+"All things consequently admonished them to halt, and with so much the
+more effect, as they could not calculate on the favourable disposition
+of the inhabitants beyond Witepsk. In conformity with his secret orders,
+they had been sounded, but without effect. How could men be roused to
+insurrection, for the sake of a liberty whose very name they did not
+understand? What influence could be obtained over a people almost
+savages, without property, and without wants? What could be taken from
+them? With what could they be tempted? Their only property was their
+life, which they carried with them into regions of almost infinite
+space."
+
+Berthier added, "That if we were to proceed forward, the Russians would
+have in their favour our too-much elongated flanks, famine, and
+especially their formidable winter; while in staying where he was, the
+emperor would enlist the latter on his side, and render himself master
+of the war; that he would fix it within his reach, instead of following
+its deceitful, wandering, and undecided flight."
+
+Such were the replies of Berthier and Daru. The emperor mildly listened
+to their observations, but oftener interrupted them by subtile
+arguments; begging the question, according to his wishes, or shifting
+it, when it became too pressing. But however disagreeable might be the
+truths which he was obliged to hear, he listened to them patiently, and
+replied with equal patience. Throughout this discussion, his
+conversation and whole deportment were remarkable for affability,
+simplicity, and good-humour, which, indeed, he almost always preserved
+in his own family; a circumstance which sufficiently explains why,
+notwithstanding so many misfortunes, he was so much beloved by those who
+lived on terms of intimacy with him.
+
+Still dissatisfied, the emperor summoned successively several of the
+generals of his army; but his questions were such as indicated their
+answers; and many of these chiefs, born in the capacity of soldiers, and
+accustomed to obey his voice, were as submissive in these conversations
+as upon the field of battle.
+
+Others waited the issue, in order to give their opinion; concealing
+their dread of a reverse, in the presence of a man who had always been
+fortunate, as well as their opinion, lest success might on some future
+day reproach them for it.
+
+The greater part signified their approbation, being perfectly convinced
+that were they even to incur his displeasure by recommending him to
+stop, he would not be the less certain to advance. As it was necessary
+to incur fresh dangers, they preferred meeting them with an appearance
+of good-will. They found it more convenient to be wrong with him, than
+right against him.
+
+But there was one individual, who, not content with approving his
+design, encouraged it. Prompted by a culpable ambition, he increased
+Napoleon's confidence, by exaggerating the force of his division. For
+after incurring so many fatigues, unaccompanied by danger, it was a
+great merit in those chiefs who preserved the greatest number of men
+around their eagles. The emperor was thus gratified on his weak side,
+and the time for rewards was approaching. In order to make himself more
+agreeable, the individual in question boldly took upon himself to vouch
+for the ardour of his soldiers, whose emaciated countenances but ill
+accorded with the flattery of their leader. The emperor gave credit to
+this ardour, because it pleased him, and because he only saw the
+soldiers at reviews; occasions when his presence, the military pomp, the
+mutual excitation produced by great assemblages, imparted fervor to the
+mind; when, in short, all things, even to the secret orders of the
+chiefs, dictated an appearance of enthusiasm.
+
+But in fact it was only with his guard that he thus occupied his
+attention. In the army, the soldiers complained of his non-appearance.
+"They no longer saw him," they said, "except in days of battle, when
+they had to die for him, but never to supply them with the means of
+existence. They were all there to serve him, but he seemed no longer
+there to serve them."
+
+In this manner did they suffer and complain, but without sufficiently
+considering that what they complained of was one of the inseparable
+evils of the campaign. The dispersion of the various corps d'armee being
+indispensable for the sake of procuring subsistence in these deserts,
+that necessity kept Napoleon at a distance from his soldiers. His guard
+could hardly find subsistence and shelter in his immediate
+neighbourhood; the rest were out of his sight. It is true that many
+imprudent acts had recently been committed; several convoys of
+provisions belonging to other corps were on their passage daringly
+retained at the imperial head-quarters, for the use of the guard, by
+whose order is not known. This violence, added to the jealousy which
+such bodies of men always inspire, created discontent in the army.
+
+The emperor was ignorant of these complaints; but another cause of
+anxiety had occurred to torment him. He knew that at Witepsk alone,
+there were 3000 of his soldiers attacked by the dysentery, which was
+extending its ravages over his whole army. The rye which they were
+eating in soup was its principal cause. Their stomachs, accustomed to
+bread, rejected this cold and indigestible food, and the emperor was
+urging his physicians to find a remedy for its effects. One day he
+appeared less anxious. "Davoust," said he, "has found out what the
+medical men could not discover; he has just sent to inform me of it; all
+that is required is to roast the rye before preparing it;" and his eyes
+sparkled with hope as he questioned his physician, who declined giving
+any opinion until the experiment was tried. The emperor instantly called
+two grenadiers of his guard; he seated them at table, close to him, and
+made them begin the trial of this nourishment so prepared. It did not
+succeed with them, although he added to it some of his own wine, which
+he himself poured out for them.
+
+Respect, however, for the conqueror of Europe, and the necessity of
+circumstances, supported them in the midst of their numerous privations.
+They saw that they were too deeply embarked; that a victory was
+necessary for their speedy deliverance; and that he alone could give it
+them. Misfortune, moreover, had purified the army; all that remained of
+it could not fail to be its _elite_ both in mind and body. In order to
+have got so far as they had done, what trials had they not withstood!
+Suspense, and disgust with miserable cantonments, were sufficient to
+agitate such men. To remain, appeared to them insupportable; to retreat,
+impossible; it was, therefore, imperative to advance.
+
+The great names of Smolensk and Moscow inspired no alarm. In ordinary
+times, and with ordinary men, that unknown region, that unvisited
+people, and the distance which magnifies all things, would have been
+sufficient to discourage. But these were the very circumstances which,
+in this case, were most attractive. The soldiers' chief pleasure was in
+hazardous situations, which were rendered more interesting by the
+greater proportion of danger they involved, and on which new dangers
+conferred a more striking air of singularity; emotions full of charm for
+active spirits, which had exhausted their taste for old things, and
+which, therefore, required new.
+
+Ambition was, at that time, completely unshackled; every thing inspired
+the passion for glory; they had been launched into a boundless career.
+How was it possible to measure the ascendancy, which a powerful emperor
+must have acquired, or the strong impulse which he had given them?--an
+emperor, capable of telling his soldiers after the victory of
+Austerlitz, "I will allow you to name your children after me; and if
+among them there should prove one worthy of us, I will leave him every
+thing I possess, and name him my successor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+The junction of the two wings of the Russian army, in the direction of
+Smolensk, had compelled Napoleon also to approximate his various
+divisions. No signal of attack had yet been given, but the war involved
+him on all sides; it seemed to tempt his genius by success, and to
+stimulate it by reverses. On his left, Wittgenstein, equally in dread of
+Oudinot and Macdonald, remained between the two roads from Polotsk and
+Duenabourg, which meet at Sebez. The Duke of Reggio's orders had been to
+keep on the defensive. But neither at Polotsk nor at Witepsk was there
+any thing found in the country, which disclosed the position of the
+Russians. Tired of feeling nothing of them on any side, the marshal
+determined to go in quest of them himself. On the 1st of August,
+therefore, he left general Merle and his division on the Drissa, to
+protect his baggage, his great park of artillery, and his retreat; he
+pushed Verdier towards Sebez, and made him take a position on the
+high-road, in order to mask the movement which he was meditating. He
+himself, turning to the left with Legrand's infantry, Castex's cavalry,
+and Aubrey's light artillery, advanced as far as Yakoubowo, on the road
+to Osweia.
+
+As chance would have it, Wittgenstein, at the same moment, was marching
+from Osweia to Yakoubowo; the hostile armies unexpectedly met each
+other in front of that village. It was late in the day; the shock was
+violent, but of short duration: night put an end to the combat, and
+postponed its decision.
+
+The marshal found himself engaged, with a single division, in a deep and
+narrow pass, surrounded with woods and hills, all the declivities of
+which were opposed to us. He was hesitating, however, whether he should
+quit that contracted position, on which all the enemy's fire was about
+to be concentrated, when a young Russian staff-officer, scarcely emerged
+from boyhood, came dashing heedlessly into our posts, and allowed
+himself to be taken, with the despatches of which he was the bearer. We
+learned from them, that Wittgenstein was marching with all his forces to
+attack and destroy our bridges over the Duena. Oudinot felt it necessary
+to retreat, in order to rally and concentrate his forces in a less
+unfavourable position; in consequence, as frequently happens in
+retrograde marches, some stragglers and baggage fell into the hands of
+the Russians.
+
+Wittgenstein, elated by this easy success, pushed it beyond all bounds.
+In the first transport of what he regarded as a victory, he ordered
+Koulnief, and 12,000 men, to pass the Drissa, in order to pursue
+d'Albert and Legrand. The latter had made a halt; Albert hastened to
+inform the marshal. They covered their detachment by a rising ground,
+watched all the movements of the Russian general, and observing him
+rashly venturing himself into a defile between them and the river, they
+rushed suddenly upon him, overthrew and killed him; taking from him also
+eight pieces of cannon, and 2000 men.
+
+Koulnief, it was said, died like a hero; a cannon ball broke both his
+legs, and threw him prostrate on his own cannon; where, observing the
+French approaching, he tore off his decorations, and, in a transport of
+anger at his own temerity, condemned himself to die on the very spot
+where his error was committed, commanding his soldiers to leave him to
+his fate. The whole Russian army regretted him; it imputed this
+misfortune to one of those individuals whom the caprice of Paul had made
+into generals, at the period when that emperor was quite new to power,
+and conceived the idea of entering his peaceable inheritance in the
+character of a triumphant conqueror.
+
+Rashness passed over with the victory from the Russian to the French
+camp; this unexpected success elated Casa-Bianca and his Corsican
+battalions; they forgot the error to which they were indebted for it,
+they neglected the recommendation of their general, and without
+reflecting that they were imitating the imprudence by which they had
+just profited, they precipitated themselves upon the flying footsteps of
+the Russians. They proceeded, headlong, in this manner for two leagues,
+and were only reminded of their temerity by finding themselves alone in
+presence of the Russian army. Verdier, forced to engage in order to
+support them, was already compromising the rest of his division, when
+the Duke of Reggio hurried up, relieved his troops from this peril, led
+them back behind the Drissa, and on the following day resumed his first
+position under the walls of Polotsk. There he found Saint-Cyr and the
+Bavarians, who increased the force of his corps to 35,000 men. As to
+Wittgenstein, he tranquilly took up his first position at Osweia. The
+result of these four days was very unsatisfactory to the emperor.
+
+Nearly about the same time intelligence was brought to Witepsk that the
+advanced guard of the viceroy had gained some advantages near Suraij;
+but that, in the centre, near the Dnieper, at Inkowo, Sebastiani had
+been surprised by superior numbers, and defeated.
+
+Napoleon was then writing to the Duke of Bassano 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 passages 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 mass 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 Eckmuehl, 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 assembling 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 assembled 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 Duena 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 mass, 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 Duena from the Boristhenes; it was in front of Rassasna 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 Rassasna; 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 passed them
+in all possible haste and in disorder.
+
+The streams were crossed by fords which were soon spoiled; the regiments
+which came afterwards passed 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 passed 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 pronunciation, their
+voluble and hasty way of speaking, the vivacity of their motions, and
+their complexion, animated by the base passion 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-worship, while the Muscovites carry their adoration of images to
+idolatry. Finally, whether from superstition 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 passage
+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 harassed 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 mass.
+
+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
+anticipate 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 chasseurs 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 mass, 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 assistance 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 attitude
+was dictated by honour; the multitude 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 circumstances, 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
+nobles, 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.
+
+Barclay alone was against fighting. His plan, erroneously attributed
+to England, had been formed in his mind so far back as the year 1807;
+but he had to combat his own army as well as ours; and though
+commander-in-chief and minister, he was neither Russian enough, nor
+victorious enough, to win the confidence of the Russians. He possessed
+that of Alexander alone.
+
+Bagration and his officers hesitated to obey him. The point was to
+defend their native land, to devote themselves for the salvation of all:
+it was the affair of each, and all imagined that they had a right to
+examine. Thus their ill fortune distrusted the prudence of their
+general; whilst, with the exception of a few chiefs, our good fortune
+trusted implicitly to the boldness, hitherto always prosperous of ours;
+for in success to command is easy; no one inquires whether it is
+prudence or fortune that guides. Such is the situation of military
+chiefs; when successful, they are blindly obeyed by all; when
+unfortunate, they are criticized by all.
+
+Hurried away notwithstanding, by the general impulse, Barclay had just
+yielded to it for a moment, collected his forces near Rudnia, and
+attempted to surprise the French army, dispersed as it was. But the
+feeble blow which his advanced guard had just struck at Inkowo had
+alarmed him. He trembled, paused, and imagining every moment that he saw
+Napoleon approaching in front of him, on his right and every where
+excepting on his left, which was covered as he thought by the Dnieper,
+he lost several days in marches and counter-marches. He was thus
+hesitating, when all at once Newerowskoi's cries of distress resounded
+in his camp. To attack was now entirely out of the question: his troops
+ran to arms, and hurried towards Smolensk for the purpose of defending
+it.
+
+Murat and Ney were already attacking that city: the former with his
+cavalry, at the place where the Boristhenes enters its walls; the
+latter, with his infantry, where it issues from them, and on woody
+ground intersected by deep ravines. The marshal's left was supported by
+the river, and his right by Murat, whom Poniatowski, coming direct from
+Mohilef, arrived to reinforce.
+
+In this place two steep hills contract the channel of the Boristhenes;
+on these hills Smolensk is built. That city has the appearance of two
+towns, separated by the river and connected by two bridges. That on the
+right bank, the most modern, is wholly occupied by traders; it is open,
+but overlooks the other, of which it is nevertheless but a dependency.
+
+The old town, occupying the plateau and slopes of the left bank, is
+surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high, eighteen thick, three
+thousand fathoms in length, and defended by twenty-nine massive towers,
+a miserable earthen citadel of five bastions, which commands the Orcha
+road, and a wide ditch, which serves as a covered way. Some outworks and
+the suburbs intercept the view of the approaches to the Mohilef and
+Dnieper gates; they are defended by a ravine, which, after encompassing
+a great part of the town, becomes deeper and steeper as it approaches
+the Dnieper, on the side next to the citadel.
+
+The deluded inhabitants were quitting the temples, where they had been
+praising God for the victories of their troops, when they saw them
+hastening up, bloody, vanquished, and flying before the victorious
+French army. Their disaster was unexpected, and their consternation so
+much the greater.
+
+Meanwhile, the sight of Smolensk inflamed the impatient ardour of
+Marshal Ney: we know not whether he unseasonably called to mind the
+wonders of the Prussian war, when citadels fell before the sabres of our
+cavalry, or whether he at first designed only to reconnoitre this first
+Russian fortress: at any rate he approached too near; a ball struck him
+on the neck; incensed, he despatched a battalion against the citadel,
+through a shower of balls, which swept away two-thirds of his men; the
+remainder proceeded; nothing could stop them but the Russian walls; a
+few only returned. Little notice was taken of the heroic attempt which
+they had made, because it was a fault of their general's, and useless
+into the bargain.
+
+Cooled by this check, Marshal Ney retired to a sandy and wooded height
+bordering the river. He was surveying the city and its environs, when he
+imagined that he could discern troops in motion on the other side of the
+river: he ran to fetch the emperor, and conducted him through coppices
+and dingles to avoid the fire of the place.
+
+Napoleon, on reaching the height, beheld a cloud of dust enveloping long
+black columns, glistening with a multitude of arms: these masses
+approached so rapidly that they seemed to run. It was Barclay,
+Bagration, nearly 120,000 men: in short, the whole Russian army.
+
+Transported with joy at this sight, Napoleon clapped his hands,
+exclaiming, "At last I have them!" There could be no doubt of it; this
+surprised army was hastening up to throw itself into Smolensk, to pass
+through it, to deploy under its walls, and at length to offer us that
+battle which was so ardently desired. The moment that was to decide the
+fate of Russia had at last arrived.
+
+The emperor immediately went through the whole line, and allotted to
+each his place. Davoust, and next to him Count Lobau, were to deploy on
+the right of Ney: the guard in the centre, as a reserve, and farther
+off the army of Italy. The place of Junot and the Westphalians was
+indicated; but a false movement had carried them out of the way. Murat
+and Poniatowski formed the right of the army; those two chiefs already
+threatened the city: he made them draw back to the margin of a coppice,
+and leave vacant before them a spacious plain, extending from this wood
+as far as the Dnieper. It was a field of battle which he offered to the
+enemy. The French army, thus posted, had defiles and precipices at its
+back; but Napoleon concerned himself little about retreat; he thought
+only of victory.
+
+Bagration and Barclay were meanwhile returning at full speed towards
+Smolensk; the first to save it by a battle, the other to cover the
+flight of its inhabitants and the evacuation of its magazines: he was
+determined to leave us nothing but its ashes. The two Russian generals
+arrived panting on the heights on the right bank; nor did they again
+take breath till they saw that they were still masters of the bridges
+which connect the two towns.
+
+Napoleon then caused the enemy to be harassed by a host of riflemen, for
+the purpose of drawing him to the left bank of the river, and ensuring a
+battle for the following day. It is asserted that Bagration would have
+fallen in with his views, but that Barclay did not expose him to the
+temptation. He despatched him to Elnia, and took upon himself the
+defence of Smolensk.
+
+Barclay had imagined that the greatest part of our army was marching
+upon Elnia, to get between Moscow and the Russian army. He deceived
+himself by the disposition, so common in war, of imputing to one's enemy
+designs contrary to those which he demonstrates. For the defensive,
+being uneasy in its nature, frequently magnifies the offensive, and
+fear, heating the imagination, causes it to attribute to the enemy a
+thousand projects of which he never dreamt. It is possible too that
+Barclay, having to cope with a colossal foe, felt authorized to expect
+from him gigantic movements.
+
+The Russians themselves have since reproached Napoleon with not having
+adopted that manoeuvre; but have they considered, that to proceed thus
+to place himself beyond a river, a fortified town and a hostile army, to
+cut off the Russians from the road to their capital, would have been
+cutting off himself from all communication with his reinforcements, his
+other armies, and Europe? Those are not capable of appreciating the
+difficulties of such a movement who are astonished that it was not made,
+without preparation, in two days, across a river and a country both
+unknown, with such masses, and amidst another combination the execution
+of which was not yet completed.
+
+Be that as it may, in the evening of the 16th, Bagration commenced his
+march for Elnia. Napoleon had just had his tent pitched in the middle of
+his first line, almost within reach of the guns of Smolensk, and on the
+brink of the ravine which encircles the city. He called Murat and
+Davoust: the former had just observed among the Russians movements
+indicative of a retreat. Every day since the passage of the Niemen, he
+had been accustomed to see them thus escape him; he did not therefore
+believe that there would be any battle the following day. Davoust was of
+a contrary opinion. As for the emperor, he had no hesitation in
+believing what he wished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+On the 17th, by daybreak, the hope of seeing the Russian army drawn up
+before him awoke Napoleon; but the field which he had prepared for it
+remained empty: he persisted, nevertheless, in his illusion, in which
+Davoust participated; it was to his side that he proceeded. Dalton, one
+of the generals of that marshal, had seen some hostile battalions quit
+the city and range themselves in order of battle. The emperor seized
+this hope, which Ney, jointly with Murat, combated in vain.
+
+But while he was still full of hopes and expectations, Belliard, tired
+of this uncertainty, ordered a few horse to follow him; he drove a band
+of Cossacks into the Dnieper, above the town, and saw on the opposite
+bank the road from Smolensk to Moscow covered with artillery, and troops
+on the march. There was no longer any doubt that the Russians were in
+full retreat. The emperor was apprised that he must renounce all hopes
+of a battle, but that his cannon might, from the opposite bank, annoy
+the retrograde march of the enemy.
+
+Belliard even proposed to send part of the army across the river, to cut
+off the retreat of the Russian rear-guard, which was entrusted with the
+defence of Smolensk; but the party of cavalry sent to discover a ford
+went two leagues without finding one, and drowned several horses. There
+was nevertheless a wide and commodious crossing about a league above the
+city. Napoleon himself, in his agitation, turned his horse that way. He
+proceeded several wersts in that direction, tired himself, and returned.
+
+From that moment he seemed to consider Smolensk as a mere place of
+passage, of which it was absolutely necessary to gain possession by main
+force, and without loss of time. But Murat, prudent when not heated by
+the presence of the enemy, and who, with his cavalry, had nothing to do
+in an assault, disapproved of this resolution.
+
+To him so violent an effort appeared useless, when the Russians were
+retiring of their own accord; and in regard to the plan of overtaking
+them, he observed that, "since they would not fight, we had followed
+them far enough, and it was high time to stop."
+
+The emperor replied: but the rest of their conversation was not
+overheard. As, however, the king afterwards declared that "he had thrown
+himself at the knees of his brother, and conjured him to stop, but that
+Napoleon saw nothing but Moscow; that honour, glory, rest, every thing
+for him was there; that this Moscow would be our ruin!"--it was obvious
+what had been the cause of their disagreement.
+
+So much is certain, that when Murat quitted his brother-in-law, his face
+wore the expression of deep chagrin; his motions were abrupt; a gloomy
+and concentrated vehemence agitated him; and the name of Moscow several
+times escaped his lips.
+
+Not far off, on the left bank of the Dnieper, a formidable battery had
+been placed, at the spot whence Belliard had perceived the retreat of
+the enemy. The Russians had opposed to us two still more formidable.
+Every moment our guns were shattered, and our ammunition-waggons blown
+up. It was into the midst of this volcano that the king urged his horse:
+there he stopped, alighted, and remained motionless. Belliard warned him
+that he was sacrificing his life to no purpose, and without glory. The
+king answered only by pushing on still farther. Those around him no
+longer doubted, that despairing of the issue of the war, and foreseeing
+future disasters, he was seeking death in order to escape them.
+Belliard, however, insisted, and observed to him, that his temerity
+would be the destruction of those about him. "Well then," replied Murat,
+"do you retire, and leave me here by myself." All refused to leave him;
+when the king angrily turning about, tore himself from this scene of
+carnage, like a man who is suffering violence.
+
+Meanwhile a general assault had been ordered. Ney had to attack the
+citadel, and Davoust and Lobau the suburbs, which cover the walls of
+the city. Poniatowski, already on the banks of the Dnieper, with sixty
+pieces of cannon, was again to descend that river to the suburb which
+borders it, to destroy the enemy's bridges, and to intercept the retreat
+of the garrison. Napoleon gave orders, that, at the same time, the
+artillery of the guard should batter the great wall with its
+twelve-pounders, which were ineffective against so thick a mass. It
+disobeyed, and directed its fire into the covered way, which it cleared.
+
+Every manoeuvre succeeded at once, excepting Ney's attack, the only
+one which ought to have been decisive, but which was neglected. The
+enemy was driven back precipitately within his walls; all who had not
+time to regain them perished; but, in mounting to the assault, our
+attacking columns left a long and wide track of blood, of wounded and
+dead.
+
+It was remarked, that one battalion, which presented itself in flank to
+the Russian batteries, lost a whole rank of one of its platoons by a
+single bullet; twenty-two men were felled by the same blow.
+
+Meanwhile the army, from an amphitheatre of heights, contemplated with
+silent anxiety the conduct of its brave comrades; but when it saw them
+darting through a shower of balls and grape shot, and persisting with an
+ardour, a firmness, and a regularity, quite admirable; then it was that
+the soldiers, warmed with enthusiasm, began clapping their hands. The
+noise of this glorious applause was such as even to reach the attacking
+columns. It rewarded the devotion of those warriors; and although in
+Dalton's single brigade, and in the artillery of Reindre, five chiefs of
+battalion, 1500 men, and the general himself fell, the survivors still
+say, that the enthusiastic homage which they excited, was a sufficient
+compensation to them for all their sufferings.
+
+On reaching the walls of the place, they screened themselves from its
+fire, by means of the outworks and buildings, of which they had gained
+possession. The fire of musketry continued; and from the report,
+redoubled by the echo of the walls, it seemed to become more and more
+brisk. The emperor grew tired of this; he would have withdrawn his
+troops. Thus, the same blunder which Ney had made a battalion commit the
+preceding day, was repeated by the whole army; the one had cost 300 or
+400 men, the other 5000 or 6000; but Davoust persuaded the emperor to
+persevere in his attack.
+
+Night came on. Napoleon retired to his tent, which had been placed more
+prudently than the day before; and the Count Lobau, who had made himself
+master of the ditch, but could no longer maintain his ground there,
+ordered shells to be thrown into the city to dislodge the enemy. Thick
+black columns of smoke were presently seen rising from several points;
+these were soon lighted at intervals by flickering flashes, then by
+sparks, and at last, long spires of flame burst from all parts. It was
+like a great number of distinct fires. It was not long before they
+united and formed but one vast blaze, which whirling about as it rose,
+covered Smolensk, and entirely consumed it, with a dismal roaring.
+
+Count Lobau was dismayed by so great a disaster, which he believed to be
+his own work. The emperor, seated in front of his tent, contemplated in
+silence this awful spectacle. It was as yet impossible to ascertain
+either the cause or the result, and the night was passed under arms.
+
+About three in the morning, one of Davoust's subalterns ventured to the
+foot of the wall, which he scaled without noise. Emboldened by the
+silence which reigned around him, he penetrated into the city; all at
+once several voices and the Sclavonian accent were heard, and the
+Frenchman, surprised and surrounded, thought that he had nothing to do
+but to sell his life dearly, or surrender. The first rays of the dawn,
+however, showed him, in those whom he mistook for enemies, some of
+Poniatowski's Poles. They had been the first to enter the city, which
+Barclay had just evacuated.
+
+After Smolensk had been reconnoitred and its approaches cleared, the
+army entered the walls: it traversed the reeking and blood-stained ruins
+with its accustomed order, pomp, and martial music, triumphing over the
+deserted wreck, and having no other witness of its glory but itself. A
+show without spectators, an almost fruitless victory, a sanguinary
+glory, of which the smoke that surrounded us, and seemed to be our only
+conquest, was but too faithful an emblem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+When the emperor knew that Smolensk was entirely occupied, and its fires
+almost extinguished, and when day and the different reports had
+sufficiently instructed him; when, in short, he saw that there, as at
+the Niemen, at Wilna, at Witepsk, the phantom of victory, which allured
+him forward, and which he always imagined himself to be on the point of
+seizing, had once more eluded his grasp, he proceeded slowly towards his
+barren conquest. He inspected the field of battle, according to his
+custom, in order to appreciate the value of the attack, the merit of the
+resistance, and the loss on both sides.
+
+He found it strewed with a great number of Russian dead, and very few of
+ours. Most of them, especially the French, had been stripped; they might
+be known by the whiteness of their skin, and by their forms less bony
+and muscular than those of the Russians. Melancholy review of the dead
+and dying! dismal account to make up and to render! The pain felt by the
+emperor might be inferred from the contraction of his features and his
+irritation; but in him policy was a second nature, which soon imposed
+silence on the first.
+
+For the rest, this calculation of the dead the day after an engagement
+was as delusive as it was disagreeable; for most of ours had been
+previously removed, but those of the enemy left in sight; an expedient
+adopted with a view to prevent unpleasant impressions being made on our
+own troops, as well as from that natural impulse, which causes us to
+collect and assist our own dying, and to pay the last duties to our own
+dead, before we think of those belonging to the enemy.
+
+The emperor, nevertheless, asserted in his bulletin, that his loss on
+the preceding day was much smaller than that of the Muscovites; that the
+conquest of Smolensk made him master of the Russian salt works, and that
+his minister of finance might reckon upon twenty-four additional
+millions. It is neither probable nor true, that he suffered himself to
+be the dupe of such illusions: yet it was believed, that he was then
+turning against himself that faculty of imposing upon others, of which
+he knew how to make so important a use.
+
+Continuing his reconnoissance, he came to one of the gates of the
+citadel, near the Boristhenes, facing the suburb on the right bank,
+which was still occupied by the Russians. There, surrounded by Marshals
+Ney, Davoust, Mortier, the Grand-marshal Duroc, Count Lobau, and another
+general, he sat down on some mats before a hut, not so much to observe
+the enemy, as to relieve his heart from the load which oppressed it, and
+to seek, in the flattery or in the ardour of his generals, encouragement
+against facts and against his own reflections.
+
+He talked long, vehemently, and without interruption. "What a disgrace
+for Barclay, to have given up, without fighting, the key of old Russia!
+and yet what a field of honour he had offered to him! how advantageous
+it was for him! a fortified town to support and take part in his efforts!
+the same town and a river to receive and cover the wreck of his
+army, if defeated!
+
+"And what would he have had to fight? an army, numerous indeed, but
+straitened for want of room, and having nothing but precipices for its
+retreat. It had given itself up, in a manner, to his blows. Barclay had
+wanted nothing but resolution. It was therefore, all over with Russia.
+She had no army but to witness the fall of her cities, and not to defend
+them. For, in fact, on what more favourable ground could Barclay make a
+stand? what position would he determine to dispute? he, who had forsaken
+that Smolensk, called by him Smolensk the holy, Smolensk the strong, the
+key of Moscow, the Bulwark of Russia, which, as it had been given out,
+was to prove the grave of the French! We should presently see the effect
+of this loss on the Russians; we should see their Lithuanian soldiers,
+nay even those of Smolensk, deserting their ranks, indignant at the
+surrender of their capital without a struggle."
+
+Napoleon added, that "authentic reports had made him acquainted with the
+weakness of the Russian divisions; that most of them were already much
+reduced; that they suffered themselves to be destroyed in detail, and
+that Alexander would soon cease to have an army. The rabble of peasants
+armed with pikes, whom we had just seen in the train of their battalions,
+sufficiently demonstrated to what shifts their generals were reduced."
+
+While the emperor was thus talking, the balls of the Russian riflemen
+were whizzing about his ears; but he was worked up by his subject. He
+launched out against the enemy's general and army, as if he could have
+destroyed it by his reasoning, because he could not by victory. No one
+answered him; it was evident that he was not asking advice, but that he
+had been talking all this time to himself; that he was contending
+against his own reflections, and that, by this torrent of conjectures,
+he was seeking to impose upon himself, and endeavouring to make others
+participators in the same illusions.
+
+Indeed, he did not give any one time to interrupt him. As to the
+weakness and disorganization of the Russian army, nobody believed it;
+but what could be urged in reply? He appealed to positive documents,
+those which had been sent to him by Lauriston; they had been altered,
+under the idea of correcting them: for the estimate of the Russian
+forces by Lauriston, the French minister in Russia, was correct; but,
+according to accounts less deserving of credit, though more flattering,
+this estimate had been diminished one-third.
+
+After talking to himself for an hour, the emperor, looking at the
+heights on the right bank, which were nearly abandoned by the enemy,
+concluded with exclaiming, that "the Russians were women, and that they
+acknowledged themselves vanquished!" He strove to persuade himself that
+these people had, from their contact with Europe, lost their rude and
+savage valour. But their preceding wars had instructed them, and they
+had arrived at that point, at which nations still possess all their
+primitive virtues, in addition to those they have acquired.
+
+At length, he again mounted his horse. It was then the Grand-marshal
+observed to one of us, that "if Barclay had committed so very great a
+blunder in refusing battle, the emperor would not have been so extremely
+anxious to convince us of it." A few paces farther, an officer, sent not
+long before to Prince Schwartzenberg, presented himself: he reported
+that Tormasof and his army had appeared in the north, between Minsk and
+Warsaw, and that they had marched upon our line of operation. A Saxon
+brigade taken at Kobrynn, the grand-duchy overrun, and Warsaw alarmed,
+had been the first results of this aggression; but Regnier had summoned
+Schwartzenberg to his aid. Tormasof had then retreated to Gorodeczna,
+where he halted on the 12th of August, between two defiles, in a plain
+surrounded by woods and marshes, but accessible in the rear of his left
+flank.
+
+Regnier, skilful before an action, and an excellent judge of ground,
+knew how to prepare battles; but when the field became animated, when it
+was covered with men and horses, he lost his self-possession, and rapid
+movements seemed to dazzle him. At first, therefore, that general
+perceived at a glance the weak side of the Russians; he bore down upon
+it, but instead of breaking into it by masses and with impetuosity, he
+merely made successive attacks.
+
+Tormasof, forewarned by these, had time to oppose, at first, regiments
+to regiments, then brigades to brigades, and lastly divisions to
+divisions. By favour of this prolonged contest, he gained the night, and
+withdrew his army from the field of battle, where a rapid and
+simultaneous effort might have destroyed it. Still, he lost some pieces
+of cannon, a great quantity of baggage, and four thousand men, and
+retired behind the Styr, where he was joined by Tchitchakof, who was
+hastening with the army of the Danube to his succour.
+
+This battle, though far from decisive, preserved the grand-duchy: it
+confined the Russians, in this quarter, to the defensive, and gave the
+emperor time to win a battle.
+
+During this recital, the tenacious genius of Napoleon was less struck
+with these advantages in themselves, than with the support they gave to
+the illusion which he had just been holding forth to us: accordingly,
+still adhering to his original idea, and without questioning the
+aid-de-camp, he turned round to his auditory, and, as if continuing his
+former conversation, he exclaimed: "There you see, the poltroons! they
+allow themselves to be beaten even by Austrians!" Then, casting around
+him a look of apprehension, "I hope," added he, "that none but Frenchmen
+hear me." He then asked if he might rely on the good faith of Prince
+Schwartzenberg, for which the aid-de-camp pledged himself; nor was he
+mistaken, though the event seemed to belie his confidence.
+
+Every word which the emperor had uttered merely proved his
+disappointment, and that a great hesitation had again taken possession
+of his mind; for in him success was less communicative, and decision
+less verbose. At length he entered Smolensk. In the passage through its
+massive walls, Count Lobau exclaimed, "What a fine head for
+cantonments!" This was the same thing as advising him to stop there; but
+the emperor returned no other answer to this counsel than a stern look.
+
+This look, however, soon changed its expression, when it had nothing to
+rest upon but ruins, among which our wounded were crawling, and heaps of
+smoking ashes, where lay human skeletons, dried and blackened by the
+fire. This great destruction confounded him. What a harvest of victory!
+That city where his troops were at length to find shelter, provisions, a
+rich booty, the promised reward for so many hardships, was but a ruin on
+which he should be obliged to bivouac! No doubt his influence over his
+men was great, but could it extend beyond nature? What would they think?
+
+Here, it is right to observe, that the sufferings of the army did not
+want for an interpreter. He knew that his soldiers asked one another
+"for what purpose they had been marched eight hundred leagues, to find
+nothing but muddy water, famine, and bivouacs on heaps of ashes: for
+such were all their conquests; they possessed nothing but what they had
+brought with them. If it was necessary to drag every thing along with
+them, to transport France into Russia, wherefore had they been required
+to quit France?"
+
+Several of the generals themselves began to tire: some stopped on
+account of illness, others murmured: "What better were they for his
+having enriched them, if they could not enjoy their wealth? for his
+having given them wives, if he made them widowers by a continual
+absence? for his having bestowed on them palaces, if he forced them to
+lie abroad incessantly on the bare ground, amidst frost and snow?--for
+every year the hardships of war increased; fresh conquests compelling
+them to go farther in quest of fresh enemies. Europe would soon be
+insufficient: he would want Asia too."
+
+Several, especially of our allies, ventured to think, that we should
+lose less by a defeat than by a victory: a reverse would perhaps disgust
+the emperor with the war; at least it would place him more upon a level
+with us.
+
+The generals who were nearest to Napoleon were astonished at his
+confidence. "Had he not already in some measure quitted Europe? and if
+Europe were to rise against him, he would have no subjects but his
+soldiers, no empire but his camp: even then, one-third of them, being
+foreigners, would become his enemies." Such was the language of Murat
+and Berthier. Napoleon, irritated at finding in his two chief
+lieutenants, and at the very moment of action, the same uneasiness with
+which he was himself struggling, vented his ill-humour against them: he
+overwhelmed them with it, as frequently happens in the household of
+princes, who are least sparing of those of whose attachment they are
+most sure; an inconvenience attending favour, which counterbalances its
+advantages.
+
+After his spleen had vented itself in a torrent of words, he summoned
+them back; but this time, dissatisfied with such treatment, they kept
+aloof. The emperor then made amends for his hastiness by caresses,
+calling Berthier "his wife," and his fits of passion, "domestic
+bickerings."
+
+Murat and Ney left him with minds full of sinister presentiments
+relative to this war, which at the first sight of the Russians they were
+themselves for carrying on with fury. For in them, whose character was
+entirely made up of action, inspiration, and first movements, there was
+no consistency: every thing was unexpected; the occasion hurried them
+away; impetuous, they varied in language, plans, and dispositions, at
+every step, just as the ground is incessantly varying in appearance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+About the same time, Rapp and Lauriston presented themselves: the latter
+came from Petersburgh. Napoleon did not ask a single question of this
+officer on his arrival from the capital of his enemy. Aware, no doubt,
+of the frankness of his former aid-de-camp, and of his opinion
+respecting this war, he was apprehensive of receiving from him
+unsatisfactory intelligence.
+
+But Rapp, who had followed our track, could not keep silence. "The army
+had advanced but a hundred leagues from the Niemen, and already it was
+completely altered. The officers who travelled post from the interior of
+France to join it, arrived dismayed. They could not conceive how it
+happened that a victorious army, without fighting, should leave behind
+it more wrecks than a defeated one.
+
+"They had met with all who were marching to join the masses, and all who
+had separated from them; lastly, all who were not excited either by the
+presence of the chiefs, or by example, or by the war. The appearance of
+each troop, according to its distance from home, excited hope, anxiety,
+or pity.
+
+"In Germany, as far as the Oder, where a thousand objects were
+incessantly reminding them of France, these recruits imagined themselves
+not wholly cut off from it; they were ardent and jovial; but beyond the
+Oder, in Poland, where the soil, productions, inhabitants, costumes,
+manners, in short every thing, to the very habitations, wore a foreign
+aspect; where nothing, in short, resembled a country which they
+regretted; they began to be dismayed at the distance they had traversed,
+and their faces already bore the stamp of fatigue and lassitude.
+
+"By what an extraordinary distance must they then be separated from
+France, since they had already reached unknown regions, where every
+thing presented to them an aspect of such gloomy novelty! how many steps
+they had taken, and how many more they had yet to take! The very idea of
+return was disheartening; and yet they were obliged to march on, to keep
+constantly marching! and they complained that ever since they left
+France, their fatigues had been gradually increasing, and the means of
+supporting them continually diminishing."
+
+The truth is, that wine first failed them, then beer, even spirits; and,
+lastly, they were reduced to water, which in its turn was frequently
+wanting. The same was the case with dry provisions, and also with every
+necessary of life; and in this gradual destitution, depression of mind
+kept pace with the successive debilitation of the body. Agitated by a
+vague inquietude, they marched on amid the dull uniformity of the vast
+and silent forests of dark pines. They crept along these large trees,
+bare and stripped to their very tops, and were affrighted at their
+weakness amid this immensity. They then conceived gloomy and absurd
+notions respecting the geography of these unknown regions; and, overcome
+by a secret horror, they hesitated to penetrate farther into such vast
+deserts.
+
+From these sufferings, physical and moral, from these privations, from
+these continual bivouacs, as dangerous near the pole as under the
+equator, and from the infection of the air by the putrified carcases of
+men and horses that strewed the roads, sprang two dreadful
+epidemics--the dysentery and the typhus fever. The Germans first felt
+their ravages; they are less nervous and less sober than the French; and
+they were less interested in a cause which they regarded as foreign to
+them. Out of 22,000 Bavarians who had crossed the Oder, 11,000 only
+reached the Duena; and yet they had never been in action. This military
+march cost the French one-fourth, and the allies half of their army.
+
+Every morning the regiments started in order from their bivouacs; but
+scarcely had they proceeded a few steps, before their widening ranks
+became lengthened out into small and broken files; the weakest, being
+unable to follow, dropped behind: these unfortunate wretches beheld
+their comrades and their eagles getting farther and farther from them:
+they still strove to overtake, but at length lost sight of them, and
+then sank disheartened. The roads and the margins of the woods were
+studded with them: some were seen plucking the ears of rye to devour the
+grain; and they would then attempt, frequently in vain, to reach the
+hospital, or the nearest village. Great numbers thus perished.
+
+But it was not the sick only that separated from the army: many
+soldiers, disgusted and dispirited on the one hand, and impelled by a
+love of independence and plunder on the other, voluntarily deserted
+their colours; and these were not the least resolute: their numbers soon
+increased, as evil begets evil by example. They formed bands, and fixed
+their quarters in the mansions and villages adjacent to the military
+road. There they lived in abundance. Among them there were fewer French
+than Germans; but it was remarked, that the leader of each of these
+little independent bodies, composed of men of several nations, was
+invariably a Frenchman.
+
+Rapp had witnessed all these disorders: on his arrival, his blunt
+honesty kept back none of these details from his chief; but the emperor
+merely replied, "I am going to strike a great blow, and all the
+stragglers will then rally."
+
+With Sebastiani he was more explicit. The latter reminded him of his own
+words, when he had declared to him, at Wilna, that "he would not cross
+the Duena, for to proceed farther this year, would be hurrying to
+infallible destruction."
+
+Sebastiani, like the others, laid great stress on the state of the army.
+"It is dreadful, I know," replied the emperor: "from Wilna, half of it
+consisted of stragglers; now they form two-thirds; there is, therefore,
+no time to be lost: we must extort peace; it is at Moscow. Besides, this
+army cannot now stop: with its composition, and in its disorganization,
+motion alone keeps it together. One may advance at the head of it, but
+not stop or go back. It is an army of attack, not of defence; an army of
+operation, not of position."
+
+It was thus that he spoke to those immediately about him; but to the
+generals commanding his divisions, he held a different language. Before
+the former, he manifested the motives which urged him forward, from the
+latter he carefully concealed them, and seemed to agree with them as to
+the necessity of stopping. This may serve to explain the contradictions
+which were remarked in his own language.
+
+Thus, the very same day, in the streets of Smolensk, surrounded by
+Davoust and his generals, whose corps had suffered most in the assault
+of the preceding day, he said, that in the capture of Smolensk he was
+indebted to them for an important success, and that he considered that
+city as an excellent head of cantonments.
+
+"Now," continued he, "my line is well covered; we will stop here: behind
+this rampart, I can rally my troops, let them rest, receive
+reinforcements, and our supplies from Dantzic. Thus the whole of Poland
+is conquered and defended; this is a sufficient result; it is gathering,
+in two months, the fruit that might be expected only from two years of
+war: it is therefore sufficient. Betwixt this and the spring, we must
+organize Lithuania, and recompose an invincible army; then, if peace
+should not come to seek us in our winter quarters, we will go and
+conquer it at Moscow."
+
+He then told the marshal in confidence, that his motive for ordering him
+to proceed beyond Smolensk, was only to drive off the Russians to the
+distance of a few marches; but he strictly forbade him to involve
+himself in any serious affair. At the same time, it is true, he
+committed the vanguard to Murat and to Ney, the two rashest of his
+officers; and, unknown to Davoust, he placed that prudent and
+methodical marshal under the command of the impetuous king of Naples.
+Thus his mind seemed to be wavering between two great resolutions, and
+the contradictions in his words were communicated to his actions. In
+this internal conflict, however, it was remarked, what an ascendence his
+enterprising genius had over his prudence, and how the former so
+disposed matters as to give birth to circumstances which must
+necessarily hurry him away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Meanwhile the Russians still defended the suburb on the right bank of
+the Dnieper. On our side, the 18th, and the night of the 19th, were
+employed in rebuilding the bridges. On the 19th of August, before day,
+Ney crossed the river by the light of the suburb, which was on fire. At
+first, he saw there no enemies but the flames, and he began to climb the
+long and rugged declivity on which it stands. His troops proceeded
+slowly and with caution, making a thousand circuits to avoid the fire.
+The Russians had managed it with skill: it met our men at every point,
+and obstructed the principal avenues.
+
+Ney, and the foremost of his soldiers, advanced in silence into this
+labyrinth of flames, with anxious eye and attentive ear, not knowing but
+that the Russians might be waiting on the summit of the steep, to pour
+suddenly upon them, to overthrow and drive them back into the flames and
+the river. But they breathed more freely, relieved from the weight of a
+great apprehension, when they perceived on the crest of the ravine, at
+the branching-off of the roads to Petersburgh and Moscow, nothing but a
+band of cossacks, who immediately fled by those two roads. Having
+neither prisoners nor inhabitants, nor spies, the ground was, as at
+Witepsk, the only thing they could interrogate. But the enemy had left
+as many traces in one direction as in the other, so that the marshal
+paused in uncertainty between the two until mid-day.
+
+During this interval, a passage had been effected across the Boristhenes
+at several points; the roads to the two hostile capitals were
+reconnoitred to the distance of a league, and the Russian infantry was
+discovered in that leading to Moscow. Ney would soon have overtaken it;
+but as that road skirted the Dnieper, he had to cross the streams which
+fall into it. Each of them having scooped out its own bed, marked the
+bottom of a valley, the opposite side of which was a position where the
+enemy posted himself, and which it was necessary to carry: the first,
+that of the Stubna, did not detain him long; but the hill of Valoutina,
+at the foot of which runs the Kolowdnia, became the scene of an
+obstinate conflict.
+
+The cause of this resistance has been attributed to an ancient tradition
+of national glory, which represented this field of battle as ground
+consecrated by victory. But this superstition, worthy even still of the
+Russian soldier, is far from the more enlightened patriotism of their
+generals. It was necessity that here compelled them to fight: we have
+seen that the Moscow road, on leaving Smolensk, skirted the Dnieper, and
+that the French artillery, on the other bank, traversed it with its
+fire. Barclay durst not take this road at night, for fear of risking his
+artillery, baggage, and the waggons with the wounded, the rolling of
+which would have betrayed his retreat.
+
+The Petersburgh road quitted the river more abruptly: two marshy
+cross-roads branched off from it on the right, one at the distance of
+two leagues from Smolensk, the other at four; they ran through woods,
+and rejoined the high-road to Moscow, after a long circuit; the one at
+Bredichino, two leagues beyond Valoutina, the other farther off at
+Slobpnewa.
+
+Into these defiles Barclay was bold enough to commit himself with so
+many horses and vehicles; so that this long and heavy column had thus to
+traverse two large arcs of a circle, of which the high-road from
+Smolensk to Moscow, which Ney soon attacked, was the chord. Every
+moment, as always happens in such cases, the overturning of a carriage,
+the sticking fast of a wheel, or of a single horse, in the mud, or the
+breaking of a trace, stopped the whole. The sound of the French cannon,
+meanwhile, drew nearer, and seemed to have already got before the
+Russian column, and to be on the point of reaching and closing the
+outlet which it was striving to gain.
+
+At length, after an arduous march, the head of the enemy's convoy came
+in sight of the high-road at the moment when the French had only to
+force the height of Valoutina and the passage of Kolowdnia, in order to
+reach that outlet. Ney had furiously carried that of the Stubna; but
+Korf, driven back upon Valoutina, had summoned to his aid the column
+which preceded him. It is asserted that the latter, without order, and
+badly officered, hesitated to comply; but that Woronzof, aware of the
+importance of that position, prevailed upon its commander to turn back.
+
+The Russians defended themselves to defend every thing, cannon, wounded,
+baggage: the French attacked in order to take every thing. Napoleon had
+halted a league and a half behind Ney. Conceiving that it was but an
+affair between his advanced guard and the rear of the enemy, he sent
+Gudin to the assistance of the marshal, rallied the other divisions, and
+returned to Smolensk. But this fight became a serious battle; 30,000 men
+were successively engaged in it on both sides: soldiers, officers,
+generals, encountered each other; the action was long, the struggle
+terrible; even night did not suspend it. At length, in possession of the
+plateau, exhausted by the loss of strength and blood, Ney finding
+himself surrounded only by dead, dying, and obscurity, became fatigued;
+he ordered his troops to cease firing, to keep silence, and present
+bayonets. The Russians hearing nothing more, were silent also, and
+availed themselves of the darkness to effect their retreat.
+
+There was almost as much glory in their defeat as in our victory: the
+two chiefs carried their point, the one in conquering, the other in not
+being conquered till he had saved the Russian artillery, baggage, and
+wounded. One of the enemy's generals, the only one left unhurt on this
+field of carnage, endeavoured to escape from among our soldiers, by
+repeating the French word of command; he was recognized by the flashes
+of their fire-arms, and secured. Other Russian generals had perished,
+but the grand army sustained a still greater loss.
+
+At the passage of the bridge over the Kolowdnia, which had been badly
+repaired, General Gudin, whose well-regulated valour loved to confront
+none but useful dangers, and who besides was not a bold rider, had
+alighted from his horse to cross the stream, when, at that moment, a
+cannon-ball skimming the surface of the ground, broke both his legs.
+When the tidings of this misfortune reached the emperor, they put a stop
+to every thing--to discussion and action. Every one was thunderstruck;
+the victory of Valoutina seemed no longer to be a success.
+
+Gudin was conveyed to Smolensk, and there received the unavailing
+attentions of the emperor; but he soon expired. His remains were
+interred in the citadel of the city, which they honour: a worthy tomb
+for a soldier, who was a good citizen, a good husband, a good father, an
+intrepid general, just and mild, a man both of principle and talent; a
+rare assemblage of qualities in an age when virtuous men are too
+frequently devoid of abilities, and men of abilities without virtue. It
+was a fortunate chance that he was worthily replaced; Gerard, the oldest
+general of brigade of the division, took the command of it, and the
+enemy, who knew nothing of our loss, gained nothing by the dreadful blow
+he had dealt us.
+
+The Russians, astonished at having been attacked only in front,
+conceived that all the military combinations of Murat were confined to
+following them on the high-road. They therefore styled him in derision,
+"_the general of the high roads_," characterizing him thus from the
+event, which tends more commonly to deceive than to enlighten.
+
+In fact, while Ney was attacking, Murat scoured his flanks with his
+cavalry, without being able to bring it into action; woods on the left,
+and morasses on the right, obstructed his movements. But while they were
+fighting in front, both were anticipating the effect of a flanking march
+of the Westphalians, commanded by Junot.
+
+From the Stubna, the high-road, in order to avoid the marshes formed by
+the various tributary streams of the Dnieper, turned off to the left,
+ascended the heights, and went farther from the basin of the river, to
+which it afterwards returned in a more favourable situation. It had been
+remarked that a by-road, bolder and shorter, as they all are, ran
+straight across these low marshy grounds, between the Dnieper and the
+high-road, which it rejoined behind the plateau of Valoutina.
+
+It was this cross-road which Junot pursued after crossing the river at
+Prudiszy. It soon led him into the rear of the left of the Russians,
+upon the flank of the columns which were returning to the assistance of
+their rear-guard. His attack was all that was wanted to render the
+victory decisive. Those who were engaged in front with Marshal Ney would
+have been daunted at hearing an attack in their rear; while the
+uncertainty and disorder into which, in the midst of an action, it would
+have thrown the multitude of men, horses, and carriages, crowded
+together in one road, would have been irreparable; but Junot, though
+personally brave, was irresolute as a general. His responsibility
+alarmed him.
+
+Meanwhile Murat, judging that he must have come up, was astonished at
+not hearing his attack. The firmness of the Russians opposed to Ney led
+him to suspect the truth. He left his cavalry, and crossing the woods
+and marshes almost alone, he hastened to Junot, and upbraided him with
+his inaction. Junot alleged in excuse, that "He had no orders to attack;
+his Wurtemberg cavalry was shy, its efforts feigned, and it would never
+be brought to charge the enemy's battalions."
+
+These words Murat answered by actions. He rushed on at the head of that
+cavalry, which, with a different leader, were quite different troops; he
+urged them on, launched them against the Russians, overthrew their
+tirailleurs, returned to Junot and said to him, "Now finish the
+business: your glory and your marshal's staff are still before you!" He
+then left him to rejoin his own troops, and Junot, confounded, remained
+motionless. Too long about Napoleon, whose active genius directed every
+thing, both the plan and the details, he had learned only to obey: he
+wanted experience in command; besides, fatigue and wounds had made him
+an old man before his time.
+
+That such a general should have been selected for so important a
+movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor
+was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp)
+and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed
+up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he
+disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it
+flattered his vanity, to see men who were his pupils commanding his
+armies; and it was moreover natural that he should have a firmer
+alliance on their attachment, than on that of any others.
+
+When, however, on the following day he inspected the places themselves,
+and, at the sight of the bridge where Gudin fell, made the remark, that
+it was not there he ought to have debouched; when afterwards gazing,
+with an angry look, on the position which Junot had occupied, he
+exclaimed: "It was there, no doubt, that the Westphalians should have
+attacked! all the battle was there! what was Junot about?" his
+irritation became so violent, that nothing could at first allay it. He
+called Rapp, and told him to take the command from the Duke of
+Abrantes:--he would dismiss him from the army! he had lost his
+marshal's staff without retrieve! this blunder would probably block the
+road to Moscow against them; that to him, Rapp, he should intrust the
+Westphalians; that he would speak to them in their own language, and he
+would know how to make them fight. But Rapp refused the place of his
+old companion in arms; he appeased the emperor, whose anger always
+subsided quickly, as soon as it had vented itself in words.
+
+But it was not merely on his left that the enemy had a narrow escape
+from being conquered; on his right he had run a still greater risk.
+Morand, one of Davoust's generals, had been despatched from that side
+through the forests; he marched along woody heights, and was, from the
+commencement of the action, on the flank of the Russians. A few paces
+more, and he would have debouched in the rear of their right. His sudden
+appearance would have infallibly decided the victory, and rendered it
+complete; but Napoleon, unacquainted with the localities, ordered him to
+be recalled to the spot where Davoust and himself had stopped.
+
+In the army, we could not help asking ourselves, why the emperor, in
+making three officers, independent of one another, combine for the same
+object, had not made a point of being on the spot, to give their
+movements the unity indispensable, and without him impossible. He, on
+the contrary, had returned to Smolensk, either from fatigue, or chiefly
+from not expecting so serious an affair; or finally, because, from the
+necessity of attending to every thing at once, he could not be in time,
+or completely any where. In fact, the business of his empire and of
+Europe, having been suspended by the preceding days of activity, had
+accumulated. It was necessary to clear out his portfolios, and to give
+circulation to both civil and political affairs, which began to clog; it
+was, besides, urgent and glorious to date from Smolensk.
+
+When, therefore, Borelli, second in command of Murat's staff, came to
+inform him of the battle of Valoutina, he hesitated about receiving him;
+and so deeply was he engaged in the business before him, that a minister
+had to interfere to procure that officer admittance. The report of this
+officer agitated Napoleon. "What say you?" he exclaimed: "what! you are
+not enough! the enemy shows 60,000 men! Then it is a battle!" and he
+began storming at the disobedience and inactivity of Junot. When Borelli
+informed him of Gudin's mortal wound, Napoleon's grief was violent; he
+gave vent to it in repeated questions and expressions of regret; then
+with that strength of mind which was peculiar to him, he subdued his
+uneasiness, postponed his anger, suspended his chagrin, and giving
+himself up wholly to his occupation, he deferred until the morrow the
+charge of battles, for night had come on; but afterwards the hopes of a
+battle roused him, and he appeared next morning with the day on the
+fields of Valoutina.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+Ney's troops, and those of Gudin's division, deprived of their general,
+had drawn up there on the corses of their companions and of the
+Russians, amidst the stumps of broken trees, on ground trampled by the
+feet of the combatants, furrowed with balls, strewed with the fragments
+of weapons, tattered garments, military utensils, carriages overthrown,
+and scattered limbs; for such are the trophies of war, such the beauties
+of a field of victory!
+
+Gudin's battalions appeared to be melted down to platoons; the more they
+were reduced, the prouder they seemed to be: close to them, one still
+breathed the smell of burnt cartridges and gunpowder, with which the
+ground and their apparel were impregnated, and their faces yet quite
+begrimed. The emperor could not pass along their front without having to
+avoid, to step over, or to tread upon carcases, and bayonets twisted by
+the violence of the shock. But over all these horrors he threw a veil of
+glory. His gratitude transformed this field of death into a field of
+triumph, where, for some hours, satisfied honour and ambition held
+exclusive sway.
+
+He was sensible that it was high time to encourage his soldiers by
+commendations and rewards. Never, therefore, were his looks more kind;
+and as to his language, "this battle was the most glorious achievement
+in our military history; the soldiers who heard him were men with whom
+one might conquer the world; the slain, warriors who had died an
+immortal death." He spoke thus, well aware that it is more especially
+amid such destruction that men think of immortality.
+
+He was profuse in his rewards; on the 12th, 21st, 127th of the line, and
+the 17th light, he conferred eighty-seven decorations and promotions;
+these were Gudin's regiments. The 127th had, before this, marched
+without an eagle; for at that time it was necessary for a regiment to
+earn its colours in a field of battle, to prove, that in the sequel it
+would know how to preserve them there.
+
+The emperor delivered the eagle to it with his own hands; he also
+satisfied Ney's corps. His favours were as great in themselves as they
+were in their form. The value of the gift was enhanced by the manner in
+which he bestowed it. He was successively surrounded by each regiment as
+by a family. There he appealed in a loud voice to the officers,
+subalterns, and privates, inquiring who were the bravest of all those
+brave men, or the most successful, and recompensing them on the spot.
+The officers named, the soldiers confirmed, the emperor approved: thus,
+as he himself observed, the elections were made instantaneously, in a
+circle, in his presence, and confirmed with acclamations by the troops.
+
+These paternal manners, which made the private soldier the military
+comrade of the ruler of Europe; these forms, which revived the
+still-regretted usages of the republic, delighted the troops. He was a
+monarch, but the monarch of the Revolution; and they could not but love
+a fortunate sovereign who led them on to fortune; in him there was every
+thing to excite, and nothing to reproach them.
+
+Never did field of victory exhibit a spectacle more capable of exalting;
+the presentation of that eagle so richly merited, the pomp of these
+promotions, the shouts of joy, the glory of those warriors, recompensed
+on the very spot where it had just been acquired; their valour
+proclaimed by a voice, every accent of which rung throughout attentive
+Europe; by that great captain whose bulletins would carry their names
+over the whole world, and more especially among their countrymen, and
+into the bosoms of their families, which they would at once cheer and
+make proud: how many favours at once! they were absolutely intoxicated
+with them: he himself seemed at first to allow himself to share their
+transports.
+
+But when he was out of sight of his troops, the attitude of Ney and
+Murat, and the words of Poniatowski, who was as frank and judicious in
+council as he was intrepid in the field, tranquillized him; and when the
+close heat of the day began to overpower him, and he learned from the
+reports that his men had proceeded eight leagues without overtaking the
+enemy, the spell was entirely dissolved. On his return to Smolensk, the
+jolting of his carriage over the relics of the fight, the stoppages
+caused on the road by the long file of the wounded who were crawling or
+being carried back, and in Smolensk itself by the tumbrels of amputated
+limbs about to be thrown away at a distance; in a word, all that is
+horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed him.
+Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which issued
+from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised on the
+fields of Valoutina.
+
+The reports of the surgeons were frightful: in that country a spirit
+distilled from grain is used instead of wine and brandy made from
+grapes. Narcotic plants are mixed with it. Our young soldiers, exhausted
+with hunger and fatigue, conceived that this liquor would cheer them;
+but its perfidious heat caused them to throw out at once all the fire
+that was yet left in them, after which they sank exhausted, and became
+the victims of disease.
+
+Others, less sober, or more debilitated, were seized with dizziness,
+stupefaction, and torpor; they squatted into the ditches and on the
+roads. Their half-open, watery, and lack-lustre eyes seemed to watch,
+with insensibility, death gradually seizing their whole frame; they
+expired sullenly and without a groan.
+
+At Wilna, it had not been possible to establish hospitals for more than
+six thousand sick: convents, churches, synagogues, and barns, served to
+receive the suffering multitude. In these dismal places, which were
+sometimes unhealthy, but still too few, and too crowded, the sick were
+frequently without food, without beds, without covering, and without
+even straw and medicines. The surgeons were inadequate to the duty, so
+that every thing, even to the very hospitals, contributed to create
+disease, and nothing to cure.
+
+At Witepsk, 400 wounded Russians were left on the field of battle: 300
+more were abandoned in the town by their army; and as the inhabitants
+had been taken away, these unfortunate wretches remained three days
+before they were discovered, without assistance, huddled together
+pell-mell, dead and dying, amidst the most horrible filth and infection:
+they were at length collected together and mixed with our own wounded,
+who, like those of the Russians, amounted to 700. Our surgeons tore up
+their very shirts, and those of these poor creatures, to dress them; for
+there already began to be a scarcity of linen.
+
+When at length the wounds of these unfortunate men were healed, and they
+required nothing but wholesome food to complete their cure, they
+perished for want of sustenance: few either of the French or Russians
+escaped. Those who were prevented from going in quest of food by the
+loss of a limb, or by debility, were the first to sink. These disasters
+occurred wherever the emperor was not in person; his presence bringing,
+and his departure carrying, every thing along with it; and his orders,
+in fact, not being scrupulously obeyed but within the circle of his own
+observation.
+
+At Smolensk, there was no want of hospitals; fifteen spacious brick
+buildings were rescued from the flames: there were even found some wine,
+brandy, and a few medical stores; and our reserve waggons for the
+wounded at length rejoined us: but every thing ran short. The surgeons
+were at work night and day, but the very second night, all the materials
+for dressing the wounded were exhausted: there was no more linen, and
+they were forced to use paper, found in the archives, in its stead.
+Parchment served for splinters, and coarse cloth for compresses; and
+they had no other substitute for lint than tow and birch down (_coton du
+bouleau_).
+
+Our surgeons were overwhelmed with dismay: for three days an hospital of
+a hundred wounded had been forgotten; an accident led to its discovery:
+Rapp penetrated into that abode of despair. I will spare my reader the
+horror of a description. Wherefore communicate those terrible
+impressions which harrow up the soul? Rapp did not spare them to
+Napoleon, who instantly caused his own wine, and a sum of money, to be
+distributed among such of those unfortunate men as a tenacious life
+still animated, or whom a disgusting food had supported.
+
+But to the vehement emotion which these reports excited in the bosom of
+the emperor, was superadded an alarming consideration. The conflagration
+of Smolensk was no longer, he saw, the effect of a fatal and unforeseen
+accident of war, nor even the result of an act of despair: it was the
+result of cool determination. The Russians had studied the time and
+means, and taken as great pains to destroy, as are usually taken to
+preserve.
+
+The same day the courageous answers of one of their popes (the only one
+found in Smolensk,) enlightened him still more in regard to the blind
+fury which had been excited in the whole Russian nation. His
+interpreter, alarmed by this animosity, conducted the pope to the
+emperor. The venerable priest first reproached him, with firmness, for
+his alleged sacrilegious acts: he knew not that it was the Russian
+general himself who had caused the storehouses and churches to be set on
+fire, and who had accused us of these outrages, in order that the
+mercantile class and the peasantry might not separate their cause from
+that of the nobility.
+
+The emperor listened attentively. "But," said he to him at last, "has
+your church been burned?"--"No, sire," replied the pope; "God will be
+more powerful than you; he will protect it, for I have opened it to all
+the unfortunate people whom the destruction of the city has deprived of
+a home!"--"You are right," rejoined Napoleon, with emotion, "yes, God
+will watch over the innocent victims of war; he will reward you for your
+courage. Go, worthy priest, return to your post. Had all your popes
+followed your example, they had not basely betrayed the mission of peace
+which they received from heaven; if they had not abandoned the temples
+which their presence alone renders sacred, my soldiers would have spared
+your holy edifices; for we are all Christians, and your God is our God."
+
+With these words, Napoleon sent back the priest to his temple with an
+escort and some succours. A heart-rending shriek arose at the sight of
+the soldiers penetrating into this asylum. A crowd of terrified women
+and children thronged about the altar; but the pope, raising his voice,
+cried; "be of good cheer: I have seen Napoleon; I have spoken to him.
+Oh! how have we been deceived, my children! the emperor of France is not
+the man that he has been represented to you. Learn that he and his
+soldiers worship the same God as we do. The war which he wages is not
+religious, it is a political quarrel with our emperor. His soldiers
+fight only our soldiers. They do not slaughter, as we have been assured,
+old men, women, and children. Cheer up, then, and let us thank God for
+being relieved from the painful duty of hating them as heathen, impious
+wretches, and incendiaries!" The pope then commenced a hymn of thanks,
+in which they all joined with tearful eyes.
+
+But these very words demonstrated how much the nation had been deceived.
+The rest of the inhabitants had fled. Henceforward, then, it was not
+their army alone, it was the population, it was all Russia, that fled
+before us. The emperor felt that, with this population, one of his most
+powerful engines of conquest was escaping from his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+Ever since our arrival at Witepsk, Napoleon had in fact employed two of
+his officers to sound the sentiments of these people. The object was,
+to instil into them notions of liberty, and to compromise them in our
+cause by an insurrection more or less general. But there had been
+nothing to work upon excepting a few straggling savage boors, whom the
+Russians had perhaps left as spies amongst us. This attempt had only
+served to betray his plan, and to put the Russians on their guard
+against it.
+
+This expedient, moreover, was repugnant to Napoleon, whose nature
+inclined him much more to the cause of kings than to that of nations. He
+employed it but carelessly. Subsequently, at Moscow, he received several
+addresses from different heads of families. They complained that they
+were treated by the nobility like herds of cattle, which they might sell
+or barter away at pleasure. They solicited Napoleon to proclaim the
+abolition of slavery, and in the event of his doing so, they offered to
+head partial insurrections, which they promised speedily to render
+general.
+
+These offers were rejected. We should have seen, among a barbarous
+people, a barbarous liberty, an ungovernable, a horrible licentiousness:
+a few partial revolts had formerly furnished the standard of them. The
+Russian nobles, like the planters of St. Domingo, would have been
+ruined. The fear of this prevailed in the mind of Napoleon, and was
+confessed by him; it induced him to give up, for a time, all attempts to
+excite a movement which he could not have regulated.
+
+Besides, these masters had conceived a distrust of their slaves. Amidst
+so many dangers, they distinguished this as the most urgent. They first
+wrought upon the minds of their unfortunate serfs, debased by all sorts
+of servitude. Their priests, whom they are accustomed to believe,
+imposed upon them by delusive language; they persuaded these peasants
+that we were legions of devils, commanded by Antichrist, infernal
+spirits, whose very look would excite horror, and whose touch would
+contaminate. Such of our prisoners as fell into their hands, remarked
+that these poor creatures would not again make use of the vessels which
+they had used, and that they reserved them for the most filthy animals.
+
+As we advanced, however, our presence would have refuted all these
+clumsy fables. But behold! these nobles fell back with their serfs into
+the interior of the country, as at the approach of a dire contagion.
+Property, habitations, all that could detain them, and be serviceable to
+us, were sacrificed. They interposed famine, fire, and the desert,
+between them and us; for it was as much against their serfs as against
+Napoleon that this mighty resolution was executed. It was no longer,
+therefore, a war of kings that was to be prosecuted, but a war of class,
+a war of party, a war of religion, a national war, a combination of all
+sorts of war.
+
+The emperor then first perceived the enormous magnitude of his
+enterprise; the farther he advanced, the more it became magnified. So
+long as he only encountered kings, to him, who was greater than all of
+them, their defeats were but sport; but the kings being conquered, he
+had now to do with people; and it was another Spain, but remote, barren,
+infinite, that he had found at the opposite extremity of Europe. He was
+daunted, hesitated, and paused.
+
+At Witepsk, whatever resolution he might have taken, he wanted Smolensk,
+and till he should be at Smolensk, he seemed to have deferred coming to
+any determination. For this reason he was again seized with the same
+perplexity: it was now more embarrassing, as the flames, the prevalent
+epidemic, and the victims which surrounded him, had aggravated every
+thing; a fever of hesitation attacked him; his eyes turned towards Kief,
+Petersburgh, and Moscow.
+
+At Kief he should envelop Tchitchakof and his army; he should rid the
+right flank and the rear of the grand army, of annoyance; he should
+cover the Polish provinces most productive of men, provisions, and
+horses; while fortified cantonments at Mohilef, Smolensk, Witepsk,
+Polotsk, Duenabourg, and Riga, would defend the rest. Behind this line,
+and during the winter, he might raise and organize all ancient Poland,
+and hurl it in the spring upon Russia, oppose nation to nation, and
+render the war equal.
+
+At Smolensk, however, he was at the point where the Petersburgh and
+Moscow roads meet, 29 marches from the first of these capitals, and 15
+from the other. In Petersburgh, the centre of the government, the knot
+to which all the threads of the administration were united, the brain of
+Russia, were her military and naval arsenals; in short, it was the only
+point of communication between Russia and England, of which he should
+possess himself. The victory of Polotsk, of which he had just received
+intelligence, seemed to urge him in that direction. By marching in
+concert with Saint-Cyr upon Petersburgh, he should envelop Wittgenstein,
+and cause Riga to fall before Macdonald.
+
+On the other hand, in Moscow, it was the nobility, as well as the
+nation, that he should attack in its property, in its ancient honour;
+the road to that capital was shorter; it presented fewer obstacles and
+more resources; the Russian main army, which he could not neglect, and
+which he must destroy, was there, together with the chances of a battle,
+and the hope of giving a shock to the nation, by striking at its heart
+in this national war.
+
+Of these three plans the latter appeared to him the only one
+practicable, in spite of the advancing season. The history of Charles
+XII. was, nevertheless, before his eyes; not that of Voltaire, which he
+had just thrown aside with impatience, judging it to be romantic and
+inaccurate, but the journal of Adlerfield, which he read, but which did
+not stop him. On comparing that expedition with his own, he found a
+thousand differences between them, on which he laid great stress; for
+who can be a judge in his own cause? and of what use is the example of
+the past, in a world where there never were two men, two things, or two
+situations exactly alike?
+
+At any rate, about this period the name of Charles XII. was frequently
+heard to drop from his lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+But the news which arrived from all quarters excited his ardour quite as
+much as it had been at Witepsk. His lieutenants seemed to have done more
+than himself: the actions of Mohilef, Molodeczna, and Valoutina, were
+regular battles, in which Davoust, Schwartzenberg, and Ney, were
+conquerors; on his right, his line of operation seemed to be covered;
+the enemy's army was flying before him; on his left, the Duke of Reggio,
+after drawing Wittgenstein upon Polotsk, was attacked at Slowna, on the
+17th of August. The attack of Wittgenstein was furious and obstinate; it
+failed; but he retained his offensive position, and Marshal Oudinot had
+been wounded. Saint-Cyr succeeded him in the command of that army,
+composed of about 30,000 French, Swiss, and Bavarians. The very next day
+this general, who disliked any command unless when he exercised it alone
+and in chief, availed himself of it, to give his measure to his own
+troops and to the enemy; but coolly, according to his character, and
+combining every thing.
+
+From daybreak till five in the evening, he contrived to amuse the enemy
+by the proposal of an agreement to withdraw the wounded, and more
+especially by demonstrations of retreat. At the same time he silently
+rallied all his combatants, drew them up into three columns of attack,
+and concealed them behind the village of Spas and rising grounds.
+
+At five o'clock, all being ready, and Wittgenstein's vigilance asleep,
+Saint-Cyr gave the signal: his artillery immediately began firing, and
+his columns rushed forward. The Russians, being taken by surprise,
+resisted in vain; their right was first broken, and their centre soon
+fled in disorder: they abandoned 1000 prisoners, 20 pieces of cannon, a
+field of battle covered with slain, and the offensive, which Saint-Cyr,
+being too weak, could only affect to resume, for the purpose of better
+defending himself.
+
+In this short but severe and sanguinary conflict, the right wing of the
+Russians, which was supported by the Duena, made an obstinate resistance.
+It was necessary to charge it with the bayonet, amidst a thick fire of
+grape-shot; every thing succeeded, but when it was supposed that there
+was no more to do but to pursue, all was nearly lost; some Russian
+dragoons, according to some, and horse-guards, according to others,
+risked a charge on a battery of Saint-Cyr's; a French brigade placed to
+support it advanced, then suddenly turned its back and fled through the
+midst of our cannon, which it prevented from being fired. The Russians
+reached them pell-mell with our men; they sabred the gunners, upset the
+pieces, and pursued our horse so closely, that the latter, more and more
+terrified, ran in disorder upon their commander-in-chief and his staff,
+whom they overthrew. General Saint-Cyr was obliged to fly on foot. He
+threw himself into the bottom of a ravine, which sheltered him from the
+squall. The Russian dragoons were already close to Polotsk, when a
+prompt and skilful manoeuvre of Berkheim and the 4th French
+cuirassiers put an end to this warm affair. The Russians betook
+themselves to the woods.
+
+The following day Saint-Cyr sent a body of men in pursuit of them, but
+merely to observe their retreat, to mark the victory, and to reap some
+more of its fruits. During the two succeeding months, up to the 18th of
+October, Wittgenstein kept at a respectful distance. The French general,
+on his part, confined his attention to observing the enemy, keeping up
+his communications with Macdonald, with Witepsk, and Smolensk,
+fortifying himself in his position of Polotsk, and, above all, finding
+there means of subsistence.
+
+In this action of the 18th, four generals, four colonels, and many
+officers, were wounded. Among them the army remarked the Bavarian
+Generals Deroy and Liben. They expired on the 22d of August. These
+generals were of the same age; they had belonged to the same regiment,
+had made the same campaigns, proceeded at nearly an equal pace in their
+perilous career, which was gloriously terminated by the same death, and
+in the same battle. It was thought right not to separate in the tomb
+these warriors, whom neither life nor death had been able to part; one
+grave received the remains of both.
+
+On the news of this victory, the emperor sent to General Saint-Cyr the
+staff of Marshal of the empire. He placed a great number of crosses at
+his disposal, and subsequently approved most of the promotions which
+were applied for.
+
+Notwithstanding this success, the determination to proceed beyond
+Smolensk was too perilous for Napoleon to decide on it alone: it was
+requisite that he should contrive to be drawn into it. Beyond Valoutina,
+Ney's corps, which was fatigued, had been replaced by that of Davoust.
+Murat as king, as brother-in-law to the emperor, and agreeably to his
+order, was to command it. Ney had submitted to this, less from
+condescension than from conformity of disposition. They agreed in their
+ardour.
+
+But Davoust, whose methodical and tenacious genius was a complete
+contrast to the fiery impetuosity of Murat, and who was rendered proud
+by the remembrance of, and the titles derived from two great victories,
+was piqued at being placed in this dependence. These haughty chiefs, who
+were about the same age, had been companions in war, and had mutually
+witnessed each other's elevation; they were both spoiled by the habit of
+having obeyed only a great man, and were by no means fit to command one
+another; Murat, in particular, who was too often unable to command
+himself.
+
+Davoust nevertheless obeyed, but with an ill grace, and imperfectly, as
+wounded pride generally does. He affected immediately to break off all
+direct correspondence with the emperor. The latter, surprised at this,
+ordered him to renew it, alleging his distrust of the reports of Murat.
+Davoust made a handle of this avowal, and again asserted his
+independence. Henceforward the vanguard had two leaders. Thus the
+emperor, fatigued, distressed, overloaded with business of every kind,
+and forced to show indulgence to his lieutenants, divided his power as
+well as his armies, in spite of his precepts and his former examples.
+Circumstances, which he had so often controlled, became stronger than
+him, and controlled him in their turn.
+
+Meanwhile Barclay, having fallen back without resistance nearly as far
+as Dorogobouje, Murat had no need of Davoust, and no occasion presented
+itself for misunderstanding; but about eleven in the forenoon of the 23d
+of August, a thick wood, a few wersts from that town, which the king
+wished to reconnoitre, was warmly disputed with him: he was obliged to
+carry it twice.
+
+Murat, surprised at such a resistance at that early hour, pushed on, and
+piercing through this curtain, beheld the whole Russian army drawn up in
+order of battle. The narrow ravine of the Luja separated him from it: it
+was noon; the extent of the Russian lines, especially towards our right,
+the preparations, the hour, the place, which was that where Barclay had
+just rejoined Bagration; the choice of the ground, well suited for a
+general engagement; all gave him reason to anticipate a battle; and he
+sent a dispatch to the emperor to apprise him of it.
+
+At the same time he ordered Montbrun to pass the ravine on his right
+with his cavalry, in order to reconnoitre and get upon the left of the
+enemy. Davoust, and his five divisions of infantry, extended themselves
+on that side; he protected Montbrun: the king recalled them to his left,
+on the high-road, designing, it is said, to support Montbrun's flank
+movement by some demonstrations in front.
+
+Davoust replied, that "This would be sacrificing our right wing, through
+which the enemy would get behind us on the high-road, our only means of
+retreat; that thus he would force us to a battle, which he, Davoust, had
+orders to avoid, and which he would avoid, his force being insufficient,
+the position bad, and he being moreover under the command of a leader in
+whom he had but little confidence." He then wrote immediately to
+Napoleon, urging him to come up without loss of time, if he would not
+have Murat engage without him.
+
+On this intelligence, which he received in the night of the 24th of
+August, Napoleon joyfully threw aside his indecision, which to this
+enterprising and decisive genius was absolute torture: he hurried
+forward with his guard, and proceeded twelve leagues without halting;
+but on the evening of the preceding day, the enemy's army had again
+disappeared.
+
+On our side, his retreat was attributed to the movement of Montbrun; on
+the part of the Russians to Barclay, and to a bad position chosen by the
+chief of his staff, who had taken up ground in his own disfavour,
+instead of making it serve to his advantage. Bagration was the first who
+perceived it; his rage knew no bounds, and he proclaimed it treason.
+
+Discord reigned in the Russian camp as well as in our advanced guard.
+Confidence in their commander, that strength of armies, was wanting; his
+every step seemed a blunder; each resolution that was taken the very
+worst. The loss of Smolensk had soured all; the junction of the two
+_corps d'armee_ increased the evil; the stronger the Russian force felt
+itself, the weaker did its general seem to it. The outcry became
+general; another leader was loudly called for. A few prudent men,
+however, interposed: Kutusof was announced, and the humbled pride of the
+Russians awaited him in order to fight.
+
+The emperor, on his part, already at Dorogobouje, no longer hesitated;
+he knew that he carried every where with him the fate of Europe; that
+wherever he might be, that would always be the place where the destiny
+of nations would be decided; that he might therefore advance, fearless
+of the threatening consequences of the defection of the Swedes and
+Turks. Thus he neglected the hostile armies of Essen at Riga, of
+Wittgenstein before Polotsk, of Ertell before Bobruisk, and of
+Tchitchakof in Volhynia. They consisted of 120,000 men, whose number
+could not but keep gradually augmenting; he passed them, and suffered
+himself to be surrounded by them with indifference, assured that all
+these vain obstacles of war and policy would be swept away by the very
+first thunderbolt which he should launch.
+
+And yet, his column of attack, which was 185,000 strong at his departure
+from Witepsk, was already reduced to 157,000; it was diminished by
+28,000 men, half of whom occupied Witepsk, Orcha, Mohilef, and Smolensk.
+The rest had been killed or wounded, or were straggling, and plundering
+in his rear our allies and the French themselves.
+
+But 157,000 men were sufficient to destroy the Russian army by a
+complete victory, and to take Moscow. As to his base of operation,
+notwithstanding the 120,000 Russians by whom it was threatened, it
+appeared to be secure. Lithuania, the Duena, the Dnieper, and lastly
+Smolensk, were or would soon be covered towards Riga and Duenabourg by
+Macdonald and 32,000 men; towards Polotsk, by Saint-Cyr, with 30,000; at
+Witepsk, Smolensk, and Mohilef, by Victor and 40,000; before Bobruisk,
+by Dombrowski and 12,000; and on the Bug by Schwartzenberg and Regnier,
+at the head of 45,000 men. Napoleon reckoned besides on the divisions of
+Loison and Durutte, 22,000 strong, which were already approaching
+Koenigsberg and Warsaw; and on reinforcements to the amount of 80,000,
+all of which would enter Russia before the middle of November.
+
+He should thus have 280,000 men, including the Lithuanian and Polish
+levies, to support him, while, with 155,000 more, he made an incursion
+of 93 leagues; for such was the distance between Smolensk and Moscow.
+
+But these 280,000 men were commanded by six different leaders, all
+independent of each other, and the most elevated of them, he who
+occupied the centre, and who seemed to be appointed to act as an
+intermediate link, to give some unity to the operations of the other
+five, was a minister of peace, and not of war.
+
+Besides, the same causes which had already diminished, by one-third, the
+French forces which first entered Russia, could not fail to disperse or
+to destroy a still greater proportion of all these reinforcements. Most
+of them were coming by detachments, formed provisionally into marching
+battalions under officers new to them, whom they were to leave the first
+day, without the incentive of discipline, _esprit de corps_, or glory,
+and traversing an exhausted country, which the season and the climate
+would be rendering daily more bare and more rude.
+
+Meanwhile Napoleon beheld Dorogobouje in ashes, like Smolensk,
+especially the quarter of the merchants, those who had most to lose,
+whom their riches might have detained or brought back amongst us, and
+who, from their situation, formed a kind of intermediate class, a
+commencement of the third estate, which liberty was likely to seduce.
+
+He was perfectly aware that he was quitting Smolensk, as he had come
+thither, with the hope of a battle, which the indecision and discord of
+the Russian generals had as yet deferred; but his resolution was taken;
+he would hear of nothing but what was calculated to support him in it.
+He persisted in pursuing the track of the enemy; his hardihood increased
+with their prudence; their circumspection he called pusillanimity, their
+retreat flight; he despised, that he might hope.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The emperor had proceeded with such expedition to Dorogobouje, that he
+was obliged to halt there, in order to wait for his army, and to leave
+Murat to pursue the enemy. He set out again on the 26th of August; the
+army marched in three columns abreast; the Emperor, Murat, Davoust, and
+Ney in the centre, on the high-road to Moscow; Poniatowski on the right;
+and the army of Italy on the left.
+
+The principal column, that of the centre, found nothing on a road where
+its advanced guard itself had to subsist entirely on the leavings of the
+Russians; it could not digress from its direction, for want of time, in
+so rapid a march. Besides, the columns on the right and left consumed
+every thing on either side of it. In order to live better, it ought to
+have set out later every day, halted earlier, and then extended itself
+more on its flanks during the night; which could be done without
+imprudence when the enemy was so near at hand.
+
+At Smolensk orders had been issued, as at Witepsk, to take, at starting,
+provisions for several days. The emperor was aware of the difficulty of
+collecting them, but he reckoned upon the diligence of the officers and
+the troops; they had warning,--that was sufficient; they would contrive
+to provide themselves with necessaries. They had acquired the habit of
+doing so; and it was really a curious sight to observe the voluntary and
+continual efforts of so many men to follow a single individual to such
+great distances. The existence of the army was a prodigy that was daily
+renewed, by the active, industrious, and intelligent spirit of the
+French and Polish troops, by their habit of surmounting all
+difficulties, and by their fondness for the hazards and irregularities
+of this dreadful game of an adventurous life.
+
+In the train of each regiment there were a multitude of those diminutive
+horses with which Poland swarms, a great number of carts of the country,
+which required to be incessantly replaced with fresh ones, and a drove
+of cattle. The baggage-waggons were driven by soldiers, for they turned
+their hands to every trade. They were missed in the ranks, it is true;
+but here the want of provisions, the necessity for transporting every
+thing with them, excused this prodigious train: it required a second
+army, as it were, to carry or draw what was indispensable for the first.
+
+In this prompt organization, adopted while marching, the army had
+accommodated itself to all the local customs and difficulties; the
+genius of the soldiers had admirably made the most of the scanty
+resources of the country. As to the officers, as the general orders
+always took for granted regular distributions which were never made,
+each of them, according to the degree of his zeal, intelligence, and
+firmness, appropriated to himself more or less of this spoil, and had
+converted individual pillage into regular contributions.
+
+For it was only by excursions on the flanks and into an unknown country
+that any provisions could be procured. Every evening, when the army
+halted, and the bivouacs were established, detachments, rarely commanded
+by divisions, sometimes by brigades, and most commonly by regiments,
+went in quest of necessaries, and penetrated into the country; a few
+wersts from the road they found all the villages inhabited, and were not
+very hostilely received; but as they could not make themselves
+understood, and besides wanted every thing, and that instantaneously,
+the peasants were soon seized with a panic and fled into the woods,
+whence they issued again as no very formidable partizans.
+
+The detachments meanwhile plentifully regaled themselves, and rejoined
+their corps next day or some days afterwards, laden with all that they
+had collected; and it frequently happened that they were plundered in
+their turn by their comrades belonging to the other corps whom they
+chanced to fall in with. Hence animosities, which would have infallibly
+led to most sanguinary intestine conflicts, had not all been
+subsequently overtaken by the same misfortune, and involved in the
+horrors of a common disaster.
+
+Till the return of their detachments, the soldiers who remained with
+their eagles lived on what they could find on the military route; in
+general it consisted of new rye, which they bruised and boiled. Owing to
+the cattle which followed, there was less want of meat than of bread;
+but the length, and especially the rapidity of the marches, occasioned
+the loss of many of these animals: they were suffocated by the heat and
+dust; when, therefore, they came to water, they ran into it with such
+fury, that many of them were drowned, while others drank so
+immoderately, as to swell themselves out till they were unable to walk.
+
+It was remarked, as before we reached Smolensk, that the divisions of
+the first corps continued to be the most numerous; their detachments,
+better disciplined, brought back more, and did less injury to the
+inhabitants. Those who remained with their colours lived on the contents
+of their knapsacks, the regular appearance of which relieved the eye,
+fatigued with a disorder that was nearly universal.
+
+Each of these knapsacks, reduced to what was strictly necessary in point
+of apparel, contained two shirts, two pair of shoes with nails, and a
+pair of extra soles, a pair of pantaloons and half-gaiters of cloth; a
+few articles requisite to cleanliness, a bandage, and a quantity of
+lint, and sixty cartridges.
+
+In the two sides were placed four biscuits of sixteen ounces each; under
+these, and at the bottom, was a long, narrow, linen bag, filled with ten
+pounds of flour. The whole knapsack and its contents, together with the
+straps and the hood, rolled up and fastened at top, weighed
+thirty-three pounds twelve ounces.
+
+Each soldier carried also a linen bag, slung in form of a shoulder-belt,
+containing two loaves of three pounds each. Thus with his sabre, his
+loaded knapsack, three flints, his turn-screw, his belt and musket, he
+had to carry fifty-eight pounds weight, and was provided with bread for
+four days, biscuit for four, flour for seven, and sixty rounds of
+ammunition.
+
+Behind it were carriages laden with provisions for six more days; but it
+was impossible to reckon with confidence on these vehicles, picked up on
+the spot, which would have been so convenient in any other country with
+a smaller army, and in a more regular war.
+
+When the flour-bag was emptied, it was filled with any corn that could
+be found, and which was ground at the first mill, if any chanced to be
+met with; if not, by the hand-mills which followed the regiments, or
+which were found in the villages, for the Russians are scarcely
+acquainted with any others. It took sixteen men twelve hours to grind in
+one of them the corn necessary for one hundred and thirty men for one
+day.
+
+As every house in this country has an oven, little want was felt on that
+score; bakers abounded; for the regiments of the first corps contained
+men of all trades, so that articles of food and clothing were all made
+or repaired by them during the march. They were colonies uniting the
+character of civilized and nomadic. The emperor had first conceived the
+idea, which the genius of the prince of Eckmuehl had appropriated; he had
+every thing he wanted, time, place, and men to carry it into execution;
+but these three elements of success were less at the disposal of the
+other chiefs. Besides, their characters being more impetuous and less
+methodical, would scarcely have derived the same advantages from it;
+with a less organizing genius, they would therefore have had more
+obstacles to surmount; the emperor had not paid sufficient attention to
+these differences, which were productive of baneful effects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+It was from Slawkowo, a few leagues beyond Dorogobouje, that Napoleon
+sent orders, on the 27th of August, to marshal Victor, who was then on
+the Niemen, to advance to Smolensk. This marshal's left was to occupy
+Witepsk, his right Mohilef, and his centre Smolensk. There he would
+succour Saint-Cyr, in case of need, serve for a point of support to the
+army of Moscow, and keep up his communications with Lithuania.
+
+It was also from the same imperial head-quarters that he published the
+details of his review at Valoutina, with the intention of proclaiming to
+the present and future ages the names even of the private soldiers who
+had there distinguished themselves. But he added, that at Smolensk "the
+conduct of the Poles had astonished the Russians, who had been
+accustomed to despise them." These words drew from the Poles an outcry
+of indignation, and the emperor smiled at an anger which he had
+foreseen, and the effects of which were designed to fall exclusively on
+the Russians.
+
+On this march he took delight in dating from the heart of Old Russia a
+number of decrees, which would be circulated in the meanest hamlets of
+France; from the desire of appearing to be present every where at once,
+and filling the earth more and more with his power: the offspring of
+that inconceiveable and expanding greatness of soul, whose ambition was
+at first a mere plaything, but finally coveted the empire of the world.
+
+It is true that at the same time there was so little order about him at
+Slawkowo, that his guard burned, during the night, to warm themselves,
+the bridge which they were ordered to guard, and the only one by which
+he could, the next day, leave his imperial quarters. This disorder,
+however, like many others, proceeded not from insubordination, but from
+thoughtlessness; it was corrected as soon as it was perceived.
+
+The very same day Murat drove the enemy beyond the Osma, a narrow river,
+but enclosed with high banks, and of great depth, like most of the
+rivers of this country, the effect of the snow, and which, at the period
+of its general melting, prevents inundations. The Russian rear-guard,
+covered by this obstacle, faced about and established itself on the
+heights of the opposite bank. Murat ordered the ravine to be examined,
+and a ford was discovered. It was through this narrow and insecure
+defile that he dared to march against the Russians, to venture between
+the river and their position; thus cutting off from himself all retreat,
+and turning a skirmish into a desperate action. In fact, the enemy
+descended in force from their height, and drove him back to the very
+brink of the ravine, into which they had well-nigh precipitated him. But
+Murat persisted in his error; he braved it out, and converted it into a
+success. The 4th lancers carried the position, and the Russians went to
+pass the night not far off; content with having made us purchase at a
+dear rate a quarter of a league of ground, which they would have given
+up to us for nothing during the night.
+
+At the moment of the most imminent danger, a battery of the prince of
+Eckmuehl twice refused to fire. Its commanding officer pleaded his
+instructions, which forbade him, upon pain of being broke, to fight
+without orders from Davoust. These orders arrived, in time, according to
+some, but too late according to others. I relate this incident, because,
+on the following day, it was the occasion of a violent quarrel between
+Murat and Davoust, in presence of the emperor, at Semlewo.
+
+The king reproached the prince with his tardy circumspection, and more
+especially with an enmity which dated from the expedition to Egypt. In
+the vehemence of his passion he told him, that if there was any quarrel
+between them they ought to settle it by themselves, but that the army
+ought not to be made the sufferers for it.
+
+Davoust, irritated in his turn, accused the king of temerity; according
+to him "his thoughtless ardour was incessantly compromising his troops,
+and wasting to no purpose, their lives, their strength, and their
+stores. It was right that the emperor should at last know what was daily
+occurring in his advanced guard. Every morning the enemy had disappeared
+before it; but this experience led to no alteration whatever in the
+march: the troops, therefore, set out late, all keeping the high-road,
+and forming a single column, and in this manner they advanced in the
+void till about noon.
+
+"The enemy's rear-guard, ready to fight, was then discovered behind some
+marshy ravine, the bridges over which had been broken down, and which
+was commanded from the opposite bank. The light troops were instantly
+brought into action, then the first regiments of cavalry that were at
+hand, and then the artillery; but in general out of reach, or against
+straggling cossacks, who were not worth the trouble. At length, after
+vain and sanguinary attempts made in front, the king took it into his
+head to reconnoitre the force and position of the enemy more accurately,
+and to manoeuvre; and he sent for the infantry.
+
+"Then after having long waited in this endless column, the ravine was
+crossed on the left or on the right of the Russians, who retired under a
+fire of their small arms to a new position; where the same resistance,
+and the same mode of march and attack, exposed us to the same losses and
+the same delays.
+
+"In this manner the king went on from position to position, till he came
+to one which was stronger or better defended. It was usually about five
+in the evening, sometimes later, rarely earlier; but in this case the
+tenacity of the Russians, and the hour, plainly indicated that their
+whole army was there, and was determined to pass the night on the spot.
+
+"For it could not be denied that this retreat of the Russians was
+conducted with admirable order. The ground alone dictated it to them and
+not Murat. Their positions were so well chosen, taken so seasonably, and
+each defended so exactly in proportion to its strength, and the time
+which their general wished to gain, that in truth their movements seemed
+to form part of a plan which had been long determined on, carefully
+traced, and executed with scrupulous exactness.
+
+"They never abandoned a post till the moment before they were likely to
+be driven from it.
+
+"In the evening they established themselves early in a good position,
+leaving under arms no more troops than were absolutely necessary to
+defend it, while the remainder rested and refreshed themselves."
+
+Davoust added that, "so far from profiting by this example, the king
+paid no regard either to the hour, the strength of the situation, or the
+resistance; that he dashed on among his tirailleurs, dancing about in
+front of the enemy's line, feeling it in every part; putting himself in
+a passion, giving his orders with loud shouts, and making himself hoarse
+with repeating them; exhausting every thing, cartouch-boxes,
+ammunition-waggons, men and horses, combatants and non-combatants, and
+keeping all the troops under arms till night had set in.
+
+"Then, indeed, it was found necessary to desist, and to take up their
+quarters where they were; but they no longer knew where to find
+necessaries. It was really pitiful to hear the soldiers wandering in the
+dark, groping about, as it were, for forage, water, wood, straw, and
+provisions, and then, unable to find their bivouacs again, calling out
+to one another lest they should lose themselves, during the whole night.
+Scarcely had they time, not to sleep, but to prepare their food.
+Overwhelmed with fatigue, they cursed the hardships they had to endure,
+till daylight and the enemy came to rouse them again.
+
+"It was not the advanced guard alone that suffered in this manner, but
+the whole of the cavalry. Every evening Murat had left behind him 20,000
+men on horseback and under arms, on the high-road. This long column had
+remained all day without eating or drinking, amidst a cloud of dust,
+under a burning sky; ignorant of what was passing before it, advancing a
+few paces from one quarter of an hour to another, then halting to deploy
+among fields of rye, but without daring to take off the bridles and to
+allow their famished horses to feed, because the king kept them
+incessantly on the alert. It was to advance five or six leagues that
+they thus passed sixteen tedious hours--particularly arduous for the
+cuirassier horses, which had more to carry than the others, though
+weaker, as the largest horses in general are, and which required more
+food; hence their great carcasses were worn down to skeletons, their
+flanks collapsed, they crawled rather than walked, and every moment one
+was seen staggering, and another falling under his rider, who left him
+to his fate."
+
+Davoust concluded with saying, that "in this manner the whole of the
+cavalry would perish; Murat, however, might dispose of that as he
+pleased, but as for the infantry of the first corps, so long as he had
+the command of it, he would not suffer it to be thrown away in that
+manner."
+
+The king was not backward in replying. While the emperor was listening
+to them, he was at the same time playing with a Russian ball, which he
+kicked about with his foot. It seemed as if there was something in the
+misunderstanding between these chiefs which did not displease him. He
+attributed their animosity entirely to their ardour, well aware that of
+all passions glory is the most jealous.
+
+The impatient ardour of Murat gratified his own. As the troops had
+nothing to live upon but what they found, every thing was consumed at
+the moment; for this reason it was necessary to make short work with the
+enemy, and to proceed rapidly. Besides, the general crisis in Europe was
+too strong, his situation too critical to remain there, and himself too
+impatient; he wished to bring matters to a close at any rate, in order
+to extricate himself.
+
+The impetuosity of the king, therefore, seemed to suit his anxiety
+better than the methodical prudence of the Prince of Eckmuehl.
+Accordingly, when he dismissed them, he said mildly to Davoust, that
+"one person could not possess every species of merit; that he knew
+better how to fight a battle than to push a rear-guard; and that if
+Murat had pursued Bagration in Lithuania, he would probably not have
+allowed him to escape." It is even asserted that he reproached the
+marshal with a restless disposition, an anxiety to appropriate to
+himself all the commands; less, indeed, from ambition than zeal, and
+that all might go on better; but yet this zeal had its inconveniences.
+He then sent them away with an injunction to agree better in future.
+
+The two chiefs returned to their commands, and to their animosity. As
+the war was confined to the head of the column, that also was the scene
+of their disputes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+On the 28th of August, the army crossed the vast plains of the
+government of Wiazma: it marched in all haste, the whole together,
+through fields, and several regiments abreast, each forming a short,
+close column. The high-road was left for the artillery, its waggons, and
+those carrying the sick and wounded. The emperor, on horseback, was seen
+every where: Murat's letters, and the approach to Wiazma, deceived him
+once more with the hope of a battle: he was heard calculating on the
+march the thousands of cannon-balls which he would require to crush the
+hostile army.
+
+Napoleon had assigned its place to the baggage: he published an order
+for burning all vehicles which should be seen among the troops, not
+excepting carts loaded with provisions, for they might embarrass the
+movements of the columns, and compromise their safety in case of attack.
+Having met in his way with the carriage of General Narbonne, his
+aid-de-camp, he himself caused it to be set on fire, before the face of
+that general, and that instantaneously, without suffering it to be
+emptied; an order which was only severe, although it appeared harsh,
+because he himself began by enforcing its execution, which, however, was
+not followed up.
+
+The baggage of all the corps was therefore assembled in the rear of the
+army: there was, from Dorogobouje, a long train of bat-horses and
+kibitks, harnessed with ropes; these vehicles were laden with booty,
+provisions, military effects, men appointed to take care of them;
+lastly, sick soldiers, and the arms of both, which were rusting in them.
+In this column were seen many of the tall dismounted cuirassiers,
+bestriding horses no bigger than our asses, because they could not
+follow on foot for want of practice and of boots. On this confused and
+disorderly multitude, as well as on most of the marauders on our flanks,
+the cossacks might have made successful _coups de main_. They would
+thereby have harassed the army, and retarded its march, but Barclay
+seemed fearful of discouraging us: he put out his strength only against
+our advanced guard, and that but just sufficiently to slacken without
+stopping our progress.
+
+This determination of Barclay's, the declining strength of the army, the
+quarrels between its chiefs, the approach of the decisive moment, gave
+uneasiness to Napoleon. At Dresden, at Witepsk, and even at Smolensk, he
+had hoped in vain for a communication from Alexander. At Ribky, on the
+28th of August, he appeared to solicit one: a letter from Berthier to
+Barclay, in no other respect worthy of notice, concluded with these
+words: "The emperor directs me to request you to present his compliments
+to the emperor Alexander; tell him that neither the vicissitudes of war,
+nor any other circumstance, can diminish the friendship which he feels
+for him."
+
+The same day, the 28th of August, the advanced-guard drove back the
+Russians as far as Wiazma; the army, thirsty from the march, the heat
+and the dust, was in want of water; the troops disputed the possession
+of a few muddy pools, and fought near the springs, which were soon
+rendered turbid and exhausted; the emperor himself was forced to put up
+with this muddy beverage.
+
+During the night, the enemy destroyed the bridges over the Wiazma,
+plundered that town, and set it on fire. Murat and Davoust precipitately
+advanced to extinguish the flames. The enemy defended his conflagration,
+but the Wiazma was fordable near the ruins of the bridges: one part of
+the advanced-guard then attacked the incendiaries, and the other the
+fire, which they speedily subdued.
+
+On this occasion some chosen men were sent to the advanced-guard, with
+orders to watch the enemy closely at Wiazma, and ascertain whether they,
+or our soldiers, were the real incendiaries. Their report entirely
+dissipated the doubts which the emperor might still have entertained as
+to the fatal resolution of the Russians. They found in this town some
+resources, which pillage would soon have wasted. In passing through the
+city, the emperor observed this disorder: he was exceedingly incensed,
+rode into the midst of the groups of soldiers, caused a suttler to be
+seized, and ordered him to be instantly tried and shot. But the meaning
+of the phrase from his lips was well known; it was known, also that the
+more vehement his paroxysms of anger, the sooner they were followed by
+indulgence. A moment afterwards, they, therefore, merely placed in his
+way the unfortunate man on his knees, with a woman and several children
+beside him, whom they passed off for his family. The emperor, who had
+already cooled, inquired what they wanted, and caused the man to be set
+at liberty.
+
+He was still on horseback, when he saw Belliard, for fifteen years the
+companion in war of Murat, and then the chief of his staff, coming
+towards him. Surprised at seeing him, the emperor fancied some
+misfortune had happened. Belliard first relieved his apprehensions, and
+then added, that "Beyond the Wiazma, behind a ravine, on an advantageous
+position, the enemy had shown himself in force and ready for battle;
+that the cavalry on both sides immediately engaged, and as the infantry
+became necessary, the king in person put himself at the head of one of
+Davoust's divisions, and drew it out to lead it against the enemy; but
+that the marshal hastened up, calling to his men to halt, loudly
+censuring that manoeuvre, harshly reproaching the king for it, and
+forbidding his generals to obey him: that Murat then appealed to his
+dignity, to his military rank, to the exigency of the occasion, but in
+vain; that, finally, he had sent to declare to the emperor his disgust
+for a command so contested, and to tell him that he must choose between
+him and Davoust."
+
+This intelligence threw Napoleon into a passion: he exclaimed, that
+"Davoust was unmindful of all subordination; that he forgot the respect
+due to his brother-in-law, to him whom he had appointed his lieutenant;"
+and he sent Berthier with orders that Compans's division, the same which
+had been the subject of the altercation, should be thenceforward under
+the command of the king. Davoust did not defend the manner, but merely
+the motive of his act, either from prejudice against the habitual
+temerity of the king, from spleen, or that he was a better judge of the
+ground, and the manoeuvre adapted to it, which is very possible.
+
+Meanwhile the combat had finished, and Murat, whose attention was no
+longer diverted by the enemy, was wholly occupied with the thoughts of
+his quarrel. Shut up with Belliard, and hiding himself in a manner in
+his tent, as his memory recalled the expressions of the marshal, his
+blood became more and more inflamed with shame and rage. "He had been
+set at defiance, and publicly insulted, and Davoust still lived! What
+did he care for the anger of the emperor, and for his decision? it was
+for him to revenge his own wrong! What signified his rank? it was his
+sword alone that had made him a king, and it was to that alone he should
+appeal!" He was already snatching up his arms to go and attack Davoust,
+when Belliard stopped him, by urging existing circumstances, the example
+he ought to set to the army, the enemy to be pursued, and that it would
+be wrong to distress his friends and delight the foe by so desperate a
+proceeding.
+
+The general says, that he then saw the king curse his crown, and strive
+to swallow the affront; but that tears of spite rolled down his cheeks
+and fell upon his clothes. Whilst he was thus tormenting himself,
+Davoust, obstinately persisting in his opinion, said that the emperor
+was misinformed, and remained quietly in his head-quarters.
+
+Napoleon returned to Wiazma, where he was obliged to stop to ascertain
+the advantages that he might derive from his new conquest. The accounts
+which he received from the interior of Russia, represented the hostile
+government as appropriating to itself our successes, and inculcating the
+belief that the loss of so many provinces was the effect of a general
+plan of retreat, adopted beforehand. Papers seized at Wiazma stated that
+_Te Deum_ had been sung at Petersburgh for pretended victories at
+Witepsk or Smolensk. "What!" he exclaimed in astonishment, "_Te Deum!_
+Dare they then lie to God as well as to men?"
+
+For the rest, most of the intercepted Russian letters expressed the same
+astonishment. "While our villages are blazing," said they, "we hear
+nothing here but the ringing of bells, hymns of thanksgiving, and
+triumphant reports. It seems as if they would make us thank God for the
+victories of the French. Thus there is lying in the air, lying on earth,
+lying in words and in writing, lying to Heaven and earth, lying in every
+thing. Our great men treat Russia like a child, but there is no small
+degree of credulity in believing us to be so credulous."
+
+Very just reflections, if means so gross had been employed to deceive
+those who were capable of writing such letters. At any rate, though
+these political falsehoods are generally resorted to, it was plain that
+when carried to such excess, they were a satire either on the governors
+or the governed, and, perhaps, on both.
+
+During this time the advanced-guard pushed the Russians as far as Gjatz,
+exchanging a few balls with them,--an exchange which was almost always
+to the disadvantage of the French, the Russians taking care to employ
+only their long pieces, which would carry much farther than ours.
+Another remark which we made was, that from Smolensk the Russians had
+neglected to burn the villages and the mansions. As they are of a
+character which aims at effect, this obscure evil probably appeared to
+them to be a useless one. They were satisfied with the more signal
+conflagrations of their cities.
+
+This defect, if that negligence proceeded from it, turned, as is
+frequently the case with all other defects, to the advantage of their
+enemies. In these villages, the French army found forage, corn, ovens
+for baking, and shelter. Others observed on this point, that all these
+devastations were allotted to cossacks, to barbarians; and that these
+hordes, either from hatred or contempt of civilization, seemed to take a
+savage and particular pleasure in the destruction of the towns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+On the 1st of September, about noon, there was only a copse of fir-trees
+between Murat and Gjatz. The appearance of cossacks obliged him to
+deploy his first regiments, but in his impatience he soon sent for some
+horse, and having himself driven the Russians from the wood which they
+occupied, he crossed it and found himself at the gates of Gjatz. This
+sight animated the French, and they instantly made themselves masters of
+the town as far as the river which parts it into two, and the bridges of
+which had been already set on fire.
+
+There, as at Smolensk and Wiazma, whether by chance, or from the relic
+of a Tartar custom, the bazaar was on the Asiatic side, on the bank
+opposite to us. The Russian rear-guard, secured by the river, had time,
+therefore, to burn that whole quarter. Nothing but the promptitude of
+Murat saved the rest.
+
+The troops crossed the Gjatz as they could, on planks, in a few boats,
+and by fording. The Russians disappeared behind the flames, whither our
+foremost riflemen followed them,--when they saw an inhabitant come
+forth, approach them, and cry out that he was a Frenchman. His joy and
+his accent confirmed his assertion. They conducted him to Davoust, who
+interrogated him.
+
+According to the account of this man, there had been a great change in
+the Russian army. A violent clamour had been raised from its ranks
+against Barclay. It had been re-echoed by the nobility, by the
+merchants, by all Moscow. "That general, that minister, was a traitor;
+he caused all their divisions to be destroyed piece-meal; he was
+dishonouring the army by an interminable flight; yet, at the same time,
+they were labouring under the disgrace of an invasion, and their towns
+were in flames. If it was necessary to determine upon this ruin, they
+might as well sacrifice themselves at once; then, there would be at
+least some honour, whereas, to suffer themselves to be sacrificed by a
+stranger, was losing every thing, the honour of the sacrifice not
+excepted.
+
+"But why employ this stranger? Was not the contemporary, the comrade,
+the rival of Suwarrow yet living? A Russian was wanted to save Russia!"
+And they all called for, all were anxious for Kutusof and a battle. The
+Frenchman added, that Alexander had yielded; that the insubordination of
+Bagration, and the universal outcry, had obtained from him that general
+and a battle; and that, moreover, after drawing the invading army so
+far, the Russian emperor had himself judged a general engagement
+unavoidable.
+
+Finally, he related, that the arrival of Kutusof on the 29th of August
+at Tzarewo-zaimizcze, between Wiazma and Gjatz, and the announcement of
+a speedy battle, had intoxicated the enemy with two-fold joy; that all
+had immediately marched towards Borodino,--not to continue their flight,
+but to fix themselves on this frontier of the government of Moscow, to
+root themselves to the soil, and defend it; in short, to conquer there
+or die.
+
+An incident, otherwise not worthy of notice, seemed to confirm this
+intelligence; this was the arrival of a Russian officer with a flag of
+truce. He had so little to say, that it was evident from the first that
+he came only to observe. His manner was particularly displeasing to
+Davoust, who read in it something more than assurance. A French general
+having inconsiderately asked this stranger what we should find between
+Wiazma and Moscow, the Russian proudly replied, "Pultowa." This answer
+bespoke a battle; it pleased the French, who are fond of a smart
+repartee, and delight to meet with enemies worthy of themselves.
+
+This officer was conducted back without precaution, as he had been
+brought. He saw that there was no obstacle to prevent access to our very
+head-quarters; he traversed our advanced posts without meeting with a
+single vidette; every where the same negligence was perceptible, and the
+temerity so natural to Frenchmen and to conquerors. Every one was
+asleep; there was no watchword, no patroles; our soldiers seemed to
+despise these details, as too trivial. Wherefore so many precautions?
+They attacked--they were victorious: it was for the Russians to defend
+themselves! This officer has since said, that he was tempted to take
+advantage that very night of our imprudence, but that he did not find
+any Russian corps within his reach.
+
+The enemy, in his haste to burn the bridges over the Gjatz, left behind
+some of his cossacks; they were taken and conducted to the emperor, who
+was approaching on horseback. Napoleon wished to question them himself.
+He sent for his interpreter, and caused two of these Scythians, whose
+strange dress and wild look were remarkable, to be placed by his side.
+In this manner he entered Gjatz, and passed through that town. The
+answers of these barbarians corresponded with the account of the
+Frenchman; and during the night of the 1st of September, all the reports
+from the advanced posts confirmed their accuracy.
+
+Thus Barclay had, singly against all, supported till the very last
+moment that plan of retreat, which in 1807 he had vaunted to one of our
+generals as the only expedient for saving Russia. Among us, he was
+commended for having persisted in this prudent defensive system, in
+spite of the clamours of a proud nation irritated by misfortune, and
+before so aggressive an enemy.
+
+He had, no doubt, failed in suffering himself to be surprised at Wilna,
+and for not considering the marshy course of the Berezina as the proper
+frontier of Lithuania; but it was remarked that, subsequently, at Witepsk
+and Smolensk, he had forestalled Napoleon; that on the Loutcheza, on the
+Dnieper, and at Valoutina, his resistance had been proportionate to time
+and place; that this petty warfare, and the losses occasioned by it, had
+been but too much in his favour; every retrograde step of his drawing us
+to a greater distance from our reinforcements, and carrying him nearer to
+his: in short, all that he had done, he had done judiciously, whether he
+had hazarded, defended, or abandoned.
+
+And yet he had drawn upon himself general animadversion! But this was,
+in our opinion, his highest panegyric. We thought the better of him for
+despising public opinion, when it had gone astray; for having contented
+himself with watching our motions in order to profit by them, and for
+having proved that, most frequently, nations are saved in spite of
+themselves.
+
+Barclay showed himself still greater during the rest of the campaign.
+This commander in chief, and minister at war, who had been deprived of
+the command, that it might be given to Kutusof, voluntarily served under
+him, and was seen to obey with as much zeal as he had commanded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The Russian army at length halted. Miloradowitch, with sixteen thousand
+recruits, and a host of peasants, bearing the cross and shouting, "_'Tis
+the will of God!_" hastened to join its ranks. We were informed that the
+enemy were turning up the whole plain of Borodino, and covering it with
+entrenchments, apparently with the determination of rooting themselves
+there, and not falling back any further.
+
+Napoleon announced a battle to his army; he allowed it two days to rest,
+to prepare its arms, and to collect subsistence. He merely warned the
+detachments sent out in quest of provisions, that "if they did not
+return the following day, they would deprive themselves of the honour of
+fighting."
+
+The emperor then endeavoured to obtain some information concerning his
+new adversary. Kutusof was described to him as an old man, the
+groundwork of whose reputation had been formerly laid by a singular
+wound. He had since skilfully profited by circumstances. The very defeat
+of Austerlitz, which he had foreseen, added to his renown, which was
+further increased by his late campaigns against the Turks. His valour
+was incontestable, but he was charged with regulating its vehemence
+according to his private interest; for he calculated every thing. His
+genius was slow, vindictive, and, above all, crafty--the true Tartar
+character!--knowing the art of preparing an implacable war with a
+fawning, supple, and patient policy.
+
+In other respects, he was more an adroit courtier than an able general:
+but formidable by his renown, by his address in augmenting it, and in
+making others concur in this object. He had contrived to flatter the
+whole nation, and every individual of it, from the general to the
+private soldier.
+
+It was added, that there was in his person, in his language, nay, even
+in his very dress, his superstitious practices and his age, a remnant of
+Suwarrow,--the stamp of an ancient Muscovite, an air of nationality,
+which rendered him dear to the Russians: at Moscow the joy at his
+appointment had been carried to intoxication; people embraced one
+another in the streets, and considered themselves as saved.
+
+When Napoleon had learned these particulars, and given his orders, he
+awaited the event with that tranquillity of mind peculiar to
+extraordinary men. He quietly employed himself in exploring the environs
+of his head-quarters. He remarked the progress of agriculture; but at
+the sight of the Gjatz, which pours its waters into the Wolga, he who
+had conquered so many rivers, felt anew the first emotions of his glory:
+he was heard to boast of being the master of those waves destined to
+visit Asia,--as if they were proceeding to announce his approach, and to
+open for him the way to that quarter of the globe.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of Murat, King of Naples]
+
+On the 4th of September, the army, still divided into three columns, set
+out from Gjatz and its environs. Murat had gone on a few leagues before.
+Ever since the arrival of Kutusof, troops of cossacks had been
+incessantly hovering about the heads of our columns. Murat was
+exasperated at seeing his cavalry forced to deploy against so feeble an
+obstacle. We are assured that on that day, from one of those first
+impulses worthy of the ages of chivalry, he dashed suddenly and alone
+towards their line, stopped short a few paces from them, and there,
+sword in hand, made a sign for them to retire, with an air and gesture
+so commanding, that these barbarians obeyed, and fell back in amazement.
+
+This circumstance, which was related to us immediately, was received
+without incredulity. The martial air of that monarch, the brilliancy of
+his chivalrous dress, his reputation, and the novelty of such an action,
+caused this momentary ascendancy to appear true, in spite of its
+improbability; for such was Murat, a theatrical monarch by the splendor
+of his dress, and truly a king by his extraordinary valour and his
+inexhaustible activity; bold as the attack, and always armed with that
+air of superiority, that threatening audacity, which is the most
+dangerous of offensive weapons.
+
+He had not marched long, however, before he was forced to halt. At
+Griednewa, between Gjatz and Borodino, the high-road suddenly descends
+into a deep ravine, whence it again rises as suddenly to a spacious
+height, which Kutusof had ordered Konownitzin to defend. That general at
+first made a vigorous resistance against the foremost troops of Murat;
+but as the army closely followed the latter, every moment gave increased
+energy to the attack, and diminished that of the defence; presently the
+advanced-guard of the viceroy engaged on the right of the Russians,
+where a charge by the Italian chasseurs was withstood for a moment by
+the cossacks, which excited astonishment; they became intermixed.
+
+Platof himself admitted that in this affair an officer was wounded near
+him, at which he was by no means surprised; but that he nevertheless
+caused the sorcerer who accompanied him to be flogged before all his
+cossacks, loudly charging him with laziness for neglecting to turn aside
+the balls by his conjurations, as he had been expressly directed to do.
+
+Konownitzin was vanquished and retired; on the 5th his bloody track was
+followed to the vast convent of Kolotskoi,--fortified as habitations
+were of old in those too highly vaunted Gothic ages, when civil wars
+were so frequent; when every place, not excepting even these sacred
+abodes of peace, was transformed into a military post.
+
+Konownitzin, threatened on the right and left, made no other stand
+either at Kolotskoi or at Golowino; but when the advanced-guard
+debouched from that village, it beheld the whole plain and the woods
+infested with cossacks, the rye crops spoiled, the villages sacked; in
+short, a general destruction. By these signs it recognized the field of
+battle, which Kutusof was preparing for the grand army. Behind these
+clouds of Scythians were perceived three villages; they presented a line
+of a league. The intervals between them, intersected by ravines and
+wood, were covered with the enemy's riflemen. In the first moment of
+ardour, some French horse ventured into the midst of these Russians, and
+were cut off.
+
+Napoleon then appeared on a height, from which he surveyed the whole
+country, with that eye of a conqueror which sees every thing at once and
+without confusion; which penetrates through obstacles, sets aside
+accessaries, discovers the capital point, and fixes it with the look of
+an eagle, like prey on which he is about to dart with all his might and
+all his impetuosity.
+
+He knew that, a league before him, at Borodino, the Kologha, a river
+running in a ravine, along the margin of which he proceeded a few
+wersts, turned abruptly to the left, and discharged itself into the
+Moskwa. He guessed that a chain of considerable heights alone could
+have opposed its course, and so suddenly changed its direction. These
+were, no doubt, occupied by the enemy's army, and on this side it could
+not be easily attacked. But the Kologha, both banks of which he
+followed, while it covered the right of the position, left their left
+exposed.
+
+The maps of the country were insufficient; at any rate, as the ground
+necessarily sloped towards the principal stream, which was the most
+considerable merely from being the lowest, it followed, that the ravines
+which ran into it must rise, become shallower, and be at length lost, as
+they receded from the Kologha. Besides, the old road to Smolensk, which
+ran on its right, sufficiently marked their commencement; why should it
+have been formerly carried to a distance from the principal stream of
+water, and consequently from the most habitable places, if not to avoid
+the ravines and the hills which bordered them?
+
+The demonstrations of the enemy agreed with these inductions of his
+experience,--no precautions, no resistance in front of their right and
+their centre; but before their left a great number of troops, a marked
+solicitude to profit by the slightest accidents of the ground, in order
+to dispute it, and finally, a formidable redoubt; this was, of course,
+their weak side, since they covered it with such care. Nay, more; it was
+on the flank of the high-road, and on that of the grand army, that this
+redoubt was situated; it was therefore of the utmost importance to
+carry it, if he would advance: Napoleon gave orders to that effect.
+
+How much the historian is at a loss for words to express the _coup
+d'oeil_ of a man of genius!
+
+The villages and the woods were immediately occupied; on the left and in
+the centre were the army of Italy, Compans's division, and Murat; on the
+right, Poniatowski. The attack was general; for the army of Italy and
+the Polish army appeared at once on the two wings of the grand imperial
+column. These three masses drove back the Russian rear-guards upon
+Borodino, and the whole war was concentrated on a single point.
+
+This curtain being withdrawn, the first Russian redoubt was discovered;
+too much detached in advance of their position, which it defended
+without being defended by it. The nature of the ground had compelled the
+choice of this insulated situation.
+
+Compans skilfully availed himself of the undulations of the ground; its
+elevations served as platforms to his guns for battering the redoubt,
+and screened his infantry while drawing up into columns of attack. The
+61st marched foremost; the redoubt was taken by a single effort, and
+with the bayonet; but Bagration sent reinforcements, by which it was
+retaken. Three times did the 61st recover it from the Russians, and
+three times was it driven out again; but at length it maintained itself
+in it, covered with blood and half destroyed.
+
+Next day, when the emperor reviewed that regiment, he inquired where
+was its third battalion? "In the redoubt," was the reply of the colonel.
+But the affair did not stop there; a neighbouring wood still swarmed
+with Russian light troops, who sallied every moment from this retreat to
+renew their attacks, which were supported by three divisions: at length
+the attack of Schewardino by Morand, and of the woods of Elnia by
+Poniatowski, completely disheartened the troops of Bagration, and
+Murat's cavalry cleared the plain. It was chiefly the firmness of a
+Spanish regiment that foiled the enemy; they at last gave way, and that
+redoubt, which had been their advanced post, became ours.
+
+At the same time the emperor assigned its place to each corps; the rest
+of the army formed in line, and a general discharge of musketry,
+accompanied at intervals with that of a few cannon, ensued. It continued
+till each party had fixed its limit, and darkness had rendered their
+fire uncertain.
+
+One of Davoust's regiments then sought to take its rank in the first
+line. Owing to the darkness, it passed beyond it, and got into the midst
+of the Russian cuirassiers, who attacked it, threw it into disorder,
+took from it three pieces of cannon, and killed or took three hundred
+men. The rest immediately fell into platoons, forming a shapeless mass,
+but making so formidable a resistance, that the enemy could not again
+break it; and this regiment, with diminished numbers, finally regained
+its place in the line of battle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The emperor encamped behind the army of Italy, on the left of the
+high-road; the old guard formed in square around his tents. As soon as
+the fire of small arms had ceased, the fires were kindled. Those of the
+Russians burned brightly, in an immense semicircle; ours gave a pale,
+unequal, and irregular light,--the troops arriving late and in haste, on
+an unknown ground, where nothing was prepared for them, and where there
+was a want of wood, especially in the centre and on the left.
+
+The emperor slept little. On General Caulaincourt's return from the
+conquered redoubt, as no prisoners had fallen into our hands, Napoleon
+surprised, kept asking him repeatedly, "Had not his cavalry then charged
+apropos? Were the Russians determined to conquer or die?"--The answer
+was, that "being fanaticised by their leaders, and accustomed to fight
+with the Turks, who gave no quarter, they would be killed sooner than
+surrender." The emperor then fell into a deep meditation; and judging
+that a battle of artillery would be the most certain, he multiplied his
+orders to bring up, with all speed, the parks which had not yet joined
+him.
+
+That very same night, a cold mizzling rain began to fall, and the autumn
+set in with a violent wind. This was an additional enemy, which it was
+necessary to take into account; for this period of the year
+corresponded with the age on which Napoleon was entering, and every one
+knows the influence of the seasons of the year on the like seasons of
+life.
+
+During that night how many different agitations! The soldiers and the
+officers had to prepare their arms, to repair their clothing, and to
+combat cold and hunger; for their life was a continual combat. The
+generals, and the emperor himself, were uneasy, lest their defeat of the
+preceding day should have disheartened the Russians, and they should
+escape us in the dark. Murat had anticipated this; we imagined several
+times that we saw their fires burn more faintly, and that we heard the
+noise of their departure; but day alone eclipsed the light of the
+enemy's bivouacs.
+
+This time there was no need to go far in quest of them. The sun of the
+6th found the two armies again, and displayed them to each other, on the
+same ground where it had left them the evening before. There was a
+general feeling of exultation.
+
+The emperor took advantage of the first rays of dawn, to advance between
+the two lines, and to go from height to height along the whole front of
+the hostile army. He saw the Russians crowning all the eminences, in a
+vast semicircle, two leagues in extent, from the Moskwa to the old
+Moscow road. Their right bordered the Kologha, from its influx into the
+Moskwa to Borodino; their centre, from Gorcka to Semenowska, was the
+saliant part of their line. Their right and left receded. The Kologha
+rendered their right inaccessible.
+
+The emperor perceived this immediately, and as, from its distance, this
+wing was not more threatening than vulnerable, he took no account of it.
+For him then the Russian army commenced at Gorcka, a village situated on
+the high-road, and at the point of an elevated plain which overlooks
+Borodino and the Kologha. This sharp projection is surrounded by the
+Kologha, and by a deep and marshy ravine; its lofty crest, to which the
+high-road ascends on leaving Borodino, was strongly entrenched, and
+formed a separate work on the right of the Russian centre, of which it
+was the extremity.
+
+On its left, and within reach of its fire, rose a detached hill,
+commanding the whole plain; it was crowned by a formidable redoubt,
+provided with twenty-one pieces of cannon. In front and on its right it
+was encompassed by the Kologha and by ravines; its left inclined to and
+supported itself upon a long and wide plateau, the foot of which
+descended to a muddy ravine, a branch of the Kologha. The crest of this
+plateau, which was lined by the Russians, declined and receded as it ran
+towards the left, in front of the grand army; it then kept rising as far
+as the yet smoking ruins of the village of Semenowska. This saliant
+point terminated Barclay's command and the centre of the enemy: it was
+armed with a strong battery, covered by an entrenchment.
+
+Here began the left wing of the Russians under Bagration. The less
+elevated crest which it occupied undulated as it gradually receded to
+Utitza, a village on the old Moscow road, where the field of battle
+ended. Two hills, armed with redoubts, and bearing diagonally upon the
+entrenchment of Semenowska, which flanked them, marked the front of
+Bagration.
+
+From Semenowska to the wood of Utitza there was an interval of about
+twelve hundred paces. It was the nature of the ground which had decided
+Kutusof thus to refuse this wing; for here the ravine, which was under
+the plateau in the centre, just commenced. It was scarcely an obstacle;
+the slopes of its banks were very gentle, and the summits suitable for
+artillery were at some distance from its margin. This side was evidently
+the most accessible, since the redoubt of the 61st, which that regiment
+had taken the preceding day, no longer defended the approach: this was
+even favoured by a wood of large pines, extending from the redoubt just
+mentioned to that which appeared to terminate the line of the Russians.
+
+But their left wing did not end there. The emperor knew that behind this
+wood was the old Moscow road; that it turned round the left wing of the
+Russians, and passing behind their army, ran again into the new Moscow
+road in front of Mojaisk. He judged that it must be occupied; and, in
+fact, Tutchkof, with his _corps d'armee_, had placed himself across it
+at the entrance of a wood; he had covered himself by two heights, on
+which he had planted artillery.
+
+But this was of little consequence, because, between this detached corps
+and the last Russian redoubt, there was a space of five or six hundred
+fathoms and a covered ground. If we did not begin with overwhelming
+Tutchkof, we might therefore occupy it, pass between him and the last of
+Bagration's redoubts, and take the left wing of the enemy in flank; but
+the emperor could not satisfy himself on this point, as the Russian
+advanced posts and the woods forbade his farther advance, and
+intercepted his view.
+
+Having finished his reconnoissance, he formed his plan. "Eugene shall be
+the pivot!" he exclaimed: "it is the right that must commence. As soon
+as, under cover of the wood, it has taken the redoubt opposite to it, it
+must make a movement to the left, and march on the Russian flank,
+sweeping and driving back their whole army upon their right and into the
+Kologha."
+
+The general plan thus conceived, he applied himself to the details.
+During the night, three batteries, of sixty guns each, must be opposed
+to the Russian redoubts; two facing their left, the third before their
+centre. At daybreak, Poniatowski and his army, reduced to five thousand
+men, must advance on the old Smolensk road, turning the wood on which
+the French right wing and the Russian left were supported. He would
+flank the one and annoy the other; the army would wait for the report of
+his first shots.
+
+Instantly, the whole of the artillery should commence upon the left of
+the Russians, its fire would open their ranks and redoubts, and Davoust
+and Ney should rush upon them; they should be supported by Junot and his
+Westphalians, by Murat and his cavalry, and lastly, by the emperor
+himself, with 20,000 guards. It was against these two redoubts that the
+first efforts should be made; it was by them that he would penetrate
+into the hostile army, thenceforth mutilated, and whose centre and right
+would then be uncovered, and almost enveloped.
+
+Meanwhile, as the Russians showed themselves in redoubled masses on
+their centre and their right, threatening the Moscow road, the only line
+of operation of the grand army; as in throwing his chief force and
+himself on their left, Napoleon was about to place the Kologha between
+him and that road, his only retreat, he resolved to strengthen the army
+of Italy which occupied it, and joined with it two of Davoust's
+divisions and Grouchy's cavalry. As to his left, he judged that one
+Italian division, the Bavarian cavalry, and that of Ornano, about 10,000
+men, would suffice to cover it. Such were the plans of Napoleon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+He was on the heights of Borodino, taking a last survey of the whole
+field of battle, and confirming himself in his plan, when Davoust
+hastened up. This marshal had just examined the left of the Russians
+with so much the more care, as it was the ground on which he was to
+act, and he mistrusted his own eyes.
+
+He begged the emperor "to place at his disposal his five divisions,
+35,000 strong, and to unite with them Poniatowski, whose force was too
+weak to turn the enemy by itself. Next day he would set this force in
+motion; he would cover its march with the last shades of night, and with
+the wood on which the Russian left wing was supported, and beyond which
+he would pass by following the old road from Smolensk to Moscow; then,
+all at once, by a precipitate manoeuvre, he would deploy 40,000 French
+and Poles on the flank and in the rear of that wing. There, while the
+emperor would occupy the front of the Muscovites by a general attack, he
+would march impetuously from redoubt to redoubt, from reserve to
+reserve, driving every thing from left to right on the high-road of
+Mojaisk, where they should put an end at once to the Russian army, the
+battle, and the war."
+
+The emperor listened attentively to the marshal; but after meditating in
+silence for some minutes, he replied, "No! it is too great a movement;
+it would remove me too far from my object, and make me lose too much
+time."
+
+The Prince of Eckmuehl, however, from conviction, persisted in his point;
+he undertook to accomplish his manoeuvre before six in the morning; he
+protested that in another hour the greatest part of its effect would be
+produced. Napoleon, impatient of contradiction, sharply replied with
+this exclamation, "Ah! you are always for turning the enemy; it is too
+dangerous a manoeuvre!" The marshal, after this rebuff, said no more:
+he then returned to his post, murmuring against a prudence which he
+thought unseasonable, and to which he was not accustomed; and he knew
+not to what cause to attribute it, unless the looks of so many allies,
+who were not to be relied on, an army so reduced, a position so remote,
+and age, had rendered Napoleon less enterprising than he was.
+
+The emperor, having decided, had returned to his camp, when Murat, whom
+the Russians had so often deceived, persuaded him that they were going
+to run away once more without fighting. In vain did Rapp, who was sent
+to observe their attitude, return and say, that he had seen them
+entrenching themselves more and more; that they were numerous,
+judiciously disposed, and appeared determined much rather to attack, if
+they were not anticipated, than to retreat: Murat persisted in his
+opinion, and the emperor, uneasy, returned to the heights of Borodino.
+
+He there perceived long black columns of troops covering the high-road,
+and spreading over the plain; then large convoys of waggons, provisions,
+and ammunition, in short all the dispositions indicative of a stay and a
+battle. At that very moment, though he had taken with him but few
+attendants, that he might not attract the notice and the fire of the
+enemy, he was recognized by the Russian batteries, and a cannon-shot
+suddenly interrupted the silence of that day.
+
+For, as it frequently happens, nothing was so calm as the day preceding
+that great battle. It was like a thing mutually agreed upon! Wherefore
+do each other useless injury? was not the next day to decide every
+thing? Besides, each had to prepare itself; the different corps, their
+arms, their force, their ammunition; they had to resume all their unity,
+which on a march is always more or less deranged. The generals had to
+observe their reciprocal dispositions of attack, defence, and retreat,
+in order to adapt them to each other and the ground, and to leave as
+little as possible to chance.
+
+Thus these two colossal foes, on the point of commencing their terrible
+contest, watched each other attentively, measured one another with their
+eyes, and silently prepared for a tremendous conflict.
+
+The emperor, who could no longer entertain doubts of a battle, returned
+to his tent to dictate the order of it. There he meditated on his awful
+situation. He had seen that the two armies were equal; about 120,000
+men, and 600 pieces of cannon on either side. The Russians had the
+advantage of ground, of speaking but one language, of one uniform, of
+being a single nation, fighting for the same cause, but a great number
+of irregular troops and recruits. The French had as many men, but more
+soldiers; for the state of his corps had just been submitted to him: he
+had before his eyes an account of the strength of his divisions, and as
+it was neither a review, nor a distribution, but a battle that was in
+prospect, this time the statements were not exaggerated. His army was
+reduced indeed, but sound, supple, nervous,--like those manly bodies,
+which, having just lost the plumpness of youth, display forms more
+masculine and strongly marked.
+
+Still, during the last few days that he had marched in the midst of it,
+he had found it silent, from that silence which is imposed by great
+expectation or great astonishment; like nature, the moment before a
+violent tempest, or crowds at the instant of an extraordinary danger.
+
+He felt that it wanted rest of some kind or other, but that there was no
+rest for it but in death or victory; for he had brought it into such a
+necessity of conquering, that it must triumph at any rate. The temerity
+of the situation into which he had urged it was evident, but he knew
+that of all faults that was the one which the French most willingly
+forgave; that in short they doubted neither of themselves nor of him,
+nor of the general result, whatever might be their individual hardships.
+
+He reckoned, moreover, on their habit and thirst of glory, and even on
+their curiosity; no doubt they wished to see Moscow, to be able to say
+that they had been there, to receive there the promised reward, perhaps
+to plunder, and, above all, there to find repose. He did not observe in
+them enthusiasm, but something more firm: an entire confidence in his
+star, in his genius, the consciousness of their superiority, and the
+proud assurance of conquerors, in the presence of the vanquished.
+
+Full of these sentiments, he dictated a proclamation, simple, grave,
+and frank, as befitted such circumstances, and men who were not just
+commencing their career, and whom, after so many sufferings, it would
+have been idle to pretend to exalt.
+
+Accordingly he addressed himself solely to the reason of all, or what is
+the same thing, to the real interest of each; he finished with glory,
+the only passion to which he could appeal in these deserts, the last of
+the noble motives by which it was possible to act upon soldiers always
+victorious, enlightened by an advanced civilization and long experience;
+in short, of all the generous illusions, the only one that could have
+carried them so far. This harangue will some day be deemed admirable: it
+was worthy of the commander and of the army; it did honour to both.
+
+"Soldiers!" said he, "here is the battle which you have so ardently
+desired. Victory will now depend upon yourselves; it is necessary for
+us; it will give us abundance, good winter-quarters, and a speedy return
+home! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, and at
+Smolensk, and afford to remotest posterity occasion to cite your conduct
+on that day: let it be said of you, 'He was in that great battle under
+the walls of Moscow.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+About the middle of the day, Napoleon remarked an extraordinary movement
+in the enemy's camp; in fact, the whole Russian army was drawn up and
+under arms, and Kutusof, surrounded with every species of religious and
+military pomp, took his station in the middle of it. He had made his
+popes and his archimandrites dress themselves in those splendid and
+majestic insignia, which they have inherited from the Greeks. They
+marched before him, carrying the venerated symbols of their religion,
+and particularly that divine image, formerly the protectress of
+Smolensk, which, by their account, had been miraculously saved from the
+profanation of the sacrilegious French.
+
+When the Russian saw that his soldiers were sufficiently excited by this
+extraordinary spectacle, he raised his voice, and began by putting them
+in mind of heaven, the only country which remains to the slave. In the
+name of the religion of equality, he endeavoured to animate these serfs
+to defend the property of their masters; but it was principally by
+exhibiting to them that holy image which had taken refuge in their
+ranks, that he appealed to their courage, and raised their indignation.
+
+Napoleon, in his mouth, "was a universal despot! the tyrannical
+disturber of the world! a poor worm! an arch-rebel, who had overturned
+their altars, and polluted them with blood; who had exposed the true
+ark of the Lord, represented by the holy image, to the profanation of
+men, and the inclemency of the seasons." He then told them of their
+cities reduced to ashes; reminded them that they were about to fight for
+their wives and children; added a few words respecting the emperor, and
+concluded by appealing to their piety and their patriotism. These were
+the virtues of instinct with this rude and simple people, who had not
+yet advanced beyond sensations, but who, for that very reason, were so
+much more formidable as soldiers; less diverted from obedience by
+reasoning; confined by slavery to a narrow circle, in which they are
+reduced to a small number of sensations, which are the only sources of
+their wants, wishes, and ideas.
+
+As to other characteristics, proud for want of comparison, and credulous
+as they are proud, from ignorance--worshippers of images, idolaters as
+much as Christians can be; for they had converted that religion of the
+soul, which is wholly intellectual and moral, into one entirely physical
+and material, to bring it to the level of their brute and short
+capacity.
+
+This solemn spectacle, however, their general's address, the
+exhortations of their officers, and the benedictions of their priests,
+served to give a thorough tincture of fanaticism to their courage. All,
+even to the meanest soldier, fancied themselves devoted by God himself
+to the defence of Heaven and their consecrated soil.
+
+With the French there was no solemnity, either religious or military,
+no review, no means of excitation: even the address of the emperor was
+not distributed till very late, and read the next morning so near the
+time of action, that several corps were actually engaged before they
+could hear it. The Russians, however, whom so many powerful motives
+should have inflamed, added to their invocations the sword of St.
+Michael, thus seeking to borrow aid from all the powers of heaven; while
+the French sought for it only within themselves, persuaded that real
+strength exists only in the heart, and that _there_ is to be found the
+"celestial host."
+
+Chance so ordered it, that on that very day the emperor received from
+Paris the portrait of the King of Rome, that infant whose birth had been
+hailed by the empire with the same transports of joy and hope as it had
+been by the emperor. Every day since that happy event, the emperor, in
+the interior of his palace, had given loose when near his child, to the
+expression of the most tender feelings; when, therefore, in the midst of
+these distant fields, and all these menacing preparations, he saw once
+more that sweet countenance, how his warlike soul melted! With his own
+hand he exhibited this picture outside his tent; he then called his
+officers, and even some of the soldiers of his old guard, desirous of
+sharing his pleasure with these veteran grenadiers, of showing his
+private family to his military family, and making it shine as a symbol
+of hope in the midst of imminent peril.
+
+In the evening, an aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had been despatched from
+the field of battle near Salamanca, arrived at that of the Moskwa. This
+was the same Fabvier, who has since made such a figure in our civil
+dissensions. The emperor received graciously the aid-de-camp of the
+vanquished general. On the eve of a battle, the fate of which was so
+uncertain, he felt disposed to be indulgent to a defeat; he listened to
+all that was said to him respecting the scattered state of his forces in
+Spain, and the number of commanders-in-chief, and admitted the justice
+of it all; but he explained his reasons, which it enters not into our
+province to mention here.
+
+With the return of night also returned the apprehension, that under
+cover of its shades, the Russian army might escape from the field of
+battle. Napoleon's anxiety was so great as to prevent him from sleeping.
+He kept calling incessantly to know the hour, inquiring if any noise was
+heard, and sending persons to ascertain if the enemy was still before
+him. His doubts on this subject were so strong, that he had given orders
+that his proclamation should not be read to his troops until the next
+morning, and then only in case of the certainty of a battle.
+
+Tranquillized for a few moments, anxiety of an opposite description
+again seized him. He became frightened at the destitute state of the
+soldiers. Weak and famished as they were, how could they support a long
+and terrible shock? In this danger he looked upon his guard as his sole
+resource; it seemed to be his security for both armies. He sent for
+Bessieres, that one of his marshals in whom he had the greatest
+confidence for commanding it; he wished to know if this chosen reserve
+wanted nothing;--he called him back several times, and repeated his
+pressing questions. He desired that these old soldiers should have three
+days' biscuit and rice distributed among them from their waggons of
+reserve; finally, dreading that his orders had not been obeyed, he got
+up once more, and questioned the grenadiers on guard at the entrance of
+his tent, if they had received these provisions. Satisfied by their
+answer, he went in, and soon fell into a doze.
+
+Shortly after, he called once more. His aid-de-camp found him now
+supporting his head with both hands; he seemed, by what was heard, to be
+meditating on the vanities of glory. "What is war? A trade of
+barbarians, the whole art of which consists in being the strongest on a
+given point!" He then complained of the fickleness of fortune, which he
+said, he began to experience. Seeming to revert to more encouraging
+ideas, he recollected what had been told him of the tardiness and
+carelessness of Kutusof, and expressed his surprise that Beningsen had
+not been preferred to him. He thought of the critical situation into
+which he had brought himself, and added, "that a great day was at hand,
+that there would be a terrible battle." He asked Rapp if he thought we
+should gain the victory? "No doubt;" was the reply, "but it will be
+sanguinary." "I know it," resumed Napoleon, "but I have 80,000 men; I
+shall lose 20,000, I shall enter Moscow with 60,000; the stragglers
+will there rejoin us, and afterwards the battalions on the march, and we
+shall be stronger than we were before the battle." In this estimate he
+seemed to include neither his guard nor the cavalry.
+
+Again assailed by his first anxiety, he sent once more to examine the
+attitude of the Russians; he was informed that their fires burned with
+equal brightness, and that by the number of these, and the moving
+shadows surrounding them, it was supposed that it was not merely a
+rear-guard, but a whole army that kept feeding them. The certainty of
+their presence at last quieted the emperor, and he tried to take some
+rest.
+
+But the marches which he had just made with the array, the fatigues of
+the preceding days and nights, so many cares, and his intense and
+anxious expectation, had worn him out; the chillness of the atmosphere
+had struck to him; an irritating fever, a dry cough, and excessive
+thirst consumed him. During the remainder of the night, he made vain
+attempts to quench the burning thirst which consumed him. This fresh
+disorder was complicated with an old complaint; he had been struggling
+since the day before with a painful attack of that cruel disorder[18],
+which had been long threatening him.
+
+[Footnote 18: A retention of urine.]
+
+At last, just at five o'clock, one of Ney's officers came to inform him
+that the marshal was still in sight of the Russians, and wished to begin
+the attack. This news seemed to restore the strength of which the fever
+had deprived him. He arose, called his officers, and sallied out,
+exclaiming, "We have them at last! Forward! Let us go and open the gates
+of Moscow!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+It was half-past five in the morning, when Napoleon arrived near the
+redoubt which had been conquered on the 5th of September. There he
+waited for the first dawn of day, and for the first fire of
+Poniatowski's infantry. The sun rose. The emperor, showing it to his
+officers, exclaimed, "Behold the sun of Austerlitz!" But it was opposite
+to us. It rose on the Russian side, made us conspicuous to their fire,
+and dazzled us. We then first perceived, that owing to the darkness, our
+batteries had been placed out of reach of the enemy, and it was
+necessary to push them more forward. The enemy allowed this to be done:
+he seemed to hesitate in being the first to break the awful silence.
+
+The emperor's attention was then directed towards his right, when, all
+at once, near seven o'clock, the battle began upon his left. Shortly
+after, he was informed, that one of the regiments of Prince Eugene, the
+106th, had got possession of the village of Borodino, and its bridge,
+which it should have destroyed; but that being carried away by the
+ardour of success, it had crossed that passage, in spite of the cries of
+its general, in order to attack the heights of Gorcka, where it was
+overwhelmed by the front and flank fires of the Russians. It was added,
+that the general who commanded that brigade had been already killed, and
+that the 106th regiment would have been entirely destroyed had it not
+been for the 92d, which voluntarily ran up to its assistance, and
+collected and brought back its survivors.
+
+It was Napoleon himself who had just ordered his left wing to make a
+violent attack. Probably, he had only reckoned on a partial execution of
+his orders, and wished to keep the enemy's attention directed to that
+side. But he multiplied his orders, used the most violent excitations,
+and engaged a battle in front, the plan of which he had conceived in an
+oblique order.
+
+During this action, the emperor judging that Poniatowski was closing
+with the enemy on the old Moscow road, gave him the signal to attack.
+Suddenly, from that peaceful plain, and the silent hills, volumes of
+fire and smoke were seen spouting out, followed by a multitude of
+explosions, and the whistling of bullets, tearing the air in every
+direction. In the midst of this noise, Davoust, with the divisions
+Compans and Dessaix, and thirty pieces of cannon in front, advanced
+rapidly to the first Russian redoubt.
+
+The enemy's musketry began, and was answered only by the French cannon.
+The French infantry marched without firing: it was hurrying on to get
+within reach of and extinguish that of the enemy, when Compans, the
+general of that column, and his bravest soldiers, were wounded and fell:
+the rest, disconcerted, halted under the shower of balls, in order to
+return it, when Rapp, rushing to replace Compans, again led his soldiers
+on, with fixed bayonets, and at a running pace against the enemy's
+redoubt.
+
+He was himself just on the point of reaching it, when he was, in his
+turn, hit; it was his twenty-second wound. A third general, who
+succeeded him, also fell. Davoust himself was wounded. Rapp was carried
+to the emperor, who said to him, "What, Rapp, always hit! What are they
+doing above, then?" The aid-de-camp answered, that it would require the
+guard to finish. "No!" replied Napoleon, "I shall take good care of
+that; I have no wish to see it destroyed; I shall gain the battle
+without it."
+
+Ney, then, with his three divisions, reduced to 10,000 men, hastened
+into the plain to the assistance of Davoust. The enemy divided his fire.
+Ney rushed forward. The 57th regiment of Compans's division, finding
+itself supported, took fresh courage; by a last effort it succeeded in
+reaching the enemy's entrenchments, scaled them, mingled with the
+Russians, put them to the bayonet, overthrew and killed the most
+obstinate of them. The rest fled, and the 57th maintained itself in its
+conquest. At the same time Ney made so furious an attack on the two
+other redoubts, that he wrested them from the enemy.
+
+It was now mid-day; the left Russian line being thus forced, and the
+plain cleared, the emperor ordered Murat to proceed with his cavalry,
+and complete the victory. An instant was sufficient for that prince to
+show himself on the heights and in the midst of the enemy, who again
+made his appearance there; for the second Russian line and the
+reinforcements, led on by Bagawout and sent by Tutchkof, had come to the
+assistance of the first line. They all rushed forward, resting upon
+Semenowska, in order to retake their redoubts. The French, who were
+still in the disorder of victory, were astonished and fell back.
+
+The Westphalians, whom Napoleon had just sent to the assistance of
+Poniatowski, were then crossing the wood which separated that prince
+from the rest of the army; through the dust and smoke they got a glimpse
+of our troops, who were retreating. By the direction of their march,
+they guessed them to be enemies, and fired upon them. They persisted in
+their mistake, and thereby increased the disorder.
+
+The enemy's cavalry vigorously followed up their advantage; they
+surrounded Murat, who forgot himself in his endeavours to rally his
+troops; they were already stretching out their arms to lay hold of him,
+when he threw himself into the redoubt, and escaped from them. But there
+he found only some unsteady soldiers whose courage had forsaken them,
+and running round the parapet in a state of the greatest panic. They
+only wanted an outlet to run away.
+
+The presence of the king and his cries first restored confidence to a
+few. He himself seized a musket; with one hand he fought, with the other
+he elevated and waved his plume, calling to his men, and restoring them
+to their first valour by that authority which example gives. At the same
+time Ney had again formed his divisions. Their fire stopped the enemy's
+cuirassiers, and threw their ranks into disorder. They let go their
+hold, Murat was at last disengaged, and the heights were reconquered.
+
+Scarcely had the king escaped this peril, when he ran into another; with
+the cavalry of Bruyere and Nansouty, he rushed upon the enemy, and by
+obstinate and repeated charges overthrew the Russian lines, pushed and
+drove them back on their centre, and, within an hour, completed the
+total defeat of their left wing.
+
+But the heights of the ruined village of Semenowska, where the left of
+the enemy's centre commenced, were still untouched; the reinforcements
+which Kutusof incessantly drew from his right, supported it. Their
+commanding fire was poured down upon Ney and Murat's troops, and stopped
+their victory; it was indispensable to acquire that position. Maubourg
+with his cavalry first cleared the front; Friand, one of Davoust's
+generals, followed him with his infantry. Dufour and the 15th light were
+the first to climb the steep; they dislodged the Russians from the
+village, the ruins of which were badly entrenched. Friand, although
+wounded, followed up and secured this advantage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+This vigorous action opened up to us the road to victory; it was
+necessary to rush into it; but Murat and Ney were exhausted: they
+halted, and while they were rallying their troops, they sent to Napoleon
+to ask for reinforcements. Napoleon was then seized with a hesitation
+which he never before displayed; he deliberated long with himself, and
+at last, after repeated orders and counter-orders to his young guard, he
+expressed his belief that the appearance of Friand and Maubourg's troops
+on the heights would be sufficient, the decisive moment not appearing to
+him to be yet arrived.
+
+But Kutusof took advantage of the respite which he had no reason to
+expect; he summoned the whole of his reserve, even to the Russian
+guards, to the support of his uncovered left wing. Bagration, with all
+these reinforcements, re-formed his line, his right resting on the great
+battery which Prince Eugene was attacking, his left on the wood which
+bounded the field of battle towards Psarewo. His fire cut our ranks to
+pieces; his attack was violent, impetuous, and simultaneous; infantry,
+artillery, and cavalry, all made a grand effort. Ney and Murat stood
+firm against this tempest; the question with them was no longer about
+following up the victory, but about retaining it.
+
+The soldiers of Friand, drawn up in front of Semenowska, repelled the
+first charges, but when they were assailed with a shower of balls and
+grape shot, they began to give way; one of their leaders got tired, and
+gave orders to retreat. At that critical moment, Murat ran up to him,
+and seizing him by the collar, exclaimed, "What are you about?" The
+colonel, pointing to the ground, covered with half his troops, answered,
+"You see well enough that it is impossible to stand here."--"Very well,
+I will remain!" exclaimed the king. These words stopped the officer: he
+looked Murat steadily in the face, and turning round, coolly said, "You
+are right! Soldiers, face to the enemy! Let us go and be killed!"
+
+Meanwhile, Murat had just sent back Borelli to the emperor to ask for
+assistance; that officer pointed to the clouds of dust which the charges
+of the cavalry were raising upon the heights, which had hitherto
+remained tranquil since they had been taken. Some cannon-balls also for
+the first time fell close to where Napoleon was stationed; the enemy
+seemed to be approaching; Borelli insisted, and the emperor promised his
+young guard. But, scarcely had it advanced a few paces, when he himself
+called out to it to halt. The Count de Lobau, however, made it advance
+by degrees, under pretence of dressing the line. Napoleon perceiving
+it, repeated his order.
+
+Fortunately, the artillery of the reserve advanced at that moment, to
+take a position on the conquered heights; Lauriston had obtained the
+emperor's consent to that manoeuvre, but it was rather a permission
+than an order. Shortly after, however, he thought it so important, that
+he urged its execution with the only movement of impatience he exhibited
+during the whole of that day.
+
+It is not known whether his doubts as to the results of Prince
+Poniatowski and Prince Eugene's engagement on his right and left kept
+him in uncertainty; what is certain is, that he seemed to be
+apprehensive lest the extreme left of the Russians should escape from
+the Poles, and return to take possession of the field of battle in the
+rear of Ney and Murat. This at least was one of the causes of his
+retaining his guard in observation upon that point. To such as pressed
+him, his answer was, "that he wished to have a better view; that his
+battle was not yet begun; that it would be a long one; that they must
+learn to wait; that time entered into every thing; that it was the
+element of which all things are composed; that nothing was yet
+sufficiently clear." He then inquired the hour, and added, "that the
+hour of his battle was not yet come; that it would begin in two hours."
+
+But it never began: the whole of that day he was sitting down, or
+walking about leisurely, in front, and a little to the left of the
+redoubt which had been conquered on the 5th, on the borders of a
+ravine, at a great distance from the battle, of which he could scarcely
+see any thing after it got beyond the heights; not at all uneasy when he
+saw it return nearer to him, nor impatient with his own troops, or the
+enemy. He merely made some gestures of melancholy resignation, on every
+occasion, when they came to inform him of the loss of his best generals.
+He rose several times to take a few turns, but immediately sat down
+again.
+
+Every one around him looked at him with astonishment. Hitherto, during
+these great shocks, he had displayed an active coolness; but here it was
+a dead calm, a nerveless and sluggish inactivity. Some fancied they
+traced in it that dejection which is generally the follower of violent
+sensations: others, that he had already become indifferent to every
+thing, even to the emotion of battles. Several remarked, that the calm
+constancy and _sang-froid_ which great men display on these great
+occasions, turn, in the course of time, to phlegm and heaviness, when
+age has worn out their springs. Those who were most devoted to him,
+accounted for his immobility by the necessity of not changing his place
+too much, when he was commanding over such an extent, in order that the
+bearers of intelligence might know where to find him. Finally, there
+were others who, on much better grounds, attributed it to the shock
+which his health had sustained, to a secret malady, and to the
+commencement of a violent indisposition.
+
+The generals of artillery, who were surprised at their stagnation,
+quickly availed themselves of the permission to fight which was just
+given them. They very soon crowned the heights. Eighty pieces of cannon
+were discharged at once. The Russian cavalry was first broken by that
+brazen line, and obliged to take refuge behind its infantry.
+
+The latter advanced in dense masses, in which our balls at first made
+wide and deep holes; they still, however, continued to advance, when the
+French batteries crushed them by a second discharge of grape-shot. Whole
+platoons fell at once; their soldiers were seen trying to keep together
+under this terrible fire. Every instant, separated by death, they closed
+together over her, treading her under foot.
+
+At last they halted, not daring to advance farther, and yet unwilling to
+retreat; either because they were struck, and, as it were, petrified
+with horror, in the midst of this great destruction, or that Bagration
+was wounded at that moment; or, perhaps, because their generals, after
+the failure of their first disposition, knew not how to change it, from
+not possessing, like Napoleon, the great art of putting such great
+bodies into motion at once, in unison, and without confusion. In short,
+these listless masses allowed themselves to be mowed down for two hours,
+making no other movement than their fall. It was a most horrible
+massacre; and our brave and intelligent artillerymen could not help
+admiring the motionless, blind, and resigned courage of their enemies.
+
+The victors were the first to be tired out. They became impatient at
+the tardiness of this battle of artillery. Their ammunition being
+entirely exhausted, they came to a decision, in consequence of which Ney
+moved forward, extending his right, which he made to advance rapidly,
+and again turn the left of the new front opposed to him. Davoust and
+Murat seconded him, and the remnants of Ney's corps became the
+conquerors over the remains of Bagration's.
+
+The battle then ceased in the plain, and became concentrated on the rest
+of the enemy's heights, and near the great redoubt, which Barclay with
+the centre and the right, continued to defend obstinately against
+Eugene.
+
+In this manner, about mid-day, the whole of the French right wing, Ney,
+Davoust, and Murat, after annihilating Bagration and the half of the
+Russian line, presented itself on the half-opened flank of the remainder
+of the hostile army, of which they could see the whole interior, the
+reserves, the abandoned rears, and even the commencement of the retreat.
+
+But as they felt themselves too weak to throw themselves into that gap,
+behind a line still formidable, they called aloud for the guard: "The
+young guard! only let it follow them at a distance! Let it show itself,
+and take their place upon the heights! They themselves will then be
+sufficient to finish!"
+
+General Belliard was sent by them to the emperor. He declared, "that
+from their position, the eye could penetrate, without impediment, a far
+as the road to Mojaisk, in the rear of the Russian army; that they could
+see there a confused crowd of flying and wounded soldiers, and carriages
+retreating; that it was true there was still a ravine and a thin copse
+between them, but that the Russian generals were so confounded, that
+they had no thought of turning these to any advantage; that in short,
+only a single effort was required to arrive in the middle of that
+disorder, to seal the enemy's discomfiture, and terminate the war!"
+
+The emperor, however, still hesitated, and ordered that general to go
+and look again, and to return and bring him word. Belliard, surprised,
+went and returned with all speed; he reported, "that the enemy began to
+think better of it; that the copse was already lined with his marksmen:
+that the opportunity was about to escape; that there was not a moment to
+be lost, otherwise it would require a second battle to terminate the
+first!"
+
+But Bessieres, who had just returned from the heights, to which Napoleon
+had sent him to examine the attitude of the Russians, asserted, that,
+"far from being in disorder, they had retreated to a second position,
+where they seemed to be preparing for a fresh attack." The emperor then
+said to Belliard, "That nothing was yet sufficiently unravelled: that to
+make him give his reserves, he wanted to see more clearly upon his
+chess-board." This was his expression; which he repeated several times,
+at the same time pointing on one side to the old Moscow road, of which
+Poniatowski had not yet made himself master; on the other, to an attack
+of the enemy's cavalry in the rear of our left wing; and, finally, to
+the great redoubt, against which the efforts of prince Eugene had been
+ineffectual.
+
+Belliard, in consternation, returned to the king of Naples, and informed
+him of the impossibility of obtaining the reserve from the emperor; he
+said, "he had found him still seated in the same place, with a suffering
+and dejected air, his features sunk, and a dull look; giving his orders
+languishingly, in the midst of these dreadful warlike noises, to which
+he seemed completely a stranger!" At this account, Ney, furious and
+hurried away by his ardent and unmeasured character, exclaimed, "Are we
+then come so far, to be satisfied with a field of battle? What business
+has the emperor in the rear of the army? There, he is only within reach
+of reverses, and not of victory. Since he will no longer make war
+himself, since he is no longer the general, as he wishes to be the
+emperor every where, let him return to the Tuilleries, and leave us to
+be generals for him!"
+
+Murat was more calm; he recollected having seen the emperor the day
+before, as he was riding along, observing that part of the enemy's line,
+halt several times, dismount, and with his head resting upon the cannon,
+remain there some time in the attitude of suffering. He knew what a
+restless night he had passed, and that a violent and incessant cough cut
+short his breathing. The king guessed that fatigue, and the first
+attacks of the equinox, had shaken his weakened frame, and that in
+short, at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a manner
+chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of
+fatigue, of fever, and of a malady which, probably, more than any other,
+prostrates the moral and physical strength of its victims.
+
+Still, farther incitements were not wanting; for shortly after Belliard,
+Daru, urged by Dumas, and particularly by Berthier, said in a low voice
+to the emperor, "that from all sides it was the cry that the moment for
+sending the guard was now come." To which Napoleon replied, "And if
+there should be another battle to-morrow, where is my army?" The
+minister urged no farther, surprised to see, for the first time, the
+emperor putting off till the morrow, and adjourning his victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Barclay, however, with the right, kept up a most obstinate struggle with
+Prince Eugene. The latter, immediately after the capture of Borodino,
+passed the Kologha in the face of the enemy's great redoubt. There,
+particularly, the Russians had calculated upon their steep heights,
+encompassed by deep and muddy ravines, upon our exhaustion, upon their
+entrenchments, defended by heavy artillery, and upon 80 pieces of
+cannon, planted on the borders of these banks, bristling with fire and
+flames! But all these elements, art, and nature, every thing failed
+them at once: assailed by a first burst of that _French fury_, which has
+been so celebrated, they saw Morand's soldiers appear suddenly in the
+midst of them, and fled in disorder.
+
+Eighteen hundred men of the 30th regiment, with general Bonnamy at their
+head, had just made that great effort.
+
+It was there that Fabvier, the aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had arrived
+but the day before from the heart of Spain, made himself conspicuous; he
+went as a volunteer, and on foot, at the head of the most advanced
+sharp-shooters, as if he had come there to represent the army of Spain,
+in the midst of the grand army; and, inspired with that rivalry of glory
+which makes heroes, wished to exhibit it at the head, and the first in
+every danger.
+
+He fell wounded in that too famous redoubt; for the triumph was
+short-lived; the attack wanted concert, either from precipitation in the
+first assailant, or too great slowness in those who followed. They had
+to pass a ravine, whose depth protected them from the enemy's fire. It
+is affirmed that many of our troops halted there. Morand, therefore, was
+left alone in the face of several Russian lines. It was yet only ten
+o'clock. Friand, who was on his right, had not yet commenced the attack
+of Semenowska; and, on his left, the divisions Gerard, Broussier, and
+the Italian guard, were not yet in line.
+
+This attack, besides, should not have been made so precipitately: the
+intention had been only to keep Barclay in check, and occupied on that
+side, the battle having been arranged to begin by the right wing, and
+pivot on the left. This was the emperor's plan, and we know not why he
+himself altered it at the moment of its execution; for it was he who, on
+the first discharge of the artillery, sent different officers in
+succession to Prince Eugene, to urge his attack.
+
+The Russians, recovering from their first surprise, rushed forward in
+all directions. Kutaisof and Yermoloff advanced at their head with a
+resolution worthy of so great an occasion. The 30th regiment, single
+against a whole army, ventured to attack it with the bayonet; it was
+enveloped, crushed, and driven out of the redoubt, where it left a third
+of its men, and its intrepid general pierced through with twenty wounds.
+Encouraged by their success, the Russians were no longer satisfied with
+defending themselves, but attacked in their turn. Then were seen united,
+on that single point, all the skill, strength, and fury, which war can
+bring forth. The French stood firm for four hours on the declivity of
+that volcano, under the shower of iron and lead which it vomited forth.
+But to do this required all the skill and determination of Prince
+Eugene; and the idea so insupportable to long-victorious soldiers, of
+confessing themselves vanquished.
+
+Each division changed its general several times. The viceroy went from
+one to the other, mingling entreaties and reproaches, and, above all,
+reminding them of their former victories. He sent to apprise the
+emperor of his critical situation; but Napoleon replied, "That he could
+not assist him; that he must conquer; that he had only to make a greater
+effort; that the heat of the battle was there." The prince was rallying
+all his forces to make a general assault, when suddenly his attention
+was diverted by furious cries proceeding from his left.
+
+Ouwarof, with two regiments of cavalry, and some thousand cossacks, had
+attacked his reserve, and thrown it into disorder. He ran thither
+instantly, and, seconded by Generals Delzons and Ornano, soon drove away
+that troop, which was more noisy than formidable; after which he
+returned to put himself at the head of a decisive attack.
+
+It was about that time that Murat, forced to remain inactive on the
+plain where he commanded, had sent, for the fourth time, to his
+brother-in-law, to complain of the losses which his cavalry were
+sustaining from the Russian troops, protected by the redoubts which were
+opposed to Prince Eugene. "He only requested the cavalry of the guard,
+with whose assistance he could turn the entrenched heights, and destroy
+them along with the army which defended them."
+
+The emperor seemed to give his consent, and sent in search of Bessieres,
+who commanded these horse-guards. Unfortunately they could not find the
+marshal, who, by his orders, had gone to look at the battle somewhat
+nearer. The emperor waited nearly an hour without the least impatience,
+or repeating his order; and when the marshal returned, he received him
+with a pleasant look, heard his report quietly, and allowed him to
+advance as far as he might judge it desirable.
+
+But it was too late; he could no longer think of making the whole
+Russian army prisoners, or perhaps of taking entire possession of
+Russia; the field of battle was all he was likely to gain. He had
+allowed Kutusof leisure to reconnoitre his positions; that general had
+fortified all the points of difficult approach which remained to him,
+and his cavalry covered the plain.
+
+The Russians had thus, for the third time, renewed their left wing, in
+the face of Ney and Murat. The latter summoned the cavalry of Montbrun,
+who had been killed. General Caulaincourt succeeded him; he found the
+aides-de-camp of the unfortunate Montbrun in tears for the loss of their
+commander. "Follow me," said he to them, "weep not for him, but come and
+avenge his death!"
+
+The king pointed out to him the enemy's fresh wing; he must break
+through it, and push on as far as the breast of their great battery;
+when there, during the time that the light cavalry is following up his
+advantage, he, Caulaincourt, must turn suddenly, on the left with his
+cuirassiers, in order to take in the rear that terrible redoubt whose
+front fire is still mowing the ranks of the viceroy.
+
+Caulaincourt's reply was, "You shall see me there presently, alive or
+dead." He immediately set off, overthrew all before him, and turning
+suddenly round on the left with his cuirassiers, was the first to enter
+the bloody redoubt, when he was struck dead by a musket-ball. His
+conquest was his tomb.
+
+They ran immediately to acquaint the emperor with this victory, and the
+loss which it had occasioned. The grand-equerry, brother of the
+unfortunate general, listened, and was at first petrified; but he soon
+summoned courage against this misfortune, and, but for the tears which
+silently coursed down his cheeks, you might have thought that he felt
+nothing. The emperor, uttering an exclamation of sorrow, said to him,
+"You have heard the news, do you wish to retire?" But as at that moment
+we were advancing against the enemy, the grand-equerry made no reply; he
+did not retire; he only half uncovered himself to thank the emperor, and
+to refuse.
+
+While this determined charge of cavalry was executing, the viceroy, with
+his infantry, was on the point of reaching the mouth of this volcano,
+when suddenly he saw its fires extinguished, its smoke disappear, and
+its summit glittering with the moveable and resplendent armour of our
+cuirassiers. These heights, hitherto Russian, had at last become French;
+he hastened forward to share and terminate the victory, and to
+strengthen himself in that position.
+
+But the Russians had not yet abandoned it; they returned with greater
+obstinacy and fury to the attack; successively as they were beat back by
+our troops, they were again rallied by their generals, and finally the
+greater part perished at the foot of these works, which they had
+themselves raised.
+
+Fortunately, their last attacking column presented itself towards
+Semenowska and the great redoubt, without its artillery, the progress of
+which had, no doubt, been retarded by the ravines. Belliard had barely
+time to collect thirty cannon against this infantry. They came almost
+close to the mouths of our pieces, which overwhelmed them so apropos,
+that they wheeled round and retreated without being even able to deploy.
+Murat and Belliard then said, that if they could have had at that moment
+ten thousand infantry of the reserve, their victory would have been
+decisive; but that, being reduced to their cavalry, they considered
+themselves fortunate to keep possession of the field of battle.
+
+On his side, Grouchy, by sanguinary and repeated charges on the left of
+the great redoubt, secured the victory, and scoured the plain. But it
+was impossible to pursue the fugitive Russians; fresh ravines, with
+armed redoubts behind them, protected their retreat. There they defended
+themselves with fury until the approach of night, covering in this
+manner the great road to Moscow, their holy city, their magazine, their
+depot, their place of refuge.
+
+From this second range of heights, their artillery overwhelmed the first
+which they had abandoned to us. The viceroy was obliged to conceal his
+panting, exhausted, and thinned lines in the hollows of the ground, and
+behind the half-destroyed entrenchments. The soldiers were obliged to
+get upon their knees, and crouch themselves up behind these shapeless
+parapets. In that painful posture they remained for several hours, kept
+in check by the enemy, who stood in check of them.
+
+It was about half-past three o'clock when this last victory was
+achieved; there had been several such during the day; each corps
+successively beat that which was opposed to it, without being able to
+take advantage of its success to decide the battle; as, not being
+supported in proper time by the reserve, each halted exhausted. But at
+last all the first obstacles were overcome; the firing gradually
+slackened, and got to a greater distance from the emperor. Officers were
+coming in to him from all parts. Poniatowski and Sebastiani, after an
+obstinate contest, were also victorious. The enemy halted, and
+entrenched himself in a new position. It was getting late, our
+ammunition was exhausted, and the battle ended.
+
+Belliard then returned for the third time to the emperor, whose
+sufferings appeared to have increased. He mounted his horse with
+difficulty, and rode slowly along the heights of Semenowska. He found a
+field of battle imperfectly gained, as the enemy's bullets, and even
+their musket-balls, still disputed the possession of it with us.
+
+In the midst of these warlike noises, and the still burning ardour of
+Ney and Murat, he continued always in the same state, his gait
+desponding, and his voice languid. The sight of the Russians, however,
+and the noise of their continued firing, seemed again to inspire him;
+he went to take a nearer view of their last position, and even wished to
+drive them from it. But Murat, pointing to the scanty remains of our own
+troops, declared that it would require the guard to finish; on which,
+Bessieres continuing to insist, as he always did, on the importance of
+this _corps d'elite_, objected "the distance the emperor was from his
+reinforcements; that Europe was between him and France; that it was
+indispensable to preserve, at least, that handful of soldiers, which was
+all that remained to answer for his safety." And as it was then nearly
+five o'clock, Berthier added, "that it was too late; that the enemy was
+strengthening himself in his last position; and that it would require a
+sacrifice of several more thousands, without any adequate results."
+Napoleon then thought of nothing but to recommend the victors to be
+prudent. Afterwards he returned, still at the same slow pace, to his
+tent, that had been erected behind that battery which was carried two
+days before, and in front of which he had remained ever since the
+morning, an almost motionless spectator of all the vicissitudes of that
+terrible day.
+
+As he was thus returning, he called Mortier to him, and ordered him "to
+make the young guard now advance, but on no account to pass the new
+ravine which separated us from the enemy." He added, "that he gave him
+in charge to guard the field of battle; that that was all he required of
+him; that he was at liberty to do whatever he thought necessary for that
+purpose, and nothing more." He recalled him shortly after to ask "if he
+had properly understood him; recommended him to make no attack; but
+merely to guard the field of battle." An hour afterwards he sent to him
+to reiterate the order, "neither to advance nor retreat, whatever might
+happen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+After he had retired to his tent, great mental anguish was added to his
+previous physical dejection. He had seen the field of battle; places had
+spoken much more loudly than men; the victory which he had so eagerly
+pursued, and so dearly bought, was incomplete. Was this he who had
+always pushed his successes to the farthest possible limits, whom
+Fortune had just found cold and inactive, at a time when she was
+offering him her last favours?
+
+The losses were certainly immense, and out of all proportion to the
+advantages gained. Every one around him had to lament the loss of a
+friend, a relation, or a brother; for the fate of battles had fallen on
+the most distinguished. Forty-three generals had been killed or wounded.
+What a mourning for Paris! what a triumph for his enemies! what a
+dangerous subject for the reflections of Germany! In his army, even in
+his very tent, his victory was silent, gloomy, isolated, even without
+flatterers!
+
+The persons whom he had summoned, Dumas and Daru, listened to him, and
+said nothing; but their attitude, their downcast eyes, and their
+silence, spoke more eloquently than words.
+
+It was now ten o'clock. Murat, whom twelve hours' fighting had not
+exhausted, again came to ask him for the cavalry of his guard. "The
+enemy's army," said he, "is passing the Moskwa in haste and disorder; I
+wish to surprise and extinguish it." The emperor repelled this sally of
+immoderate ardour; afterwards he dictated the bulletin of the day.
+
+He seemed pleased at announcing to Europe, that neither he nor his guard
+had been at all exposed. By some this care was regarded as a refinement
+of self-love; but those who were better informed thought very
+differently. They had never seen him display any vain or gratuitous
+passion, and their idea was, that at that distance, and at the head of
+an army of foreigners, who had no other bond of union but victory, he
+had judged it indispensable to preserve a select and devoted body.
+
+His enemies, in fact, would have no longer any thing to hope from fields
+of battle; neither his death, as he had no need to expose his person in
+order to insure success, nor a victory, as his genius was sufficient at
+a distance, even without bringing forward his reserve. As long,
+therefore, as this guard remained untouched, his real power and that
+which he derived from opinion would remain entire. It seemed to be a
+sort of security to him, against his allies, as well as against his
+enemies: on that account he took so much pains to inform Europe of the
+preservation of that formidable reserve; and yet it scarcely amounted to
+20,000 men, of whom more than a third were new recruits.
+
+These were powerful motives, but they did not at all satisfy men who
+knew that excellent reasons may be found for committing the greatest
+faults. They all agreed, "that they had seen the battle which had been
+won in the morning on the right, halt where it was favourable to us, and
+continue successively in front, a contest of mere strength, as in the
+infancy of the art! it was a battle without any plan, a mere victory of
+soldiers, rather than of a general! Why so much precipitation to
+overtake the enemy, with an army panting, exhausted, and weakened? and
+when we had come up with him, why neglect to complete his discomfiture,
+and remain bleeding and mutilated, in the midst of an enraged nation, in
+immense deserts, and at 800 leagues' distance from our resources?"
+
+Murat then exclaimed, "That in this great day he had not recognized the
+genius of Napoleon!" The viceroy confessed "that he had no conception
+what could be the reason of the indecision which his adopted father had
+shown." Ney, when he was called on for his opinion, was singularly
+obstinate in advising him to retreat.
+
+Those alone who had never quitted his person, observed, that the
+conqueror of so many nations had been overcome by a burning fever, and
+above all by a fatal return of that painful malady which every violent
+movement, and all long and strong emotions excited in him. They then
+quoted the words which he himself had written in Italy fifteen years
+before: "Health is indispensable in war, and nothing can replace it;"
+and the exclamation, unfortunately prophetic, which he had uttered on
+the plains of Austerlitz: "Ordener is worn out. One is not always fit
+for war; I shall be good for six years longer, after which I must lie
+by."
+
+During the night, the Russians made us sensible of their vicinity, by
+their unseasonable clamours. Next morning there was an alert, close to
+the emperor's tent. The old guard was actually obliged to run to arms; a
+circumstance which, after a victory, seemed insulting. The army remained
+motionless until noon, or rather it might be said that there was no
+longer an army, but a single vanguard. The rest of the troops were
+dispersed over the field of battle to carry off the wounded, of whom
+there were 20,000. They were taken to the great abbey of Kolotskoi, two
+leagues in the rear.
+
+Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, had just taken assistants from all the
+regiments; the _ambulances_ had rejoined, but all was insufficient. He
+has since complained, in a printed narrative, that no troop had been
+left him to procure the most necessary articles in the surrounding
+villages.
+
+The emperor then rode over the field of battle; never did one present so
+horrible an appearance. Every thing concurred to make it so; a gloomy
+sky, a cold rain, a violent wind, houses burnt to ashes, a plain turned
+topsy-turvy, covered with ruins and rubbish, in the distance the sad and
+sombre verdure of the trees of the North; soldiers roaming about in all
+directions, and hunting for provisions, even in the haversacks of their
+dead companions; horrible wounds, for the Russian musket-balls are
+larger than ours; silent bivouacs, no singing or story-telling--a gloomy
+taciturnity.
+
+Round the eagles were seen the remaining officers and subalterns, and a
+few soldiers, scarcely enough to protect the colours. Their clothes had
+been torn in the fury of the combat, were blackened with powder, and
+spotted with blood; and yet, in the midst of their rags, their misery,
+and disasters, they had a proud look, and at the sight of the emperor,
+uttered some shouts of triumph, but they were rare and excited; for in
+this army, capable at once of analysis and enthusiasm, every one was
+sensible of the position of all.
+
+French soldiers are not easily deceived; they were astonished to find so
+many of the enemy killed, so great a number wounded, and so few
+prisoners, there being not 800 of the latter. By the number of these,
+the extent of a victory had been formerly calculated. The dead bodies
+were rather a proof of the courage of the vanquished, than the evidence
+of a victory. If the rest retreated in such good order, proud, and so
+little discouraged, what signified the gain of a field of battle? In
+such extensive countries, would there ever be any want of ground for the
+Russians to fight on?
+
+As for us, we had already too much, and a great deal more than we were
+able to retain. Could that be called conquering it? The long and
+straight furrow which we had traced with so much difficulty from Kowno,
+across sands and ashes, would it not close behind us, like that of a
+vessel on an immense ocean! A few peasants, badly armed, might easily
+efface all traces of it.
+
+In fact they were about to carry off, in the rear of the army, our
+wounded and our marauders. Five hundred stragglers soon fell into their
+hands. It is true that some French soldiers, arrested in this manner,
+affected to join these cossacks; they assisted them in making fresh
+captures, until finding themselves sufficiently numerous, with their new
+prisoners, they collected together suddenly and rid themselves of their
+unsuspecting enemies.
+
+The emperor could not value his victory otherwise than by the dead. The
+ground was strewed to such a degree with Frenchmen, extended prostrate
+on the redoubts, that they appeared to belong more to them than to those
+who remained standing. There seemed to be more victors killed there,
+than there were still living.
+
+Amidst the crowd of corses which we were obliged to march over in
+following Napoleon, the foot of a horse encountered a wounded man, and
+extorted from him a last sign of life or of suffering. The emperor,
+hitherto equally silent with his victory, and whose heart felt
+oppressed by the sight of so many victims, gave an exclamation; he felt
+relieved by uttering cries of indignation, and lavishing the attentions
+of humanity on this unfortunate creature. To pacify him, somebody
+remarked that it was only a Russian, but he retorted warmly, "that after
+victory there are no enemies, but only men!" He then dispersed the
+officers of his suite, in order to succour the wounded, who were heard
+groaning in every direction.
+
+Great numbers were found at the bottom of the ravines, into which the
+greater part of our men had been precipitated, and where many had
+dragged themselves, in order to be better protected from the enemy, and
+the violence of the storm. Some groaningly pronounced the name of their
+country or their mother; these were the youngest: the elder ones waited
+the approach of death, some with a tranquil, and others with a sardonic
+air, without deigning to implore for mercy or to complain; others
+besought us to kill them outright: these unfortunate men were quickly
+passed by, having neither the useless pity to assist them, nor the cruel
+pity to put an end to their sufferings.
+
+One of these, the most mutilated (one arm and his trunk being all that
+remained to him) appeared so animated, so full of hope, and even of
+gaiety, that an attempt was made to save him. In bearing him along, it
+was remarked that he complained of suffering in the limbs, which he no
+longer possessed; this is a common case with mutilated persons, and
+seems to afford additional evidence that the soul remains entire, and
+that feeling belongs to it alone, and not to the body, which can no more
+feel than it can think.
+
+The Russians were seen dragging themselves along to places where dead
+bodies were heaped together, and offered them a horrible retreat. It has
+been affirmed by several persons, that one of these poor fellows lived
+for several days in the carcase of a horse, which had been gutted by a
+shell, and the inside of which he gnawed. Some were seen straightening
+their broken leg by tying a branch of a tree tightly against it, then
+supporting themselves with another branch, and walking in this manner to
+the next village. Not one of them uttered a groan.
+
+Perhaps, when far from their own homes, they looked less for compassion.
+But certainly they appeared to support pain with greater fortitude than
+the French; not that they suffered more courageously, but that they
+suffered less; for they have less feeling in body and mind, which arises
+from their being less civilized, and from their organs being hardened by
+the climate.
+
+During this melancholy review, the emperor in vain sought to console
+himself with a cheering illusion, by having a second enumeration made of
+the few prisoners who remained, and collecting together some dismounted
+cannon: from seven to eight hundred prisoners, and twenty broken cannon,
+were all the trophies of this imperfect victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIII.
+
+
+At the same time, Murat kept pushing the Russian rear-guard as far as
+Mojaisk: the road which it uncovered on its retreat was perfectly clear,
+and without a single fragment of men, carriages, or dress. All their
+dead had been buried, for they have a religious respect for the dead.
+
+At the sight of Mojaisk, Murat fancied himself already in possession of
+it, and sent to inform the emperor that he might sleep there. But the
+Russian rear-guard had taken a position outside the walls of the town,
+and the remains of their army were placed on a height behind it. In this
+way they covered the Moscow and the Kalouga roads.
+
+Perhaps Kutusof hesitated which of these two roads to take, or was
+desirous of leaving us in uncertainty as to the one he had taken, which
+was the case. Besides, the Russians felt it a point of honour to bivouac
+at only four leagues from the scene of our victory. That also allowed
+them time to disencumber the road behind them and clear away their
+fragments.
+
+Their attitude was equally firm and imposing as before the battle, which
+we could not help admiring; but something of this was also attributable
+to the length of time we had taken to quit the field of Borodino, and to
+a deep ravine which was between them and our cavalry. Murat did not
+perceive this obstacle, but General Dery, one of his officers, guessed
+it. He went and reconnoitred the ground, close to the gates of the town,
+under the Russian bayonets.
+
+But the king of Naples, quite as fiery as at the beginning of the
+campaign, or of his military life, made nothing of the obstacle; he
+summoned his cavalry, called to them furiously to advance, to charge and
+break through these battalions, gates, and walls! In vain his
+aid-de-camp urged the impossibility of effecting his orders; he pointed
+out to him the army on the opposite heights, which commanded Mojaisk,
+and the ravine where the remains of our cavalry were about to be
+swallowed up. Murat, in greater fury than ever, insisted "that they must
+march, and if there was any obstacle, they would see it." He then made
+use of insulting phrases to urge them on, and his orders were about to
+be carried,--with some delay, nevertheless, for there was generally an
+understanding to retard their execution, in order to give him time to
+reflect, and to allow time for a counter-order, which had been
+anticipated to arrive before any misfortune happened, which was not
+always the case, but was so this time. Murat was satisfied with wasting
+his cannon and powder on some drunken and straggling cossacks by whom he
+was almost surrounded, and who attacked him with frightful howls.
+
+This skirmish, however, was sufficiently serious to add to the losses of
+the preceding day, as general Belliard was wounded in it. This officer,
+who was a great loss to Murat, was employed in reconnoitring the left of
+the enemy's position. As it was approachable, the attack should have
+been made on that side, but Murat never thought of any thing but
+striking what was immediately before him.
+
+The emperor only arrived on the field of battle at nightfall, escorted
+by a very feeble detachment. He advanced towards Mojaisk, at a still
+slower pace than the day before, and so completely absent, that he
+neither seemed to hear the noise of the engagement, nor that of the
+bullets which were whistling around him.
+
+Some one stopped him, and pointed out to him the enemy's rear-guard
+between him and the town; and on the heights behind, the fires of an
+army of 50,000 men. This sight was a proof of the incompleteness of his
+victory, and how little the enemy were discouraged; but he seemed quite
+insensible of it; he listened to the reports with a dejected and
+listless air, and returned to sleep at a village some little distance
+off, which was within reach of the enemy's fire.
+
+The Russian autumn had triumphed over him: had it not been for that,
+perhaps the whole of Russia would have yielded to our arms on the plains
+of the Moskwa: its premature inclemency was a most seasonable assistance
+to their empire. It was on the 6th of September, the very day before the
+great battle! that a hurricane announced its fatal commencement. It
+struck Napoleon. Ever since the night of that day, it has been seen that
+a wearying fever had dried up his blood, and oppressed his spirits, and
+that he was quite overcome by it during the battle; the suffering he
+endured from this, added to another still more severe, for the five
+following days arrested his march, and bound up his genius. This it was
+which preserved Kutusof from total ruin at Borodino, and allowed him
+time to rally the remainder of his army, and withdraw it from our
+pursuit.
+
+On the 9th of September we found Mojaisk uncovered, and still standing:
+but beyond it the enemy's rear-guard on the heights which command it,
+and which their army had occupied the day before. Some of our troops
+entered the town for the purpose of passing through it in pursuit of the
+enemy, and others to plunder and find lodgings for themselves. They
+found neither inhabitants nor provisions, but merely dead bodies, which
+they were obliged to throw out of the windows, in order to get
+themselves under cover, and a number of dying soldiers, who were all
+collected into one spot. These last were so numerous, and had been so
+scattered about, that the Russians had not dared to set fire to the
+habitations; but their humanity, which was not always so scrupulous, had
+given way to the desire of firing on the first French they saw enter,
+which they did with shells: the consequence was, that this wooden town
+was soon set fire to, and a part of the unfortunate wounded whom they
+had abandoned were consumed in the flames.
+
+While we were making attempts to save them, fifty voltigeurs of the 33d
+climbed the heights, of which the enemy's cavalry and artillery still
+occupied the summit. The French army, which had halted under the walls
+of Mojaisk, was surprised at seeing this handful of men, scattered about
+on this uncovered declivity, teasing with their fire thousands of the
+enemy's cavalry. All at once what had been foreseen happened; several of
+the enemy's squadrons put themselves in motion, and in an instant
+surrounded these bold fellows, who immediately formed, and kept facing
+and firing at them in all directions; but they were so few in the midst
+of a large plain, and the number of cavalry about them was so great,
+that they soon disappeared from our eyes. A general exclamation of
+sorrow burst from the whole of our lines. Every one of the soldiers with
+his neck stretched, and his eye fixed, followed the enemy's movements,
+and endeavoured to distinguish the fate of his companions in arms. Some
+were lamenting the distance they were at, and wishing to march; others
+mechanically loaded their muskets or crossed their bayonets with a
+threatening air, as if they had been near enough to assist them. Their
+looks were sometimes as animated as if they were fighting, and at other
+times as much distressed as if they had been beat. Others advised and
+encouraged them, forgetting that they were out of reach of hearing.
+
+Several volleys of smoke, ascending from amidst the black mass of
+horses, prolonged the uncertainty. Some cried out, that it was our men
+firing, and still defending themselves, and that they were not yet beat.
+In fact, a Russian commanding officer had just been killed by the
+officer commanding these _tirailleurs_. This was the way in which he
+replied to the summons to surrender. Our anxiety lasted some minutes
+longer, when all at once the army set up a cry of joy and admiration at
+seeing the Russian cavalry, intimidated at this bold resistance,
+separate in order to escape their well-directed fire, disperse, and at
+last allow us to see once more this handful of brave fellows master of
+this extensive field of battle, of which it only occupied a few feet.
+
+When the Russians saw that we were manoeuvring seriously to attack
+them, they disappeared without leaving us any traces to follow them.
+This was the same they had done at Witepsk and Smolensk, and what was
+still more remarkable, the second day after their great disaster. At
+first there was some uncertainty whether to follow the road to Moscow or
+that to Kalouga, after which Murat and Mortier proceeded, at all
+hazards, towards Moscow.
+
+They marched for two days, with no other food than horse-flesh and
+bruised wheat, without finding a single person or thing by which to
+discover the Russian army. That army, although its infantry only formed
+one confused mass, did not leave behind it a single fragment; such was
+the national spirit and habit of obedience in it, collectively and
+singly, and so thoroughly unprovided were we with every kind of
+information, as well as resources, in this deserted and thoroughly
+hostile country.
+
+The army of Italy was advancing at some leagues' distance on the left of
+the great road, and surprised some of the armed peasantry, who were not
+accustomed to fighting; but their master, with a dagger in his hand,
+rushed upon our soldiers like a madman: he exclaimed that he had no
+longer a religion, empire, or country to defend, and that life was
+odious to him; they were willing, however, to leave him that, but as he
+attempted to kill the soldiers who surrounded him, pity yielded to
+anger, and his wish was gratified.
+
+Near Krymskoie, on the 11th of September, the hostile army again made
+its appearance, firmly established in a strong position. It had returned
+to its plan of looking more to the ground, in its retreat, than to the
+enemy. The duke of Treviso at first satisfied Murat of the impossibility
+of attacking it; but the smell of powder soon intoxicated that monarch.
+He committed himself, and obliged Dufour, Mortier, and their infantry,
+to advance to his support. This consisted of the remains of Friand's
+division, and the young guard. There were lost, without the least
+utility, 2000 men of that reserve which had been so unseasonably spared
+on the day of battle; and Mortier was so enraged, that he wrote to the
+emperor, that he would no longer obey Murat's orders. For it was by
+letter that the generals of the vanguard communicated with Napoleon. He
+had remained for three days at Mojaisk, confined to his apartment, still
+consumed by a burning fever, overwhelmed with business, and worn out
+with anxiety. A violent cold had deprived him of the use of his voice.
+Compelled to dictate to seven persons at once, and unable to make
+himself heard, he wrote on different papers the heads of his despatches.
+When any difficulty arose, he explained himself by signs.
+
+There was a moment when Bessieres enumerated to him all the generals who
+were wounded on the day of the battle. This fatal list affected him so
+poignantly, that by a violent effort he recovered his voice, and
+interrupted the marshal by the sudden exclamation, "Eight days at
+Moscow, and there will be an end of it!"
+
+Meantime, although he had hitherto placed all his futurity in that
+capital, a victory so sanguinary and so little decisive lowered his
+hopes. His instructions to Berthier of the 11th of September for marshal
+Victor exhibited his distress: "The enemy, attacked at the heart, no
+longer trifles with us at the extremities. Write to the duke of Belluno
+to direct all, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and isolated soldiers to
+Smolensk, in order to be forwarded from thence to Moscow."
+
+In the midst of these bodily and mental sufferings, which he carefully
+concealed from his army, Davoust obtained access to him; his object was
+to offer himself again, notwithstanding his wound, to take the command
+of the vanguard, promising that he would contrive to march night and
+day, reach the enemy, and compel him to fight, without squandering, as
+Murat did, the strength and lives of the soldiers. Napoleon only
+answered him by extolling in high terms the audacious and inexhaustible
+ardour of his brother-in-law.
+
+He had just before heard, that the enemy's army had again been found;
+that it had not retired upon his right flank, towards Kalouga, as he had
+feared it would; that it was still retreating, and that his vanguard was
+already within two days' march of Moscow. That great name, and the great
+hopes which he attached to it, revived his strength, and on the 12th of
+September, he was sufficiently recovered to set out in a carriage, in
+order to join his vanguard.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF THE
+
+EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,
+
+UNDERTAKEN BY THE
+
+EMPEROR NAPOLEON,
+
+IN THE YEAR 1812.
+
+
+
+
+BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.
+
+
+
+  Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,
+  Incipiam--.
+
+VIRGIL.
+
+
+_SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED._
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES,
+
+WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+LONDON:
+
+TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, JUN. AND RICHTER, 30,
+SOHO-SQUARE.
+
+1825.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of the Emperor Alexander]
+
+HISTORY
+
+OF
+
+NAPOLEON'S EXPEDITION
+
+TO
+
+RUSSIA.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+We have seen how the Emperor Alexander, surprised at Wilna amidst his
+preparations for defence, retreated with his disunited army, and was
+unable to rally it till it was at the distance of a hundred leagues from
+that city, between Witepsk and Smolensk. That Prince, hurried along in
+the precipitate retreat of Barclay, sought refuge at Drissa, in a camp
+injudiciously chosen and entrenched at great expense; a mere point in
+the space, on so extensive a frontier, and which served only to indicate
+to the enemy the object of his manoeuvres.
+
+Alexander, however, encouraged by the sight of this camp, and of the
+Duena, took breath behind that river. It was there that he first
+consented to receive an English agent, so important did he deem it to
+appear till that moment faithful to his engagements with France. Whether
+he acted with real good faith, or merely made a show of doing so, we
+know not: so much is certain, that at Paris, after his success, he
+affirmed, on his honour, to Count Daru, that, "notwithstanding the
+accusations of Napoleon, this was his first infraction of the treaty of
+Tilsit."
+
+At the same time he caused Barclay to issue addresses, designed to
+corrupt the French and their allies, similar to those which had so
+irritated Napoleon at Klubokoe;--attempts which the French regarded as
+contemptible, and the Germans as unseasonable.
+
+In other respects, the Emperor had given his enemies but a mean opinion
+of his military talents: this opinion was founded on his having
+neglected the Berezina, the only natural line of defence of Lithuania;
+on his eccentric retreat towards the north, when the rest of his army
+was fleeing southward; and lastly, on his ukase relative to recruiting,
+dated Drissa, which assigned to the recruits, for their places of
+rendezvous, several towns that were almost immediately occupied by the
+French. His departure from the army, as soon as it began to fight, was
+also a subject of remark.
+
+As to his political measures in his new and in his old provinces, and
+his proclamations from Polotsk to his army, to Moscow, to his great
+nation, it was admitted that they were singularly adapted to persons and
+places. It appears, in fact, that in the political means which he
+employed there was a very striking gradation of energy.
+
+In the recently acquired portion of Lithuania, houses, inhabitants,
+crops, in short every thing had been spared, either from hurry or
+designedly. The most powerful of the nobles had alone been carried off:
+their defection might have set too dangerous an example, and had they
+still further committed themselves, their return in the sequel would
+have been more difficult; besides, they were hostages.
+
+In the provinces of Lithuania which had been of old incorporated with
+the empire, where a mild administration, favours judiciously bestowed,
+and a longer habit of subjection, had extinguished the recollection of
+independence, the inhabitants were hurried away with all they could
+carry with them. Still it was not deemed expedient to require of
+subjects professing a different religion, and a nascent patriotism, the
+destruction of property: a levy of five men only out of every five
+hundred males was ordered.
+
+But in Russia Proper, where religion, superstition, ignorance,
+patriotism, all went hand in hand with the government, not only had the
+inhabitants been obliged to retreat with the army, but every thing that
+could not be removed had been destroyed. Those who were not destined to
+recruit the regulars, joined the militia or the cossacks.
+
+The interior of the empire being then threatened, it was for Moscow to
+set an example. That capital, justly denominated by its poets, "_Moscow
+with the golden cupolas_," was a vast and motley assemblage of two
+hundred and ninety-five churches, and fifteen hundred mansions, with
+their gardens and dependencies. These palaces of brick, and their parks,
+intermixed with neat houses of wood, and even thatched cottages, were
+spread over several square leagues of irregular ground: they were
+grouped round a lofty triangular fortress; the vast double inclosure of
+which, half a league in circuit, contained, the one, several palaces,
+some churches, and rocky and uncultivated spots; the other, a prodigious
+bazaar, the town of the merchants and shopkeepers, where was displayed
+the collected wealth of the four quarters of the globe.
+
+These edifices, these palaces, nay, the very shops themselves, were all
+covered with polished and painted iron: the churches, each surmounted by
+a terrace and several steeples, terminating in golden balls, then the
+crescent, and lastly the cross, reminded the spectator of the history of
+this nation: it was Asia and its religion, at first victorious,
+subsequently vanquished, and finally the crescent of Mahomet surmounted
+by the cross of Christ.
+
+A single ray of sun-shine caused this splendid city to glisten with a
+thousand varied colours. At sight of it the traveller paused, delighted
+and astonished. It reminded him of the prodigies with which the oriental
+poets had amused his childhood. On entering it, a nearer view served but
+to heighten his astonishment: he recognized the nobles by the manners,
+the habits, and the different languages of modern Europe; and by the
+rich and light elegance of their dress. He beheld, with surprise, the
+luxury and the Asiatic form of those of the merchants; the Grecian
+costumes of the common people, and their long beards. He was struck by
+the same variety in the edifices: and yet all this was tinged with a
+local and sometimes harsh colour, such as befits the country of which
+Moscow was the ancient capital.
+
+When, lastly, he observed the grandeur and magnificence of so many
+palaces, the wealth which they displayed, the luxury of the equipages,
+the multitude of slaves and servants, the splendour of those gorgeous
+spectacles, the noise of those sumptuous festivities, entertainments,
+and rejoicings, which incessantly resounded within its walls, he fancied
+himself transported into a city of kings, into an assemblage of
+sovereigns, who had brought with them their manners, customs, and
+attendants from all parts of the world.
+
+They were, nevertheless, only subjects; but opulent and powerful
+subjects; grandees, vain of their ancient nobility, strong in their
+collected numbers, and in the general ties of consanguinity contracted
+during the seven centuries which this capital had existed. They were
+landed proprietors, proud of their existence amidst their vast
+possessions; for almost the whole territory of the government of Moscow
+belongs to them, and they there reign over a million of serfs. Finally,
+they were nobles, resting, with a patriotic and religious pride, upon
+"the cradle and the tomb of their nobility"--for such is the appellation
+which they give to Moscow.
+
+It seems right, in fact, that here the nobles of the most illustrious
+families should be born and educated; that hence they should launch into
+the career of honours and glory; and lastly, that hither, when
+satisfied, discontented, or undeceived, they should bring their disgust,
+or their resentment to pour it forth; their reputation, in order to
+enjoy it, to exercise its influence on the young nobility; and to
+recruit, at a distance from power, of which they have nothing farther to
+expect, their pride, which has been too long bowed down near the throne.
+
+Here their ambition, either satiated or disappointed, has assumed,
+amidst their own dependents, and as it were beyond the reach of the
+court, a greater freedom of speech: it is a sort of privilege which time
+has sanctioned, of which they are tenacious, and which their sovereign
+respects. They become worse courtiers, but better citizens. Hence the
+dislike of their princes to visit this vast repository of glory and of
+commerce, this city of nobles whom they have disgraced or disgusted,
+whose age or reputation places them beyond their power, and to whom they
+are obliged to show indulgence.
+
+To this city necessity brought Alexander: he repaired thither from
+Polotsk, preceded by his proclamations, and looked for by the nobility
+and the mercantile class. His first appearance was amidst the assembled
+nobility. There every thing was great--the circumstance, the assembly,
+the speaker, and the resolutions which he inspired. His voice betrayed
+emotion. No sooner had he ceased, than one general simultaneous,
+unanimous cry burst from all hearts:--"Ask what you please, sire! we
+offer you every thing! take our all!"
+
+One of the nobles then proposed the levy of a militia; and in order to
+its formation, the gift of one peasant in twenty-five: but a hundred
+voices interrupted him, crying, that "the country required a greater
+sacrifice; that it was necessary to grant one serf in ten, ready armed,
+equipped, and supplied with provisions for three months." This was
+offering, for the single government of Moscow, eighty thousand men, and
+a great quantity of stores.
+
+This sacrifice was immediately voted without deliberation--some say with
+enthusiasm, and that it was executed in like manner, so long as the
+danger was at hand. Others have attributed the concurrence of this
+assembly to so urgent a proposition, to submission alone--a sentiment
+indeed, which, in the presence of absolute power, absorbs every other.
+
+They add, that, on the breaking up of the meeting, the principal nobles
+were heard to murmur among themselves against the extravagance of such a
+measure. "Was the danger then so pressing? Was there not the Russian
+army, which, as they were told, still numbered four hundred thousand
+men, to defend them? Why then deprive them of so many peasants! The
+service of these men would be, it was said, only temporary; but who
+could ever wish for their return? It was, on the contrary, an event to
+be dreaded. Would these serfs, habituated to the irregularities of war,
+bring back their former submission? Undoubtedly not: they would return
+full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the
+villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would
+give infinite trouble to the master by spoiling the slave."
+
+Be this as it may, the resolution of that meeting was generous, and
+worthy of so great a nation. The details are of little consequence. We
+well know that it is the same everywhere; that every thing in the world
+loses by being seen too near; and lastly, that nations ought to be
+judged by the general mass and by results.
+
+Alexander then addressed the merchants, but more briefly: he ordered
+that proclamation to be read to them, in which Napoleon was represented
+as "a perfidious wretch; a Moloch, who, with treachery in his heart and
+loyalty on his lips, was striving to sweep Russia from the face of the
+earth."
+
+It is said that, at these words, the masculine and highly coloured faces
+of the auditors, to which long beards imparted a look at once antique,
+majestic and wild, were inflamed with rage. Their eyes flashed fire;
+they were seized with a convulsive fury: their stiffened arms, their
+clenched fists, the gnashing of their teeth, and subdued execrations,
+expressed its vehemence. The effect was correspondent. Their chief, whom
+they elect themselves, proved himself worthy of his station: he put down
+his name the first for fifty thousand rubles. It was two-thirds of his
+fortune, and he paid it the next day.
+
+These merchants are divided into three classes: it was proposed to fix
+the contribution for each; but one of the assembly, who was included in
+the lowest class, declared that his patriotism would not brook any
+limit, and he immediately subscribed a sum far surpassing the proposed
+standard: the others followed his example more or less closely.
+Advantage was taken of their first emotions. Every thing was at hand
+that was requisite to bind them irrevocably while they were yet
+together, excited by one another, and by the words of their sovereign.
+
+This patriotic donation amounted, it is said, to two millions of rubles.
+The other governments repeated, like so many echoes, the national cry of
+Moscow. The Emperor accepted all; but all could not be given
+immediately: and when, in order to complete his work, he claimed the
+rest of the promised succours, he was obliged to have recourse to
+constraint; the danger which had alarmed some and inflamed others,
+having by that time ceased to exist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Meanwhile Smolensk was soon reduced; Napoleon at Wiazma, and
+consternation in Moscow. The great battle was not yet lost, and already
+people began to abandon that capital.
+
+The governor-general, Count Rostopchin, told the women, in his
+proclamations, that "he should not detain _them_, as the less fear the
+less danger there would be; but that their brothers and husbands must
+stay, or they would cover themselves with infamy." He then added
+encouraging particulars concerning the hostile force, which consisted,
+according to his statement, of "one hundred and fifty thousand men, who
+were reduced to the necessity of feeding on horse-flesh. The Emperor
+Alexander was about to return to his faithful capital; eighty-three
+thousand Russians, both recruits and militia, with eighty pieces of
+cannon, were marching towards Borodino, to join Kutusoff."
+
+He thus concluded: "If these forces are not sufficient, I will say to
+you, 'Come, my friends, and inhabitants of Moscow, let us march also! we
+will assemble one hundred thousand men: we will take the image of the
+Blessed Virgin, and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and put an
+end to the business at once!'"
+
+It has been remarked as a purely local singularity, that most of these
+proclamations were in the scriptural style and in poetic prose.
+
+At the same time a prodigious balloon was constructed, by command of
+Alexander, not far from Moscow, under the direction of a German
+artificer. The destination of this winged machine was to hover over the
+French army, to single out its chief, and destroy him by a shower of
+balls and fire. Several attempts were made to raise it, but without
+success, the springs by which the wings were to be worked having always
+broken.
+
+Rostopchin, nevertheless, affecting to persevere, is said to have caused
+a great quantity of rockets and other combustibles to be prepared.
+Moscow itself was designed to be the great infernal machine, the sudden
+nocturnal explosion of which was to consume the Emperor and his army.
+Should the enemy escape this danger, he would at least no longer have an
+asylum or resources; and the horror of so tremendous a calamity, which
+would be charged to his account, as had been done in regard to the
+disasters of Smolensk, Dorogobouje, Wiazma, and Gjatz, would not fail to
+rouse the whole of Russia.
+
+Such was the terrible plan of this noble descendant of one of the
+greatest Asiatic conquerors. It was conceived without effort, matured
+with care, and executed without hesitation. This Russian nobleman has
+since visited Paris. He is a steady man, a good husband, an excellent
+father: he has a superior and cultivated mind, and in society his
+manners are mild and pleasing: but, like some of his countrymen, he
+combines an antique energy with the civilization of modern times.
+
+His name henceforth belongs to history: still he had only the largest
+share in the honour of this great sacrifice. It had been previously
+commenced at Smolensk, and it was he who completed it. This resolution,
+like every thing great and entire, was admirable; the motive sufficient
+and justified by success; the devotedness unparalleled, and so
+extraordinary, that the historian is obliged to pause in order to
+fathom, to comprehend, and to contemplate it.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: A Count Rostopchin, we know, has written that he had no
+hand in that great event: but we cannot help following the opinion of
+the Russians and French, who were witnesses of and actors in this grand
+drama. All, without exception, persist in attributing to that nobleman
+the entire honour of that generous resolution. Several even seem to
+think, that if Count Rostopchin, who is yet animated by the same noble
+spirit, which will render his name imperishable, still refuses the
+immortality of so great an action, it is that he may leave all the glory
+of it to the patriotism of the nation, of which he is become one of the
+most remarkable characters.]
+
+One single individual, amidst a vast empire nearly overthrown, surveys
+its danger with steady eye: he measures, he appreciates it, and
+ventures, perhaps uncommissioned, to devote all the public and private
+interests a sacrifice to it. Though but a subject, he decides the lot of
+the state, without the countenance of his sovereign; a noble, he decrees
+the destruction of the palaces of all the nobles, without their consent;
+the protector, from the post which he occupies, of a numerous
+population, of a multitude of opulent merchants and traders, of one of
+the largest capitals in Europe, he sacrifices their fortunes, their
+establishments, nay, the whole city: he himself consigns to the flames
+the finest and the richest of his palaces, and proud and satisfied, he
+quietly remains among the resentful sufferers who have been injured or
+utterly ruined by the measure.
+
+What motive then could be so just and so powerful as to inspire him with
+such astonishing confidence? In deciding upon the destruction of Moscow,
+his principal aim was not to famish the enemy, since he had contrived to
+clear that great city of provisions; nor to deprive the French army of
+shelter, since it was impossible to suppose that out of eight thousand
+houses and churches, dispersed over so vast a space, there should not be
+left buildings enough to serve as barracks for one hundred and fifty
+thousand men.
+
+He was no doubt aware also that by such a step he would counteract that
+very important point of what was supposed to be the plan of campaign
+formed by Alexander, whose object was thought to be to entice forward
+and to detain Napoleon, till winter should come upon him, seize him, and
+deliver him up defenceless to the whole incensed nation. For it was
+natural to presume that these flames would enlighten that conqueror;
+they would take from his invasion its end and aim. They would of course
+compel him to renounce it while it was yet time, and decide him to
+return to Lithuania, for the purpose of taking up winter quarters in
+that country--a determination which was likely to prepare for Russia a
+second campaign more dangerous than the first.
+
+But in this important crisis Rostopchin perceived two great dangers; the
+one, which threatened the national honour, was that of a disgraceful
+peace dictated at Moscow, and forced upon his sovereign; the other was a
+political rather than a military danger, in which he feared the
+seductions of the enemy more than his arms, and a revolution more than a
+conquest.
+
+Averse, therefore, to any treaty, this governor foresaw that in the
+populous capital, which the Russians themselves style the oracle, the
+example of the whole empire, Napoleon would have recourse to the weapon
+of revolution, the only one that would be left him to accomplish his
+purpose. For this reason he resolved to raise a barrier of fire between
+that great captain and all weaknesses, from whatever quarter they might
+proceed, whether from the throne or from his countrymen, either nobles
+or senators; and more especially between a population of serfs and the
+soldiers of a free nation; in short, between the latter and that mass of
+artisans and tradesmen, who form in Moscow the commencement of an
+intermediate class--a class for which the French Revolution was
+specially adapted.
+
+All the preparations were made in silence, without the knowledge either
+of the people, the proprietors of all classes, or perhaps of their
+Emperor. The nation was ignorant that it was sacrificing itself. This is
+so strictly true, that, when the moment for execution arrived, we heard
+the inhabitants who had fled to the churches, execrating this
+destruction. Those who beheld it from a distance, the most opulent of
+the nobles, mistaken like their peasants, charged us with it; and in
+short, those by whom it was ordered threw the odium of it upon us,
+having engaged in the work of destruction in order to render us objects
+of detestation, and caring but little about the maledictions of so many
+unfortunate creatures, provided they could throw the weight of them upon
+us.
+
+The silence of Alexander leaves room to doubt whether he approved this
+grand determination or not. What part he took in this catastrophe is
+still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the
+subject, or they make a secret of the matter:--the effect of despotism,
+which enjoins ignorance or silence.
+
+Some think that no individual in the whole empire excepting the
+sovereign, would have dared to take on himself so heavy a
+responsibility. His subsequent conduct has disavowed without
+disapproving. Others are of opinion that this was one of the causes of
+his absence from the army, and that, not wishing to appear either to
+order or to defend, he would not stay to be a witness of the
+catastrophe.
+
+As to the general abandonment of the houses, all the way from Smolensk,
+it was compulsory, the Russian army defending them till they were
+carried sword in hand, and describing us every where as destructive
+monsters. The country suffered but little from this emigration. The
+peasants residing near the high road escaped through by-ways to other
+villages belonging to their lords, where they found accommodation.
+
+The forsaking of their huts made of trunks of trees laid one upon
+another, which a hatchet suffices for building, and of which a bench, a
+table, and an image, constitute the whole furniture, was scarcely any
+sacrifice for serfs, who had nothing of their own, whose persons did not
+even belong to themselves, and whose masters were obliged to provide for
+them, since they were their property, and the source of all their
+income.
+
+These peasants, moreover, in removing their carts, their implements, and
+their cattle, carried every thing with them, most of them being able to
+supply themselves with habitation, clothing, and all other necessaries:
+for these people are still in but the first stage of civilization, and
+far from that division of labour which denotes the extension and high
+improvement of commerce and society.
+
+But in the towns, and especially in the great capital, how could they be
+expected to quit so many establishments, to resign so many conveniencies
+and enjoyments, so much wealth, moveable and immoveable? and yet it cost
+little or no more to obtain the total abandonment of Moscow than that of
+the meanest village. There, as at Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, the
+principal nobles hesitated not to retire on our approach: for with them
+to remain would seem to be the same as to betray. But here, tradesmen,
+artisans, day-labourers, all thought it their duty to flee like the most
+powerful of the grandees. There was no occasion to command: these people
+have not yet ideas sufficient to judge for themselves, to distinguish
+and to discover differences; the example of the nobles was sufficient.
+The few foreigners who remained at Moscow might have enlightened them;
+some of these were exiled, and terror drove away the rest.
+
+It was, besides, an easy task to excite apprehensions of profanation,
+pillage, and devastation in the minds of people so cut off from other
+nations, and in the inhabitants of a city which had been so often
+plundered and burnt by the Tartars. With these examples before their
+eyes, they could not await an impious and ferocious enemy but for the
+purpose of fighting him: the rest must necessarily shun his approach
+with horror, if they would save themselves in this life and in the next:
+obedience, honour, religion, fear, every thing in short enjoined them to
+flee, with all that they could carry off.
+
+A fortnight before our arrival, the departure of the archives, the
+public chests and treasure, and that of the nobles and the principal
+merchants, together with their most valuable effects, indicated to the
+rest of the inhabitants what course to pursue. The governor, already
+impatient to see the city evacuated, appointed superintendants to
+expedite the emigration.
+
+On the 3d of September, a Frenchwoman, at the risk of being torn in
+pieces by the furious Muscovites, ventured to leave her hiding-place.
+She wandered a long time through extensive quarters, the solitude of
+which astonished her, when a distant and doleful sound thrilled her with
+terror. It was like the funeral dirge of this vast city; fixed in
+motionless suspense, she beheld an immense multitude of persons of both
+sexes in deep affliction, carrying their effects and their sacred
+images, and leading their children along with them. Their priests, laden
+with the sacred symbols of religion, headed the procession. They were
+invoking heaven in hymns of lamentation, in which all of them joined
+with tears.
+
+On reaching the gates of the city, this crowd of unfortunate creatures
+passed through them with painful hesitation: turned their eyes once more
+towards Moscow, they seemed to be bidding a last farewell to their holy
+city: but by degrees their sobs and the doleful tones of their hymns
+died away in the vast plains by which it is surrounded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+Thus was this population dispersed in detail or in masses. The roads to
+Cazan, Wladimir, and Yaroslaf were covered to the distance of forty
+leagues by fugitives on foot, and several unbroken files of vehicles of
+every kind. At the same time the measures of Rostopchin to prevent
+dejection and to preserve order, detained many of these unfortunate
+people till the very last moment.
+
+To this must be added the appointment of Kutusoff, which had revived
+their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and for
+the less affluent, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning
+the only home which they possessed; lastly, the inadequacy of the means
+of transport, notwithstanding the quantity of vehicles, which is
+peculiarly great in Russia; either because heavy requisitions for the
+exigencies of the army had reduced their number; or because they were
+too small, as it is customary to make them very light, on account of the
+sandy soil and the roads, which may be said to be rather marked out than
+constructed.
+
+It was just then that Kutusoff, though defeated at Borodino, sent
+letters to all quarters announcing that he was victorious. He deceived
+Moscow, Petersburg, and even the commanders of the other Russian armies.
+Alexander communicated this false intelligence to his allies. In the
+first transports of his joy he hastened to the altars, loaded the army
+and the family of his general with honours and money, gave directions
+for rejoicings, returned thanks to heaven, and appointed Kutusoff
+field-marshal for this defeat.
+
+Most of the Russians affirm that their emperor was grossly imposed upon
+by this report. They are still unacquainted with the motives of such a
+deception, which at first procured Kutusoff unbounded favours, that were
+not withdrawn from him, and afterwards, it is said, dreadful menaces,
+that were not put in execution.
+
+If we may credit several of his countrymen, who were perhaps his
+enemies, it would appear that he had two motives. In the first place, he
+wished not to shake, by disastrous intelligence, the little firmness
+which, in Russia, Alexander was generally, but erroneously thought to
+possess. In the second, as he was anxious that his despatch should
+arrive on the very name-day of his Sovereign, it is added that his
+object was to obtain the rewards for which this kind of anniversaries
+furnishes occasion.
+
+But at Moscow the erroneous impression was of short continuance. The
+rumour of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately
+propagated in that city, from the singular commotion of extraordinary
+events, which has been known to spread almost instantaneously to
+prodigious distances. Still, however, the language of the chiefs, the
+only persons who durst speak, continued haughty and threatening: many of
+the inhabitants, trusting to it, remained; but they were every day more
+and more tormented by a painful anxiety. Nearly at one and the same
+moment, they were transported with rage, elevated with hope, and
+overwhelmed with fear.
+
+At one of those moments when, either prostrate before the altars, or in
+their own houses before the images of their saints, they had no hope but
+in heaven, shouts of joy suddenly resounded: the people instantly
+thronged the streets and public places to learn the cause. Intoxicated
+with joy, their eyes were fixed on the cross of the principal church. A
+vulture had entangled himself in the chains which supported it and was
+held suspended by them. This was a certain presage to minds whose
+natural superstition was heightened by extraordinary anxiety; it was
+thus that their God would seize and deliver Napoleon into their power.
+
+Rostopchin took advantage of all these movements, which he excited or
+checked according as they were favourable to him or otherwise. He caused
+the most diminutive to be selected from the prisoners taken from the
+enemy, and exhibited to the people, that the latter might derive courage
+from the sight of their weakness: and yet he emptied Moscow of every
+kind of supplies, in order to feed the vanquished, and to famish the
+conquerors. This measure was easily carried into effect, as Moscow was
+provisioned in spring and autumn by water only, and in winter by
+sledges.
+
+He was still preserving with a remnant of hope the order that was
+necessary, especially in such a flight, when the effects of the disaster
+at Borodino appeared. The long train of wounded, their groans, their
+garments and linen dyed with gore; their most powerful nobles struck and
+overthrown like the others--all this was a novel and alarming sight to a
+city which had for such a length of time been exempt from the horrors of
+war. The police redoubled its activity; but the terror which it excited
+could not long make head against a still greater terror.
+
+Rostopchin once more addressed the people. He declared that "he would
+defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the tribunals were already
+closed, but that was of no consequence; that there was no occasion for
+tribunals to try the guilty." He added, that "in two days he would give
+the signal." He recommended to the people to "arm themselves with
+hatchets, and especially with three-pronged forks, as the French were
+not heavier than a sheaf of corn." As for the wounded, he said he should
+cause "masses to be said and the water to be blessed in order to their
+speedy recovery. Next day," he added, "he should repair to Kutusoff, to
+take final measures for exterminating the enemy. And then," said he, "we
+will send these guests to the devil; we will despatch the perfidious
+wretches, and fall to work to reduce them to powder."
+
+Kutusoff had in fact never despaired of the salvation of the country.
+After employing the militia during the battle of Borodino to carry
+ammunition and to assist the wounded, he had just formed with them the
+third rank of his army. At Mojaisk, the good face which he had kept up
+had enabled him to gain sufficient time to make an orderly retreat, to
+pick his wounded, to abandon such as were incurable, and to embarrass
+the enemy's army with them. Subsequently at Zelkowo, a check had stopped
+the impetuous advance of Murat. At length, on the 13th of September,
+Moscow beheld the fires of the Russian bivouacs.
+
+There the national pride, an advantageous position, and the works with
+which it was strengthened, all induced a belief that the general had
+determined to save the capital or to perish with it. He hesitated,
+however, and whether from policy or prudence, he at length abandoned the
+governor of Moscow to his full responsibility.
+
+The Russian army in this position of Fili, in front of Moscow, numbered
+ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were cossacks, sixty-five
+thousand veteran troops, (the relics of one hundred and twenty-one
+thousand engaged at the Moskwa,) and twenty thousand recruits, armed
+half with muskets and half with pikes.
+
+The French army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong the day before
+the great battle, had lost about forty thousand men at Borodino, and
+still consisted of ninety thousand. Some regiments on the march and the
+divisions of Laborde and Pino had just rejoined it: so that on its
+arrival before Moscow it still amounted to nearly one hundred thousand
+men. Its march was retarded by six hundred and seven pieces of cannon,
+two thousand five hundred artillery carriages, and five thousand baggage
+waggons; it had no more ammunition than would suffice for one
+engagement. Kutusoff perhaps calculated the disproportion between his
+effective force and ours. On this point, however, nothing but conjecture
+can be advanced, or he assigned purely military motives for his retreat.
+
+So much is certain, that the old general deceived the governor to the
+very last moment. He even swore to him "by his grey hair that he would
+perish with him before Moscow," when all at once the governor was
+informed, that in a council of war held at night in the camp, it had
+been determined to abandon the capital without a battle.
+
+Rostopchin was incensed, but not daunted by this intelligence. There was
+now no time to be lost, no farther pains were taken to conceal from
+Moscow the fate that was destined for it; indeed it was not worth while
+to dissemble for the sake of the few inhabitants who were left; and
+besides it was necessary to induce them to seek their safety in flight.
+
+At night, therefore, emissaries went round, knocking at every door and
+announcing the conflagration. Fusees were introduced at every favourable
+aperture, and especially into the shops covered with iron of the
+tradesmen's quarter. The fire engines were carried off: the desolation
+attained its highest pitch, and each individual, according to his
+disposition, was either overwhelmed with distress or urged to a
+decision. Most of those who were left formed groups in the public
+places; they crowded together, questioned each other, and reciprocally
+asked advice: many wandered about at random, some depressed with terror,
+others in a frightful state of exasperation. At length the army, the
+last hope of the people, deserted them: the troops began to traverse the
+city, and in their retreat they hurried along with them the still
+considerable remnant of its population.
+
+They departed by the gate of Kolomna, surrounded by a multitude of
+women, children, and aged persons in deep affliction. The fields were
+covered with them. They fled in all directions, by every path across the
+country, without provisions, and laden with such of their effects as in
+their agitation they had first laid their hands on. Some, for want of
+horses, had harnessed themselves to carts, and thus dragged along their
+infant children, a sick wife, or an infirm father, in short, whatever
+they held most dear. The woods afforded them shelter, and they subsisted
+on the charity of their countrymen.
+
+On that day, a terrific scene terminated this melancholy drama. This,
+the last day of Moscow, having arrived, Rostopchin collected together
+all whom he had been able to retain and arm. The prisons were thrown
+open. A squalid and disgusting crew tumultuously issued from them. These
+wretches rushed into the streets with a ferocious joy. Two men, a
+Russian and a Frenchman, the one accused of treason, the other of
+political indiscretion, were selected from among this horde, and dragged
+before Rostopchin, who reproached the Russian with his crime. The latter
+was the son of a tradesman: he had been apprehended while exciting the
+people to insurrection. A circumstance which occasioned alarm was the
+discovery that he belonged to a sect of German illuminati, called
+Martinists, a society of superstitious independents. His audacity had
+never failed him in prison. It was imagined for a moment that the spirit
+of equality had penetrated into Russia. At any rate he did not impeach
+any accomplices.
+
+At this crisis his father arrived. It was expected that he would
+intercede for his son: on the contrary, he insisted on his death. The
+governor granted him a few moments, that he might once more speak to and
+bless him. "What, I! I bless a traitor:" exclaimed the enraged
+Russian, and turning to his son, he, with a horrid voice and gesture,
+pronounced a curse upon him.
+
+This was the signal for his execution. The poor wretch was struck down
+by an ill-directed blow of a sabre. He fell, but wounded only, and
+perhaps the arrival of the French might have saved him, had not the
+people perceived that he was yet alive. They forced the barriers, fell
+upon him, and tore him to pieces.
+
+The Frenchman during this scene was petrified with terror. "As for
+thee," said Rostopchin, turning towards him, "being a Frenchman, thou
+canst not but wish for the arrival of the French army: be free, then,
+but go and tell thy countrymen, that Russia had but a single traitor,
+and that he is punished." Then addressing himself to the wretches who
+surrounded him, he called them sons of Russia, and exhorted them to make
+atonement for their crimes by serving their country. He was the last to
+quit that unfortunate city, and he then rejoined the Russian army.
+
+From that moment the mighty Moscow belonged neither to the Russians nor
+to the French, but to that guilty horde, whose fury was directed by a
+few officers and soldiers of the police. They were organized, and each
+had his post allotted to him, in order that pillage, fire, and
+devastation might commence every where at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+That very day (September the 14th), Napoleon, being at length persuaded
+that Kutusoff had not thrown himself on his right flank, rejoined his
+advanced guard. He mounted his horse a few leagues from Moscow. He
+marched slowly and cautiously, sending scouts before him to examine the
+woods and the ravines, and to ascend all the eminences to look out for
+the enemy's army. A battle was expected: the ground favoured the
+opinion: works were begun, but had all been abandoned, and we
+experienced not the slightest resistance.
+
+At length the last eminence only remained to be passed: it is contiguous
+to Moscow, which it commands. It is called _the Hill of Salvation_,
+because, on its summit, the inhabitants, at sight of their holy city,
+cross and prostrate themselves. Our scouts had soon gained the top of
+this hill. It was two o'clock: the sun caused this great city to glisten
+with a thousand colours. Struck with astonishment at the sight, they
+paused, exclaiming, "Moscow! Moscow!" Every one quickened his pace; the
+troops hurried on in disorder; and the whole army, clapping their hands,
+repeated with transport, "Moscow! Moscow!" just as sailors shout "Land!
+land!" at the conclusion of a long and toilsome voyage.
+
+At the sight of this gilded city, of this brilliant knot uniting Asia
+and Europe, of this magnificent emporium of the luxury, the manners, and
+the arts of the two fairest divisions of the globe, we stood still in
+proud contemplation. What a glorious day had now arrived! It would
+furnish the grandest, the most brilliant recollection of our whole
+lives. We felt that at this moment all our actions would engage the
+attention of the astonished universe; and that every one of our
+movements, however trivial, would be recorded by history.
+
+On this immense and imposing theatre we marched, accompanied, as it
+were, by the acclamations of all nations: proud of exalting our grateful
+age above all other ages, we already beheld it great from our greatness,
+and completely irradiated by our glory.
+
+At our return, already so ardently wished for, with what almost
+respectful consideration, with what enthusiasm should we be received by
+our wives, our countrymen, and even by our parents! We should form,
+during the rest of our lives, a particular class of beings, at whom they
+would not look but with astonishment, to whom they would not listen but
+with mingled curiosity and admiration! Crowds would throng about us
+wherever we passed; they would catch up our most unmeaning words. This
+miraculous conquest would surround us with a halo of glory: henceforward
+people would fancy that they breathed about us an air of prodigy and
+wonder.
+
+When these proud thoughts gave place to more moderate sentiments, we
+said to ourselves, that this was the promised term of our labours; that
+at length we should pause, since we could no longer be surpassed by
+ourselves, after a noble expedition, the worthy parallel to that of
+Egypt, and the successful rival of all the great and glorious wars of
+antiquity.
+
+At that moment, dangers, sufferings were all forgotten. Was it possible
+to purchase too dearly the proud felicity of being able to say, during
+the rest of life, "I belonged to the army of Moscow!"
+
+Well, comrades, even now, amidst our abasement, and though it dates from
+that fatal city, is not this reflexion of a noble exultation
+sufficiently powerful to console us, and to make us proudly hold up our
+heads, bowed down by misfortune?
+
+Napoleon himself hastened up. He paused in transport: an exclamation of
+joy escaped his lips. Ever since the great battle, the discontented
+marshals had shunned him: but at the sight of captive Moscow, at the
+intelligence of the arrival of a flag of truce, struck with so important
+a result, and intoxicated with all the enthusiasm of glory, they forgot
+their grievances. They pressed around the emperor, paying homage to his
+good fortune, and already tempted to attribute to his genius the little
+pains he had taken on the 7th to complete his victory.
+
+But in Napoleon first emotions were of short duration. He had too much
+to think of, to indulge his sensations for any length of time. His first
+exclamation was: "There, at last, is that famous city!" and the second:
+"It was high time!"
+
+His eyes, fixed on that capital, already expressed nothing but
+impatience: in it he beheld in imagination the whole Russian empire. Its
+walls enclosed all his hopes,--peace, the expenses of the war, immortal
+glory: his eager looks therefore intently watched all its outlets. When
+will its gates at length open? When shall he see that deputation come
+forth, which will place its wealth, its population, its senate, and the
+principal of the Russian nobility at our disposal? Henceforth that
+enterprise in which he had so rashly engaged, brought to a successful
+termination by dint of boldness, will pass for the result of a high
+combination; his imprudence for greatness: henceforth his victory at the
+Moskwa, incomplete as it was, will be deemed his greatest achievement.
+Thus all that might have turned to his ruin will contribute to his
+glory: that day would begin to decide whether he was the greatest man in
+the world, or the most rash; in short, whether he had raised himself an
+altar, or dug himself a grave.
+
+Anxiety, however, soon began to take possession of his mind. On his left
+and right he already beheld Prince Eugene and Poniatowski approaching
+the hostile city; Murat, with his scouts, had already reached the
+entrance of the suburbs, and yet no deputation appeared: an officer,
+sent by Miloradowitch, merely came to declare that his general would set
+fire to the city, if his rear was not allowed time to evacuate it.
+
+Napoleon granted every demand. The first troops of the two armies were,
+for a short time, intermingled. Murat was recognized by the Cossacks,
+who, familiar as the nomadic tribes, and expressive as the people of the
+south, thronged around him: then, by their gestures and exclamations,
+they extolled his valour and intoxicated him with their admiration. The
+king took the watches of his officers, and distributed them among these
+barbarous warriors. One of them called him his _hettman_.
+
+Murat was for a moment tempted to believe that in these officers he
+should find a new Mazeppa, or that he himself should become one: he
+imagined that he had gained them over. This momentary armistice, under
+the actual circumstances, sustained the hopes of Napoleon, such need had
+he to delude himself. He was thus amused for two hours.
+
+Meanwhile the day was declining, and Moscow continued dull, silent, and
+as it were inanimate. The anxiety of the emperor increased; the
+impatience of the soldiers became more difficult to be repressed. Some
+officers ventured within the walls of the city. "Moscow is deserted!"
+
+At this intelligence, which he angrily refused to credit, Napoleon
+descended the Hill of Salvation, and approached the Moskwa and the
+Dorogomilow gate. He paused once more, but in vain, at the entry of that
+barrier. Murat urged him. "Well!" replied he, "enter then, since they
+wish it!" He recommended the strictest discipline; he still indulged
+hopes. "Perhaps these inhabitants do not even know how to surrender: for
+here every thing is new; they to us, and we to them."
+
+Reports now began to succeed each other: they all agreed. Some
+Frenchmen, inhabitants of Moscow, ventured to quit the hiding-place
+which for some days had concealed them from the fury of the populace,
+and confirmed the fatal tidings. The emperor called Daru. "Moscow
+deserted!" exclaimed he: "what an improbable story! We must know the
+truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars." He imagined that those men,
+stiff with pride, or paralysed with terror, were fixed motionless in
+their houses: and he, who had hitherto been always met by the submission
+of the vanquished, provoked their confidence, and anticipated their
+prayers.
+
+How, indeed, was it possible for him to persuade himself, that so many
+magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile
+establishments, were forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets
+through which he had recently passed. Daru's mission however was
+fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not the least smoke rose from
+a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this immense and
+populous city; its three hundred thousand inhabitants seemed to be
+struck dumb and motionless by enchantment: it was the silence of the
+desert!
+
+But such was the incredulity of Napoleon, that he was not yet convinced,
+and waited for farther information. At length, an officer, determined to
+gratify him, or persuaded that whatever the Emperor willed must
+necessarily be accomplished, entered the city, seized five or six
+vagabonds, drove them before his horse to the Emperor, and imagined that
+he had brought him a deputation. From the first words they uttered,
+Napoleon discovered that the persons before him were only indigent
+labourers.
+
+It was not till then that he ceased to doubt the entire evacuation of
+Moscow, and lost all the hopes that he had built upon it. He shrugged
+his shoulders, and with that contemptuous look with which he met every
+thing that crossed his wishes, he exclaimed, "Ah! the Russians know not
+yet the effect which the taking of their capital will produce upon
+them!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+It was now an hour since Murat, and the long and close column of his
+cavalry, had entered Moscow; they penetrated into that gigantic body, as
+yet untouched, but inanimate. Struck with profound astonishment at the
+sight of this complete solitude, they replied to the taciturnity of this
+modern Thebes, by a silence equally solemn. These warriors listened,
+with a secret shuddering, to the steps of their horses resounding alone,
+amid these deserted palaces. They were astonished to hear nothing but
+themselves amid such numerous habitations. No-one thought of stopping or
+of plundering, either from prudence, or because great civilized nations
+respect themselves in enemies' capitals, in the presence of those great
+centers of civilization.
+
+Meanwhile they were silently observing that mighty city, which would
+have been truly remarkable had they met with it in a flourishing and
+populous country, but which was still more astonishing in these deserts.
+It was like a rich and brilliant oasis. They had at first been struck by
+the sudden view of so many magnificent palaces; but they now perceived
+that they were intermingled with mean cottages; a circumstance which
+indicated the want of gradation between the classes, and that luxury was
+not generated there, as in other countries, by industry, but preceded
+it; whereas, in the natural order, it ought to be its more or less
+necessary consequence.
+
+Here more especially prevailed inequality--that bane of all human
+society, which produces pride in some, debasement in others, corruption
+in all. And yet such a generous abandonment of every thing demonstrated
+that this excessive luxury, as yet however entirely borrowed, had not
+rendered these nobles effeminate.
+
+They thus advanced, sometimes agitated by surprise, at others by pity,
+and more frequently by a noble enthusiasm. Several cited events of the
+great conquests which history has handed down to us; but it was for the
+purpose of indulging their pride, not to draw lessons from them; for
+they thought themselves too lofty and beyond all comparison: they had
+left behind them all the conquerors of antiquity. They were exalted by
+that which is second to virtue only, by glory. Then succeeded
+melancholy; either from the exhaustion consequent on so many sensations,
+or the effect of the operation produced by such an immeasurable
+elevation, and of the seclusion in which we were wandering on that
+height, whence we beheld immensity, infinity, in which our weakness was
+lost: for the higher we ascend, the more the horizon expands, and the
+more conscious we become of our own insignificance.
+
+Amid these reflexions, which were favoured by a slow pace, the report of
+fire-arms was all at once heard: the column halted. Its last horses
+still covered the fields; its centre was in one of the longest streets
+of the city; its head had reached the Kremlin. The gates of that citadel
+appeared to be closed. Ferocious cries issued from within it: men and
+women, of savage and disgusting aspect, appeared fully armed on its
+walls. In a state of filthy inebriety, they uttered the most horrible
+imprecations. Murat sent them an amicable message, but to no purpose. It
+was found necessary to employ cannon to break open the gate.
+
+We penetrated partly without opposition, partly by force, among these
+wretches. One of them rushed close to the king, and endeavoured to kill
+one of his officers. It was thought sufficient to disarm him, but he
+again fell upon his victim, rolled him on the ground, and attempted to
+suffocate him; and even after his arms were seized and held, he still
+strove to tear him with his teeth. These were the only Muscovites who
+had waited our coming, and who seemed to have been left behind as a
+savage and barbarous token of the national hatred.
+
+It was easy to perceive, however, that there was no unison in this
+patriotic fury. Five hundred recruits, who had been forgotten in the
+Kremlin, beheld this scene without stirring. At the first summons they
+dispersed. Farther on, we overtook a convoy of provisions, the escort of
+which immediately threw down its arms. Several thousand stragglers and
+deserters from the enemy, voluntarily remained in the power of our
+advanced guard. The latter left to the corps which followed the task of
+picking them up; and these to others, and so on: hence they remained at
+liberty in the midst of us, till the conflagration and pillage of the
+city having reminded them of their duty, and rallied them all in one
+general feeling of antipathy, they went and rejoined Kutusoff.
+
+Murat, who had been stopped but a few moments by the Kremlin, dispersed
+this crew which he despised. Ardent and indefatigable as in Italy and
+Egypt, after a march of nine hundred leagues, and sixty battles fought
+to reach Moscow, he traversed that proud city without deigning to halt
+in it, and pursuing the Russian rear-guard, he boldly, and without
+hesitation, took the road for Wladimir and Asia.
+
+Several thousand Cossacks, with four pieces of cannon, were retreating
+in that direction. The armistice was at an end. Murat, tired of this
+peace of half a day, immediately ordered it to be broken by a discharge
+of carbines. But our cavalry considered the war as finished; Moscow
+appeared to them to be the term of it, and the advanced posts of the two
+empires were unwilling to renew hostilities. A fresh order arrived, and
+the same hesitation prevailed. At length Murat, irritated at this
+disobedience, gave his orders in person; and the firing, with which he
+seemed to threaten Asia, but which was not destined to cease till we
+reached the banks of the Seine, was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+Napoleon did not enter Moscow till after dark. He stopped in one of the
+first houses of the Dorogomilow suburb. There he appointed Marshal
+Mortimer governor of that capital. "Above all," said he to him, "no
+pillage? For this you shall be answerable to me with your life. Defend
+Moscow against all, whether friend or foe."
+
+That night was a gloomy one: sinister reports followed one upon the
+heels of another. Some Frenchmen, resident in the country, and even a
+Russian officer of police, came to denounce the conflagration. He gave
+all the particulars of the preparations for it. The Emperor, alarmed by
+these accounts, strove in vain to take some rest. He called every
+moment, and had the fatal tidings repeated to him. He nevertheless
+entrenched himself in his incredulity, till about two in the morning,
+when he was informed that the fire had actually broken out.
+
+It was at the exchange, in the centre of the city, in its richest
+quarter. He instantly issued orders upon orders. As soon as it was
+light, he himself hastened to the spot, and threatened the young guard
+and Mortimer. The Marshal pointed out to him some houses covered with
+iron; they were closely shut up, still untouched and uninjured without,
+and yet a black smoke was already issuing from them. Napoleon pensively
+entered the Kremlin.
+
+At the sight of this half Gothic and half modern palace of the Ruriks
+and the Romanofs, of their throne still standing, of the cross of the
+great Ivan, and of the finest part of the city, which is overlooked by
+the Kremlin, and which the flames, as yet confined to the bazaar, seemed
+disposed to spare, his former hopes revived. His ambition was flattered
+by this conquest. "At length then," he exclaimed, "I am in Moscow, in
+the ancient palace of the Czars, in the Kremlin!" He examined every part
+of it with pride, curiosity, and gratification.
+
+He required a statement of the resources afforded by the city; and in
+this brief moment given to hope, he sent proposals of peace to the
+Emperor Alexander. A superior officer of the enemy's had just been found
+in the great hospital; he was charged with the delivery of this letter.
+It was by the baleful light of the flames of the bazaar that Napoleon
+finished it, and the Russian departed. He was to be the bearer of the
+news of this disaster to his sovereign, whose only answer was this
+conflagration.
+
+Daylight favoured the efforts of the Duke of Treviso, to subdue the
+fire. The incendiaries kept themselves concealed. Doubts were
+entertained of their existence. At length, strict injunctions being
+issued, order restored, and alarm suspended, each took possession of a
+commodious house, or sumptuous palace, under the idea of there finding
+comforts that had been dearly purchased by long and excessive
+privations.
+
+Two officers had taken up their quarters in one of the buildings of the
+Kremlin. The view hence embraced the north and west of the city. About
+midnight they were awakened by an extraordinary light. They looked and
+beheld palaces filled with flames, which at first merely illuminated,
+but presently consumed these elegant and noble structures. They observed
+that the north wind drove these flames directly towards the Kremlin, and
+became alarmed for the safety of that fortress in which the flower of
+their army and its commander reposed. They were apprehensive also for
+the surrounding houses, where our soldiers, attendants and horses, weary
+and exhausted, were doubtless buried in profound sleep. Sparks and
+burning fragments were already flying over the roofs of the Kremlin,
+when the wind, shifting from north to west, blew them in another
+direction.
+
+One of these officers, relieved from apprehension respecting his corps,
+then composed himself again to sleep, exclaiming, "Let others look to it
+now; 'tis no affair of ours." For such was the unconcern produced by the
+multiplicity of events and misfortunes, and such the selfishness arising
+from excessive suffering and fatigue, that they left to each only just
+strength and feeling sufficient for his personal service and
+preservation.
+
+It was not long before fresh and vivid lights again awoke them. They
+beheld other flames rising precisely in the new direction which the wind
+had taken towards the Kremlin, and they cursed French imprudence and
+want of discipline, to which they imputed this disaster. But three times
+did the wind thus change from north to west, and three times did these
+hostile fires, as if obstinately bent on the destruction of the imperial
+quarters, appear eager to follow this new direction.
+
+At this sight a strong suspicion seized their minds. Can the Muscovites,
+aware of our rash and thoughtless negligence, have conceived the hope of
+burning with Moscow our soldiers, heavy with wine, fatigue and sleep; or
+rather, have they dared to imagine that they should involve Napoleon in
+this catastrophe; that the loss of such a man would be fully equivalent
+to that of their capital; that it was a result sufficiently important to
+justify the sacrifice of all Moscow to obtain it; that perhaps Heaven,
+in order to grant them so signal a victory, had decreed so great a
+sacrifice; and lastly, that so immense a colossus required a not less
+immense funeral pile?
+
+Whether this was their plan we cannot tell, but nothing less than the
+Emperor's good fortune was required to prevent its being realized. In
+fact, not only did the Kremlin contain, unknown to us, a magazine of
+gunpowder; but that very night, the guards, asleep and carelessly
+posted, suffered a whole park of artillery to enter and draw up under
+the windows of Napoleon.
+
+It was at this moment that the furious flames were driven from all
+quarters with the greatest violence towards the Kremlin; for the wind,
+attracted no doubt by this vast combustion, increased every moment in
+strength. The flower of the army and the Emperor would have been
+destroyed, if but one of the brands that flew over our heads had
+alighted on one of the powder-waggons. Thus upon each of the sparks that
+were for several hours floating in the air, depended the fate of the
+whole army.
+
+At length the day, a gloomy day, appeared: it came to add to the horrors
+of the scene, and to deprive it of its brilliancy. Many of the officers
+sought refuge in the halls of the palace. The chiefs, and Mortimer
+himself, overcome by the fire with which, for thirty six hours, they had
+been contending, there dropped down from fatigue and despair.
+
+They said nothing and we accused ourselves. Most of us imagined that
+want of discipline in our troops and intoxication had begun the
+disaster, and that the high wind had completed it. We viewed ourselves
+with a sort of disgust. The cry of horror which all Europe would not
+fail to set up terrified us. Filled with consternation by so tremendous
+a catastrophe, we accosted each other with downcast looks: it sullied
+our glory; it deprived us of the fruits of it; it threatened our present
+and our future existence; we were now but an army of criminals, whom
+Heaven and the civilized world would severely judge. From these
+overwhelming thoughts and paroxysms of rage against the incendiaries, we
+were roused only by an eagerness to obtain intelligence; and all the
+accounts began to accuse the Russians alone of this disaster.
+
+In fact, officers arrived from all quarters, and they all agreed. The
+very first night, that of the 14th, a fire-balloon had settled on the
+palace of Prince Trubetskoi, and consumed it: this was a signal. Fire
+had been immediately set to the Exchange: Russian police soldiers had
+been seen stirring it up with tarred lances. Here howitzer shells,
+perfidiously placed, had discharged themselves in the stoves of several
+houses, and wounded the military who crowded round them. Retiring to
+other quarters which were still standing, they sought fresh retreats;
+but when they were on the point of entering houses closely shut up and
+uninhabited, they had heard faint explosions within; these were
+succeeded by a light smoke, which immediately became thick and black,
+then reddish, and lastly the colour of fire, and presently the whole
+edifice was involved in flames.
+
+All had seen hideous-looking men, covered with rags, and women
+resembling furies, wandering among these flames, and completing a
+frightful image of the infernal regions. These wretches, intoxicated
+with wine and the success of their crimes, no longer took any pains to
+conceal themselves: they proceeded in triumph through the blazing
+streets; they were caught, armed with torches, assiduously striving to
+spread the conflagration: it was necessary to strike down their hands
+with sabres to oblige them to loose their hold. It was said that these
+banditti had been released from prison by the Russian generals for the
+purpose of burning Moscow; and that in fact so grand, so extreme a
+resolution could have been adopted only by patriotism and executed only
+by guilt.
+
+Orders were immediately issued to shoot all the incendiaries on the
+spot. The army was on foot. The old guard which exclusively occupied one
+part of the Kremlin, was under arms: the baggage, and the horses ready
+loaded, filled the courts; we were struck dumb with astonishment,
+fatigue and disappointment, on witnessing the destruction of such
+excellent quarters. Though masters of Moscow, we were forced to go and
+bivouac without provisions outside its gates.
+
+While our troops were yet struggling with the conflagration, and the
+army was disputing their prey with the flames, Napoleon, whose sleep
+none had dared to disturb during the night, was awoke by the two-fold
+light of day and of the fire. His first feeling was that of irritation,
+and he would have commanded the devouring element; but he soon paused
+and yielded to impossibility. Surprised that when he had struck at the
+heart of an empire, he should find there any other sentiment than
+submission and terror, he felt himself vanquished, and surpassed in
+determination.
+
+This conquest, for which he had sacrificed every thing, was like a
+phantom which he had pursued, and which at the moment when he imagined
+he had grasped it, vanished in a mingled mass of smoke and flame. He was
+then seized with extreme agitation; he seemed to be consumed by the
+fires which surrounded him. He rose every moment, paced to and fro, and
+again sat down abruptly. He traversed his apartments with quick steps:
+his sudden and vehement gestures betrayed painful uneasiness: he
+quitted, resumed, and again quitted, an urgent occupation, to hasten to
+the windows and watch the progress of the conflagration. Short and
+incoherent exclamations burst from his labouring bosom. "What a
+tremendous spectacle!--It is their own work!--So many palaces!--What
+extraordinary resolution!--What men!--These are Scythians indeed!"
+
+Between the fire and him there was an extensive vacant space, then the
+Moskwa and its two quays; and yet the panes of the windows against which
+he leaned felt already burning to the touch, and the constant exertions
+of sweepers, placed on the iron roofs of the palace, were not sufficient
+to keep them clear of the numerous flakes of fire which alighted upon
+them.
+
+At this moment a rumour was spread that the Kremlin was undermined: this
+was confirmed, it was said, by Russians, and by written documents. Some
+of his attendants were beside themselves with fear; while the military
+awaited unmoved what the orders of the Emperor and fate should decree:
+And to this alarm the Emperor replied only with a smile of incredulity.
+
+But he still walked convulsively; he stopped at every window, and beheld
+the terrible, the victorious element furiously consuming his brilliant
+conquest; seizing all the bridges, all the avenues to his fortress,
+inclosing, and as it were besieging him in it; spreading every moment
+among the neighbouring houses; and, reducing him within narrower and
+narrower limits, confining him at length to the site of the Kremlin
+alone.
+
+We already breathed nothing but smoke and ashes. Night approached, and
+was about to add darkness to our dangers: the equinoxial gales, in
+alliance with the Russians, increased in violence. The King of Naples
+and Prince Eugene hastened to the spot: in company with the Prince of
+Neufchatel they made their way to the Emperor, and urged him by their
+entreaties, their gestures, and on their knees, and insisted on removing
+him from this scene of desolation. All was in vain.
+
+Napoleon, in possession of the palace of the Czars, was bent on not
+yielding that conquest even to the conflagration, when all at once the
+shout of "the Kremlin is on fire!" passed from mouth to mouth, and
+roused us from the contemplative stupor with which we had been seized.
+The Emperor went out to ascertain the danger. Twice had the fire
+communicated to the building in which he was, and twice had it been
+extinguished; but the tower of the arsenal was still burning. A soldier
+of the police had been found in it. He was brought in, and Napoleon
+caused him to be interrogated in his presence. This man was the
+incendiary: he had executed his commission at the signal given by his
+chief. It was evident that every thing was devoted to destruction, the
+ancient and sacred Kremlin itself not excepted.
+
+The gestures of the Emperor betokened disdain and vexation: the wretch
+was hurried into the first court, where the enraged grenadiers
+dispatched him with their bayonets.
+
+[Illustration: Conflagration of Moscow]
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+This incident had decided Napoleon. He hastily descended the northern
+staircase, famous for the massacre of the Strelitzes, and desired to be
+conducted out of the city, to the distance of a league on the road to
+Petersburgh, toward the imperial palace of Petrowsky.
+
+But we were encircled by a sea of fire, which blocked up all the gates
+of the citadel, and frustrated the first attempts that were made to
+depart. After some search, we discovered a postern gate leading between
+the rocks to the Moskwa. It was by this narrow passage that Napoleon,
+his officers and guard escaped from the Kremlin. But what had they
+gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the fire, and
+could neither retreat nor remain where they were; and how were they to
+advance? how force a passage through the waves of this ocean of flame?
+Those who had traversed the city, stunned by the tempest, and blinded by
+the ashes, could not find their way, since the streets themselves were
+no longer distinguishable amidst smoke and ruins.
+
+There was no time to be lost. The roaring of the flames around us became
+every moment more violent. A single narrow winding street completely on
+fire, appeared to be rather the entrance than the outlet to this hell.
+The Emperor rushed on foot and without hesitation into this narrow
+passage. He advanced amid the crackling of the flames, the crash of
+floors, and the fall of burning timbers, and of the red-hot iron roofs
+which tumbled around him. These ruins impeded his progress. The flames
+which, with impetuous roar, consumed the edifices between which we were
+proceeding spreading beyond the walls, were blown about by the wind, and
+formed an arch over our heads. We walked on a ground of fire, beneath a
+fiery sky, and between two walls of fire. The intense heat burned our
+eyes, which we were nevertheless obliged to keep open and fixed on the
+danger. A consuming atmosphere, glowing ashes, detached flames, parched
+our throats, and rendered our respiration short and dry; and we were
+already almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned, either in
+endeavouring to protect our faces from the insupportable heat, or in
+brushing off the sparks which every moment covered and penetrated our
+garments.
+
+In this inexpressible distress, and when a rapid advance seemed to be
+our only mean of safety, our guide stopped in uncertainty and agitation.
+Here would probably have terminated our adventurous career, had not some
+pillagers of the first corps recognised the Emperor amidst the whirling
+flames: they ran up and guided him towards the smoking ruins of a
+quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the morning.
+
+It was then that we met the Prince of Eckmuehl. This marshal, who had
+been wounded at the Moskwa, had desired to be carried back among the
+flames to rescue Napoleon, or to perish with him. He threw himself into
+his arms with transport; the emperor received him kindly, but with that
+composure which in danger he never lost for a moment.
+
+To escape from this vast region of calamities, it was further necessary
+to pass a long convoy of powder, which was defiling amidst the fire.
+This was not the least of his dangers, but it was the last, and by
+nightfall he arrived at Petrowsky.
+
+Next morning, the 17th of September, Napoleon cast his first looks
+towards Moscow, hoping to see that the conflagration had subsided. He
+beheld it again raging with the utmost violence: the whole city appeared
+like a vast spout of fire rising in whirling eddies to the sky, which it
+deeply coloured. Absorbed by this melancholy contemplation, he preserved
+a long and gloomy silence, which he broke only by the exclamation, "This
+forebodes great misfortunes to us!"
+
+The effort which he had made to reach Moscow had expended all his means
+of warfare. Moscow had been the term of his projects, the aim of all his
+hopes, and Moscow was no more! What was now to be done? Here this
+decisive genius was forced to hesitate. He, who in 1805 had ordered the
+sudden and total abandonment of an expedition, prepared at an immense
+cost, and determined at Bologne-sur-mer on the surprise and annihilation
+of the Austrian army, in short, all the operations of the campaign
+between Ulm and Munich exactly as they were executed; the same man, who,
+the following year, dictated at Paris with the same infallibility all
+the movements of his army as far as Berlin, the day fixed for his
+entrance into that capital, and the appointment of the governor whom he
+destined for it--he it was, who, astonished in his turn, was now
+undecided what course to pursue. Never had he communicated his most
+daring projects to the most confidential of his ministers but in the
+order for their execution; he was now constrained to consult, and put to
+the proof, the moral and physical energies of those about him.
+
+In doing this, however, he still preserved the same forms. He declared,
+therefore, that he should march for Petersburg. This conquest was
+already marked out on his maps, hitherto so prophetic: orders were even
+issued to the different corps to hold themselves in readiness. But his
+decision was only a feint: it was but a better face that he strove to
+assume, or an expedient for diverting his grief for the loss of Moscow:
+so that Berthier, and more especially Bessieres, soon convinced him that
+he had neither time, provisions, roads, nor a single requisite for so
+extensive an excursion.
+
+At this moment he was apprised that Kutusoff, after having fled
+eastward, had suddenly turned to the south, and thrown himself between
+Moscow and Kalouga. This was an additional motive against the expedition
+to Petersburg; there was a threefold reason for marching upon this
+beaten army for the purpose of extinguishing it; to secure his right
+flank and his line of operation; to possess himself of Kalouga and
+Toula, the granary and arsenal of Russia; and lastly, to open a safe,
+short, new, and virgin retreat to Smolensk and Lithuania.
+
+Some one proposed to return upon Wittgenstein and Witepsk. Napoleon was
+undecided between all these plans. That for the conquest of Petersburg
+alone flattered him: the others appeared but as ways of retreat, as
+acknowledgments of error; and whether from pride, or policy which will
+not admit itself to be in the wrong, he rejected them.
+
+Besides, where was he to stop in a retreat? He had so fully calculated
+on concluding a peace at Moscow, that he had no winter quarters provided
+in Lithuania. Kalouga had no temptations for him. Wherefore lay waste
+fresh provinces? It would be wiser to threaten them, and leave the
+Russians something to lose, in order to induce them to conclude a peace
+by which it might be preserved. Would it be possible to march to another
+battle, to fresh conquests, without exposing a line of operation,
+covered with sick, stragglers, wounded and convoys of all sorts? Moscow
+was the general rallying point; how could it be changed? What other name
+would have any attraction?
+
+Lastly, and above all, how relinquish a hope to which he had made so
+many sacrifices, when he knew that his letter to Alexander had just
+passed the Russian advanced posts; when eight days would be sufficient
+for receiving an answer so ardently desired; when he wanted that time to
+rally and re-organize his army, to collect the relics of Moscow, the
+conflagration of which had but too strongly sanctioned pillage, and to
+draw his soldiers from that vast infirmary!
+
+Scarcely indeed a third of that army and of that capital now existed.
+But himself and the Kremlin were still standing: his renown was still
+entire, and he persuaded himself that those two great names, Napoleon
+and Moscow, combined, would be sufficient to accomplish every thing. He
+determined, therefore, to return to the Kremlin, which a battalion of
+his guard had unfortunately preserved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+The camps which he traversed on his way thither presented an
+extraordinary sight. In the fields, amidst thick and cold mud, large
+fires were kept up with mahogany furniture, windows, and gilded doors.
+Around these fires, on a litter of damp straw, imperfectly sheltered by
+a few boards, were seen the soldiers, and their officers, splashed all
+over with mud, and blackened with smoke, seated in arm-chairs or
+reclined on silken couches. At their feet were spread or heaped Cashmere
+shawls, the rarest furs of Siberia, the gold stuffs of Persia, and
+silver plates, off which they had nothing to eat but a black dough baked
+in the ashes, and half broiled and bloody horse-flesh. Singular
+assemblage of abundance and want, of riches and filth, of luxury and
+wretchedness!
+
+Between the camp and the city were met troops of soldiers dragging along
+their booty, or driving before them, like beasts of burden, Muscovites
+bending under the weight of the pillage of their capital; for the fire
+brought to view nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, previously
+unobserved in that immense city. Some of these Muscovites of both sexes
+were well dressed; they were tradespeople. They came with the wreck of
+their property to seek refuge at our fires. They lived pell-mell with
+our soldiers, protected by some, and tolerated, or rather scarcely
+remarked by others.
+
+About ten thousand of the enemy's troops were in the same predicament.
+For several days they wandered about among us free, and some of them
+even still armed. Our soldiers met these vanquished enemies without
+animosity, or without thinking of making them prisoners; either because
+they considered the war as at an end, from thoughtlessness, or from
+pity, and because when not in battle the French delight in having no
+enemies. They suffered them to share their fires; nay, more, they
+allowed them to pillage in their company. When some degree of order was
+restored, or rather when the officers had organized this marauding as a
+regular system of forage, the great number of these Russian stragglers
+then attracted notice. Orders were given to secure them; but seven or
+eight thousand had already escaped. It was not long before we had to
+fight them.
+
+On entering the city, the Emperor was struck by a sight still more
+extraordinary: a few houses scattered among the ruins were all that was
+left of the mighty Moscow. The smell issuing from this colossus,
+overthrown, burned, and calcined, was horrible. Heaps of ashes, and at
+intervals, fragments of walls or half demolished pillars, were now the
+only vestiges that marked the site of streets.
+
+The suburbs were sprinkled with Russians of both sexes, covered with
+garments nearly burned. They flitted like spectres among the ruins;
+squatted in the gardens, some of them were scratching up the earth in
+quest of vegetables, while others were disputing with the crows for the
+relics of the dead animals which the army had left behind. Farther on,
+others again were seen plunging into the Moskwa to bring out some of the
+corn which had been thrown into it by command of Rostopchin, and which
+they devoured without preparation, sour and spoiled as it already was.
+
+Meanwhile the sight of the booty, in such of the camps where every thing
+was yet wanting, inflamed the soldiers whom their duty or stricter
+officers had kept with their colours. They murmured. "Why were they to
+be kept back? Why were they to perish by famine and want, when every
+thing was within their reach! Was it right to leave the enemy's fires to
+destroy what might be saved? Why was such respect to be paid them?" They
+added, that "as the inhabitants of Moscow had not only abandoned, but
+even endeavoured utterly to destroy it, all that they could save would
+be legitimately acquired; that the remains of that city, like the relics
+of the arms of the conquered, belonged by right to the victors, as the
+Muscovites had turned their capital into a vast machine of war, for the
+purpose of annihilating us."
+
+The best principled and the best disciplined were those who argued thus,
+and it was impossible to reply. Too rigid scruples at first prevented
+the issuing of orders for pillage; it was now permitted, unrestrained by
+regulations. Urged by the most imperious necessities, all hurried to
+share in the spoil, the soldiers of the _elite_, and even officers
+themselves. Their chiefs were obliged to shut their eyes: only such
+guards as were absolutely indispensable were left with the eagles and
+the fasces.
+
+The Emperor saw his whole army dispersed over the city. His progress was
+obstructed by a long file of marauders going in quest of booty, or
+returning with it; by tumultuous assemblages of soldiers grouped around
+the entrances of cellars, or the doors of palaces, shops, and churches,
+which the fire had nearly reached, and into which they were endeavouring
+to penetrate.
+
+His steps were impeded by the fragments of furniture of every kind which
+had been thrown out of the windows to save it from the flames, or by
+rich pillage which had been abandoned from caprice for some other booty;
+for such is the way with soldiers; they are incessantly beginning their
+fortune afresh, taking every thing without discrimination, loading
+themselves beyond measure, as if they could carry all they find; then,
+after they have gone a few steps, compelled by fatigue to throw away the
+greatest part of their burden.
+
+The roads were obstructed; the open places, like the camps, were turned
+into markets, whither every one repaired to exchange superfluities for
+necessaries. There, the rarest articles, the value of which was not
+known to their possessors, were sold at a low price; others, of
+deceitful appearance, were purchased at a price far beyond their worth.
+Gold, as being more portable, was bought at an immense loss with silver,
+which the knapsacks were incapable of holding. Everywhere soldiers were
+seen seated on bales of merchandize, on heaps of sugar and coffee,
+amidst wines and the most exquisite liqueurs, which they were offering
+in exchange for a morsel of bread. Many, in an intoxication aggravated
+by inanition, had fallen near the flames, which reached them, and put an
+end to their lives.
+
+Most of the houses and palaces which had escaped the fire served
+nevertheless for quarters for the officers, and all that they contained
+was respected. All of them beheld with pain this vast destruction, and
+the pillage which was its necessary consequence. Some of our men
+belonging to the _elite_ were charged with taking too much pleasure in
+collecting what they were able to save from the flames; but their number
+was so few that they were mentioned by name. In these ardent men, war
+was a passion which presupposed the existence of others. It was not
+covetousness, for they did not hoard; they spent lavishly what they
+picked up, taking in order to give, believing that one hand washed the
+other, and that they had paid for every thing with the danger.
+
+Besides, on such an occasion, there is scarcely any distinction to be
+made, unless in the motive: some took with regret, others with pleasure,
+and all from necessity. Amidst wealth which had ceased to belong to any
+individual, ready to be consumed, or to be buried in ashes, they were
+placed in a quite novel situation, where right and wrong were
+confounded, and for which no rule was laid down. The most delicate,
+either from principle, or because they were richer than others, bought
+of the soldiers the provision and apparel which they required: some sent
+agents to plunder for them; and the most necessitous were forced to help
+themselves with their own hands.
+
+As to the soldiers, many of them being embarrassed with the fruits of
+their pillage, became less active, less thoughtless: in danger they
+began to calculate, and in order to save their booty, they did what they
+would have disdained to do to save themselves.
+
+It was amidst this confusion that Napoleon again entered Moscow. He had
+allowed this pillage, hoping that his army, scattered over the ruins,
+would not ransack them in vain. But when he learned that the disorder
+increased; that the old guard itself was seduced; that the Russian
+peasants, who were at length allured thither with provisions, for which
+he caused them to be liberally paid for the purpose of drawing others,
+were robbed of the provisions which they brought us, by our famished
+soldiers; when he was informed that the different corps, destitute of
+every thing, were ready to fight for the relics of Moscow; that,
+finally, all the existing resources were wasted by this irregular
+pillage; he then issued strict orders, and forbade his guard to leave
+their quarters. The churches, in which our cavalry had sheltered
+themselves, were restored to the Greek worship. The business of plunder
+was ordered to be taken in turn by the corps like any other duty, and
+directions were at length given for securing the Russian stragglers.
+
+But it was too late. These soldiers had fled: the affrighted peasants
+returned no more; great quantities of provisions were spoiled. The
+French army have sometimes fallen into this fault, but on the present
+occasion the fire pleads their excuse: no time was to be lost in
+anticipating the flames. It is, however, a remarkable fact, that at the
+first command perfect order was restored.
+
+Some writers, and even French ones, have ransacked these ruins in quest
+of traces of outrages which might have been committed in them. There
+were very few. Most of our men behaved generously, considering the small
+number of inhabitants, and the great number of enemies, that they met
+with. But if in the first moments of pillage some excesses were
+committed, ought this to appear surprising in an army exasperated by
+such urgent wants, such severe sufferings, and composed of so many
+different nations?
+
+Misfortune having since humbled these warriors, reproaches have, as is
+always the case, been raised against them. Who can be ignorant that such
+disorders have always been the bad side of great wars, the inglorious
+part of glory; that the renown of conquerors casts its shadow like every
+thing else in this world! Does there exist a creature ever so
+diminutive, on every side of which the sun, great as is that luminary,
+can shine at once? It is therefore a law of nature, that large bodies
+have large shadows.
+
+For the rest, people have been too much astonished at the virtues as
+well as at the vices of that army. They were the virtues of the moment,
+the vices of the age; and for this very reason, the former were less
+praiseworthy, and the latter less reprehensible, inasmuch as they were,
+if I may so express myself, enjoined by example and circumstances. Thus
+every thing is relative, which does not exclude fixed principles and
+absolute good as the point of departure and aim. But here the question
+relates to the judgment formed of this army and its chief; and he who
+would form a correct judgment of them must put himself in their place.
+As, then, this position is very elevated, very extraordinary, very
+complicated, few minds are capable of attaining it, embracing the whole
+of it, and appreciating all its necessary results.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+Meanwhile Kutusoff, on leaving Moscow, had drawn Murat towards Kolomna,
+to the point where the Moskwa intersects the road. Here, under favour of
+the night, he suddenly turned to the south, proceeding by way of Podol,
+to throw himself between Moscow and Kalouga. This nocturnal march of the
+Russians around Moscow, the ashes and flames of which were wafted to
+them by the violence of the wind, was melancholy and religious. They
+advanced by the baleful light of the conflagration, which was consuming
+the centre of their commerce, the sanctuary of their religion, the
+cradle of their empire! Filled with horror and indignation, they all
+kept a sullen silence, which was unbroken save by the dull and
+monotonous sound of their footsteps, the roaring of the flames, and the
+howling of the tempest. The dismal light was frequently interrupted by
+livid and sudden flashes. The brows of these warriors might then be seen
+contracted by a savage grief, and the fire of their sombre and
+threatening looks answered these flames, which they regarded as our
+work; it already betrayed that ferocious revenge which was rankling in
+their hearts, which spread throughout the whole empire, and to which so
+many Frenchmen fell victims.
+
+At that solemn moment, Kutusoff in a firm and noble tone informed his
+sovereign of the loss of his capital. He declared, that, "in order to
+preserve the fertile provinces of the south, and his communication with
+Tormasof and Tchitchakof, he had been obliged to abandon Moscow, but
+emptied of the inhabitants, who were the life of it; that as the people
+are the soul of every empire, so wherever the Russian people were, there
+would be Moscow and the whole empire of Russia."
+
+Here, however, he seemed to bend under the weight of his grief. He
+admitted that "this wound was deep and could never be effaced;" but soon
+recovering himself, he added, that "the loss of Moscow made but one city
+less in the empire, that it was the sacrifice of a part for the
+salvation of the whole. He was throwing himself on the flank of the
+enemy's long line of operation, keeping him as it were blockaded by his
+detachments: there he should watch his movements, cover the resources of
+the empire, and again complete his army;" and already (on the 16th of
+September) he announced, that "Napoleon would be forced to abandon his
+fatal conquest."
+
+It is said that on the receipt of this intelligence Alexander was
+thunderstruck. Napoleon built hopes on the weakness of his rival, and
+the Russians at the same time dreaded the effect of that weakness. The
+Czar belied both these hopes and these fears. In his addresses to his
+subjects he exhibited himself great as his misfortune; "No pusillanimous
+dejection!" he exclaimed: "Let us vow redoubled courage and
+perseverance! The enemy is in deserted Moscow as in a tomb, without
+means of domination or even of existence. He entered Russia with three
+hundred thousand men of all countries, without union or any national or
+religious bond;--he has lost half of them by the sword, famine, and
+desertion: he has but the wreck of this army in Moscow; he is in the
+heart of Russia, and not a single Russian is at his feet.
+
+"Meanwhile, our forces are increasing and inclosing him. He is in the
+midst of a mighty population, encompassed by armies which are waiting
+for, and keeping him in check. To escape famine, he will soon be obliged
+to direct his flight through the close ranks of our brave soldiers.
+Shall we then recede, when all Europe is looking on and encouraging us?
+Let us on the contrary set it an example, and kiss the hand which has
+chosen us to be the first of the nations in the cause of virtue and
+independence." He concluded with an invocation to the Almighty.
+
+The Russians entertain different opinions respecting their general and
+their Emperor. We, for our part, as enemies, can only judge of our
+enemies by their actions. Now such were their words, and their actions
+corresponded with them. Comrades! let us do them justice! their
+sacrifice was complete, without reserve, without tardy regrets. They
+have since claimed nothing, even in the enemy's capital which they
+preserved. Their renown has therefore remained great and unsullied. They
+have known real glory; and when a more advanced civilization shall have
+spread among all classes of that great nation, it will have its
+brilliant era, and will sway in its turn the sceptre of glory, which it
+seems to be decreed that the nations of the earth shall successively
+relinquish to each other.
+
+This circuitous march made by Kutusoff, either from indecision or
+stratagem, turned out fortunate for him. Murat lost all trace of him for
+three days. The Russian employed this interval in studying the ground
+and entrenching himself. His advanced guard had nearly reached Woronowo,
+one of the finest domains belonging to Count Rostopchin, when that
+nobleman proceeded forward before it. The Russians supposed that he was
+going to take a last look at this mansion, when all at once the edifice
+was wrapt from their sight by clouds of smoke.
+
+They hurried on to extinguish the fire, but Rostopchin himself rejected
+their aid. They beheld him amid the flames which he was encouraging,
+smiling at the demolition of this splendid mansion, and then with a firm
+hand penning these words, which the French, shuddering with surprise,
+read on the iron gate of a church which was left standing: "For eight
+years I have been embellishing this country seat, where I have lived
+happily in the bosom of my family. The inhabitants of this estate, to
+the number of 1,720, will leave it on your approach, while I have set
+fire to my house, that it might not be polluted by your presence.
+Frenchmen, I have relinquished to you my two houses at Moscow, with
+their furniture, worth half a million of rubles. Here you will find
+nothing but ashes."
+
+It was near this place that Murat came up with Kutusoff. On the 29th of
+September there was a smart engagement of cavalry towards Czerikowo, and
+another, on the 4th of October, near Vinkowo. But there, Miloradowitch,
+too closely pressed, turned round furiously, with twelve thousand horse,
+upon Sebastiani. He brought him into such danger, that Murat, amidst the
+fire, dictated a proposal for a suspension of arms, announcing to
+Kutusoff the approach of a flag of truce. It was Lauriston that he
+expected. But as the arrival of Poniatowski at that moment gave us some
+superiority, the king made no use of the letter which he had written; he
+fought till nightfall, and repulsed Miloradowitch.
+
+Meanwhile the conflagration at Moscow, which commenced in the night of
+the 14th of September, suspended through our exertions during the day of
+the 15th, revived in the following night, and raging in its utmost
+violence on the 16th, 17th, and 18th, abated on the 19th. It ceased on
+the 20th. That very day, Napoleon, whom the flames had driven from the
+Kremlin, returned to the palace of the czars. He invited thither the
+looks of all Europe. He there awaited his convoys, his reinforcements,
+and the stragglers of his army; certain that all his men would be
+rallied by his victory, by the allurements of such vast booty, by the
+astonishing sight of captive Moscow, and above all, by his own glory,
+which from the top of this immense pile of ruins, still shone attractive
+like a beacon upon a rock.
+
+Twice, however, on the 22d and 28th of September, letters from Murat had
+well nigh drawn Napoleon from this fatal abode. They announced a battle;
+but twice the orders for departure, written in consequence, were burned.
+It seemed as though the war was finished for our Emperor, and that he
+was only waiting for an answer from Petersburg. He nourished his hopes
+with the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt. Was it possible that at
+Moscow he should have less ascendancy over Alexander? Then, like men who
+have long been favourites of fortune, what he ardently wished he
+confidently expected.
+
+His genius possessed besides that extraordinary faculty, which consisted
+in throwing aside the most important occupation whenever he pleased,
+either for the sake of variety or of rest: for in him the power of
+volition surpassed that of imagination. In this respect he reigned over
+himself as much as he did over others.
+
+Thus Paris diverted his attention from Petersburg. His affairs were as
+yet divided, and the couriers, which in the first days succeeded each
+other without intermission, served to engage him. But the rapidity with
+which he transacted business soon left him nothing to do. His expresses,
+which at first came from France in a fortnight, ceased to arrive. A few
+military posts, placed in four towns reduced to ashes, and in wooden
+houses rudely palisaded, were not sufficient to guard a road of
+ninety-three leagues: for we had not been able to establish more than a
+few echelons, and those at too great distances, on too long a line of
+operation, broken at every point where it was touched by the enemy; and
+for which a few peasants and a handful of Cossacks were quite
+sufficient.
+
+Still no answer was received from Alexander. The uneasiness of Napoleon
+increased, and his means of distraction diminished. The activity of his
+genius, accustomed to the government of all Europe, had nothing
+wherewith to occupy itself but the management of one hundred thousand
+men; and then, the organization of his army was so perfect, that this
+was scarcely any occupation. Here every thing was fixed; he held all the
+wires in his hand: he was surrounded by ministers who could tell him
+immediately, at any hour of the day, the position of each man in the
+morning or at night, whether alone or not, whether with his colours, or
+in the hospital, or on leave of absence, or wherever else he might be,
+and that from Moscow to Paris--to such a degree of perfection had the
+science of military administration been brought, so experienced and well
+chosen were the officers, and so much was required by their commander.
+
+But eleven days had now elapsed; still Alexander was silent, and still
+did Napoleon hope to overcome his rival in obstinacy: thus losing the
+time which he ought to have gained, and which is always serviceable to
+defence against attack.
+
+From this period all his actions indicated to the Russians still more
+strongly than at Witepsk, that their mighty foe was resolved to fix
+himself in the heart of their empire. Moscow, though in ashes, received
+an intendant and municipalities. Orders were issued to provision it for
+the winter. A theatre was formed amidst the ruins. The first-rate actors
+of Paris were said to have been sent for. An Italian singer strove to
+reproduce in the Kremlin the evening entertainments of the Tuileries. By
+such means Napoleon expected to dupe a government, which the habit of
+reigning over error and ignorance had rendered an adept in all these
+deceptions.
+
+He was himself sensible of the inadequacy of these means, and yet
+September was past, October had begun. Alexander had not deigned to
+reply! it was an affront! he was exasperated. On the 3d of October,
+after a night of restlessness and anger, he summoned his marshals. "Come
+in," said he, as soon as he perceived them, "hear the new plan which I
+have conceived; Prince Eugene, read it." They listened. "We must burn
+the remains of Moscow, march by Twer to Petersburg, where we shall be
+joined by Macdonald. Murat and Davoust will form the rear-guard."--The
+Emperor, all animation, fixed his sparkling eyes on his generals, whose
+frigid and silent countenances expressed nothing but astonishment.
+
+Then exalting himself in order to rouse them--"What!" said he, "and are
+_you_ not inflamed by this idea? Was there ever so great a military
+achievement? Henceforth this conquest is the only one that is worthy of
+us! With what glory we shall be covered, and what will the whole world
+say, when it learns that in three months we have conquered the two great
+capitals of the North!"
+
+But Davoust, as well as Daru, objected to him, "the season, the want of
+supplies, a sterile desert and artificial road, that from Twer to
+Petersburg, running for a hundred leagues through morasses, and which
+three hundred peasants might in one day render impassable. Why keep
+proceeding northward? why go to meet winter, to provoke and to defy
+it?--it was already too near; and what was to become of the six thousand
+wounded still in Moscow? were they then to be left to the mercy of
+Kutusoff? That general would not fail to follow close at our heels. We
+should have at once to attack and to defend ourselves, and to march, as
+though we were fleeing to a conquest."
+
+These officers have declared that they then proposed various plans; a
+useless trouble with a prince whose genius outstripped all other
+imaginations, and whom their objections would not have stopped, had he
+been really determined to march to Petersburg. But that idea was in him
+only a sally of anger, an inspiration of despair, on finding himself
+obliged in the face of Europe to give way, to relinquish a conquest, and
+to retreat.
+
+It was more especially a threat to frighten his officers as well as the
+enemy, and to bring about and promote a negotiation which Caulaincourt
+was to open. That officer had pleased Alexander; he was the only one of
+the grandees of Napoleon's court who had acquired any influence over his
+rival; but for some months past, Napoleon had kept him at a distance,
+because he had not been able to persuade him to approve his expedition.
+
+It was nevertheless to this very man that he was that day obliged to
+have recourse, and to disclose his anxiety. He sent for him; but when
+alone with him, he hesitated. Taking him by the arm, he walked to and
+fro a long time in great agitation, while his pride prevented him from
+breaking so painful a silence: at length it yielded, but in a
+threatening manner. He was to beg the enemy to solicit peace, as if he
+deigned to grant it.
+
+After a few words, which were scarcely articulate, he said, that "he was
+about to march to Petersburg. He knew that the destruction of that city
+would no doubt give pain to his grand-equerry. Russia would then rise
+against the Emperor Alexander: there would be a conspiracy against that
+monarch; he would be assassinated, which would be a most unfortunate
+circumstance. He esteemed that prince, and should regret him, both for
+his own sake and that of France. His character, he added, was suitable
+to our interests; no prince could replace him with such advantage to us.
+He thought therefore of sending Caulaincourt to him, to prevent such a
+catastrophe."
+
+The Duke of Vicenza, however, more obstinate, than susceptible of
+flattery, did not alter his tone. He maintained that "these overtures
+would be useless; that so long as the Russian territory was not entirely
+evacuated, Alexander would not listen to any proposals; that Russia was
+sensible of all her advantage at this season of the year; nay, more,
+that this step would be detrimental to himself, inasmuch as it would
+demonstrate the need which Napoleon had of peace, and betray all the
+embarrassment of our situation."
+
+He added, "that the higher the rank of the negotiator whom he selected,
+the more clearly he would show his anxiety; that of course he himself
+would be more likely to fail than any other, especially as he should go
+with this certainty." The Emperor abruptly terminated the conversation
+by these words: "Well, then, I will send Lauriston."
+
+The latter asserts, that he added fresh objections to the preceding, and
+that, being urged by the Emperor, he recommended to him to begin his
+retreat that very day by way of Kalouga. Napoleon, irritated at this,
+acrimoniously replied, that "he liked simple plans, less circuitous
+routes, high roads, the road by which he had come, yet he would not
+retread it but with peace." Then showing to him, as he had done to the
+Duke of Vicenza, the letter which he had written to Alexander, he
+ordered him to go and obtain of Kutusoff a safe-conduct to Petersburg.
+The last words of the Emperor to Lauriston were: "I want peace, I must
+have peace, I absolutely will have peace; only save my honour!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+The general set out, and reached the advanced posts on the 5th of
+October. Hostilities were instantly suspended, the interview granted;
+but Wolkonsky, aide-de-camp to Alexander, and Beningsen were there
+without Kutusoff. Wilson asserts, that the Russian generals and
+officers, suspecting their commander, and accusing him of weakness, had
+raised a cry of treason, and that the latter had not dared to leave his
+camp.
+
+Lauriston's instructions purported that he was to address himself to no
+one but Kutusoff. He therefore peremptorily rejected any intermediate
+communication, and seizing, as he said, this occasion for breaking off a
+negotiation which he disapproved, he retired, in spite of all the
+solicitations of Wolkonsky, and determined to return to Moscow. In that
+case, no doubt, Napoleon, exasperated, would have fallen upon Kutusoff,
+overthrown him and destroyed his army, as yet very incomplete, and have
+forced him into a peace. In case of less decisive success, he would at
+least have been able to retire without loss upon his reinforcements.
+
+Beningsen unfortunately desired an interview with Murat. Lauriston
+paused. The chief of the Russian staff, an abler negotiator than
+soldier, strove to charm the new king by demonstrations of respect; to
+seduce him by praises; to deceive him with smooth words, breathing
+nothing but a weariness of war and the hope of peace: and Murat, tired
+of battles, anxious respecting their result, and as it is said,
+regretting his throne, now that he had no hope of a better, suffered
+himself to be charmed, seduced and deceived.
+
+Beningsen was equally successful in persuading his own commander, and
+the leader of our vanguard; he sent in great haste for Lauriston, and
+had him conducted to the Russian camp, where Kutusoff was waiting for
+him at midnight. The interview began ill. Konownitzin and Wolkonsky
+wished to be present. This shocked the French general: he insisted that
+they should retire, and they complied.
+
+As soon as Lauriston was alone with Kutusoff, he explained his motives
+and his object, and applied for a safe-conduct to Petersburg. The
+Russian general replied, that a compliance with this demand exceeded his
+powers; but he immediately proposed to send Wolkonsky with the letter
+from Napoleon to Alexander, and offered an armistice till the return of
+that officer. He accompanied these proposals with pacific protestations,
+which were repeated by all his generals.
+
+"According to their account," they all deplored the continuance of the
+war. And for what reason? Their nations, like their Emperors, ought to
+esteem, to love, and to be allies of one another. It was their ardent
+wish that a speedy peace might arrive from Petersburg. Wolkonsky could
+not make "haste enough." They pressed round Lauriston, drawing him
+aside, taking him by the hand, and lavishing upon him those caressing
+manners which they have inherited from Asia.
+
+It was soon demonstrated that the chief point in which they were all
+agreed was to deceive Murat and his Emperor; and in this they succeeded.
+These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope,
+perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these
+appearances; eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed
+him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an
+expansive joy. He summoned all his generals; he triumphantly "announced
+to them a very speedy peace. They had but to wait another fortnight.
+None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character. On the
+receipt of his letter, Petersburg would be full of bonfires."
+
+But the armistice proposed by Kutusoff was unsatisfactory to him, and he
+ordered Murat to break it instantly; but notwithstanding, it continued
+to be observed, the cause of which is unknown.
+
+This armistice was a singular one. If either party wished to break it,
+three hours notice was to be sufficient. It was confined to the fronts
+of the two camps, but did not extend to their flanks. Such at least was
+the interpretation put upon it by the Russians. We could not bring up a
+convoy, or send out a foraging party, without fighting; so that the war
+continued everywhere, excepting where it could be favourable to us.
+
+In the first of the succeeding days, Murat took it into his head to show
+himself at the enemy's advanced posts. There, he was gratified by the
+notice which his fine person, his reputation for bravery, and his rank
+procured him. The Russian officers took good care not to displease him;
+they were profuse of all the marks of respect calculated to strengthen
+his illusion. He could give his orders to their vedettes just as he did
+to the French. If he took a fancy to any part of the ground which they
+occupied, they cheerfully gave it up to him.
+
+Some Cossack chiefs even went so far as to affect enthusiasm, and to
+tell him that they had ceased to acknowledge any other as Emperor but
+him who reigned at Moscow. Murat believed for a moment that they would
+no longer fight against him. He went even farther. Napoleon was heard to
+exclaim, while reading his letters, "Murat, King of the Cossacks! What
+folly!" The most extravagant ideas were conceived by men on whom fortune
+had lavished all sorts of favours.
+
+As for the Emperor, who could scarcely be deceived, he had but a few
+moments of a factitious joy. He soon complained "that an annoying
+warfare of partizans hovered around him; that notwithstanding all these
+pacific demonstrations, he was sensible that bodies of Cossacks were
+prowling on his flanks and in his rear. Had not one hundred and fifty
+dragoons of his old guard been surprised and routed, by a number of
+these barbarians? And this two days after the armistice, on the road to
+Mojaisk, on his line of operation, that by which the army communicated
+with its magazines, its reinforcements, its depots, and himself with
+Europe!"
+
+In fact two convoys had just fallen into the enemy's hands on that road:
+one through the negligence of its commander, who put an end to his life
+in despair; and the other through the cowardice of an officer, who was
+about to be punished when the retreat commenced. To the destruction of
+the army he owed his escape.
+
+Our soldiers, and especially our cavalry, were obliged every morning to
+go to a great distance in quest of provisions for the evening and the
+next day; and as the environs of Moscow and Vinkowo became gradually
+more and more drained, they were daily necessitated to extend their
+excursions. Both men and horses returned worn out with fatigue, that is
+to say such of them as returned at all; for we had to fight for every
+bushel of rye, and for every truss of forage. It was a series of
+incessant surprises, skirmishes, and losses. The peasantry took a part
+in it. They punished with death such of their number as the prospect of
+gain had allured to our camp with provisions. Others set fire to their
+own villages, to drive our foragers out of them, and to give them up to
+the Cossacks whom they had previously summoned, and who kept us there in
+a state of siege.
+
+It was the peasantry also who took Vereia, a town in the neighbourhood
+of Moscow. One of their priests is said to have planned and executed
+this _coup-de-main_. He armed the inhabitants, obtained some troops from
+Kutusoff; then on the 10th of October, before daybreak, he caused the
+signal of a false attack to be given in one quarter, while in another he
+himself rushed upon our palisades, destroyed them, penetrated into the
+town, and put the whole garrison to the sword.
+
+Thus the war was every where; in our front, on our flanks and in our
+rear: the army was weakening, and the enemy becoming daily more
+enterprising. This conquest was destined to fare like many others, which
+are won in the mass, and lost in detail.
+
+Murat himself at length grew uneasy. In these daily skirmishes he saw
+half of the remnant of his cavalry melted away. At the advanced posts,
+or on meeting with our officers, those of the Russians, either from
+weariness, vanity, or military frankness carried to indiscretion,
+exaggerated the disasters which threatened us. They showed us those
+"wild-looking horses, scarcely at all broken in, whose long manes swept
+the dust of the plain. Did not this tell us that a numerous cavalry was
+joining them from all quarters, while ours was gradually perishing? Did
+not the continual discharges of fire-arms within their line apprise us
+that a multitude of recruits were there training under favour of the
+armistice?"
+
+And in fact, notwithstanding the long journies which they had to make,
+all these recruits joined the army. There was no occasion to defer
+calling them together as in other years, till deep snows, obstructing
+all the roads excepting the high road, rendered their desertion
+impossible. Not one failed to obey the national appeal; all Russia rose:
+mothers, it was said, wept for joy on learning that their sons had been
+selected for soldiers: they hastened to acquaint them with this glorious
+intelligence, and even accompanied them to see them marked with the sign
+of the Crusaders, to hear them cry, _'Tis the will of God!_
+
+The Russian officers added, "that they were particularly astonished at
+our security on the approach of their mighty winter, which was their
+natural and most formidable ally, and which they expected every moment:
+they pitied us and urged us to fly. In a fortnight, your nails will drop
+off, and your arms will fall from your benumbed and half-dead fingers."
+
+The language of some of the Cossack chiefs was also remarkable. They
+asked our officers, "if they had not, in their own country, corn enough,
+air enough, graves enough--in short, room enough to live and die? Why
+then did they come so far from home to throw away their lives and to
+fatten a foreign soil with their blood?" They added, that "this was a
+robbery of their native land, which, while living, it is our duty to
+cultivate, to defend and to embellish; and to which after our death we
+owe our bodies, which we received from it, which it has fed, and which
+in their turn ought to feed it."
+
+The Emperor was not ignorant of these warnings, but he would not suffer
+his resolution to be shaken by them. The uneasiness which had again
+seized him betrayed itself in angry orders. It was then that he caused
+the churches of the Kremlin to be stripped of every thing that could
+serve for a trophy to the grand army. These objects, devoted to
+destruction by the Russians themselves, belonged, he said, to the
+conquerors by the two-fold right conferred by victory, and still more by
+the conflagration.
+
+It required long efforts to remove the gigantic cross from the steeple
+of Ivan the Great, to the possession of which the Russians attached the
+salvation of their empire. The Emperor determined that it should adorn
+the dome of the invalids, at Paris. During the work it was remarked that
+a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that
+Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed, that "it seemed as
+if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot
+pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it
+is well known that he was accessible to every kind of presentiment.
+
+His daily excursions, always illumined by a brilliant sun, in which he
+strove himself to perceive and to make others recognize his star, did
+not amuse him. To the sullen silence of inanimate Moscow was superadded
+that of the surrounding deserts, and the still more menacing silence of
+Alexander. It was not the faint sound of the footsteps of our soldiers
+wandering in this vast sepulchre, that could rouse our Emperor from his
+reverie, and snatch him from his painful recollections and still more
+painful anticipations.
+
+His nights in particular became irksome to him. He passed part of them
+with Count Daru. It was then only that he admitted the danger of his
+situation. "From Wilna to Moscow what submission, what point of support,
+rest or retreat, marks his power? It is a vast, bare and desert field of
+battle, in which his diminished army is imperceptible, insulated, and as
+it were lost in the horrors of an immense void. In this country of
+foreign manners and religion, he has not conquered a single individual;
+he is in fact master only of the ground on which he stands. That which
+he has just quitted and left behind him is no more his than that which
+he has not yet reached. Insufficient for these vast deserts, he is lost
+as it were in their immense space."
+
+He then reviewed the different resolutions of which he still had the
+choice. "People imagined," he said, "that he had nothing to do but
+march, without considering that it would take a month to refit his army
+and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the
+Cossacks would celebrate daily triumphs over his sick and his
+stragglers. He would appear to fly. All Europe would resound with the
+report! Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom
+to rally, and which imagined that it had found such a rival in
+Alexander."
+
+Then appreciating all the power which he derived from the notion of his
+infallibility, he shuddered at the idea of giving it the first blow.
+"What a frightful series of dangerous wars would date from his first
+retrograde step! Let not then his inactivity be censured! As if I did
+not know," added he, "that in a military point of view Moscow is of no
+value! But Moscow is not a military position, it is a political
+position. People look upon me as general there, when in fact I am
+Emperor!" He then exclaimed that "in politics a person ought never to
+recede, never to retrograde, never to admit himself to be wrong, as it
+lessened his consideration; that when mistaken, he ought to persevere,
+in order to give him the appearance of being in the right."
+
+On this account he adhered to his own opinion with that tenacity which,
+on other occasions, was his best quality, but in this case his worst
+defect.
+
+His distress meanwhile increased. He knew that he could not rely on the
+Prussian army: an intimation from too authentic a source, addressed to
+Berthier, extinguished his confidence in the support of the Austrians.
+He was sensible that Kutusoff was playing with him, but he had gone so
+far, that he could neither advance nor stay where he was, nor retreat,
+nor fight with honour and success. Thus alternately impelled and held
+back by all that can decide and dissuade, he remained upon those ashes,
+ceasing to hope, but continuing to desire.
+
+The letter of which Lauriston was the bearer had been dispatched on the
+6th of October; the answer to it could scarcely arrive before the 20th;
+and yet in spite of so many threatening demonstrations, the pride, the
+policy, and perhaps the health of Napoleon induced him to pursue the
+worst of all courses, that of waiting for this answer, and of trusting
+to time which was destroying him. Daru, like his other grandees, was
+astonished to find in him no longer that prompt decision, variable and
+rapid as the circumstances that called it forth; they asserted, that his
+genius could no longer accommodate itself to them; they placed it to the
+account of his natural obstinacy, which led to his elevation, and was
+likely to cause his downfall.
+
+But in this extremely critical warlike position, which by its
+complication with a political position, became the most delicate which
+ever existed, it was not to be expected that a character like his, which
+had hitherto been so great from its unshaken constancy, would make a
+speedy renunciation of the object which he had proposed to himself ever
+since he left Witepsk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+Napoleon however, was completely aware of his situation. To him every
+thing seemed lost if he receded in the face of astonished Europe, and
+every thing saved if he could yet overcome Alexander in determination.
+He appreciated but too well the means that were left him to shake the
+constancy of his rival; he knew that the number of effective troops,
+that his situation, the season, in short every thing would become daily
+more and more unfavourable to him; but he reckoned upon that force of
+illusion which gave him his renown. Till that day he had borrowed from
+it a real and never-failing strength; he endeavoured therefore to keep
+up by specious arguments the confidence of his people, and perhaps also
+the faint hope that was yet left to himself.
+
+Moscow, empty of inhabitants, no longer furnished him with any thing to
+lay hold of. "It is no doubt a misfortune," said he, "but this
+misfortune is not without its advantage. Had it been otherwise, he would
+not have been able to keep order in so large a city, to overawe a
+population of three hundred thousand souls, and to sleep in the Kremlin
+without having his throat cut. They have left us nothing but ruins, but
+at least we are quiet among them. Millions have no doubt slipped through
+our hands, but how many millions is Russia losing! Her commerce is
+ruined for a century to come. The nation is thrown back fifty years;
+this, of itself, is an important result. When the first moment of
+enthusiasm is past, this reflexion will fill them with consternation."
+The conclusion which he drew was, that so violent a shock would convulse
+the throne of Alexander, and force that prince to sue for peace.
+
+If he reviewed his different _corps d'armee_, as their reduced
+battalions now presented but a narrow front, which he had traversed in a
+moment, this diminution vexed him; and whether he wished to dissemble
+for the sake of his enemies or his own people, he declared that the
+practice hitherto pursued, of ranging the men three deep, was wrong, and
+that two were sufficient; he therefore ordered that in future his
+infantry should be drawn up in two ranks only.
+
+Nay, more, he insisted that the inflexibility of the _states of
+situation_ should give way to this illusion. He disputed their results.
+The obstinacy of Count Lobau could not overcome his: he was desirous no
+doubt of making his aide-de-camp understand what he wished others to
+believe, and that nothing could shake his resolution.
+
+Murat, nevertheless, transmitted to him tidings of the distress of his
+advanced guard. They terrified Berthier; but Napoleon sent for the
+officer who brought them, pressed him with his interrogatories, daunted
+him with his looks, brow-beat him with his incredulity. The assertions
+of Murat's envoy lost much of their assurance. Napoleon took advantage
+of his hesitation to keep up the hopes of Berthier, and to persuade him
+that matters were not yet so very urgent; and he sent back the officer
+to Murat's camp with the opinion which he would no doubt propagate, that
+the Emperor was immoveable, that he doubtless had his reasons for thus
+persisting, and that they must all redouble their exertions.
+
+Meanwhile the attitude of his army seconded his wishes. Most of the
+officers persevered in their confidence. The common soldiers, who,
+seeing their whole lives in the present moment and expecting but little
+from the future, concerned themselves but little about it, retained
+their thoughtlessness, the most valuable of their qualities. The
+rewards, however, which the Emperor bestowed profusely upon them in the
+daily reviews, were received only with a sedate joy, mingled with some
+degree of dejection. The vacant places that were just filled up were yet
+dyed with blood. These favours were threatening.
+
+On the other hand, ever since they had left Wilna many of them had
+thrown away their winter garments, that they might load themselves with
+provisions. Their shoes were worn by the length of the way, and the rest
+of their apparel by the actions in which they had been engaged; but, in
+spite of all, their attitude was still lofty. They carefully concealed
+their wretched plight from the notice of the Emperor, and appeared
+before him with their arms bright and in the best order. In this first
+court of the palace of the Czars, eight hundred leagues from their
+resources, and after so many battles and bivouacs, they were anxious to
+appear still clean, ready and smart; for herein consists the pride of
+the soldier: here they piqued themselves upon it the more on account of
+the difficulty, in order to astonish, and because man prides himself on
+every thing that requires extraordinary effort.
+
+The Emperor complaisantly affected to know no better, catching at every
+thing to keep up his hopes, when all at once the first snows fell. With
+them fell all the illusions with which he had endeavoured to surround
+himself. From that moment he thought of nothing but retreat, without,
+however, pronouncing the word, and yet no positive order for it could be
+obtained from him. He merely said, that in twenty days the army must be
+in winter-quarters, and he urged the departure of his wounded. On this,
+as on other occasions, he would not consent to the voluntary
+relinquishment of any thing, however trifling; there was a deficiency of
+horses for his artillery, now too numerous for an army so reduced; it
+did not signify, and he flew into a passion at the proposal to leave
+part of it in Moscow. "No; the enemy would make a trophy of it."--and he
+insisted that every thing should go along with him.
+
+In this desert country, he gave orders for the purchase of twenty
+thousand horses, and he expected forage for two months to be provided,
+on a tract where the most distant and dangerous excursions were not
+sufficient for the supply of the passing day. Some of his officers were
+astonished to hear orders which it was so impossible to execute; but we
+have already seen that he sometimes issued such orders to deceive his
+enemies, and most frequently to indicate to his own troops the extent of
+his necessities, and the exertions which they ought to make for the
+purpose of supplying them.
+
+His distress manifested itself only in some paroxysms of ill humour. It
+was in the morning at his levee. There, amid the assembled chiefs, in
+whose anxious looks he imagined he could read disapprobation, he seemed
+desirous to awe them by the severity of his attitude, by his sharp tone
+and his abrupt language. From the paleness of his face, it was evident
+that Truth, whose best time for obtaining a hearing is in the darkness
+of night, had oppressed him grievously by her presence, and tired him
+with her unwelcome light. Sometimes, on these occasions, his bursting
+heart would overflow, and pour forth his sorrows around him by movements
+of impatience; but so far from lightening his grief, he aggravated them
+by those acts of injustice for which he reproached himself, and which he
+was afterwards anxious to repair.
+
+It was to Count Daru alone that he unbosomed himself frankly, but
+without weakness. He said, "he should march upon Kutusoff, crush or
+drive him back, and then turn suddenly towards Smolensk." Daru, who had
+before approved this course, replied, that "it was now too late; that
+the Russian army was reinforced, his own weakened; his victory
+forgotten; that the moment his troops should turn their faces towards
+France, they would slip away from him by degrees; that each soldier,
+laden with booty, would try to get the start of the army, for the
+purpose of selling it in France."--"What then is to be done?" exclaimed
+the Emperor. "Remain here," replied Daru, "make one vast entrenched camp
+of Moscow and pass the winter in it. He would answer for it that there
+would be no want of bread and salt: the rest foraging on a large scale
+would supply. Such of the horses as they could not procure food for
+might be salted down. As to lodgings, if there were not houses enough,
+the cellars might make up the deficiency. Here we might stay till the
+return of spring, when our reinforcements and all Lithuania in arms
+should come to relieve, to join us, and to complete the conquest."
+
+After listening to this proposal the Emperor was for some time silent
+and thoughtful; he then replied, "This is a lion's counsel! But what
+would Paris say? what would they do there? what have they been doing for
+the last three weeks that they have not heard from me? who knows what
+would be the effect of a suspension of communications for six months!
+No; France would not accustom itself to my absence, and Prussia and
+Austria would take advantage of it."
+
+Still Napoleon did not decide either to stay or to depart. Overcome in
+this struggle of obstinacy, he deferred from day to day the avowal of
+his defeat. Amid the dreadful storm of men and elements which was
+gathering around him, his ministers and his aides-de-camp saw him pass
+whole days in discussing the merits of some new verses which he had
+received, or the regulations for the _Comedie Francaise_ at Paris, which
+he took three evenings to finish. As they were acquainted with his deep
+anxiety, they admired the strength of his genius, and the facility with
+which he could take off or fix the whole force of his attention on
+whatever he pleased.
+
+It was merely remarked that he prolonged his meals, which had hitherto
+been so simple and so short. He seemed desirous of stifling thought by
+repletion. He would then pass whole hours, half reclined, as if torpid,
+and awaiting, with a novel in his hand, the catastrophe of his terrible
+history. On beholding this obstinate and inflexible character struggling
+with impossibility, his officers would then observe to one another, that
+having arrived at the summit of his glory, he no doubt foresaw that from
+his first retrograde step would date its decline; that for this reason
+he continued immoveable, clinging to and lingering a few moments longer
+on this elevation.
+
+Kutusoff, meanwhile, was gaining that time which we were losing. His
+letters to Alexander described "his army as being in the midst of
+abundance; his recruits arriving from all quarters and being trained;
+his wounded recovering in the bosom of their families; the peasants,
+some in arms, some on the look out from the tops of steeples, while
+others were stealing into our habitations and even into the Kremlin.
+Rostopchin received from them a daily report of what was passing at
+Moscow, as before its capture. If they undertook to be our guides, it
+was for the purpose of delivering us into his hands. His partizans were
+every day bringing in some hundreds of prisoners. Every thing concurred
+to destroy the enemy's army and to strengthen his own; to serve him and
+to betray us; in a word, the campaign, which was over for us, was but
+just about to begin for them."
+
+Kutusoff neglected no advantage. He made his camp ring with the news of
+the victory of Salamanca. "The French," said he, "are expelled from
+Madrid. The hand of the Most High presses heavily upon Napoleon. Moscow
+will be his prison, his grave, and that of all his grand army. We shall
+soon take France in Russia!" It was in such language that the Russian
+general addressed his troops and his Emperor; and nevertheless he still
+kept up appearances with Murat. At once bold and crafty, he contrived
+slowly to prepare a sudden and impetuous warfare, and to cover his plans
+for our destruction with demonstrations of kindness and honeyed words.
+
+At length, after several days of illusion, the charm was dispelled. A
+Cossack completely dissolved it. This barbarian fired at Murat, at the
+moment when that prince came as usual to show himself at the advanced
+posts. Murat was exasperated; he declared to Miloradowitch that an
+armistice which was incessantly violated was at an end; and that
+thenceforward each ought to put confidence in himself alone.
+
+At the same time he apprised the Emperor, that a woody country on his
+left might favour attempts against his flank and rear; that his first
+line, backed against a ravine, might be precipitated into it; that in
+short the position which he occupied, in advance of a defile, was
+dangerous, and rendered a retrograde movement absolutely necessary. But
+Napoleon would not consent to this step, though he had at first pointed
+out Woronowo as a more secure position. In this war, still in his view
+rather political than military, he dreaded above all the appearance of
+receding. He preferred risking every thing.
+
+At the same time, on the 13th of October, he sent back Lauriston to
+Murat, to examine the position of the vanguard. As to the Emperor,
+either from a tenacious adherence to his first hope, or that any
+disposition which might be construed into a preparation for retreat,
+equally shocked his pride and his policy, a singular negligence was
+remarked in his preparations for departure. He nevertheless thought of
+it, for that very day he traced his plan of retreat by Woloklamsk,
+Zubtzow, and Bieloe, on Witepsk. A moment afterwards he dictated another
+on Smolensk. Junot received orders to burn on the 21st, at Kolotskoi,
+all the muskets of the wounded, and to blow up the ammunition waggons.
+D'Hilliers was to occupy Elnia, and to form magazines at that place. It
+was not till the 17th, at Moscow, that Berthier thought of causing
+leather to be distributed for the first time among the troops.
+
+This major-general was a wretched substitute for his principal on this
+critical occasion. In a strange country and climate, he recommended no
+new precaution, and he expected the minutest details to be dictated by
+his Emperor. They were forgotten. This negligence or want of foresight
+was attended with fatal consequences. In an army, each division of which
+was commanded by a marshal, a prince, or even a king, one relied perhaps
+too much on the other. Besides, Berthier gave no orders of himself; he
+thought it enough to repeat exactly the very letter of Napoleon's
+commands; for, as to their spirit, either from fatigue or habit, he was
+incessantly confounding the positive with the conjectural parts of those
+instructions.
+
+Napoleon meanwhile rallied his _corps d'armee_. The reviews which he
+held in the Kremlin were more frequent; he formed all the dismounted
+cavalry into battalions, and lavishly distributed rewards. The division
+of Claparede, the trophies and all the wounded that could be removed,
+set out for Mojaisk; the rest were collected in the great foundling
+hospital; French surgeons were placed there; and the Russian wounded,
+intermixed with ours, were intended to serve them for a safeguard.
+
+But it was too late. Amid these preparations, and at the moment when
+Napoleon was reviewing Ney's divisions in the first court of the
+Kremlin, a report was all at once circulated around him, that the report
+of cannon was heard towards Vinkowo. It was some time before any one
+durst apprise him of the circumstance; some from incredulity or
+uncertainty, and dreading the first movement of his impatience; others
+from love of ease, hesitating to provoke a terrible signal, or
+apprehensive of being sent to verify this assertion, and of exposing
+themselves to a fatiguing excursion.
+
+Duroc, at length, took courage. The Emperor was at first agitated, but
+quickly recovering himself, he continued the review. An aide-de-camp,
+young Beranger, arrived shortly after with the intelligence that Murat's
+first line had been surprised and overthrown, his left turned by favour
+of the woods, his flank attacked, his retreat cut off; that twelve
+pieces of cannon, twenty ammunition waggons, and thirty waggons
+belonging to the train were taken, two generals killed, three or four
+thousand men lost and the baggage; and lastly, that the King was
+wounded. He had not been able to rescue the relics of his advanced guard
+from the enemy, but by repeatedly charging their numerous troops which
+already occupied the high road in his rear, his only retreat.
+
+Our honour however was saved. The attack in front, directed by Kutusoff,
+was feeble; Poniatowski, at some leagues distance on the right, made a
+glorious resistance; Murat and his carbineers, by supernatural
+exertions, checked Bagawout, who was ready to penetrate our left flank,
+and restored the fortune of the day. Claparede and Latour-Maubourg
+cleared the defile of Spaskaplia, two leagues in the rear of our line,
+which was already occupied by Platof. Two Russian generals were killed,
+and others wounded: the loss of the enemy was considerable, but the
+advantage of the attack, our cannon, our position, the victory in short,
+were theirs.
+
+As for Murat, he no longer had an advanced guard. The armistice had
+destroyed half the remnant of his cavalry. This engagement finished it;
+the survivors, emaciated with hunger, were so few as scarcely to furnish
+a charge. Thus had the war recommenced. It was now the 18th of October.
+
+At these tidings Napoleon recovered the fire of his early years. A
+thousand orders general and particular, all differing, yet all in unison
+and all necessary, burst at once from his impetuous genius. Night had
+not yet arrived, and the whole army was already in motion for Woronowo;
+Broussier was sent in the direction of Fominskoe, and Poniatowski toward
+Medyn. The Emperor himself quitted Moscow before daylight on the 19th of
+October. "Let us march upon Kalouga," said he, "and woe be to those whom
+I meet with by the way!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+In the southern part of Moscow, near one of its gates, one of its most
+extensive suburbs is divided by two high roads; both run to Kalouga: the
+one, that on the right, is the more ancient; the other is new. It was on
+the first that Kutusoff had just beaten Murat. By the same road Napoleon
+left Moscow on the 19th of October, announcing to his officers his
+intention to return to the frontiers of Poland by Kalouga, Medyn,
+Yuknow, Elnia, and Smolensk. One of them, Rapp, observed that "it was
+late, and that winter might overtake them by the way." The Emperor
+replied, "that he had been obliged to allow time to the soldiers to
+recruit themselves, and to the wounded collected in Moscow, Mojaisk, and
+Kolotskoi, to move off towards Smolensk." Then pointing to a still
+serene sky, he asked, "if in that brilliant sun they did not recognize
+his star?" But this appeal to his fortune, and the sinister expression
+of his looks, belied the security which he affected.
+
+Napoleon entered Moscow with ninety thousand fighting men, and twenty
+thousand sick and wounded, and quitted it with more than a hundred
+thousand combatants. He left there only twelve hundred sick. His stay,
+notwithstanding daily losses, had therefore served to rest his infantry,
+to complete his stores, to augment his force by ten thousand men, and to
+protect the recovery or the retreat of a great part of his wounded. But
+on this very first day he could perceive, that his cavalry and artillery
+might be said rather to crawl than to march.
+
+A melancholy spectacle added to the gloomy presentiments of our chief.
+The army had ever since the preceding day been pouring out of Moscow
+without intermission. In this column of one hundred and forty thousand
+men and about fifty thousand horses of all kinds, a hundred thousand
+combatants marching at the head with their knapsacks, their arms,
+upwards of five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand
+artillery-waggons, still exhibited a formidable appearance, worthy of
+soldiers who had conquered the world. But the rest, in an alarming
+proportion, resembled a horde of Tartars after a successful invasion. It
+consisted of three or four files of infinite length, in which there was
+a mixture, a confusion of chaises, ammunition waggons, handsome
+carriages, and vehicles of every kind. Here trophies of Russian,
+Turkish, and Persian colours, and the gigantic cross of Ivan the
+Great--there, long-bearded Russian peasants carrying or driving along
+our booty, of which they constituted a part: others dragging even
+wheelbarrows filled with whatever they could remove. The fools were not
+likely to proceed in this manner till the conclusion of the first day:
+their senseless avidity made them think nothing of battles and a march
+of eight hundred leagues.
+
+In these followers of the army were particularly remarked a multitude of
+men of all nations, without uniform and without arms, and servants
+swearing in every language, and urging by dint of shouts and blows the
+progress of elegant carriages, drawn by pigmy horses harnessed with
+ropes. They were filled with provisions, or with the booty saved from
+the flames. They carried also French women with their children. Formerly
+these females were happy inhabitants of Moscow; they now fled from the
+hatred of the Muscovites, which the invasion had drawn upon their heads;
+the army was their only asylum.
+
+A few Russian girls, voluntary captives, also followed. It looked like a
+caravan, a wandering nation, or rather one of those armies of antiquity
+returning loaded with slaves and spoil after a great devastation. It was
+inconceivable how the head of this column could draw and support such a
+heavy mass of equipages in so long a route.
+
+Notwithstanding the width of the road and the shouts of his escort,
+Napoleon had great difficulty to obtain a passage through this immense
+throng. No doubt the obstruction of a defile, a few forced marches and a
+handful of Cossacks, would have been sufficient to rid us of all this
+incumbrance: but fortune or the enemy had alone a right to lighten us in
+this manner. As for the Emperor, he was fully sensible that he could
+neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor
+reproach them for securing it. Besides, the provisions concealed the
+booty, and could he, who could not give his troops the subsistence which
+he ought to have done, forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly,
+in failure of military conveyances, these vehicles would be the only
+means of preservation for the sick and wounded.
+
+Napoleon, therefore, extricated himself in silence from the immense
+train which he drew after him, and advanced on the old road leading to
+Kalouga. He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that
+he should go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all
+at once, about mid-day, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he
+halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three
+marches across the country gained the new road to Kalouga.
+
+The rain, which overtook him in the midst of this manoeuvre, spoiled
+the cross-roads, and obliged him to halt in them. This was a most
+unfortunate circumstance. It was not without difficulty that our cannon
+were drawn out of the sloughs.
+
+At any rate the Emperor had masked his movement by Ney's corps and the
+relics of Murat's cavalry, which had remained behind the Motscha and at
+Woronowo. Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the
+grand army on the old road, whilst on the 23rd of October, the whole of
+it, transferred to the new one, had but one march to make in order to
+pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kalouga.
+
+A letter from Berthier to Kutusoff, dated the first day of this flanking
+march, was at once a last attempt at peace, and perhaps a _ruse de
+guerre_. No satisfactory answer was returned to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+On the 23rd the imperial quarters were at Borowsk. That night was an
+agreeable one for the Emperor: he was informed that at six in the
+evening Delzons and his division had, four leagues in advance of him,
+found Malo-Yaroslawetz and the woods which command it unoccupied: this
+was a strong position within reach of Kutusoff, and the only point where
+he could cut us off from the new road to Kalouga.
+
+The Emperor wished first to secure this advantage by his presence; the
+order to march was even given, but withdrawn, we know not why. He passed
+the whole of that evening on horseback, not far from Borowsk, on the
+left of the road, the side on which he supposed Kutusoff to be. He
+reconnoitred the ground in the midst of a heavy rain, as if he
+anticipated that it might become a field of battle. Next day, the 24th,
+he learned that the Russians had disputed the possession of
+Malo-Yaroslawetz with Delzons. Owing either to confidence or uncertainty
+in his plans, this intelligence gave him very little concern.
+
+He quitted Borowsk, therefore, late and leisurely, when the noise of a
+very smart engagement reached where he was; he then became uneasy,
+hastened to an eminence and listened. "Had the Russians anticipated him?
+Was his manoeuvre thwarted? Had he not used sufficient expedition in
+that march, the object of which was to pass the left flank of Kutusoff?"
+
+In reality there was in this whole movement a little of that torpor
+which succeeds a long repose. Moscow is but one hundred and ten wersts
+from Malo-Yaroslawetz; four days would have been sufficient to go that
+distance; we took six. The army, laden with provisions and pillage, was
+heavy, and the roads were deep. A whole day had been sacrificed to the
+passage of the Nara and its morass, as also to the rallying of the
+different corps. It is true that in defiling so near the enemy it was
+necessary to march close, that we might not present to him too long a
+flank. Be this as it may, we may date all our calamities from that
+delay.
+
+The Emperor was still listening; the noise increased. "Is it then a
+battle?" he exclaimed. Every discharge agitated him, for the chief point
+with him was no longer to conquer, but to preserve, and he urged on
+Davoust, who accompanied him; but he and that marshal did not reach the
+field of battle till dark, when the firing was subsiding and the whole
+was over.
+
+The Emperor saw the end of the battle, but without being able to assist
+the viceroy. A band of Cossacks from Twer had nearly captured one of his
+officers, who was only a very short distance from him.
+
+It was not till then that an officer, sent by Prince Eugene, came to him
+to explain the whole affair. "The troops had," he said, "in the first
+place, been obliged to cross the Louja at the foot of Malo-Yaroslawetz,
+at the bottom of an elbow which the river makes in its course; and then
+to climb a steep hill: it is on this rapid declivity, broken by pointed
+crags, that the town is built. Beyond is an elevated plain, surrounded
+with wood from which run three roads, one in front, coming from Kalouga,
+and two on the left, from Lectazowo, the entrenched camp of Kutusoff.
+
+"On the preceding day Delzons found no enemy there; but he did not think
+it prudent to place his whole division in the upper town, beyond a river
+and a defile, and on the margin of a precipice, down which it might have
+been thrown by a nocturnal surprise. He remained, therefore, on the low
+bank of the Louja, sending only two battalions to occupy the town and to
+watch the elevated plain.
+
+"The night was drawing to a close; it was four o'clock, and all were
+already asleep in Delzons's bivouacs, excepting a few sentinels, when
+Doctorof's Russians suddenly rushed in the dark out of the wood with
+tremendous shouts. Our sentinels were driven back on their posts, the
+posts on their battalions, the battalions on the division: and yet it
+was not a _coup-de-main_, for the Russians had brought up cannon. At the
+very commencement of the attack, the firing had conveyed the tidings of
+a serious affair to the viceroy, who was three leagues distant."
+
+The report added, that "the Prince had immediately hastened up with some
+officers, and that his divisions and his guard had precipitately
+followed him. As he approached, a vast amphitheatre, where all was
+bustle, opened before him; the Louja marked the foot of it, and a
+multitude of Russian riflemen already disputed its banks."
+
+Behind them from the summit of the declivities on which the town was
+situated, their advanced guard poured their fire on Delzons: beyond
+that, on the elevated plain, the whole army of Kutusoff was hastening up
+in two long black columns, by the two roads from Lectazowo. They were
+seen stretching and entrenching themselves on this bare slope, upon a
+line of about half a league, where they commanded and embraced every
+thing by their number and position: they were already placing themselves
+across the old road to Kalouga, which was open the preceding day, which
+we might have occupied and travelled if we had pleased, but which
+Kutusoff would henceforward have it in his power to defend inch by inch.
+
+The enemy's artillery had at the same time taken advantage of the
+heights which bordered the river on their side; their fire traversed the
+low ground in the bend of the river, in which were Delzons and his
+troops. The position was untenable, and hesitation would have been
+fatal. It was necessary to get out of it either by a prompt retreat, or
+by an impetuous attack; but it was before us that our retreat lay, and
+the viceroy gave orders for the attack.
+
+After crossing the Louja by a narrow bridge, the high road from Kalouga
+runs along the bottom of a ravine which ascends to the town, and then
+enters Malo-Yaroslawetz. The Russians, in mass occupied this hollow way:
+Delzons and his Frenchmen rushed upon them head foremost; the Russians
+were broken and overthrown; they gave way and presently our bayonets
+glistened on the heights.
+
+Delzons, conceiving himself sure of the victory, announced it as won. He
+had nothing but a pile of buildings to storm, his soldiers hesitated. He
+himself advanced and was encouraging them by his words, gestures and
+example, when a ball struck him on the forehead, and extended him on the
+ground. His brother threw himself upon him, covered him with his body,
+clasped him in his arms, and would have borne him off out of the fire
+and the fray, but a second ball hit him also, and both expired together.
+
+This loss left a great void, which required to be filled up. Guilleminot
+succeeded Delzons, and the first thing he did was to throw a hundred
+grenadiers into a church and church-yard, in the walls of which they
+made loop-holes. This church stood on the left of the high road, which
+it commanded, and to this edifice we owed the victory. Five times on
+that day was this post passed by the Russian columns, which were
+pursuing ours, and five times did its fire, seasonably poured upon their
+flank and rear, harass them and slacken their progress: afterwards when
+we resumed the offensive, this position placed them between two fires
+and ensured the success of our attacks.
+
+Scarcely had that general made this disposition when he was assailed by
+hosts of Russians; he was driven back towards the bridge, where the
+viceroy had stationed himself, in order to judge how to act and prepare
+his reserves. At first the reinforcements which he sent came up but
+slowly one after another; and as is almost always the case, each of
+them, being inadequate to any great effort, was successively destroyed
+without result.
+
+At length the whole of the 14th division was engaged: the combat was
+then carried, for the third time, to the heights. But when the French
+had passed the houses, when they had removed from the central point from
+which they set out; when they had reached the plain, where they were
+exposed, and where the circle expanded; they could advance no farther:
+overwhelmed by the fire of a whole army they were daunted and shaken:
+fresh Russians incessantly came up; our thinned ranks gave way and were
+broken; the obstacles of the ground increased their confusion: they
+again descended precipitately and abandoned every thing.
+
+Meanwhile the shells having set fire to the wooden town behind them, in
+their retreat they were stopped by the conflagration; one fire drove
+them back upon another; the Russian recruits, wrought up to a pitch of
+fanatic fury, closely pursued them; our soldiers became enraged; they
+fought man to man: some were seen seizing each other by one hand,
+striking with the other, until both victors and vanquished rolled down
+precipices into the flames, without losing their hold. There the wounded
+expired, either suffocated by the smoke, or consumed by the fire. Their
+blackened and calcined skeletons soon presented a hideous sight, when
+the eye could still discover in them the traces of a human form.
+
+All, however, were not equally intent on doing their duty. There was one
+officer, a man who was known to talk very big, and who, at the bottom of
+a ravine, wasted the time for action in making speeches. In this place
+of security he kept about him a sufficient number of troops to authorize
+his remaining himself, leaving the rest to expose themselves in detail,
+without unison and at random.
+
+The 15th division was still left. The viceroy summoned it: as it
+advanced, it threw a brigade into the suburb on the left, and another
+into the town on the right. It consisted of Italians, recruits, who had
+never before been in action. They ascended, shouting enthusiastically,
+ignorant of the danger or despising it, from that singular disposition,
+which renders life less dear in its flower than in its decline, either
+because while young we fear death less from the feeling of its distance,
+or because at that age, rich in years and prodigal of every thing, we
+squander life as the wealthy do their fortune.
+
+The shock was terrible: every thing was reconquered for the fourth time,
+and lost in like manner. More eager to begin than their seniors, they
+were sooner disheartened, and returned flying to the old battalions,
+which supported and were obliged to lead them back to the danger.
+
+The Russians, emboldened by their incessantly increasing numbers and
+success, then descended by their right to gain possession of the bridge
+and to cut off our retreat. Prince Eugene had nothing left but his last
+reserve: he and his guard now took part in the combat. At this sight,
+and at his call, the remains of the 13th, 14th, and 15th divisions
+mustered their courage; they made a powerful and a last effort, and for
+the fifth time the combat was transferred to the heights.
+
+At the same time Colonel Peraldi and the Italian chasseurs overthrew
+with their bayonets the Russians, who were already approaching the left
+of the bridge, and inebriated by the smoke and the fire, through which
+they had passed, by the havoc which they made, and by their victory,
+they pushed forward without stopping on the elevated plain, and
+endeavoured to make themselves masters of the enemy's cannon: but one of
+those deep clefts, with which the soil of Russia is intersected, stopped
+them in the midst of a destructive fire; their ranks opened, the enemy's
+cavalry attacked them, and they were driven back to the very gardens of
+the suburbs. There they paused and rallied: all, both French and
+Italians, obstinately defended the upper avenues of the town, and the
+Russians being at length repulsed, drew back and concentrated themselves
+on the road to Kalouga, between the woods and Malo-Yaroslawetz.
+
+In this manner eighteen thousand Italians and French crowded together at
+the bottom of a ravine, defeated fifty thousand Russians, posted over
+their heads, and seconded by all the obstacles that a town built on a
+steep declivity is capable of presenting.
+
+The army, however, surveyed with sorrow this field of battle, where
+seven generals and four thousand Italians had been killed or wounded.
+The sight of the enemy's loss afforded no consolation; it was not twice
+the amount of ours, and their wounded would be saved. It was moreover
+recollected that in a similar situation Peter I., in sacrificing ten
+Russians for one Swede, thought that he was not sustaining merely an
+equal loss, but even gaining by so terrible a bargain. But what caused
+the greatest pain, was the idea that so sanguinary a conflict might have
+been spared.
+
+In fact, the fires which were discovered on our left, in the night
+between the 23d and 24th, had apprised us of the movement of the
+Russians towards Malo-Yaroslawetz; and yet the French army had marched
+thither languidly; a single division, thrown to the distance of three
+leagues from all succour, had been carelessly risked; the _corps
+d'armee_ had remained out of reach of each other. Where were now the
+rapid movements of Marengo, Ulm, and Eckmuehl? Why so slow and drawling a
+march on such a critical occasion? Was it our artillery and baggage that
+had caused this tardiness? Such was at least the most plausible
+presumption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+When the Emperor heard the report of this combat, he was a few paces to
+the right of the high road, at the bottom of a ravine, close to the
+rivulet and village of Ghorodinia, in the habitation of a weaver, an
+old, crazy, filthy, wooden hut. Here he was half a league from
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, at the commencement of the bend of the Louja. It was
+in this worm-eaten dwelling, and in a dirty dark room, parted off into
+two by a cloth, that the fate of the army and of Europe was about to be
+decided.
+
+The first hours of the night passed in receiving reports. All agreed
+that the enemy was making preparations against the next day for a
+battle, which all were disposed to decline. About eleven o'clock
+Bessieres entered. This marshal owed his elevation to honourable
+services, and above all to the affection of the Emperor, who had become
+attached to him as to a creation of his own. It is true, that a man
+could not be a favourite with Napoleon, as with any other monarch; that
+it was necessary at least to have followed and been of some service to
+him, for he sacrificed little to the agreeable; in short, it was
+requisite that he should have been more than a witness of so many
+victories; and the Emperor when fatigued, accustomed himself to see with
+eyes which he believed to be of his own formation.
+
+He had sent this marshal to examine the attitude of the enemy. Bessieres
+had obeyed: he had carefully explored the front of the Russian position.
+"It is," said he, "unassailable!"--"Oh heavens!" exclaimed the Emperor,
+clasping his hands, "are you sure you are right? Are you not mistaken?
+Will you answer for that?" Bessieres repeated his assertion: he affirmed
+that "three hundred grenadiers would there be sufficient to keep in
+check a whole army." Napoleon then crossed his arms with a look of
+consternation, hung his head, and remained as if overwhelmed with the
+deepest dejection. "His army was victorious and himself conquered. His
+route was intercepted, his manoeuvre, thwarted: Kutusoff, an old man,
+a Scythian, had been beforehand with him! And he could not accuse his
+star. Did not the sun of France seem to have followed him to Russia? Was
+not the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz open but the preceding day? It was not
+his fortune then that had failed him, but he who had been wanting to his
+fortune?"
+
+Absorbed in this abyss of painful reflections, he fell into so profound
+a stupor, that none of those about him could draw from him a single
+word. Scarcely could a nod of the head be obtained from him by dint of
+importunity. At length he strove to get some rest: but a feverish
+anxiety prevented him from closing his eyes. During all the rest of that
+cruel night he kept rising, lying down again, and calling incessantly,
+but yet not a single word betrayed his distress: it was only from the
+agitation of his body that the anguish of his mind was to be inferred.
+
+About four in the morning, one of his orderly officers, the Prince
+d'Aremberg, came to inform him that under favour of the night, the woods
+and some inequalities of ground, Cossacks were slipping in between him
+and his advanced posts. The Emperor had just sent off Poniatowski on his
+right to Kremenskoe. So little did he expect the enemy from that side,
+that he had neglected to order out any scouts on his right flank. He
+therefore slighted the report of his orderly officer.
+
+No sooner did the sun appear above the horizon on the 25th, than he
+mounted his horse, and advanced on the Kalouga road, which to him was
+now nothing more than the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz. To reach the bridge
+of that town, he had to cross the plain, about a league in length and
+breadth, embraced by the bend of the Louja: a few officers only attended
+him. The four squadrons of his usual escort, not having been previously
+apprised, hastened to rejoin, but had not yet overtaken him. The road
+was covered with sick-waggons, artillery, and vehicles of luxury: it was
+the interior of the army, and every one was marching on without
+mistrust.
+
+In the distance, towards the right, a few small bodies of men were first
+seen running, and then large black lines advancing. Outcries were
+presently heard: some women and attendants on the army were met running
+back, too much affrighted and out of breath, either to listen to any
+thing, or to answer any question. At the same time the file of vehicles
+stopped in uncertainty; disorder arose in it: some endeavoured to
+proceed, others to turn back; they crossed, jostled and upset one
+another: and the whole was soon a scene of complete uproar and
+confusion.
+
+The Emperor looked on and smiled, still advancing, and believing it to
+be a groundless panic. His aides-de-camp suspected that it was Cossacks
+whom they saw, but they marched in such regular platoons that they still
+had doubts on the subject; and if those wretches had not howled at the
+moment of attack, as they all do to stifle the sense of danger, it is
+probable that Napoleon would not have escaped them. A circumstance which
+increased the peril was, that their cries were at first mistaken for
+acclamations, and their hurrahs for shouts of _Vive l'Empereur!_
+
+It was Platof and six thousand Cossacks, who in the rear of our
+victorious advanced-guard, had ventured to cross the river, the low
+plain and the high road, carrying all before them; and it was at the
+very moment when the Emperor, perfectly tranquil in the midst of his
+army, and the windings of a deep river, was advancing, refusing belief
+to so audacious a plan, that they put it in execution.
+
+When they had once started, they approached with such speed, that Rapp
+had but just time to say to the Emperor, "It is the Cossacks!--turn
+back!" The Emperor, whose eyes deceived him, or who disliked running
+away, stood firm, and was on the point of being surrounded, when Rapp
+seized the bridle of his horse, and turned him round, crying. "Indeed
+you must!" And really it was high time to fly, although Napoleon's pride
+would not allow him to do so. He drew his sword, the Prince of
+Neufchatel and the grand equerry did the same; then placing themselves
+on the left side of the road, they waited the approach of the horde,
+from which they were not forty paces distant. Rapp had barely time to
+turn himself round to face these barbarians, when the foremost of them
+thrust his lance into the chest of his horse with such violence as to
+throw him down. The other aides-de-camp, and a few horse belonging to
+the guard, extricated the general. This action, the bravery of
+Lecoulteux, the efforts of a score of officers and chasseurs, and above
+all the thirst of these barbarians for plunder, saved the Emperor. And
+yet they needed only to have stretched out their hands and seized him;
+for, at the same moment, the horde, in crossing the high road, overthrew
+every thing before them, horses, men, and carriages, wounding and
+killing some, and dragging them into the woods for the purpose of
+plundering them; then, loosing the horses harnessed to the guns, they
+took them along with them across the country. But they had only a
+momentary victory; a triumph of surprise. The cavalry of the guard
+galloped up; at this sight they let go their prey and fled; and this
+torrent subsided, leaving indeed melancholy traces, but abandoning all
+that it was hurrying away in its course.
+
+Some of these barbarians, however, carried their audacity even to
+insolence. They were seen retiring at a foot-pace across the interval
+between our squadrons, and coolly reloading their arms. They reckoned
+upon the heaviness of our cavalry of the _elite_, and the swiftness of
+their own horses, which they urge with a whip. Their flight was effected
+without disorder; they faced round several times, without waiting indeed
+till within reach of fire, so that they left scarcely any wounded and
+not one prisoner. At length they enticed us on to ravines covered with
+bushes, where we were stopped by their artillery, which was waiting for
+them. All this furnished subject for reflection. Our army was worn down;
+and the war had begun again with new and undiminished spirit.
+
+The Emperor, struck with astonishment that the enemy had dared to attack
+him, halted until the plain was cleared; after which he returned to
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, where the viceroy pointed out to him the obstacles
+which had been conquered the preceding day.
+
+The ground itself spoke sufficiently. Never was field of battle more
+terribly eloquent. Its marked features; its ruins covered with blood;
+the streets, the line of which could no longer be recognized but by the
+long train of the dead, whose heads were crushed by the wheels of the
+cannon, the wounded, who were still seen issuing from the rubbish and
+crawling along, with their garments, their hair, and their limbs half
+consumed by the fire, and uttering lamentable cries; finally, the
+doleful sound of the last melancholy honours which the grenadiers were
+paying to the remains of their colonels and generals who had been
+slain--all attested the extreme obstinacy of the conflict. In this scene
+the Emperor, it was said, beheld nothing but glory: he exclaimed, that
+"the honour of so proud a day belonged exclusively to Prince Eugene."
+This sight, nevertheless, aggravated the painful impression which had
+already seized him. He then advanced to the elevated plain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+Can you ever forget, comrades, the fatal field which put a stop to the
+conquest of the world, where the victories of twenty years were blasted,
+where the great edifice of our fortune began to totter to its
+foundation? Do you not still figure to yourselves the blood-stained
+ruins of that town, those deep ravines, and the woods which surround
+that elevated plain and convert it, as it were, into a tented field? On
+one side were the French, quitting the north, which they shunned; on the
+other, at the entrance of the wood, were the Russians, guarding the
+south, and striving to drive us back upon their mighty winter. In the
+midst of this plain, between the two armies, was Napoleon, his steps and
+his eyes wandering from south to west, along the roads to Kalouga and
+Medyn, both which were closed against him. On that to Kalouga, were
+Kutusoff and one hundred and twenty thousand men, ready to dispute with
+him twenty leagues of defiles; towards Medyn he beheld a numerous
+cavalry: it was Platof and those same hordes which had just penetrated
+into the flank of the army, had traversed it through and through, and
+burst forth, laden with booty, to form again on his right flank, where
+reinforcements and artillery were waiting for them. It was on that side
+that the eyes of the Emperor were fixed longest; it was there that he
+received the reports of his officers and consulted his maps: then,
+oppressed with regret and gloomy forebodings, he slowly returned to his
+head-quarters.
+
+Murat, Prince Eugene, Berthier, Davoust and Bessieres followed him. This
+mean habitation of an obscure artisan contained within it an Emperor,
+two Kings, and three Generals. Here they were about to decide the fate
+of Europe, and of the army which had conquered it. Smolensk was the
+goal. Should they march thither by Kalouga, Medyn or Mojaisk? Napoleon
+was seated at a table, his head supported by his hands, which concealed
+his features, as well as the anguish which they no doubt expressed.
+
+A silence fraught with such imminent destinies continued to be
+respected, until Murat, whose actions were always the result of
+impetuous feeling, became weary of this hesitation. Yielding to the
+dictates of his genius, which was wholly directed by his ardent
+temperament, he was eager to burst from that uncertainty, by one of
+those first movements which elevate to glory, or hurry to destruction.
+
+Rising, he exclaimed, that "he might possibly be again accused of
+imprudence, but that in war circumstances decided and gave to every
+thing its name; that where there is no other course than to attack,
+prudence becomes temerity and temerity prudence; that to stop was
+impossible, to fly dangerous, consequently they ought to pursue. What
+signified the menacing attitude of the Russians and their impenetrable
+woods? For his part he cared not for them. Give him but the remnant of
+his cavalry, and that of the guard, and he would force his way into
+their forests and their battalions, overthrow all before him, and open
+anew to the army the road to Kalouga."
+
+Here Napoleon, raising his head, extinguished all this fire, by saying,
+that "we had exhibited temerity enough already; that we had done too
+much for glory, and it was high time to give up thinking of any thing
+but how to save the rest of the army."
+
+Bessieres, either because his pride revolted from the idea of obeying
+the King of Naples, or from a desire to preserve uninjured the cavalry
+of the guard, which he had formed, for which he was answerable to
+Napoleon, and which he exclusively commanded; Bessieres, finding himself
+supported, then ventured to add, that "neither the army nor even the
+guard had sufficient spirit left for such efforts. It was already said
+in both, that as the means of conveyance were inadequate, henceforth the
+victor, if overtaken, would fall a prey to the vanquished; that of
+course every wound would be mortal. Murat would therefore be but feebly
+seconded. And in what a position! its strength had just been but too
+well demonstrated. Against what enemies! had they not remarked the field
+of the preceding day's battle, and with what fury the Russian recruits,
+only just armed and clothed, had there fought and fell?" The Marshal
+concluded by voting in favour of retreat, which the Emperor approved by
+his silence.
+
+The Prince of Eckmuehl immediately observed, that, "as a retreat was
+decided upon, he proposed that it should be by Medyn and Smolensk." But
+Murat interrupted Davoust, and whether from enmity or from that
+discouragement which usually succeeds the rejection of a rash measure,
+he declared his astonishment, "that any one should dare to propose so
+imprudent a step to the Emperor. Had Davoust sworn the destruction of
+the army? Would he have so long and so heavy a column trail along,
+without guides and in uncertainty, on an unknown track, within reach of
+Kutusoff, presenting its flank to all the attacks of the enemy? Would
+he, Davoust, defend it? Why--when in our rear Borowsk and Vereia would
+lead us without danger to Mojaisk--why reject that safe route? There,
+provisions must have been collected, there every thing was known to us,
+and we could not be misled by any traitor."
+
+At these words Davoust, burning with a rage which he had great
+difficulty to repress, replied, that "he proposed a retreat through a
+fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful and well supplied route,
+villages still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might
+not avail himself of it, to cut us off from the route from Mojaisk to
+Smolensk, recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and
+ashes, where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where
+we should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons and
+famine!
+
+"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was
+asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as
+if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the Emperor alone
+had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his
+Sovereign, and never should be!"
+
+The quarrel growing warm, Bessieres and Berthier interposed. As for the
+Emperor, still absorbed in the same attitude, he appeared insensible to
+what was passing. At length he broke up this council with the words,
+"Well, gentlemen, I will decide."
+
+He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most
+speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate
+effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to
+him. So painful was this effort, that in the inward struggle which it
+occasioned, he lost the use of his senses. Those who attended him have
+asserted, that the report of another warm affair with the Cossacks,
+towards Borowsk, a few leagues in the rear of the army, was the last
+shock which induced him finally to adopt this fatal resolution.
+
+It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat
+northward, at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed
+by the defeat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, were retiring southward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The very same night a similar anxiety had agitated the Russian camp.
+During the combat of Malo-Yaroslawetz, Kutusoff had approached the field
+of battle, groping his way, as it were, pausing at every step, and
+examining the ground, as if he was afraid of its sinking beneath him; he
+did not send off the different corps which were dispatched to the
+assistance of Doctorof, till the orders for that purpose were absolutely
+extorted from him. He durst not place himself in person across
+Napoleon's way, till an hour when general battles are not to be
+apprehended.
+
+Wilson, warm from the action, then hastened to him.--Wilson, that active
+bustling Englishman, whom we had seen in Egypt, in Spain, and every
+where else, the enemy of the French and of Napoleon. He was the
+representative of the allies in the Russian army; he was in the midst of
+Kutusoff's army an independent man, an observer, nay, even a
+judge--infallible motives of aversion; his presence was odious to the
+old Russian general; and as hatred never fails to beget hatred, both
+cordially detested each other.
+
+Wilson reproached him with his excessive dilatoriness; he reminded him
+that five times in one day it had caused them to lose the victory, in
+the battle of Vinkowo, on the 18th of October. In fact, on that day
+Murat would have been destroyed, had Kutusoff fully occupied the front
+of the French by a brisk attack, while Beningsen was turning their left
+wing. But either from negligence, or that tardiness which is the fault
+of age, or as several Russians assert, because Kutusoff was more envious
+of Beningsen than inimical to Napoleon, the veteran had attacked too
+faintly, and too late, and had stopped too soon.
+
+Wilson continued to insist on his agreeing to a decisive engagement on
+the following day, and on his refusal, he asked, "Was he then determined
+to open a free passage for Napoleon? to allow him to escape with his
+victory? What a cry of indignation would be raised in Petersburgh, in
+London, throughout all Europe! Did he not already hear the murmurs of
+his own troops?"
+
+Kutusoff, irritated at this, replied, that "he would certainly rather
+make a bridge of gold for the enemy than compromise his army, and with
+it the fate of the whole empire. Was not Napoleon fleeing? why then stop
+him and force him to conquer? The season was sufficient to destroy him:
+of all the allies of Russia, they could rely with most confidence on
+winter; and he should wait for its assistance. As for the Russian army,
+it was under his command, and it would obey him in spite of the clamours
+of Wilson; Alexander, when informed of his proceedings, would approve
+them. What did he care for England? was it for her that he was fighting?
+He was a true-born Russian, his fondest wish was to see Russia
+delivered, and delivered she would be without risking the chance of
+another battle; and as for the rest of Europe, it was nothing to him
+whether it was under the dominion of France or England."
+
+Thus was Wilson repulsed, and yet Kutusoff, shut up with the French army
+in the elevated plain of Malo-Yaroslawetz, was compelled to put himself
+into the most threatening attitude. He there drew up, on the 25th, all
+his divisions, and seven hundred pieces of artillery. No doubts were any
+longer entertained in the two armies that a decisive day had arrived:
+Wilson was of that opinion himself. He remarked that the Russian lines
+had at their back a muddy ravine, across which there was an unsafe
+bridge. This only way of retreat, in the sight of an enemy, appeared to
+him to be impracticable. Kutusoff was now in such a situation that he
+must either conquer or perish; and the Englishman was hugging himself at
+the prospect of a decisive engagement: whether its issue proved fatal to
+Napoleon or dangerous to Russia, it must be bloody, and England could
+not but be a gainer by it.
+
+Still uneasy, however, he went at night through the ranks: he was
+delighted to hear Kutusoff swear that he was at length going to fight;
+he triumphed on seeing all the Russian generals preparing for a terrible
+conflict; Beningsen alone had still his doubts on the subject. The
+Englishman, nevertheless, considering that the position no longer
+admitted of falling back, at length lay down to wait for daylight, when
+about three in the morning a general order for retreat awoke him. All
+his efforts were ineffectual. Kutusoff had resolved to direct his flight
+southward, first to Gonczarewo, and then beyond Kalouga; and at the Oka
+every thing was by this time ready for his passage.
+
+It was at that very instant that Napoleon ordered his troops to retire
+northward on Mojaisk. The two armies therefore turned their backs on
+each other, mutually deceiving each other by means of their rear-guards.
+
+On the part of Kutusoff, Wilson asserts, that his retreat was like a
+rout. Cavalry, cannon, carriages, and battalions thronged from all sides
+to the entrance of the bridge, against which the Russian army was
+backed. There all these columns, hurrying from the right, the left, and
+the centre, met, clashed, and became blended into so enormous and so
+dense a mass, that it lost all power of motion. It took several hours to
+disentangle it and to clear the passage. A few balls discharged by
+Davoust, which he regarded as thrown away, fell among this confused
+crowd.
+
+Napoleon needed but to have advanced upon this disorderly rabble. It was
+after the greatest effort, that of Malo-Yaroslawetz, had been made, and
+when he had nothing to do but to march, that he retreated. But such is
+war! in which it is impossible to attempt too much or to be too daring.
+One army knows not what the other is doing. The advanced posts are the
+exterior of these two great hostile bodies, by means of which they
+overawe one another. What an abyss there is between two armies that are
+in the presence of each other!
+
+Besides, it was perhaps because the Emperor had been wanting in prudence
+at Moscow that he was now deficient in audacity: he was worn out; the
+two affairs with the Cossacks had disgusted him: he felt for his
+wounded; so many horrors disheartened him, and like men of extreme
+resolutions, having ceased to hope for a complete victory, he determined
+upon a precipitate retreat.
+
+From that moment he had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on
+leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October
+that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust with
+twenty-five thousand men remained as a rear-guard. While he advanced a
+few paces, and, without being aware of it, spread consternation among
+the Russians, the grand army in astonishment turned its back on them. It
+marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of
+it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring
+his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.
+
+For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but
+two points where he could halt and rest, the first, Smolensk, and the
+second, Minsk. He had made these two towns his two great depots, where
+immense magazines were established. But Wittgenstein, still before
+Polotsk, threatened the left flank of the former, and Tchitchakof,
+already at Bresk-litowsky, the right flank of the latter. Wittgenstein's
+force was gaining strength by recruits and fresh corps which he was
+daily receiving, and by the gradual diminution of that of Saint Cyr.
+
+Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six
+thousand fresh troops. The _corps d'armee_ had been at Smolensk ever
+since the beginning of September. He reckoned also upon detachments
+being sent from his depots, on the sick and wounded who had recovered,
+and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into
+marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and
+fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease.
+He should therefore have time to regain that position on the Duena and
+the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence,
+added to that of Victor, Saint Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe
+Wittgenstein, check Kutusoff, and threaten Alexander even in his second
+capital.
+
+He therefore proclaimed that he was going to take post on the Duena. But
+it was not upon that river and the Borysthenes that his thoughts rested:
+he was sensible that it was not with a harassed and reduced army that he
+could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses,
+which the ice would speedily efface. He placed no reliance on a sea of
+snow six feet deep, with which winter would speedily cover those parts,
+but to which it would also give solidity: the whole then would be one
+wide road for the enemy to reach him, to penetrate into the intervals
+between his wooden cantonments, scattered over a frontier of two hundred
+leagues, and to burn them.
+
+Had he at first stopped there, as he declared he should on his arrival
+at Witepsk; had he there taken proper measures for preserving and
+recruiting his army; had Tormasof, Tchitchakof and Hoertel been driven
+out of Volhynia; had he raised a hundred thousand Cossacks in those rich
+provinces; his winter-quarters would then have been habitable. But now,
+nothing was ready for him there; and not only was his force inadequate
+to the purpose, but Tchitchakof, a hundred leagues in his rear, would
+still threaten his communications with Germany and France and his
+retreat. It was therefore at a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a
+more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina, it was to
+Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter-quarters,
+from which he was forty marches distant.
+
+But should he arrive there in time? He had reason to think so.
+Dombrowski and his Poles, placed around Bobruisk, would be sufficient to
+keep Ertell in check. As for Schwartzenberg, that general had been
+victorious; he was at the head of forty-two thousand Austrians, Saxons,
+and Poles, whom Durutte, and his French division, from Warsaw, would
+augment to more than fifty thousand men. He had pursued Tormasof as far
+as the Styr.
+
+It was true that the Russian army of Moldavia had just formed a junction
+with the remnant of the army of Volhynia; that Tchitchakof, an active
+and resolute general, had assumed the command of fifty-five thousand
+Russians; that the Austrian had paused and even thought it prudent, on
+the 23d of September, to retire behind the Bug; but he was to have
+recrossed that river at Bresk-litowsky, and Napoleon knew no more.
+
+At any rate, without a defection, which it was too late to foresee, and
+which a precipitate return could alone prevent, he flattered himself
+that Schwartzenberg, Regnier, Durutte, Dombrowski, and twenty thousand
+men, divided between Minsk, Slonim, Grodno, and Wilna--in short, that
+seventy thousand men; would not allow sixty thousand Russians to gain
+possession of his magazines and to cut off his retreat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+Napoleon, reduced to such hazardous conjectures, arrived quite pensive
+at Vereia, when Mortier presented himself before him. But I perceive
+that, hurried along, just as we then were, by the rapid succession of
+violent scenes and memorable events, my attention has been diverted from
+a fact worthy of notice. On the 23d of October, at half-past one in the
+morning, the air was shaken by a tremendous explosion which for a moment
+astonished both armies, though amid such mighty expectations scarcely
+any thing now excited astonishment.
+
+Mortier had obeyed his orders; the Kremlin was no more: barrels of
+powder had been placed in all the halls of the palace of the Czars, and
+one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which
+supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on
+this volcano, which a Russian howitzer-shell might have exploded. Here
+he covered the march of the army upon Kalouga and the retreat of our
+different convoys towards Mojaisk.
+
+Among these eight thousand men there were scarcely two thousand on whom
+Mortier could rely: the others were dismounted cavalry, men of different
+countries and regiments, under new officers, without similar habits,
+without common recollections, in short, without any bond of union, who
+formed rather a rabble than an organized body; they could scarcely fail
+in a short time to disperse.
+
+This marshal was looked upon as a devoted victim. The other chiefs, his
+old companions in glory, had left him with tears in their eyes, as well
+as the Emperor, who said to him, "that he relied on his good fortune;
+but still in war we must sometimes make part of a fire." Mortier had
+resigned himself without hesitation. His orders were to defend the
+Kremlin, and on retreating to blow it up, and to burn what yet remained
+of the city. It was from the castle of Krasnopachra, on the 21st of
+October, that Napoleon had sent him his last orders. After executing
+them, Mortier was to march upon Vereia and to form the rear-guard of the
+army.
+
+In this letter Napoleon particularly recommended to him "to put the men
+still remaining in the hospitals into the carriages belonging to the
+young guard, those of the dismounted cavalry, and any others that he
+might find. The Romans," added he, "awarded civic crowns to those who
+saved citizens: so many soldiers as he should save, so many crowns would
+the Duke of Treviso deserve. He must put them on his horses and those of
+any of his troops. It was thus that he, Napoleon, acted at St. Jean
+d'Acre. He ought so much the more to take this measure, since, as soon
+as the convoy should have rejoined the army, there would be plenty of
+horses and carriages, which the consumption would have rendered useless
+for its supply. The Emperor hoped that he should have to testify his
+satisfaction to the Duke of Treviso for having saved him five hundred
+men. He must begin with the officers and then with the subalterns, and
+give the preference to Frenchmen. He would therefore assemble all the
+generals and officers under his command, to make them sensible of the
+importance of this measure, and how well they would deserve of the
+Emperor if they saved him five hundred men."
+
+Meanwhile, as the grand army was leaving Moscow, the Cossacks were
+penetrating into the suburbs, and Mortier had retired towards the
+Kremlin, as a remnant of life retires towards the heart, when death has
+begun to seize the extremities. These Cossacks were the scouts to ten
+thousand Russians under the command of Winzingerode.
+
+This foreigner, inflamed with hatred of Napoleon, and animated by the
+desire of retaking Moscow and naturalizing himself in Russia by this
+signal exploit, pushed on to a considerable distance from his men; he
+traversed, running, the Georgian colony, hastened towards the Chinese
+town and the Kremlin, met with advanced posts, mistook them, fell into
+an ambuscade, and finding himself a prisoner in a city which he had come
+to take, he suddenly changed his part, waving his handkerchief in the
+air, and declaring that he had brought a flag of truce.
+
+He was conducted to the Duke of Treviso. There he claimed, in a high
+tone, the protection of the law of nations, which, he said, was violated
+in his person. Mortier replied, that "a general-in-chief, coming in this
+manner, might be taken for a rash soldier, but never for a flag of
+truce, and that he must immediately deliver his sword." The Russian
+general, having no longer any hope of imposing upon him, complied and
+admitted his imprudence.
+
+At length, after four days' resistance, the French bid an eternal adieu
+to that fatal city. They carried with them four hundred wounded, and, on
+retiring, deposited, in a safe and secret place, a fire-work skilfully
+prepared, which a slow fire was already consuming; its progress was
+minutely calculated; so that it was known at what hour the fire would
+reach the immense heap of powder buried among the foundations of these
+condemned palaces.
+
+Mortier hastened his flight; but while he was rapidly retiring, some
+greedy Cossacks and squalid Muscovites, allured probably by the prospect
+of pillage, approached; they listened, and emboldened by the apparent
+quiet which pervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate into it;
+they ascended, and their hands, eager after plunder, were already
+stretched forth, when in a moment they were all destroyed, crushed,
+hurled into the air, with the buildings which they had come to pillage,
+and thirty thousand stand of arms that had been left behind there: and
+then their mangled limbs, mixed with fragments of walls and shattered
+weapons, blown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower.
+
+The earth shook under the feet of Mortier. At Feminskoe, ten leagues
+off, the Emperor heard the explosion, and he himself, in that tone of
+anger in which he sometimes addressed Europe, published the following
+day a bulletin, dated from Borowsk, to this effect, that "the Kremlin,
+the arsenal, the magazines were all destroyed; that the ancient citadel,
+which dated from the origin of the monarchy, and the first palace of the
+Czars, no longer existed; that Moscow was now but a heap of ruins, a
+filthy and unwholesome sink, without importance, either political or
+military. He had abandoned it to Russian beggars and plunderers to march
+against Kutusoff, to throw himself on the left wing of that general, to
+drive him back, and then to proceed quietly to the banks of the Duena,
+where he should take up his winter-quarters." Then, apprehensive lest he
+should appear to be retreating, he added, that "there he should be
+within eighty leagues of Wilna and Petersburg, a double advantage; that
+is to say, twenty marches nearer to his resources and his object." By
+this remark he hoped to give to his retreat the air of an offensive
+march.
+
+It was on this occasion that he declared, that "he had refused to give
+orders for the destruction of the whole country which he was quitting;
+he felt a repugnance to aggravate the miseries of its inhabitants. To
+punish the Russian incendiary and a hundred wretches who make war like
+Tartars, he would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two
+hundred thousand serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely
+destitute of resources."
+
+He had not then been soured by misfortune; but in three days every thing
+had changed. After coming in collision with Kutusoff, he retreated
+through this same town of Borowsk, and no sooner had he passed through
+it than it ceased to exist. It was thus that in future all was destined
+to be burned behind him. While conquering, he had preserved: when
+retiring, he resolved to destroy: either from necessity, to ruin the
+enemy and to retard his march, every thing being imperative in war; or
+by way of reprisal, the dreadful consequence of wars of invasion, which
+in the first place authorize every means of defence, while these
+afterwards operate as motives to those of attack.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the aggression in this terrible
+species of warfare was not on the side of Napoleon. On the 19th of
+October, Berthier had written to Kutusoff, proposing "to regulate
+hostilities in such a manner that they might not inflict on the
+Muscovite empire more evils than were inseparable from a state of war;
+the devastation of Russia being as detrimental to that empire as it was
+painful to Napoleon." But Kutusoff replied, that "it was not in his
+power to restrain the Russian patriotism," which amounted to an approval
+of the Tartar war made upon us by his militia, and authorized us in some
+measure to repay them in their own coin.
+
+The like flames consumed Vereia, where Mortier rejoined the Emperor,
+bringing to him Winzingerode. At sight of that German general, all the
+secret resentments of Napoleon took fire; his dejection gave place to
+anger, and he discharged all the spleen that oppressed him upon his
+enemy. "Who are you?" he exclaimed, crossing his arms with violence as
+if to grasp and to restrain himself, "a man without country! You have
+always been my personal enemy. When I was at war with the Austrians, I
+found you in their ranks. Austria is become my ally, and you have
+entered into the Russian service. You have been one of the warmest
+instigators of the present war. Nevertheless you are a native of the
+states of the Confederation of the Rhine; you are my subject. You are
+not an ordinary enemy, you are a rebel; I have a right to bring you to
+trial! _Gendarmes d'elite_, seize this man!" The _gendarmes_ remained
+motionless, like men accustomed to see these violent scenes terminate
+without effect, and sure of obeying best by disobeying.
+
+The Emperor resumed: "Do you see, sir, this devastated country, these
+villages in flames? To whom are these disasters to be charged? to fifty
+adventurers like yourself, paid by England, who has thrown them upon the
+continent; but the weight of this war will ultimately fall on those who
+have excited it. In six months I shall be at Petersburg, and I will call
+them to account for all this swaggering."
+
+Then addressing the aide-de-camp of Winzingerode, who was a prisoner
+like himself, "As for you, Count Narischkin," said he, "I have nothing
+to upbraid you with; you are a Russian, you are doing your duty; but how
+could a man of one of the first families in Russia become the
+aide-de-camp of a foreign mercenary? Be the aide-de-camp of a Russian
+general; that employment will be far more honourable."
+
+Till then General Winzingerode had not had an opportunity to answer this
+violent language, except by his attitude: it was calm as his reply. "The
+Emperor Alexander," he said, "was his benefactor and that of his family:
+all that he possessed he owed to him; gratitude had made him his
+subject; he was at the post which his benefactor had allotted to him,
+and consequently he was only doing his duty."
+
+Napoleon added some threats, but in a less violent strain, and he
+confined himself to words, either because he had vented all his wrath in
+the first explosion, or because he merely designed to frighten the
+Germans who might be tempted to abandon him. Such at least was the
+interpretation which those about him put upon his violence. It was
+disapproved; no account was taken of it, and each was eager to accost
+the captive general, to tranquillize and to console him. These
+attentions were continued till the army reached Lithuania, where the
+Cossacks retook Winzingerode and his aide-de-camp. The Emperor had
+affected to treat this young Russian nobleman with kindness, at the same
+time that he stormed so loudly against his general--a proof that there
+was calculation even in his wrath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk. That town was still full
+of wounded; some were carried away and the rest collected together and
+left, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians. Napoleon had
+proceeded but a few wersts from that place, when the winter began. Thus,
+after an obstinate combat, and ten days' marching and countermarching,
+the army, which had brought from Moscow only fifteen rations of flour
+per man, had advanced but three days' march in its retreat. It was in
+want of provisions and overtaken by the winter.
+
+Some men had already sunk under these hardships. In the first days of
+the retreat, on the 26th of October, carriages, laden with provisions,
+which the horses could no longer draw, were burned. The order for
+setting fire to all behind the army then followed; in obedience to it,
+powder-waggons, the horses of which were already worn out, were blown up
+together with the houses. But at length, as the enemy had not again
+shown himself, we seemed to be but once more setting out on a toilsome
+journey; and Napoleon, on again seeing the well-known road, was
+recovering his confidence, when, towards evening, a Russian chasseur,
+who had been made prisoner, was sent to him by Davoust.
+
+At first he questioned him carelessly; but as chance would have it, this
+Russian had some knowledge of roads, names, and distances. He answered,
+that "the whole Russian army was marching by Medyn upon Wiazma." The
+Emperor then became attentive. Did Kutusoff mean to forestall him there,
+as at Malo-Yaroslawetz, to cut off his retreat upon Smolensk, as he had
+done that upon Kalouga, and to coop him up in this desert without
+provisions, without shelter, and in the midst of a general insurrection?
+His first impulse, however, inclined him to reject this notion; for,
+whether owing to pride or experience, he was accustomed not to give his
+adversaries credit for that ability which he should have displayed in
+their place.
+
+In this instance, however, he had another motive. His security was but
+affected: for it was evident that the Russian army was taking the Medyn
+road, the very one which Davoust had recommended for the French army:
+and Davoust, either from vanity or inadvertence, had not confided this
+alarming intelligence to his dispatch alone. Napoleon feared its effects
+on his troops, and therefore affected to disbelieve and to despise it;
+but at the same time he gave orders that his guard should march next day
+in all haste, and so long as it should be light, as far as Gjatz. Here
+he proposed to afford rest and provisions to this flower of his army, to
+ascertain, so much nearer, the direction of Kutusoff's march, and to be
+beforehand with him at that point.
+
+But he had not consulted the season, which seemed to avenge the slight.
+Winter was so near at hand, that a blast of a few minutes was sufficient
+to bring it on, sharp, biting, intense. We were immediately sensible
+that it was indigenous to this country, and that we were strangers in
+it. Every thing was altered: roads, faces, courage: the army became
+sullen, the march toilsome, and consternation began.
+
+Some leagues from Mojaisk, we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a
+large rivulet; two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks
+were sufficient to ensure the passage: but such was the confusion and
+inattention, that the Emperor was detained there. Several pieces of
+cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It
+seemed as if each _corps d'armee_ was marching separately as if there
+was no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing that bound these
+corps together. In reality the elevation of each of their chiefs
+rendered them too independent of one another. The Emperor himself had
+become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance
+from the details of his army; and Berthier, holding an intermediate
+place between him and officers, who were all kings, princes, or
+marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution. He was
+besides wholly incompetent to the situation.
+
+The Emperor, stopped by the trifling obstacle of a broken bridge,
+confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and
+contempt; to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On
+this particular point he had received no orders from the Emperor: he
+therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a
+faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear and
+distinct, he reflected, he repeated the Emperor, but added nothing, and
+what Napoleon forgot was forgotten without retrieve.
+
+After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some
+of us, raising our eyes, uttered an exclamation of horror. Each
+instantly looked around him, and beheld a plain trampled, bare and
+devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface,
+and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared to be the
+most misshapen. It had all the appearance of an extinguished and
+destroyed volcano. The ground was covered all around with fragments of
+helmets and cuirasses, broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms,
+and standards dyed with blood.
+
+On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corses. A number
+of skeletons, left on the summit of one of the hills, overlooked the
+whole. It seemed as if death had here fixed his empire; it was that
+terrible redoubt, the conquest and the grave of Caulaincourt. Presently
+the cry, "It is the field of the great battle!" formed a long and
+doleful murmur. The Emperor passed quickly. Nobody stopped. Cold,
+hunger, and the enemy urged us on: we merely turned our faces as we
+proceeded to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so many
+companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whom we were obliged to
+leave behind.
+
+It was here that we had inscribed with the sword and blood one of the
+most memorable pages of our history. A few relics yet recorded it, and
+they would soon be swept away. Some day the traveller will pass with
+indifference over this plain, undistinguished from any other; but when
+he shall learn that it was the theatre of the great battle, he will turn
+back, long survey it with inquisitive looks, impress its minutest
+features on his greedy memory, and doubtless exclaim, What men! what a
+commander! what a destiny! These were the soldiers, who thirteen years
+before in the south attempted a passage to the East, through Egypt, and
+were dashed against its gates. They afterwards conquered Europe, and
+hither they came by the north to present themselves again before that
+same Asia, to be again foiled. What then urged them into this roving and
+adventurous life? They were not barbarians, seeking a more genial
+climate, more commodious habitations, more enchanting spectacles,
+greater wealth: on the contrary, they possessed all these advantages,
+and all possible pleasures; and yet they forsook them, to live without
+shelter, and without food, to fall daily and in succession, either slain
+or mutilated. What necessity drove them to this?--Why, what but
+confidence in a leader hitherto infallible! the ambition to complete a
+great work gloriously begun! the intoxication of victory, and above all,
+that insatiable thirst of fame, that powerful instinct, which impels man
+to seek death, in order to obtain immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+While the army was passing this fatal field in grave and silent
+meditation, one of the victims of that sanguinary day was perceived, it
+is said, still living, and piercing the air with his groans. It was
+found by those who ran up to him that he was a French soldier. Both his
+legs had been broken in the engagement; he had fallen among the dead,
+where he remained unnoticed. The body of a horse, gutted by a shell, was
+at first his asylum; afterwards, for fifty days, the muddy water of a
+ravine, into which he had rolled, and the putrified flesh of the dead,
+had served for dressing for his wounds and food for the support of his
+languishing existence. Those who say that they discovered this man
+affirm that they saved him.
+
+Farther on, we again beheld the great abbey or hospital of Kolotskoi, a
+sight still more hideous than that of the field of battle. At Borodino
+all was death, but not without its quiet; there at least the battle was
+over; at Kolotskoi it was still raging. Death here seemed to be pursuing
+his victims, who had escaped from the engagement, with the utmost
+malignity; he penetrated into them by all their senses at once. They
+were destitute of every thing for repelling his attacks, excepting
+orders, which it was impossible to execute in these deserts, and which,
+moreover, issuing from too high and too distant a quarter, passed
+through too many hands to be executed.
+
+Still, in spite of famine, cold, and the most complete destitution, the
+devotedness of a few surgeons and a remnant of hope, still supported a
+great number of wounded in this pestiferous abode. But when they saw the
+army repass, and that they were about to be left behind, the least
+infirm crawled to the threshold of the door, lined the way, and extended
+towards us their supplicating hands.
+
+The Emperor had just given orders that each carriage, of whatever kind
+it might be, should take up one of these unfortunate creatures, that the
+weakest should be left, as at Moscow, under the protection of such of
+the wounded and captive Russian officers as had been recovered by our
+attentions. He halted to see this order carried into execution, and it
+was at a fire kindled with his forsaken waggons that he and most of his
+attendants warmed themselves. Ever since morning a multitude of
+explosions proclaimed the numerous sacrifices of this kind which it
+already had been found necessary to make.
+
+During this halt, an atrocious action was witnessed. Several of the
+wounded had just been placed in the suttlers' carts. These wretches,
+whose vehicles were overloaded with the plunder of Moscow, murmured at
+the new burden imposed upon them; but being compelled to admit it, they
+held their peace. No sooner, however, had the army recommenced its
+march, than they slackened their pace, dropped behind their columns, and
+taking advantage of a lonely situation, they threw all the unfortunate
+men committed to their care into the ditches. One only lived long enough
+to be picked up by the next carriages that passed: he was a general, and
+through him this atrocious procedure became known. A shudder of horror
+spread throughout the column; it reached the Emperor; for the sufferings
+of the army were not yet so severe and so universal as to stifle pity,
+and to concentrate all his affections within the bosom of each
+individual.
+
+In the evening of this long day, as the imperial column approached
+Gjatz, it was surprised to find Russians quite recently killed on the
+way. It was remarked, that each of them had his head shattered in the
+same manner, and that his bloody brains were scattered near him. It was
+known that two thousand Russian prisoners were marching on before, and
+that their guard consisted of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Poles. On this
+discovery, each, according to his disposition, was indignant, approved,
+or remained indifferent. Around the Emperor these various feelings were
+mute. Caulaincourt broke out into the exclamation, that "it was an
+atrocious cruelty. Here was a pretty specimen of the civilization which
+we were introducing into Russia! What would be the effect of this
+barbarity on the enemy? Were we not leaving our wounded and a multitude
+of prisoners at his mercy? Did he want the means of wreaking the most
+horrible retaliation?"
+
+Napoleon preserved a gloomy silence, but on the ensuing day these
+murders had ceased. These unfortunate people were then merely left to
+die of hunger in the enclosures where, at night, they were confined like
+cattle. This was no doubt a barbarity too; but what could we do?
+Exchange them? the enemy rejected the proposal. Release them? they would
+have gone and published the general distress, and, soon joined by
+others, they would have returned to pursue us. In this mortal warfare,
+to give them their lives would have been sacrificing our own. We were
+cruel from necessity. The mischief arose from our having involved
+ourselves in so dreadful an alternative.
+
+Besides, in their march to the interior of Russia, our soldiers, who had
+been made prisoners, were not more humanely treated, and there,
+certainly, imperious necessity was not an excuse.
+
+At length the troops arrived with the night at Gjatz; but this first day
+of winter had been cruelly occupied. The sight of the field of battle,
+and of the two forsaken hospitals, the multitude of waggons consigned to
+the flames, the Russians with their brains blown out, the excessive
+length of the march, the first severities of winter, all concurred to
+render it horrible: the retreat became a flight; and Napoleon, compelled
+to yield and run away, was a spectacle perfectly novel.
+
+Several of our allies enjoyed it with that inward satisfaction which is
+felt by inferiors, when they see their chiefs at length thwarted, and
+obliged in their turn to give way. They indulged that miserable envy
+that is excited by extraordinary success, which rarely occurs without
+being abused, and which shocks that equality which is the first want of
+man. But this malicious joy was soon extinguished and lost in the
+universal distress.
+
+The wounded pride of Napoleon justified the supposition of such
+reflections. This was perceived in one of the halts of that day: there,
+on the rough furrows of a frozen field, strewed with wrecks both Russian
+and French, he attempted, by the energy of his words, to relieve himself
+from the weight of the insupportable responsibility of so many
+disasters. "He had in fact dreaded this war, and he devoted its author
+to the execration of the whole world. It was ---- whom he accused of
+this; it was that Russian minister, sold to the English, who had
+fomented it, and the traitor had drawn into it both Alexander and
+himself."
+
+These words, uttered before two of his generals, were heard with that
+silence enjoined by old respect, added to that which is due to
+misfortune. But the Duke of Vicenza, perhaps too impatient, betrayed his
+indignation by a gesture of anger and incredulity, and, abruptly
+retiring, put an end to this painful conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+From Gjatz the Emperor proceeded in two marches to Wiazma. He there
+halted to wait for Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the
+road of Medyn and Yucknow, which runs at that place into the high road
+to Smolensk. It was this cross-road which might bring the Russian army
+from Malo-Yaroslawetz on his passage. But on the first of November,
+after waiting thirty-six hours, Napoleon had not seen any avant-courier
+of that army; he set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had
+fallen asleep, and the fear that the Russian had left Wiazma on his
+right, and proceeded two marches farther towards Dorogobouje to cut off
+his retreat. At any rate, he left Ney at Wiazma, to collect the first
+and fourth corps, and to relieve, as the rear-guard, Davoust, whom he
+judged to be fatigued.
+
+He complained of the tardiness of the latter; he wrote to reproach him
+with being still five marches behind him, when he ought to have been no
+more than three days later; he considered the genius of that marshal as
+too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.
+
+The whole army, and the corps of Prince Eugene in particular, repeated
+these complaints. They said, that "owing to his spirit of order and
+obstinacy, Davoust had suffered the enemy to overtake him at the Abbey
+of Kalotskoi; that he had there done ragamuffin Cossacks the honour of
+retiring before them, step by step, and in square battalions, as if they
+had been Mamelukes; that Platof, with his cannon, had played at a
+distance on the deep masses which he had presented to him; that then
+only the marshal had opposed to them merely a few slender lines, which
+had speedily formed again, and some light pieces, the first fire of
+which had produced the desired effect; but that these manoeuvres and
+regular foraging excursions had occasioned a great loss of time, which
+is always valuable in retreat, and especially amidst famine, through
+which the most skilful manoeuvre was to pass with all possible
+expedition."
+
+In reply to this, Davoust urged his natural horror of every kind of
+disorder, which had at first led him to attempt to introduce regularity
+into this flight; he had endeavoured to cover the wrecks of it, fearing
+the shame and the danger of leaving for the enemy these evidences of our
+disastrous state.
+
+He added, that, "people were not aware of all that he had had to
+surmount; he had found the country completely devastated, houses
+demolished, and the trees burned to their very roots; for it was not to
+him who came last, that the work of general destruction had been left;
+the conflagration preceded him. It appeared as if the rear-guard had
+been totally forgotten! No doubt, too, people forgot the frozen road
+rough with the tracks of all who had gone before him; as well as the
+deep fords and broken bridges, which no one thought of repairing, as
+each corps, when not engaged, cared but for itself alone."
+
+Did they not know besides, that the whole tremendous train of
+stragglers, belonging to the other corps, on horseback, on foot, and in
+vehicles, aggravated these embarrassments, just as in a diseased body
+all the complaints fly to and unite in the part most affected? Every day
+he marched between these wretches and the Cossacks, driving forward the
+one and pressed by the other.
+
+Thus, after passing Gjatz, he had found the slough of Czarewo-Zaimcze
+without a bridge, and completely encumbered with carriages. He had
+dragged them out of the marsh in sight of the enemy, and so near to them
+that their fires lighted his labours, and the sound of their drums
+mingled with that of his voice. For the marshal and his generals could
+not yet resolve to relinquish to the enemy so many trophies; nor did
+they make up their minds to it, till after superfluous exertions, and in
+the last extremity, which happened several times a day.
+
+The road was in fact crossed every moment by marshy hollows. A slope,
+slippery as glass with the frost, hurried the carriages into them and
+there they stuck; to draw them out it was necessary to climb the
+opposite ascent by an icy road, where the horses, whose shoes were worn
+quite smooth, could not obtaining a footing, and where every moment they
+and their drivers dropped exhausted one upon the other. The famished
+soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to
+pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they
+broiled the yet bleeding flesh and devoured it.
+
+Meanwhile the artillerymen, a chosen corps, and their officers, all
+brought up in the first school in the world, kept off these unfortunate
+wretches whenever they could, and took the horses from their own chaises
+and waggons, which they abandoned to save the guns. To these they
+harnessed their horses, nay even themselves: the Cossacks, observing
+this disaster from a distance, durst not approach; but with their light
+pieces mounted on sledges they threw their balls into all this disorder,
+and served to increase it.
+
+The first corps had already lost ten thousand men: nevertheless, by dint
+of efforts and sacrifices, the viceroy and the Prince of Eckmuehl were,
+on the 2d of November, within two leagues of Wiazma. It is certain that
+the same day they might have passed that town, joined Ney, and avoided a
+disastrous engagement. It is affirmed, that such was the opinion of
+Prince Eugene, but that Davoust believed his troops to be too much
+fatigued, on which the viceroy, sacrificing himself to his duty, staid
+to share a danger which he foresaw. Davoust's generals say, on the
+contrary, that Prince Eugene, who was already encamped, could not find
+in his heart to make his soldiers leave their fires and their meal,
+which they had already begun, and the cooking of which always cost them
+a great deal of trouble.
+
+Be that as it may, during the deceptive tranquillity of that night, the
+advanced-guard of the Russians arrived from Malo-Yaroslawetz, our
+retreat from which place had put an end to theirs: it skirted along the
+two French corps and that of Poniatowski, passed their bivouacs, and
+disposed its columns of attack against the left flank of the road, in
+the intermediate two leagues which Davoust and Eugene had left between
+themselves and Wiazma.
+
+Miloradowitch, whom we denominated the Russian Murat, commanded this
+advanced-guard. He was, according to his countrymen, an indefatigable
+and successful warrior, impetuous as that soldier-king, of a stature
+equally remarkable, and, like him, a favourite of fortune. He was never
+known to be wounded, though numbers of officers and soldiers had fallen
+around him, and several horses had been killed under him. He despised
+the principles of war: he even made an art of not following the rules of
+that art, pretending to surprise the enemy by unexpected blows, for he
+was prompt in decision; he disdained to make any preparations, leaving
+places and circumstances to suggest what was proper to be done, and
+guiding himself only by sudden inspirations. In other respects, a
+general in the field of battle alone, he was destitute of foresight in
+the management of any affairs, either public or private, a notorious
+spendthrift, and, what is rare, not less upright than prodigal.
+
+It was this general, with Platof and twenty thousand men, whom we had
+now to fight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+On the 3d of November, Prince Eugene was proceeding towards Wiazma,
+preceded by his equipages and his artillery, when the first light of day
+shewed him at once his retreat threatened by an army on his left; behind
+him his rear-guard cut off; and on his left the plain covered with
+stragglers and scattered vehicles, fleeing before the lances of the
+enemy. At the same time, towards Wiazma, he heard Marshal Ney, who
+should have assisted him, fighting for his own preservation.
+
+That Prince was not one of those generals, the offspring of favour, to
+whom every thing is unexpected and cause of astonishment, for want of
+experience. He immediately looked the evil in the face, and set about
+remedying it. He halted, turned about, deployed his divisions on the
+right of the high road, and checked in the plain the Russian columns,
+who were striving to cut him off from that road. Their foremost troops,
+overpowering the right of the Italians, had already seized one point, of
+which they kept possession, when Ney despatched from Wiazma one of his
+regiments, which attacked them in the rear and dislodged them.
+
+At the same time Compans, a general of Davoust's, joined the Italian
+rear-guard with his division. They cleared a way for themselves, and
+while they, united with the Viceroy, were engaged, Davoust with his
+column passed rapidly behind them, along the left side of the high road,
+then crossing it as soon as he had got beyond them, he claimed his place
+in the order of battle, took the right wing, and found himself between
+Wiazma and the Russians. Prince Eugene gave up to him the ground which
+he had defended, and crossed to the other side of the road. The enemy
+then began to extend himself before them, and endeavoured to break
+through their wings.
+
+By the success of this first manoeuvre, the two French and Italian
+corps had not conquered the right to continue their retreat, but only
+the possibility of defending it. They were still thirty thousand strong;
+but in the first corps, that of Davoust, there was some disorder. The
+hastiness of the manoeuvre, the surprise, so much wretchedness, and,
+above all, the fatal example of a multitude of dismounted cavalry,
+without arms, and running to and fro bewildered with fear, threw it into
+confusion.
+
+This sight encouraged the enemy; he took it for a rout. His artillery,
+superior in number, manoeuvred at a gallop: it took obliquely and in
+flank our lines, which it cut down, while the French cannon, already at
+Wiazma, and which had been ordered to return in haste, could with
+difficulty be brought along. However, Davoust and his generals had still
+their firmest troops, about them. Several of these officers, still
+suffering from the wounds received at the Moskwa, one with his arm in a
+sling, another with his head wrapped in cloths, were seen supporting the
+best, encouraging the most irresolute, dashing at the enemy's batteries,
+forcing them to retire, and even seizing three of their pieces; in
+short, astonishing both the enemy and their own fugitives, and combating
+a mischievous example by their noble behaviour.
+
+Miloradowitch, perceiving that his prey was escaping, now applied for
+reinforcement; and it was again Wilson, who was sure to be present
+wherever he could be most injurious to France, who hastened to summon
+Kutusoff. He found the old marshal unconcernedly resting himself with
+his army within hearing of the action. The ardent Wilson, urgent as the
+occasion, excited him in vain: he could not induce him to stir.
+Transported with indignation, he called him traitor, and declared that
+he would instantly despatch one of his Englishmen full speed to
+Petersburg, to denounce his treason to his Emperor and his allies.
+
+This threat had no effect on Kutusoff; he persisted in remaining
+inactive; either because to the frost of age was superadded that of
+winter, and that in his shattered frame his mind was depressed by the
+sight of so many ruins; or that, from another effect of old age, a
+person becomes prudent when he has scarcely any thing to risk, and a
+temporiser when he has no more time to lose. He seemed still to be of
+opinion, as at Malo-Yaroslawetz, that the Russian winter alone could
+overthrow Napoleon; that this genius, the conqueror of men, was not yet
+sufficiently conquered by Nature; that it was best to leave to the
+climate the honour of that victory, and to the Russian atmosphere the
+work of vengeance.
+
+Miloradowitch, left to himself, then tried to break the French line of
+battle; but he could not penetrate it except by his fire, which made
+dreadful havoc in it. Eugene and Davoust were growing weak; and as they
+heard another action in the rear of their right, they imagined that the
+rest of the Russian army was approaching Wiazma by the Yuknof road, the
+outlet of which Ney was defending.
+
+It was only an advanced-guard: but they were alarmed at the noise of
+this fight in the rear of their own, threatening their retreat. The
+action had lasted ever since seven in the morning; night was
+approaching; the baggage must by this time have got away; the French
+generals therefore began to retire.
+
+This retrograde movement increased the ardour of the enemy, and but for
+a memorable effort of the 25th, 57th, and 85th regiments, and the
+protection of a ravine, Davoust's corps would have been broken, turned
+by its right, and destroyed. Prince Eugene, who was not so briskly
+attacked, was able to effect his retreat more rapidly through Wiazma;
+but the Russians followed him thither, and had penetrated into the town,
+when Davoust, pursued by twenty thousand men, and overwhelmed by eighty
+pieces of cannon, attempted to pass in his turn.
+
+Morand's division first entered the town: it was marching on with
+confidence, under the idea that the action was over, when the Russians,
+who were concealed by the windings of the streets, suddenly fell upon
+it. The surprise was complete and the confusion great: Morand
+nevertheless rallied and re-encouraged his men, retrieved matters, and
+fought his way through.
+
+It was Compans who put an end to the whole. He closed the march with his
+division. Finding himself too closely pressed by the bravest troops of
+Miloradowitch, he turned about, dashed in person at the most eager,
+overthrew them, and having thus made them fear him, he finished his
+retreat without further molestation. This conflict was glorious to each,
+and its result disastrous to all: it was without order and unity. There
+would have been troops enough to conquer, had there not been too many
+commanders. It was not till near two o'clock that the latter met to
+concert their manoeuvres, and these were even then executed without
+harmony.
+
+When at length the river, the town of Wiazma, night, mutual fatigue, and
+Marshal Ney had separated them from the enemy, the danger being
+adjourned and the bivouacs established, the numbers were counted.
+Several pieces of cannon which had been broken, the baggage, and four
+thousand killed or wounded, were missing. Many of the soldiers had
+dispersed. Their honour was saved, but there were immense gaps in the
+ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring every thing within a
+narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each
+regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion a platoon. The
+soldiers had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, or officers.
+
+This sad re-organization took place by the light of the conflagration of
+Wiazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and
+Miloradowitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double
+darkness of night and the forests. Several times the relics of these
+brave troops, conceiving that they were attacked, crawled to their arms.
+Next morning, when they fell into their ranks again, they were
+astonished at the smallness of their number.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+The spirits of the troops were 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, of that universal
+source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the
+spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed us.
+
+But on the 6th of November, the heavens declared against us. Their azure
+disappeared. The army marched enveloped in cold fogs. These fogs became
+thicker, and presently an immense cloud descended upon it in large
+flakes of snow. It seemed as if the very sky was falling, and joining
+the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects
+changed their appearance, and became confounded, and not to be
+recognised again; we proceeded, without knowing where we were, without
+perceiving the point to which we were bound; every thing was transformed
+into an obstacle. While the soldier was struggling with the tempest of
+wind and snow, the flakes, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated
+in every hollow; their surfaces concealed unknown abysses, which
+perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the men were engulphed, and
+the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found a grave in these
+snow-pits.
+
+Those who followed turned aside, but the storm drove into their faces
+both the snow that was descending from the sky, and that which it raised
+from the ground: it seemed bent on opposing their progress. The Russian
+winter, under this new form, attacked them on all sides: it penetrated
+through their light garments and their torn shoes and boots. Their wet
+clothes froze upon their bodies; an icy envelope encased them and
+stiffened all their limbs. A keen and violent wind interrupted
+respiration: it seized their breath at the moment when they exhaled it,
+and converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all round
+their mouths.
+
+The unfortunate creatures still crawled on, shivering, till the snow,
+gathering like balls under their feet, or the fragment of some broken
+article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades,
+caused them to stumble and fall. There they groaned in vain; the snow
+soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spot where they lay: such
+was their only grave! The road was studded with these undulations, like
+a cemetery: the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected;
+they passed on quickly with averted looks. But before them, around them,
+there was nothing but snow: this immense and dreary uniformity extended
+farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded; it was
+like 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 funeral verdure, the motionless aspect of their
+gigantic black trunks and their dismal look, which completed the doleful
+appearance of a general mourning, and of an army dying amidst a nature
+already dead.
+
+Every thing, even to their very arms, still offensive at
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, but since then defensive only, now turned against
+them. These seemed to their frozen limbs insupportably heavy, in the
+frequent falls which they experienced, they dropped from their hands and
+were broken or buried in the snow. If they rose again, it was without
+them; for they did not throw them away; hunger and cold wrested them
+from their grasp. The fingers of many others were frozen to the musket
+which they still held, which deprived them of the motion necessary for
+keeping up some degree of warmth and life.
+
+We soon met with numbers of men belonging to all the corps, sometimes
+singly, at others in troops. They had not basely deserted their colours;
+it was cold and inanition which had separated them from their columns.
+In this general and individual struggle, they had parted from one
+another, and there they were, disarmed, vanquished, defenceless, without
+leaders, obeying nothing but the 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 passage, all had been laid waste to the
+extent of seven or eight leagues; they met with nothing but Cossacks,
+and an armed population, which encompassed, wounded, and stripped them
+naked, and then left them, with ferocious bursts of laughter, to expire
+on 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
+nobly a country which they were unable to defend, hovered on both flanks
+of the army under favour of the woods. Those whom they did not despatch
+with their pikes and hatchets, they brought back to the fatal and
+all-devouring high road.
+
+Night then came on--a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow which
+covered every thing, they knew not where to halt, where to sit, where to
+lie down, where to find some root or other to eat, and 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 kept together. They strove to establish themselves;
+but the tempest, still active, dispersed the first preparations for
+bivouacs. The pines, laden with frost, obstinately resisted the flames;
+their snow, that from the sky which yet continued to fall fast, and that
+on the ground, which melted with the efforts of the soldiers, and the
+effect of the first fires, extinguished those fires, as well as the
+strength and spirits of the men.
+
+When at length the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and
+soldiers around them prepared their wretched repast; it consisted of
+lean and bloody pieces of flesh torn from the horses that were knocked
+up, and at most a few spoonfuls of rye-flour mixed with snow-water. Next
+morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked 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
+lively army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an
+advanced civilization, discouragement and neglect of discipline spread
+rapidly, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil as in good.
+Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, at every
+moment, some portion separated from the yet organised troops, and fell
+into disorder. There were some, however, who withstood this wide
+contagion of indiscipline and despondency. These were officers,
+non-commissioned officers, and steady soldiers. These were extraordinary
+men: they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk,
+which they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised
+that all their wants should be supplied.
+
+It was in this manner that, after this deluge of snow, and the increase
+of cold which it foreboded, each, whether officer or soldier, preserved
+or lost his fortitude, according to his disposition, his age, and his
+constitution. That one of our leaders who had hitherto been the
+strictest in enforcing discipline, now paid little attention to it.
+Thrown out of all his fixed ideas of regularity, order, and method, he
+was seized with despair at the sight of such universal disorder, and
+conceiving, before the others, that all was lost, he felt himself ready
+to abandon all.
+
+From Gjatz to Mikalewska, a village between Dorogobouje and Smolensk,
+nothing remarkable occurred in the imperial column, unless that it was
+found necessary to throw the spoils of Moscow into the lake of Semlewo:
+cannon, gothic armour, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of
+Ivan the Great, were buried in its waters; trophies, glory, all those
+acquisitions to which we had sacrificed every thing, became a burden to
+us; our object was no longer to embellish, to adorn life, but to
+preserve it. In this vast wreck, the army, like a great ship tossed by
+the most tremendous of tempests, threw without hesitation into that sea
+of ice and snow, every thing that could slacken or impede its progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+During the 3d and 4th of November Napoleon halted at Stakowo. This
+repose, and the shame of appearing to flee, inflamed his imagination. He
+dictated orders, according to which his rear-guard, by appearing to
+retreat in disorder, was to draw the Russians into an ambuscade, where
+he should be waiting for them in person; but this vain project passed
+off with the pre-occupation which gave it birth. On the 5th he slept at
+Dorogobouje. Here he found the hand-mills which were ordered for the
+expedition at the time the cantonments of Smolensk were projected; of
+these a late and totally useless distribution was made.
+
+Next day, the 6th of November, opposite to Mikalewska, at the moment
+when the clouds, laden with sleet and snow, were bursting over our
+heads, Count Daru was seen hastening up, and a circle of vedettes
+forming around him and the Emperor.
+
+An express, the first that had been able to reach us for ten days, had
+just brought intelligence of that strange conspiracy, hatched in Paris
+itself, and in the depth of a prison, by an obscure general. He had had
+no other accomplices than the false news of our destruction, and forged
+orders to some troops to apprehend the Minister, the Prefect of Police,
+and the Commandant of Paris. His plan had completely succeeded, from the
+impulsion of a first movement, from ignorance and the general
+astonishment; but no sooner was a rumour of the affair spread abroad,
+than an order was sufficient again to consign the leader, with his
+accomplices or his dupes, to a prison.
+
+The Emperor was apprised at the same moment of their crime and their
+punishment. Those who at a distance strove to read his thoughts in his
+countenance could discover nothing. He repressed his feelings; his first
+and only words to Daru were, "How now, if we had remained at Moscow!" He
+then hastened into a house surrounded with a palisade, which had served
+for a post of correspondence.
+
+The moment he was alone with the most devoted of his officers, all his
+emotions burst forth at once in exclamations of astonishment,
+humiliation and anger. Presently afterwards he sent for several other
+officers, to observe the effect which so extraordinary a piece of
+intelligence would produce upon them. He perceived in them a painful
+uneasiness and consternation, and their confidence in the stability of
+his government completely shaken. He had occasion to know that they
+accosted each other with a sigh, and the remark, that it thus appeared
+that the great revolution of 1789, which was thought to be finished, was
+not yet over. Grown old in struggles to get out of it, were they to be
+again plunged into it, and to be thrown once more into the dreadful
+career of political convulsions? Thus war was coming upon us in every
+quarter, and we were liable to lose every thing at once.
+
+Some rejoiced at this intelligence, in the hope that it would hasten the
+return of the Emperor to France, that it would fix him there, and that
+he would no longer risk himself abroad, since he was not safe at home.
+On the following day, the sufferings of the moment put an end to these
+conjectures. As for Napoleon, all his thoughts again flew before him to
+Paris, and he was advancing mechanically towards Smolensk, when his
+whole attention was recalled to the present place and time, by the
+arrival of an aide-de-camp of Ney.
+
+From Wiazma that Marshal had begun to protect this retreat, mortal to so
+many others, but immortal for himself. As far as Dorogobouje, it had
+been molested only by some bands of Cossacks, troublesome insects
+attracted by our dying and by our forsaken carriages, flying away the
+moment a hand was lifted, but harassing by their continual return.
+
+They were not the subject of Ney's message. On approaching Dorogobouje
+he had met with the traces of the disorder which prevailed in the corps
+that preceded him, and which it was not in his power to efface. So far
+he had made up his mind to leave the baggage to the enemy; but he
+blushed with shame at the sight of the first pieces of cannon abandoned
+before Dorogobouje.
+
+The marshal had halted there. After a dreadful night, in which snow,
+wind, and famine had driven most of his men from the fires, the dawn,
+which is always awaited with such impatience in a bivouac, had brought
+him a tempest, the enemy, and the spectacle of an almost general
+defection. In vain he had just fought in person at the head of what men
+and officers he had left: he had been obliged to retreat precipitately
+behind the Dnieper; and of this he sent to apprise the Emperor.
+
+He wished him to know the worst. His aide-de-camp, Colonel Dalbignac,
+was instructed to say, that "the first movement of retreat from
+Malo-Yaroslawetz, for soldiers who had never yet run away, had
+dispirited the army; that the affair at Wiazma had shaken its firmness;
+and that lastly, the deluge of snow and the increased cold which it
+betokened, had completed its disorganization: that a multitude of
+officers, having lost every thing, their platoons, battalions,
+regiments, and even divisions, had joined the roving masses: generals,
+colonels, and officers of all ranks, were seen mingled with the
+privates, and marching at random, sometimes with one column, sometimes
+with another: that as order could not exist in the presence of disorder,
+this example was seducing even the veteran regiments, which had served
+during the whole of the wars of the revolution: that in the ranks, the
+best soldiers were heard asking one another, why they alone were
+required to fight in order to secure the flight of the rest; and how any
+one could expect to keep up their courage, when they heard the cries of
+despair issuing from the neighbouring woods, in which large convoys of
+their wounded, who had been dragged to no purpose all the way from
+Moscow, had just been abandoned? Such then was the fate which awaited
+themselves! what had they to gain by remaining by their colours?
+Incessant toils and combats by day, and famine at night; no shelter, and
+bivouacs still more destructive than battle: famine and cold drove sleep
+far away from them, or if fatigue got the better of these for the
+moment, that repose which ought to refresh them put a period to their
+lives. In short, the eagles had ceased to protect--they destroyed. Why
+then remain around them to perish by battalions, by masses? It would be
+better to disperse, and since there was no other course than flight, to
+try who could run fastest. It would not then be the best that would
+fall: the cowards behind them would no longer eat up the relics of the
+high road." Lastly, the aide-de-camp was commissioned to explain to the
+Emperor all the horrors of his situation, the responsibility of which
+Ney absolutely declined.
+
+But Napoleon saw enough around himself to judge of the rest. The
+fugitives were passing him; he was sensible that nothing could now be
+done but sacrifice the army successively, part by part, beginning at the
+extremities, in order to save the head. When, therefore, the
+aide-de-camp was beginning, he sharply interrupted him with these words,
+"Colonel, I do not ask you for these details." The Colonel was silent,
+aware that in this disaster, now irremediable, and in which every one
+had occasion for all his energies, the Emperor was afraid of complaints,
+which could have no other effect but to discourage both him who indulged
+in, and him who listened to them.
+
+He remarked the attitude of Napoleon, the same which he retained
+throughout the whole of this retreat. It was grave, silent, and
+resigned; suffering much less in body than others, but much more in
+mind, and brooding 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 had them
+forwarded to the Prince of the Moskwa, saying, "that those who were
+fighting must eat before the others." 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 re-organized."
+
+But if this hope kept some to their duty, many others abandoned every
+thing, to hasten towards that promised term of their sufferings. As for
+Ney, he saw that a sacrifice was required, and that he was marked out as
+the victim: he resigned himself, ready to meet the whole of a danger
+great as his courage: thenceforward he neither attached his honour to
+baggage, nor to cannon, which the winter alone wrested from him. A first
+bend of the Borysthenes stopped and kept back part of his guns at the
+foot of its icy slopes; he sacrificed them without hesitation, passed
+that obstacle, faced about, and made the hostile river, which crossed
+his route, serve him as the means of defence.
+
+The Russians, however, advanced under favour of a wood and 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, got
+discouraged; they gave way, justifying themselves by their
+faint-heartedness on the preceding day, fleeing because they had fled;
+which before they would have considered as impossible. But Ney rushed in
+amongst them, snatched one of their muskets, and led them back to the
+fire, which he was the first to renew; exposing his life like a private
+soldier, with a musket in his hand, the same as when he was neither
+husband nor father, neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor
+consideration: in short, as if he had still every thing to gain, when in
+fact he had every thing to lose. At the same time that he again turned
+soldier, he ceased not to be a general; he took advantage of the ground,
+supported himself against a height, and covered himself with a palisaded
+house. His generals and his colonels, among whom he himself remarked
+Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who expected to
+pursue, was obliged to retreat.
+
+By this action, Ney gave the army a respite of twenty-four hours; it
+profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and all the
+succeeding days, he manifested the same heroism. Between Wiazma and
+Smolensk he fought ten whole days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIII.
+
+
+On the 13th of November he was approaching that city, which he was not
+to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to keep off the
+enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his
+left were seen covered with a multitude of fugitives. In their fright,
+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
+flock of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of
+Italy, returning quite stripped, without baggage, and without cannon.
+
+Platof had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.
+Near that town Prince Eugene had left 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 crossed before was
+a mere brook, and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swelled into a
+river. It ran over a bed of mud, and was bounded by two steep banks. It
+was found necessary to cut a way in these rough and frozen banks, and to
+give orders for the demolition, during the night, of the neighbouring
+houses, in order to build a bridge with the materials. But those who had
+taken shelter in them opposed their destruction. The Viceroy, more
+beloved than feared, was not obeyed. The pontonniers were disheartened,
+and when daylight appeared with the Cossacks, the bridge, after being
+twice broken down, was abandoned.
+
+Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of
+disbanded men, sick and wounded, upwards of a hundred pieces of cannon,
+ammunition waggons, and a multitude of other vehicles, lined the bank,
+and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford through the
+ice carried along by the torrent. The first guns that tried to cross
+reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while
+at the same time the bed of the river at the ford was deepened by the
+wheels and the efforts of the horses. A carriage stuck fast; others did
+the same; and 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 at length found himself necessitated to order his artillery and
+all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The
+owners had scarcely time to part from their effects; while they were
+selecting from them the articles which they most needed, and loading
+horses with them, a multitude of soldiers hastened up; they fell in
+preference upon the vehicles of luxury; they broke in pieces and
+rummaged every thing, revenging their destitution on this wealth, their
+privations on these superfluities, and snatching them from the Cossacks,
+who looked on at a distance.
+
+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 singular
+sight to behold the riches of Paris and 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 waggons, 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 waggons were
+blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not
+killed on the spot dispersed in dismay.
+
+A few hundred men, who were still called the 14th division, were opposed
+to these hordes, and sufficed to keep them at a respectful distance till
+the next day. All the rest, soldiers, administrators, women and
+children, sick and wounded, driven by the enemy's balls, crowded the
+bank of the torrent. But at the sight of its swollen current, of the
+sharp and massive sheets of ice flowing down it, and the necessity of
+aggravating their already intolerable sufferings from cold by plunging
+into its chilling waves, they all hesitated.
+
+An Italian, Colonel Delfanti, was obliged to set the example and cross
+first. The soldiers then moved and the crowd followed. The weakest, the
+least resolute, or the most avaricious, staid behind. Such as could not
+make up their minds to part from their booty, and to forsake fortune
+which was forsaking them, were surprised in the midst of their
+hesitation. Next day the savage Cossacks were seen amid all this wealth,
+still covetous of the squalid and tattered garments of the unfortunate
+creatures who had become their prisoners: they stripped them, and then
+collecting them in troops, drove them along naked on the snow, by hard
+blows with the shaft of their lances.
+
+The army of Italy, thus dismantled, thoroughly soaked in the waters of
+the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow
+near a village, where its officers expected to have found lodging for
+themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They
+rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on each habitation, profiting by the
+darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being
+known by them. They tore down every thing, doors, windows and even the
+wood-work of the roofs, feeling little compunction to compel others, be
+they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.
+
+Their generals strove in vain to drive them off; they took their blows
+without murmur or opposition, but without desisting; and 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 remained
+silently but actively engaged 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 should fall
+upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in
+their design, and respect for the anger of their generals.
+
+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.
+
+It is a fact which reflects disgrace on the enemy, that during this
+disaster, and in sight of so rich a booty, a few hundred men, left at
+the distance of half a league from the Viceroy, on the other side of the
+Wop, were sufficient to curb, for twenty hours, not only the courage but
+also the cupidity of Platof's Cossacks.
+
+It is possible, indeed, that the Hetman made sure of destroying the
+Viceroy on the following day. In fact, all his measures were so well
+planned, that at the moment when the army of Italy, after an unquiet and
+disorderly march, came in sight of Dukhowtchina, a town yet uninjured,
+and was joyfully hastening forward to shelter itself there, several
+thousand Cossacks sallied forth from it with cannon, and suddenly
+stopped its progress: at the same time Platof, with all his hordes, came
+up and attacked its rear-guard and both flanks.
+
+Persons, who were eye-witnesses, assert that a complete tumult and
+disorder then ensued; that the disbanded men, the women, and the
+attendants, ran over one another, and broke quite through the ranks;
+that, in short, there was a moment when this unfortunate army was but a
+shapeless mass, a mere rabble rout whirling round and round. All seemed
+to be lost; but the coolness of the Prince and the efforts of the
+officers saved all. The best men disengaged themselves; the ranks were
+again formed. They advanced, firing a few volleys, and the enemy, who
+had every thing on his side excepting courage, the only advantage yet
+left us, opened and retired, confining himself to a mere demonstration.
+
+The army took his place still warm in that town, beyond which he went to
+bivouac, and to prepare similar surprises to the very gates of Smolensk.
+For this disaster at the Wop had made the Viceroy give up the idea of
+separating from the Emperor; there these hordes grew bolder; they
+surrounded the 14th division. When Prince Eugene would have gone to its
+relief, the men and their officers, stiffened with a cold of twenty
+degrees, which the wind rendered most piercing, continued stretched on
+the warm ashes of their fires. To no purpose did he point out to them
+their comrades surrounded, the enemy approaching, the bullets and balls
+which were already reaching them; they refused to rise, protesting that
+they would rather perish than any longer have to endure such cruel
+hardships. The vedettes themselves had abandoned their posts. Prince
+Eugene nevertheless contrived to save his rear-guard.
+
+It was in returning with it towards Smolensk that his stragglers had
+been driven back on Ney's troops, to whom they communicated their panic;
+all hurried together towards the Dnieper; here they crowded together at
+the entrance of the bridge, without thinking of defending themselves,
+when a charge made by the 4th regiment stopped the advance of the enemy.
+
+Its colonel, young Fezenzac, contrived to infuse fresh life into these
+men who were half perished with cold. There, as in every thing that can
+be called action, was manifested the superiority of the sentiments of
+the soul over the sensations of the body; for every physical sensation
+tended to encourage despondency and flight; nature advised it with her
+hundred most urgent voices; and yet a few words of honour were
+sufficient to produce the most heroic devotedness. The soldiers of the
+4th regiment rushed like furies upon the enemy, against the mountain of
+snow and ice of which he had taken possession, and in the teeth of the
+northern hurricane, for they had every thing against them. Ney himself
+was obliged to moderate their impetuosity.
+
+A reproach from their colonel effected this change. These private
+soldiers devoted themselves, that they might not be wanting to their own
+characters, from that instinct which requires courage in a man, as well
+as from habit and the love of glory. A splendid word for so obscure a
+situation! For, what is the glory of a common soldier, who perishes
+unseen, who is neither praised, censured, nor regretted, but by his own
+division of a company! The circle of each, however, is sufficient for
+him: a small society embraces the same passions as a large one. The
+proportions of the bodies differ; but they are composed of the same
+elements; it is the same life that animates them, and the looks of a
+platoon stimulate a soldier, just as those of an army inflame a general.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIV.
+
+
+At length the army again beheld Smolensk; it approached the term so
+often held forth to its sufferings. The soldiers pointed it out to each
+other. There was that land of promise where their famine 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
+should enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel;
+there they should be furnished with new shoes and garments adapted to
+the climate.
+
+At this sight, the corps _d'elite_, some soldiers, and the veteran
+regiments, 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 masses round the lofty walls
+and gates of the city; but their disorderly multitude, their haggard
+faces, begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms and the
+grotesque habiliments which they had substituted for them, in short,
+their strange, hideous look, and their extreme ardour, excited alarm. It
+was conceived that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger,
+were not repelled, a general pillage would be the consequence, and the
+gates were closed against it.
+
+It was also hoped that by this rigour these men would be forced to
+rally. A horrid struggle between order and disorder then commenced in
+the remnant of that unfortunate army. In vain did some entreat, weep,
+conjure, threaten, strive to burst the gates, and drop down dead at the
+feet of their comrades, who had orders to repel them; they found them
+inexorable: they were forced to await the arrival of the first troops,
+who were still officered and in order.
+
+These were the old and young guard. It was not till afterwards that the
+disbanded men were allowed to enter; they and the other corps which
+arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed that their
+entry had been delayed merely to give more rest and more provisions to
+this guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust; they execrated it.
+"Were they then to be for ever sacrificed to this privileged class,
+fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost but at reviews,
+festivities, and distributions? Was the army always to put up with their
+leavings; and in order to obtain them, was it always to wait till they
+had glutted themselves?" It was impossible 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 last, however, these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk
+for which they had so ardently wished; they had left the banks of the
+Borysthenes strewed with the dying bodies of the weakest of their
+number; impatience and several hours' waiting had finished them. They
+left others on the icy steep which they had to climb to reach the upper
+town. The rest ran to the magazines, and there more of them expired
+while they beset the doors; for they were again repulsed. "Who were
+they? to what corps did they belong? what had they to show for it? The
+persons who had to distribute the provisions were responsible for them;
+they had orders to deliver them only to authorized officers, bringing
+receipts, for which they could exchange the rations committed to their
+care." Those who applied had no officers; nor could they tell where
+their regiments were. Two thirds of the army were in this predicament.
+
+These unfortunate men then dispersed through the streets, having no
+longer any other hope than pillage. But horses dissected to the very
+bones every where denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the houses
+had been all broken and torn away to feed the bivouac-fires: 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 still the fatal high-road, passing through an empty
+name; it was a new bivouac among deceitful ruins; colder even than the
+forests which they had just quitted.
+
+Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colours; they
+rejoined them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread
+that could be baked had been distributed: there was no more biscuit, no
+butcher's meat, rye-flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were delivered
+out to them. It required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the
+detachments of the different corps from murdering one another at the
+doors of the magazines: and when, after long formalities, their wretched
+fare was delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their
+regiments; they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds
+of flour, and ran to hide themselves till they had devoured it. The same
+was the case with the spirits. Next day the houses were found full of
+the bodies of these unfortunate wretches.
+
+In short, that fatal Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to as
+the term of its sufferings, marked only their commencement.
+Inexpressible hardships awaited us: we had yet to march forty days under
+that yoke of iron. Some, already overloaded with present miseries, sunk
+under the alarming prospect of those which awaited them. Others revolted
+against their destiny; finding they had nothing to rely on but
+themselves, they resolved to live at any rate.
+
+Henceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the
+weaker, they plundered their dying companions by violence or stealth, of
+their subsistence, their garments, and even the gold, with which they
+had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom
+despair had made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their
+infamous booty, profiting by the general condition, an obscure name, a
+uniform no longer distinguishable, and night, in short, by all kinds of
+obscurities, favourable to cowardice and guilt. If works already
+published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed in
+silence details so disgusting; for these atrocities were rare, and
+justice was dealt to the most criminal.
+
+The Emperor arrived on the 9th of November, 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 continue his retreat. He had
+calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one
+hundred thousand men; there was not more than half the quantity of
+flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were set up
+against one of the persons appointed to provide these supplies. The
+commissary saved his life only by crawling for a long time on his knees
+at the feet of Napoleon. Probably the reasons which he assigned did more
+for him than his supplications.
+
+"When he arrived," he said, "bands of stragglers, whom, when advancing,
+the army left behind it, had, as it were, involved Smolensk in terror
+and destruction. The men died there of hunger as upon the road. When
+some degree of order had been restored, the Jews alone had at first
+offered to furnish the necessary provisions. More generous motives
+subsequently engaged the aid of some Lithuanian noblemen. At length the
+foremost of the long convoys of provisions collected in Germany
+appeared. These were the carriages called _comtoises_, and were the only
+ones which had traversed the sands of Lithuania; they brought no more
+than two hundred quintals of flour and rice; several hundred German and
+Italian bullocks had also arrived with them.
+
+"Meanwhile the accumulation of dead bodies in the houses, courts, and
+gardens, and their unwholesome effluvia, infected the air. The dead were
+killing the living. The civil officers as well as many of the military
+were attacked: some had become to all appearance idiots, weeping or
+fixing their hollow eyes stedfastly on the ground. There were others
+whose hair had become stiff, erect, and ropy, and who, amidst a torrent
+of blasphemies, a horrid convulsion, or a still more frightful laugh,
+had dropped down dead.
+
+"At the same time it had been found necessary to kill without delay the
+greatest part of the cattle brought from Germany and Italy. These
+animals would neither walk any farther, nor eat. Their eyes, sunk in
+their sockets, were dull and motionless. They were killed without
+seeking to avoid the fatal blow. Other misfortunes followed: several
+convoys were intercepted, magazines taken, and a drove of eight hundred
+oxen had just been carried off from Krasnoe."
+
+This man added, that "regard ought also to be had to the great quantity
+of detachments which had passed through Smolensk; to the stay which
+Marshal Victor, twenty-eight thousand men, and about fifteen thousand
+sick, had made there; to the multitude of posts and marauders whom the
+insurrection and the approach of the enemy had driven back into the
+city. All had subsisted upon the magazines; it had been necessary to
+deliver out nearly sixty thousand rations per day; and lastly,
+provisions and cattle had been sent forward towards Moscow as far as
+Mojaisk and towards Kalouga as far as Yelnia."
+
+Many of these allegations 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
+quantity of provisions distributed over this space was incalculable; the
+efforts for transporting them thither gigantic, and the result little
+better than nothing. They were insufficient in that immensity.
+
+Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had
+been surpassed; the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above
+time, climate, and distances, had, as it were, lost itself in space:
+great as was its measure, it had been beyond it.
+
+For the rest, he was passionate, from necessity. He had not deceived
+himself in regard to the inadequacy of his supplies. Alexander alone had
+deceived him. Accustomed to triumph over every thing by the terror of
+his name, and the astonishment produced by his audacity, he had ventured
+his army, himself, his fortune, his all, on a first movement of
+Alexander's. He was still the same man as in Egypt, at Marengo, Ulm, and
+Esslingen; it was Ferdinand Cortes; it was the Macedonian burning his
+ships, and above all solicitous, in spite of his troops, to penetrate
+still farther into unknown Asia; finally, it was Caesar risking his whole
+fortune in a fragile bark.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The surprise of Vinkowo, however, that unexpected attack of Kutusoff in
+front of Moscow, was only the spark of a great conflagration. On the
+same day, at the same hour, the whole of Russia had resumed the
+offensive. The general plan of the Russians was at once developed. The
+inspection of the map became truly alarming.
+
+On the 18th of October, at the very moment that the cannon of Kutusoff
+were destroying Napoleon's illusions of glory and of peace,
+Wittgenstein, at one hundred leagues in the rear of his left wing, had
+thrown himself upon Polotsk; Tchitchakof, behind his right, and two
+hundred leagues farther off, had taken advantage of his superiority over
+Schwartzenberg; and both of them, one descending from the north, and the
+other ascending from the south, were endeavouring to unite their forces
+at Borizof.
+
+This was the most difficult passage in our retreat, and both these
+hostile armies were already close to it, at the time that Napoleon was
+at the distance of twelve days' journey, with the winter, famine, and
+the grand Russian army between them.
+
+At Smolensk it was only suspected that Minsk was in danger; the officers
+who were present at the loss of Polotsk gave the following details
+respecting it:--
+
+Ever since the battle of the 18th of August, which raised him to the
+dignity of marshal, Saint Cyr had remained on the Russian bank of the
+Duena, in possession of Polotsk, and of an entrenched camp in front of
+its walls. This camp showed how easy it would have been for the whole
+army to have taken up its winter quarters on the frontiers of Lithuania.
+Its barracks, constructed by our soldiers, were more spacious than the
+houses of the Russian peasantry, and equally warm: they were beautiful
+military villages, properly entrenched, and equally protected from the
+winter and from the enemy.
+
+For two months the two armies carried on merely a war of partizans. With
+the French its object was to extend themselves through the country in
+search of provisions; on the part of the Russians, to strip them of what
+they found. A war of this sort was entirely in favour of the Russians,
+as our people, being ignorant of the country as well as of the language,
+even of the names of the places where they attempted to enter, were
+incessantly betrayed by the inhabitants, and even by their guides.
+
+In consequence of these checks, and of hunger, and disease, the strength
+of Saint Cyr's army was diminished one half, while that of Wittgenstein
+had been more than doubled by the arrival of recruits. By the middle of
+October, the Russian army at that point amounted to fifty-two thousand
+men, while ours was only seventeen thousand. In this number must be
+included the 6th corps, or the Bavarians, reduced from twenty-two
+thousand to eighteen hundred men, and two thousand cavalry. The latter
+were then absent; Saint Cyr being without forage, and uneasy respecting
+the attempts of the enemy upon his flanks, had sent them to a
+considerable distance up the river, with orders to return by the left
+bank, in order to procure subsistence and to gain intelligence.
+
+For this marshal was afraid of having his right turned by Wittgenstein
+and his left by Steingell, who was advancing at the head of two
+divisions of the army of Finland, which had recently arrived at Riga.
+Saint Cyr had sent a very pressing letter to Macdonald, requesting him
+to use his efforts to stop the march of these Russians, who would have
+to pass his army, and to send him a reinforcement of fifteen thousand
+men; or if he would not do that, to come himself with succours to that
+amount, and take the command. In the same letter he also submitted to
+Macdonald all his plans of attack and defence. But Macdonald did not
+feel himself authorized to operate so important a movement without
+orders. He distrusted Yorck, whom he perhaps suspected of an intention
+of allowing the Russians to get possession of his park of besieging
+artillery. His reply was that he must first of all think of defending
+that, and he remained stationary.
+
+In this state of affairs, the Russians became daily more and more
+emboldened; and finally, on the 17th of October, the out-posts of Saint
+Cyr were driven into his camp, and Wittgenstein possessed himself of all
+the outlets of the woods which surround Polotsk. He threatened us with a
+battle, which he did not believe we would venture to accept.
+
+The French marshal, without orders from his Emperor, had been too late
+in his determination to entrench himself. His works were only marked out
+as much as was necessary, (not to cover their defenders), but to point
+out the place where their efforts would be principally required. Their
+left, resting on the Duena, and defended by batteries placed on the left
+bank of the river, was the strongest. Their right was weak. The Polota,
+a stream which flows into the Duena, separated them.
+
+Wittgenstein sent Yatchwil to threaten the least accessible side, and
+on the 18th he himself advanced against the other; at first with some
+rashness, for two French squadrons, the only ones which Saint Cyr had
+retained, overthrew his column in advance, took its artillery, and made
+himself prisoner, it is said, without being aware of it; so that they
+abandoned this general-in-chief, as an insignificant prize, when they
+were forced by numbers to retreat.
+
+Rushing from their woods, the Russians then exhibited their whole force,
+and attacked Saint Cyr in the most furious manner. In one of the first
+discharges of their musketry, the marshal was wounded by a ball. He
+remained, however, in the midst of the troops, but being unable to
+support himself, was obliged to be carried about. Wittgenstein's
+determination to carry this point lasted as long as it was daylight. The
+redoubts, which were defended by Maison, were taken and retaken seven
+times. Seven times did Wittgenstein believe himself the conqueror; Saint
+Cyr finally wore him out. Legrand and Maison remained in possession of
+their entrenchments, which were bathed with the blood of the Russians.
+
+But while on the right the victory appeared completely gained, on the
+left every thing seemed to be lost: the eagerness of the Swiss and the
+Croats was the cause of this reverse. Their rivalry had up to that
+period wanted an opportunity of showing itself. From a too great anxiety
+to show themselves worthy of belonging to the grand army, they acted
+rashly. Having been placed carelessly in front of their position, in
+order to draw on Yacthwil, they had, instead of abandoning the ground
+which had been prepared for his destruction, rushed forward to meet his
+masses, and were overwhelmed by numbers. The French artillery, being
+prevented from firing on this medley, became useless, and our allies
+were driven back into Polotsk.
+
+It was then that the batteries on the left bank of the Duena discovered,
+and were able to commence firing on the enemy, but instead of arresting,
+they only quickened his march. The Russians under Yacthwil, in order to
+avoid that fire, threw themselves with great rapidity into the ravine of
+the Polota, by which they were about to penetrate into the town, when at
+last three cannon, which were hastily directed against the head of their
+column, and a last effort of the Swiss, succeeded in driving them back.
+At five o'clock the battle terminated; the Russians retreated on all
+sides into their woods, and fourteen thousand men had beat fifty
+thousand.
+
+The night which followed was perfectly tranquil, even to Saint Cyr. His
+cavalry were deceived, and brought him wrong intelligence; they assured
+him that no enemy had passed the Duena either above or below his
+position: this was incorrect, as Steingell and thirteen thousand
+Russians had crossed the river at Drissa, and gone up the left bank,
+with the object of taking the marshal in the rear, and shutting him up
+in Polotsk, between them, the Duena, and Wittgenstein.
+
+The morning of the 19th exhibited the latter under arms, and making
+every disposition for an attack, the signal for which he appeared to be
+afraid of giving. Saint Cyr, however, was not to be deceived by these
+appearances; he was satisfied that it was not his feeble entrenchments
+which kept back an enterprising and numerous enemy, but that he was
+doubtless waiting the effect of some manoeuvre, the signal of an
+important co-operation, which could only be effected in his rear.
+
+In fact, about ten o'clock in the morning, an aide-de-camp came in full
+gallop from the other side of the river, with the intelligence, that
+another hostile army, that of Steingell, was marching rapidly along the
+Lithuanian side of the river, and that it had defeated the French
+cavalry. He required immediate assistance, without which this fresh army
+would speedily get in the rear of the camp and surround it. The news of
+this engagement soon reached the army of Wittgenstein, where it excited
+the greatest joy, while it carried dismay into the French camp. Their
+position became dreadfully critical. Let any one figure to himself these
+brave fellows, hemmed in, against a wooden town, by a force treble their
+number, with a great river behind them, and no other means of retreat
+but a bridge, the passage from which was threatened by another army.
+
+It was in vain that Saint Cyr then weakened his force by three
+regiments, which he dispatched to the other side to meet Steingell, and
+whose march he contrived to conceal from Wittgenstein's observation.
+Every moment the noise of the former's artillery was approaching nearer
+and nearer to Polotsk. The batteries, which from the left side protected
+the French camp, were now turned round, ready to fire upon this new
+enemy. At sight of this, loud shouts of joy burst out from the whole of
+Wittgenstein's line; but that officer still remained immoveable. To make
+him begin it was not merely necessary that he should _hear_ Steingell;
+he seemed absolutely determined to _see_ him make his appearance.
+
+Meanwhile, all Saint Cyr's generals, in consternation, were surrounding
+him, and urging him to order a retreat, which would soon become
+impossible. Saint Cyr refused; convinced that the 50,000 Russians before
+him under arms, and on the tiptoe of expectation, only waited for his
+first retrograde movement to dart upon him, he remained immoveable,
+availing himself of their unaccountable inaction, and still flattering
+himself that night would cover Polotsk with its shades before Steingell
+could make his appearance.
+
+He has since confessed, that never in his life was his mind in such a
+state of agitation. A thousand times, in the course of these three hours
+of suspense, he was seen looking at his watch and at the sun; as if he
+could hasten his setting.
+
+At last, when Steingell was within half an hour's march of Polotsk, when
+he had only to make a few efforts to appear in the plain, to reach the
+bridge of the town, and shut out Saint Cyr from the only outlet by which
+he could escape from Wittgenstein, he halted. Soon after, a thick fog,
+which the French looked upon as an interposition from heaven, preceded
+the approach of night, and shut out the three armies from the sight of
+each other.
+
+Saint Cyr only waited for that moment. His numerous artillery was
+already silently crossing the river, his divisions were about to follow
+it and conceal their retreat, when the soldiers of Legrand, either from
+habit, or regret at abandoning their camp entire to the enemy, set fire
+to it; the other two divisions, fancying that this was a signal agreed
+upon, followed their example, and in an instant the whole line was in a
+blaze.
+
+This fire disclosed their movement; the whole of Wittgenstein's
+batteries immediately began their fire; his columns rushed forward, his
+shells set fire to the town; the French troops were obliged to contend
+every inch of ground with the flames, the fire throwing light on the
+engagement the same as broad daylight. The retreat, however, was
+effected in good order; on both sides the loss was great; but it was not
+until three o'clock in the morning of the 20th of October that the
+Russian eagle regained possession of Polotsk.
+
+As good luck would have it, Steingell slept soundly at the noise of this
+battle, although he might have heard even the shouts of the Russian
+militia. He seconded the attack of Wittgenstein during that night as
+little as Wittgenstein had seconded his the day before. It was not until
+Wittgenstein had finished on the right side, that the bridge of Polotsk
+was broken down, and Saint Cyr, with all his force on the left bank, and
+then fully able to cope with Steingell, that the latter began to put
+himself in motion. But De Wrede, with 6,000 French, surprised him in his
+first movement, beat him back several leagues into the woods which he
+had quitted, and took or killed 2,000 of his men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+Those three days were days of glory. Wittgenstein was repulsed,
+Steingell defeated, and ten thousand Russians, with six generals, killed
+or put _hors du combat_. But Saint Cyr was wounded, the offensive was
+lost, confidence, joy, and plenty reigned in the enemy's corps,
+despondency and scarcity in ours; it was necessary to fall back. The
+army required a commander: De Wrede aspired to be so, but the French
+generals refused even to enter into concert with that officer, from a
+knowledge of his character, and a belief that it was impossible to go on
+harmoniously with him. Amidst their jarring pretensions Saint Cyr,
+although wounded, was obliged to retain the command of these two corps.
+
+Immediately after, he gave orders to retreat on Smoliantzy by all the
+roads leading to that place. He himself kept in the centre, regulating
+the march of the different columns by that of each other. This was a
+mode of retreat completely contrary to that which Napoleon had just
+followed.
+
+Saint Cyr's object was to find more provisions, to march with greater
+freedom, and more concert; in short, to avoid that confusion which is so
+common in the march of numerous columns, when troops, artillery, and
+baggage are crowded together on one road. He completely succeeded. Ten
+thousand French, Swiss, and Croats, with fifty thousand Russians at
+their heels, retired slowly in four columns, without allowing themselves
+to be broken, and kept Wittgenstein and Steingell from advancing more
+than three marches in eight days.
+
+By retreating in this manner towards the south, they covered the right
+flank of the road from Orcha to Borizof, by which the Emperor was
+returning from Moscow. One column only, that of the left, met with a
+check. It was that of De Wrede and his fifteen hundred Bavarians,
+augmented with a brigade of French cavalry, which he retained with him
+in spite of Saint Cyr's orders. He marched at his own pleasure; his
+wounded pride would no longer suffer him to yield obedience to others;
+but it cost him the whole of his baggage. Afterwards, under pretence of
+better serving the common cause by covering the line of operations from
+Wilna to Witepsk, which the Emperor had abandoned, he separated himself
+from the second corps, retreated by Klubokoe on Vileika, and made
+himself useless.
+
+The discontent of De Wrede had existed ever since the 19th of August. He
+fancied that he had contributed so great a part to the victory of the
+18th, that he thought it was made too little of in the report of the
+following day. This feeling had rankled in his mind, and was increased
+by repeated complaints, and by the instigation of a brother, who it was
+said was serving in the Austrian army. Added to this, it was believed,
+that at the last period of the retreat, the Saxon general, Thielmann,
+had drawn him into his plans for the liberation of Germany.
+
+This defection was scarcely felt at the time. The Duke of Belluno, with
+twenty-five thousand men, hastened from Smolensk, and on the 31st of
+October effected a junction with Saint Cyr in front of Smoliantzy, at
+the very moment that Wittgenstein, ignorant of this junction, and
+relying on his superior strength, had crossed the Lukolmlia, imprudently
+engaged himself in defiles at his rear, and attacked our out-posts. It
+only required a simultaneous effort of the two French corps to have
+destroyed his army completely. The generals and soldiers of the second
+corps were burning with ardour. But at the moment that victory was in
+their hearts, and when, believing it before their eyes, they were
+waiting for the signal to engage, Victor gave orders to retreat.
+
+Whether this prudence, which was then considered unseasonable, arose
+from his unacquaintance with a country, which he then saw for the first
+time, or from his distrust of soldiers whom he had not yet tried, we
+know not. It is possible that he did not feel himself justified in
+risking a battle, the loss of which would certainly have involved that
+of the grand army and its leader.
+
+After falling back behind the Lukolmlia, and keeping on the defensive
+the whole of the day, he took advantage of the night to gain Sienno. The
+Russian general then became sensible of the peril of his position; it
+was so critical, that he only took advantage of our retrograde movement,
+and the discouragement which it occasioned, to effect his retreat.
+
+The officers who gave us these details added, that ever since that time
+Wittgenstein seemed to think of nothing but retaking Witepsk, and
+keeping on the defensive. He probably thought it too rash to turn the
+Berezina at its sources, in order to join Tchitchakof; for a vague
+rumour had already reached us of the march of this army from the south
+upon Minsk and Borizof, and of the defection of Schwartzenberg.
+
+It was at Mikalewska, on the 6th of November, that unfortunate day when
+he had just received information of Mallet's conspiracy, that Napoleon
+was informed of the junction of the second and the ninth corps, and of
+the unfortunate engagement at Czazniki. Irritated at the intelligence,
+he sent orders to the Duke of Belluno immediately to drive Wittgenstein
+behind the Duena, as the safety of the army depended upon it. He did not
+conceal from the marshal that he had arrived at Smolensk with an army
+harassed to death and his cavalry entirely dismounted.
+
+Thus, therefore, the days of good fortune were passed, and from all
+quarters nothing but disastrous intelligence arrived. On one side
+Polotsk, the Duena, and Witepsk lost, and Wittgenstein already within
+four days march of Borizof; on the other, towards Elnia, Baraguay
+d'Hilliers defeated. That general had allowed the enemy to cut off the
+brigade of Augereau, and to take the magazines, and the Elnia road, by
+the possession of which Kutusoff was now enabled to anticipate us at
+Krasnoe, as he had done at Wiazma.
+
+At the same time, at one hundred leagues in advance of us,
+Schwartzenberg informed the Emperor, that he was covering Warsaw; in
+other words, that he had uncovered Minsk and Borizof, the magazine, and
+the retreat of the grand army, and that probably, the Emperor of Austria
+would deliver up his son-in-law to Russia.
+
+At the same moment, in our rear and our centre, Prince Eugene was
+conquered by the Wop; the draught-horses which had been waiting for us
+at Smolensk were devoured by the soldiers; those of Mortier carried off
+in a forage; the cattle at Krasnoe captured; the army exhibiting
+frightful symptoms of disease; and at Paris the period of conspiracies
+appeared to have returned; in short, every thing seemed to combine to
+overwhelm Napoleon.
+
+The daily reports which he received of the state of each corps of the
+army were like so many bills of mortality; in these he saw his army,
+which had conquered Moscow, reduced from an hundred and eighty thousand,
+to thirty thousand men, still capable of fighting. To this mass of
+calamities, he could only oppose an inert resistance, an impassable
+firmness, and an unshaken attitude. His countenance remained the same;
+he changed none of his habits, nothing in the form of his orders; in
+reading them, you would have supposed that he had still several armies
+under his command. He did not even expedite his march. Irritated only at
+the prudence of Marshal Victor, he repeated his orders to him to attack
+Wittgenstein, and thereby remove the danger which menaced his retreat.
+As to Baraguay d'Hilliers, whom an officer had just accused, he had him
+brought before him, and sent him off to Berlin, where that general,
+overwhelmed by the fatigues of the retreat, and sinking under the weight
+of chagrin, died before he was able to make his defence.
+
+The unshaken firmness which the Emperor preserved was the only attitude
+which became so great a spirit, and so irreparable a misfortune. But
+what appears surprising, is, that he allowed fortune to strip him of
+every thing, rather than sacrifice a part to save the rest. It was at
+first without his orders that the commanders of corps burnt the baggage
+and destroyed their artillery; he only allowed it to be done. If he
+afterwards gave similar instructions, they were absolutely extorted from
+him; he seemed as if he was tenacious, above every thing, that no action
+of his should confess his defeat; either from a feeling that he thus
+respected his misfortunes, and by his inflexibility set the example of
+inflexible courage to those around him, or from that proud feeling of
+men who have been long fortunate, which precipitates their downfall.
+
+Smolensk, however, which was twice fatal to the army, was a place of
+rest for some. During the respite which this afforded to their
+sufferings, these were asking each other, "how it happened, that at
+Moscow every thing had been forgotten; why there was so much useless
+baggage; why so many soldiers had already died of hunger and cold under
+the weight of their knapsacks, which were loaded with gold, instead of
+food and raiment; and, above all, if three and thirty days rest had not
+allowed sufficient time to make snow shoes for the artillery, cavalry,
+and draught-horses, which would have made their march more sure and
+rapid?
+
+"If that had been done, we should not have lost our best men at Wiazma,
+at the Wop, at the Dnieper, and along the whole road; in short, even
+now, Kutusoff, Wittgenstein, and perhaps Tchitchakof would not have had
+time to prepare more fatal days for us.
+
+"But why, in the absence of orders from Napoleon, had not that
+precaution been taken by the commanders, all of them kings, princes, and
+marshals? Had not the winter in Russia been foreseen? Was it that
+Napoleon, accustomed to the active intelligence of his soldiers, had
+reckoned too much upon their foresight? Had the recollection of the
+campaign in Poland, during a winter as mild as that of our own climate,
+deceived him, as well as an unclouded sun, whose continuance, during the
+whole of the month of October, had astonished even the Russians
+themselves? What spirit of infatuation is it that has seized the whole
+army as well as its leader? What has every one been reckoning upon? as
+even supposing that at Moscow the hope of peace had dazzled us all, it
+was always necessary to return, and nothing had been prepared, even for
+a pacific journey homeward!"
+
+The greater number could not account for this general infatuation,
+otherwise than by their own carelessness, and because in armies, as well
+as in despotic governments, it is the office of one to think for all; in
+this case that _one_ was alone regarded as responsible, and misfortune,
+which authorizes distrust, led every one to condemn him. It had been
+already remarked, that in this important fault, this forgetfulness, so
+improbable in an active genius during so long and unoccupied a
+residence, there was something of that spirit of error, "the fatal
+forerunner of the fall of kings!"
+
+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 Doukhowtchina. "Then it was not the necessity of waiting
+for the army of Italy which detained him! To what then must we attribute
+this delay, when famine, disease and the winter, and three hostile
+armies were gradually surrounding us?
+
+"While we had been penetrating to the heart of the Russian Colossus, had
+not his arms remained advanced and extended towards the Baltic and the
+Black Sea? was he likely to leave them motionless now, when, instead of
+striking him mortal blows, we had been struck ourselves? Was not the
+fatal moment arrived when this Colossus was about to surround us with
+his threatening arms? Could we imagine that we had either tied them up,
+or paralysed them, by opposing to them the Austrians in the south, and
+the Prussians in the north? Was it not rather a method of rendering the
+Poles and the French, who were mixed with these dangerous allies,
+entirely useless?
+
+"But without going far in search of causes of uneasiness, was the
+Emperor ignorant of the joy of the Russians, when three months before he
+stopped to attack Smolensk, instead of marching to the right to Elnia,
+where he would have cut off the enemy's army from a retreat upon their
+capital? Now that the war has returned back to the same spots, will the
+Russians, whose movements are much more free than ours were then,
+imitate our error? Will they keep in our rear when they can so easily
+place themselves before us, on the line of our retreat?
+
+"Is Napoleon unwilling to allow that Kutusoff's attack may be bolder and
+more skilful than his own had been? Are the circumstances still the
+same? Was not every thing favourable to the Russians during their
+retreat, and, on the contrary, has not every thing been unfavourable to
+us, in our retreat? Will not the cutting off Augereau and his brigade
+upon that road open his eyes? What business had we in the burnt and
+ravaged Smolensk, but to take a supply of provisions and proceed rapidly
+onwards?
+
+"But the Emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches five
+days from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the
+appearance of a slow and glorious retreat! This was the reason of his
+ordering the destruction of the towers which surround Smolensk, from the
+wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its walls!
+as if there was any idea of our returning to a place, which we did not
+even know whether we should ever get out of.
+
+"Will any one believe that he wished to give time to the artillerymen to
+shoe their horses against the ice? as if he could expect any labour from
+workmen emaciated with hunger and long marches; from poor wretches who
+hardly found, the day long enough to procure provisions and dress them,
+whose forges were thrown away or damaged, and who besides wanted the
+indispensable materials for a labour so considerable.
+
+"But perhaps he wished to allow himself time to drive on before him, out
+of danger and clear of the ranks, the troublesome crowd of soldiers, who
+had become useless, to rally the better sort, and to re-organize the
+army? as if it were possible to convey any orders whatever to men so
+scattered about, or to rally them, without lodgings, or distribution of
+provisions, to _bivouacs_; in short, to think of re-organization for
+corps of dying soldiers, all of whom had no longer any thing to adhere
+to, and whom the least touch would dissolve."
+
+Such, around Napoleon, were the conversations of his officers; or rather
+their secret reflexions: for their devotion to him remained entire for
+two whole years longer, in the midst of the greatest calamities, and of
+the general revolt of nations.
+
+The Emperor, however, made an effort which was not altogether fruitless;
+namely, to rally, under one commander, all that remained of the cavalry:
+of thirty-seven thousand cavalry which were present at the passage of
+the Niemen, there were now only eighteen hundred left on horseback. He
+gave the command of them to Latour-Maubourg; whether from the esteem
+felt for him, or from fatigue, no one objected to it.
+
+As to Latour-Maubourg, he received the honour or the charge without
+expressing either pleasure or regret. He was a character of peculiar
+stamp; always ready without forwardness, calm and active, remarkable for
+his extreme purity of morals, simple and unostentatious; in other
+respects, unaffected and sincere in his relations with others, and
+attaching the idea of glory only to actions, and not to words. He always
+marched with the same order and moderation in the midst of the most
+immoderate disorder; and yet, what does honour to the age, he attained
+to the highest distinctions as quickly and as rapidly as any who could
+be named.
+
+This feeble re-organization, the distribution of a part of the
+provisions, the plunder of the rest, the repose which the Emperor and
+his guard were enabled to take, the destruction of part of the artillery
+and baggage, and finally, the expedition of a number of orders, were
+nearly all the benefits which were derived from that fatal delay. In
+other respects, all the misfortunes happened which had been foreseen. A
+few hundred men were only rallied for a moment. The explosion of the
+mines scarcely blew up the outside of some of the walls, and was only of
+use on the last day, in driving out of the town the stragglers whom we
+had been unable to set in motion.
+
+The soldiers who had totally lost heart, the women, and several thousand
+sick and wounded, were here abandoned. This was when Augereau's disaster
+near Elnia made it but too evident that Kutusoff, now become the
+pursuer, did not confine himself to the high road; that he was marching
+from Wiazma by Elnia, direct upon Krasnoe; finally, when we ought to
+have foreseen that we should be obliged to cut our way through the
+Russian army, it was only on the 14th of November that the grand army
+(or rather thirty-six thousand troops) commenced its march.
+
+The old and young guard had not then more than from nine to ten thousand
+infantry, and two thousand cavalry; Davoust and the first corps, from
+eight to nine thousand; Ney and the third corps, five to six thousand;
+Prince Eugene and the army of Italy, five thousand; Poniatowski, eight
+hundred; Junot and the Westphalians, seven hundred; Latour-Maubourg and
+the rest of the cavalry, fifteen hundred; there might also be about one
+thousand light horse, and five hundred dismounted cavalry, whom we had
+succeeded in collecting together.
+
+This army had left Moscow one hundred thousand strong; in
+five-and-twenty days it had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men. The
+artillery had already lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon, and
+yet these feeble remains were always divided into eight armies, which
+were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers, and a long train
+of cannon and baggage.
+
+Whether it was this incumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a
+mistaken sense of security, which led the Emperor to order a day's
+interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; most
+probably it was the latter. Be that as it may, he, Eugene, Davoust, and
+Ney only quitted Smolensk in succession; Ney was not to leave it till
+the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery saw the trunnions
+of the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the ammunition, to
+drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the towers which
+surrounded the city.
+
+Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues distance from
+thence, and preparing to cut in pieces successively those remnants of
+corps thus extended and parcelled out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+It was on the 14th of November, about five in the morning, that the
+imperial column at last quitted Smolensk. Its march was still firm, but
+gloomy and silent as night, and mute and discoloured as the aspect of
+the country through which it was advancing.
+
+This silence was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied
+to the poor horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met
+with ravines; and when upon these icy declivities, men, horses, and
+artillery were rolling in obscurity, one over the other. The first day
+they advanced five leagues. The artillery of the guard took twenty-two
+hours to get over that ground.
+
+Nevertheless, this first column arrived, without any great loss of men,
+at Korythinia, which Junot had passed with his Westphalian corps, now
+reduced to seven hundred men. A vanguard had pushed on as far as
+Krasnoe. The wounded and disbanded men were on the point of reaching
+Liady. Korythinia is five leagues from Smolensk; Krasnoe five leagues
+from Korythinia; Liady four leagues from Krasnoe. The Boristhenes flows
+at two leagues on the right of the high road from Korythinia to Krasnoe.
+
+Near Korythinia another road, that from Elnia to Krasnoe, runs close to
+the great road. That very day Kutusoff advanced upon that road with
+ninety thousand men, which completely covered it; his march was parallel
+with that of Napoleon, whom he soon outstripped; on the cross-roads he
+sent forward several vanguards to intercept our retreat.
+
+One of these, said to be commanded by Ostermann, made its appearance at
+Korythinia at the same time with Napoleon, and was driven back.
+
+A second, consisting of twenty thousand men, and commanded by
+Miloradowitch, took a position three leagues in advance of us, towards
+Merlino and Nikoulina, behind a ravine which skirts the left side of the
+great road; and there, lying in ambush on the flank of our retreat, it
+awaited our passage.
+
+At the same time a third reached Krasnoe, which it surprised during the
+night, but was driven out by Sebastiani, who had just arrived there.
+
+Finally, a fourth, pushed still more in advance, got between Krasnoe and
+Liady, and carried off, upon the high road, several generals and other
+officers who were marching singly.
+
+Kutusoff, at the same time, with the bulk of his army, advanced, and
+took a position in the rear of these vanguards, and within reach of them
+all, and felicitated himself on the success of his manoeuvres, which
+would have inevitably failed, owing to his tardiness, had it not been
+for our want of foresight; for this was a contest of errors, in which
+ours being the greatest, we could have no thought of escaping total
+destruction. Having made these dispositions, the Russian commander must
+have believed that the French army was entirely in his power; but this
+belief saved us. Kutusoff was wanting to himself at the moment of
+action; his old age executed only half and badly the plans which it had
+combined wisely.
+
+During the time that all these masses were arranging themselves round
+Napoleon, he remained perfectly tranquil in a miserable hut, the only
+one left standing in Korythinia, apparently quite unconscious of all
+these movements of troops, artillery, and cavalry, which were
+surrounding him in all directions; at least he sent no orders to the
+three corps which had halted at Smolensk to expedite their march, and he
+himself waited for daylight to proceed.
+
+His column was advancing, without precaution, preceded by a crowd of
+stragglers, all eager to reach Krasnoe, when at two leagues from that
+place, a row of Cossacks, placed from the heights on our left all across
+the great road, appeared before them. Seized with astonishment, these
+stragglers halted; they had looked for nothing of the kind, and at first
+were inclined to believe that relentless fate had traced upon the snow
+between them and Europe, that long, black, and motionless line as the
+fatal term assigned to their hopes.
+
+Some of them, stupified and rendered insensible by the misery of their
+situation, with their eyes mentally fixed on home, and pursuing
+mechanically and obstinately that direction, would listen to no warning,
+and were about to surrender; the others collected together, and on both
+sides there was a pause, in order to consider each other's force.
+Several officers, who then came up, put these disbanded soldiers in some
+degree of order; seven or eight riflemen, whom they sent forward, were
+sufficient to break through that threatening curtain.
+
+The French were smiling at the audacity of this idle demonstration, when
+all at once, from the heights on their left, an enemy's battery began
+firing. Its bullets crossed the road; at the same time thirty squadrons
+showed themselves on the same side, threatening the Westphalian corps
+which was advancing, the commander of which was so confused, that he
+made no disposition to meet their attack.
+
+A wounded officer, unknown to these Germans, and who was there by mere
+chance, called out to them with an indignant voice, and immediately
+assumed their command. The men obeyed him as they would their own
+leader. In this case of pressing danger the differences of convention
+disappeared. The man really superior having shown himself, acted as a
+rallying point to the crowd, who grouped themselves around him, while
+the general-in-chief remained mute and confounded, receiving with
+docility the impulse the other had given, and acknowledging his
+superiority, which, after the danger was over, he disputed, but of which
+he did not, as too often happens, seek to revenge himself.
+
+This wounded officer was Excelmans! In this action he was every thing,
+general, officer, soldier, even an artilleryman, for he actually laid
+hold of a cannon that had been abandoned, loaded and pointed it, and
+made it once more be of use against our enemies. As to the commander of
+the Westphalians, after this campaign, his premature and melancholy end
+makes us presume that excessive fatigue and the consequences of some
+severe wounds had already affected him mortally.
+
+On seeing this leading column marching in such good order, the enemy
+confined itself to attacking it with their bullets, which it despised,
+and soon left behind it. When it came to the turn of the grenadiers of
+the old guard to pass through this fire, they closed their ranks around
+Napoleon like a moveable fortress, proud of having to protect him. Their
+band of music expressed this pride. When the danger was greatest, they
+played the well-known air, "_Ou peut-on etre mieux qu'au sein de sa
+famille!_" (Where can we be happier than in the bosom of our family!) But
+the Emperor, whom nothing escaped, stopped them with an exclamation,
+"Rather play, _Veillons au salut de l'Empire_!" (Let us watch for the
+safety of the empire!) words much better suited to his pre-occupation,
+and to the general situation.
+
+At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders
+to silence it, and in two hours after he reached Krasnoe. The sight of
+Sebastiani, and of the first grenadiers who preceded him, had been
+sufficient to drive away the enemy's infantry. Napoleon entered in a
+state of great anxiety, from not knowing what corps had been attacking
+him, and his cavalry being too weak to enable them to get him
+information, out of reach of the high road. He left Mortier and the
+young guard a league behind him, in this way stretching out from too
+great a distance a hand too feeble to assist his army, and determined to
+wait for it.
+
+The passage of his column had not been sanguinary, but it could not
+conquer the ground as it did the enemy; the road was hilly; at every
+eminence cannon were obliged to be left behind without being spiked, and
+baggage, which was plundered before it was abandoned. The Russians from
+their heights saw the whole interior of the army, its weaknesses, its
+deformities, its most shameful parts: in short, all that is generally
+concealed with the greatest care.
+
+Notwithstanding, it appeared as if Miloradowitch, from his elevated
+position, was satisfied with merely insulting the passage of the
+Emperor, and of that old guard which had been so long the terror of
+Europe. He did not dare to gather up its fragments until it had passed
+on; but then he became bold, concentrated his forces, and descending
+from the heights, took up a strong position with twenty thousand men,
+quite across the high road; by this movement he separated Eugene,
+Davoust, and Ney from the Emperor, and closed the road to Europe against
+these three leaders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+While he was making these preparations, Eugene was using all his efforts
+at Smolensk to collect his scattered troops; with great difficulty he
+tore them from the plunder of the magazines, and he did not succeed in
+rallying eight thousand men until late on the 15th of November. He was
+obliged to promise them supplies of provisions, and to show them the
+road to Lithuania, in order to induce them to renew their march. Night
+compelled him to halt at three leagues distance from Smolensk; the half
+of his soldiers had already left their ranks. Next morning he continued
+his march, with all that the cold of the night and of death had not
+fastened round their _bivouacs_.
+
+The noise of the cannon which they had heard the day before had ceased;
+the royal column was advancing with difficulty, adding its own fragments
+to those which it encountered. At its head, the viceroy and the chief of
+his staff, buried in their own melancholy reflections, gave the reins to
+their horses. Insensibly they left their troop behind them, without
+being sensible of it; for the road was strewed with stragglers and men
+marching at their pleasure, the idea of keeping whom in order had been
+abandoned.
+
+In this way they advanced to within two leagues of Krasnoe, but then a
+singular movement which was passing before them attracted their absent
+looks. Several of the disbanded soldiers had suddenly halted; those who
+followed as they came up, formed a group with them; others who had
+advanced farther fell back upon the first; they crowded together; a mass
+was soon formed. The viceroy surprised, then looked about him; he
+perceived that he had got the start of the main body of his army by an
+hour's march: that he had about him only fifteen hundred men of all
+ranks, of all nations, without organization, without leaders, without
+order, without arms ready or fit for an engagement, and that he was
+summoned to surrender.
+
+This summons was answered by a general cry of indignation! But the
+Russian flag of truce, who presented himself singly, insisted: "Napoleon
+and his guard," said he to them, "have been beaten; you are surrounded
+by twenty thousand Russians: you have no means of safety but in
+accepting honourable conditions, and these Miloradowitch proposes to
+you."
+
+At these words, Guyon, one of the generals whose soldiers were either
+all dead or dispersed, rushed from the crowd, and with a loud voice
+called out, "Return immediately to whence you came, and tell him who
+sent you, that if he has twenty thousand men, we have eighty thousand!"
+The Russian, confounded, immediately retired.
+
+All this happened in the twinkling of an eye; in a moment after the
+hills on the left of the road were spouting out lightning and whirlwinds
+of smoke; showers of shells and grape-shot swept the high road, and
+threatening advancing columns showed their bayonets.
+
+The viceroy hesitated for a moment; it grieved him to leave that
+unfortunate troop, but at last, leaving his chief of the staff with
+them, he returned back to his divisions, in order to bring them forward
+to the combat, to make them get beyond the obstacle before it became
+insurmountable, or to perish; for with the pride derived from a crown
+and so many victories, it was not to be expected that he could ever
+admit the thought of surrender.
+
+Meanwhile, Guilleminot summoned about him the officers who, in this
+crowd, had mingled with the soldiers. Several generals, colonels, and a
+great number of officers immediately started forth and surrounded him;
+they concerted together, and accepting him for their leader, they
+distributed into platoons all the men who had hitherto formed but one
+mass, and whom in that state they had found it impossible to excite.
+
+This organization was made under a sharp fire. Several superior officers
+went and placed themselves proudly in the ranks, and became once more
+common soldiers. From a different species of pride, some marines of the
+guard insisted on being commanded by one of their own officers, while
+each of the other platoons was commanded by a general. Hitherto the
+Emperor himself had been their colonel; now they were on the point of
+perishing they maintained their privilege, which nothing could make them
+forget, and which was respected accordingly.
+
+These brave men, in this order, proceeded on their march to Krasnoe: and
+they had already got beyond the batteries of Miloradowitch, when the
+latter, rushing with his columns upon their flanks, hemmed them in so
+closely, as to compel them to turn about, and seek a position in which
+they could defend themselves. To the eternal glory of these warriors it
+should be told, that these fifteen hundred French and Italians, one to
+ten, with nothing in their favour but a determined countenance and very
+few fire-arms in a state fit for use, kept their enemies at a respectful
+distance upwards of an hour.
+
+But as there was still no appearance of the viceroy and the rest of his
+divisions, a longer resistance was evidently impossible. They were again
+and again summoned to lay down their arms. During these short pauses
+they heard the cannon rolling at a distance in their front and in their
+rear. Thus, therefore, "the whole army was attacked at once, and from
+Smolensk to Krasnoe it was but one engagement! If we wanted assistance,
+there could be none expected by waiting for it; we must go and look for
+it; but on which side? At Krasnoe it was impossible; we were too far
+from it; there was every reason to believe that our troops were beaten
+there. It would besides become matter of necessity for us to retreat;
+and we were too near the Russians under Miloradowitch, who were calling
+to us from their ranks to lay down our arms, to venture to turn our
+backs upon them. It would therefore be a much better plan, as our faces
+were now turned towards Smolensk, and as Prince Eugene was on that side,
+to form ourselves into one compact mass, keep all its movements well
+connected, and rushing headlong, to re-enter Russia by cutting our way
+through these Russians, and rejoin the viceroy; then to return together,
+to overthrow Miloradowitch, and at last reach Krasnoe."
+
+To this proposition of their leader, there was a loud and unanimous cry
+of assent. Instantly the column formed into a mass, and rushed into the
+midst of ten thousand hostile muskets and cannon. The Russians, at first
+seized with astonishment, opened their ranks and allowed this handful of
+warriors, almost disarmed, to advance into the middle of them. Then,
+when they comprehended their purpose, either from pity or admiration,
+the enemy's battalions, which lined both sides of the road, called out
+to our men to halt; they entreated and conjured them to surrender; but
+the only answer they received was a more determined march, a stern
+silence, and the point of the bayonet. The whole of the enemy's fire was
+then poured upon them at once, at the distance of a few yards, and the
+half of this heroic column was stretched wounded or lifeless on the
+ground.
+
+The remainder proceeded without a single man quitting the body of his
+troop, which no Russian was bold enough to venture near. Few of these
+unfortunate men again saw the viceroy and their advancing divisions.
+Then only they separated; they ran and threw themselves into these
+feeble ranks, which were opened to receive and protect them.
+
+For more than an hour the Russian cannon had been thinning them. While
+one half of their forces had pursued Guilleminot and compelled him to
+retreat, Miloradowitch, with the other half, had stopped Prince Eugene.
+His right rested on a wood which was protected by heights entirely
+covered with cannon; his left touched the great road, but more in the
+rear. This disposition dictated that of Eugene. The royal column, by
+degrees, as it came up, deployed on the right of the road, its right
+more forward than its left. The viceroy thus placed obliquely between
+him and the enemy the great road, the possession of which was the
+subject of contest. Each of the two armies occupied it by its left.
+
+The Russians, placed in a position so offensive, kept entirely on the
+defensive; their bullets alone attacked Eugene. A cannonade was kept up
+on both sides, on theirs most destructive, on ours almost totally
+ineffective. Tired out with this firing, Eugene formed his resolution;
+he called the 14th French division, drew it up on the left of the great
+road, pointed out to it the woody height on which the enemy rested, and
+which formed his principal strength; _that_ was the decisive point, the
+centre of the action, and to make the rest fall, _that_ must be carried.
+He did not expect it would; but that effort would draw the attention and
+the strength of the enemy on that side, the right of the great road
+would remain free, and he would endeavour to take proper advantage of
+it.
+
+Three hundred soldiers, formed into three troops, were all that could be
+found willing to mount to this assault. These devoted men advanced
+resolutely against hostile thousands in a formidable position. A battery
+of the Italian guard advanced to protect them, but the Russian batteries
+immediately demolished it, and their cavalry took possession of it.
+
+In spite of the grape-shot which was mowing them rapidly down, the three
+hundred French kept moving on, and they had actually reached the enemy's
+position, when, suddenly from two sides of the wood two masses of
+cavalry rushed forth, bore down upon, overwhelmed and massacred them.
+Not one escaped; and with them perished all remains of discipline and
+courage in their division.
+
+It was then that General Guilleminot again made his appearance. That in
+a position so critical, Prince Eugene, with four thousand enfeebled
+troops, the remnant of forty-two thousand and upwards, should not have
+despaired, that he should still have exhibited a bold countenance, may
+be conceived, from the known character of that commander; but that the
+sight of our disaster and the ardour of victory should not have urged
+the Russians to more than indecisive efforts, and that they should have
+allowed the night to put an end to the battle, is with us, to this day,
+matter of complete astonishment. Victory was so new to them, that even
+when they held it in their hands, they knew not how to profit by it;
+they delayed its completion until the next day.
+
+The viceroy saw that the greater part of the Russians, attracted by his
+demonstrations, had collected on the left of the road, and he only
+waited until night, the sure ally of the weakest, had chained all their
+movements. Then it was, that leaving his fires burning on that side, to
+deceive the enemy, he quitted it, and marching entirely across the
+fields, he turned, and silently got beyond the left of Miloradowitch's
+position, while that general, too certain of his victory, was dreaming
+of the glory of receiving, next morning, the sword of the son of
+Napoleon.
+
+In the midst of this perilous march, there was an awful moment. At the
+most critical instant, when these soldiers, the survivors of so many
+battles, were stealing along the side of the Russian army, holding their
+breath and the noise of their steps; when their all depended on a look
+or a cry of alarm; the moon all at once coming out of a thick cloud
+appeared to light their movements. At the same moment a Russian sentinel
+called out to them to halt, and demanded who they were? They gave
+themselves up for lost! but Klisky, a Pole, ran up to this Russian, and
+speaking to him in his own language, said to him with the greatest
+composure, in a low tone of voice, "Be silent, fellow! don't you see
+that we belong to the corps of Ouwarof, and that we are going on a
+secret expedition?" The Russian, outwitted, held his tongue.
+
+But the Cossacks were galloping up every moment to the flanks of the
+column, as if to reconnoitre it, and then returned to the body of their
+troop. Their squadrons advanced several times as if they were about to
+charge; but they did no more, either from doubt as to what they saw, for
+they were still deceived, or from prudence, as it frequently halted, and
+presented a determined front to them.
+
+At last, after two hours most anxious march, they again reached the high
+road, and the viceroy was actually in Krasnoe on the 17th of November,
+when Miloradowitch, descending from his heights in order to seize him,
+found the field of battle occupied only by a few stragglers, whom no
+effort could induce the night before to quit their fires.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The Emperor on his side had waited for the viceroy during the whole of
+the preceding day. The noise of his engagement had irritated him. An
+effort to break through the enemy, in order to join him, had been
+ineffectually attempted; and when night came on without his making his
+appearance, the uneasiness of his adopted father was at the height.
+"Eugene and the army of Italy, and this long day of baffled expectation,
+had they then terminated together?" Only one hope remained to Napoleon;
+and that was, that the viceroy, driven back towards Smolensk, had there
+joined Davoust and Ney, and that the following day they would, with
+united forces, attempt a decisive effort.
+
+In his anxiety, the Emperor assembled the marshals who remained with
+him. These were Berthier, Bessieres, Mortier, and Lefebvre; these were
+saved; they had cleared the obstacle; they had only to continue their
+retreat through Lithuania, which was open to them; but would they
+abandon their companions in the midst of the Russian army? No,
+certainly; and they determined once more to enter Russia, either to
+deliver, or to perish with them.
+
+When this resolution was taken, Napoleon coolly prepared the
+dispositions to carry it into effect. He was not at all shaken by the
+great movements which the enemy were evidently making around him. He saw
+that Kutusoff was advancing in order to surround and take him prisoner
+in Krasnoe. The very night before, he had learned that Ojarowski, with a
+vanguard of Russian infantry, had got beyond him, and taken a position
+at Maliewo, in a village in the rear of his left. Irritated, instead of
+depressed, by misfortune, he called his aide-de-camp, Rapp, and
+exclaimed, "that he must set out immediately, and proceed during the
+night and the darkness to attack that body of infantry with the bayonet;
+that this was the first time of its exhibiting so much audacity, and
+that he was determined to make it repent it, in such a way, that it
+should never again dare to approach so near to his head-quarters." Then
+instantly recalling him, he continued, "But, no! let Roguet and his
+division go alone! As for thee, remain where thou art, I don't wish thee
+to be killed here, I shall have occasion for thee at Dantzic."
+
+Rapp, while he was carrying this order to Roguet, could not help feeling
+astonished, that his leader, surrounded by eighty thousand enemies, whom
+he was going to attack next day with nine thousand, should have so
+little doubt about his safety, as to be thinking of what he should have
+to do at Dantzic, a city from which he was separated by the winter, two
+other hostile armies, famine, and a hundred and eighty leagues.
+
+The nocturnal attack on Chirkowa and Maliewo was successful. Roguet
+formed his idea of the enemy's position by the direction of their fires;
+they occupied two villages, connected by a causeway, which was defended
+by a ravine. He disposed his troop into three columns of attack; those
+on the right and left were to advance silently, as close as possible to
+the enemy; then at the signal to charge, which he himself would give
+them from the centre, they were to rush into the midst of the enemy
+without firing a shot, and making use only of their bayonets.
+
+Immediately the two wings of the young guard commenced the action. While
+the Russians, taken by surprise, and not knowing on which side to defend
+themselves, were wavering from their right to their left, Roguet, with
+his column, rushed suddenly upon their centre and into the midst of
+their camp, into which he entered pell-mell with them. Thus divided and
+thrown into confusion, they had barely time to throw the best part of
+their great and small arms into a neighbouring lake, and to set fire to
+their tents, the flames arising from which, instead of saving them, only
+gave light to their destruction.
+
+This check stopped the movement of the Russian army for four-and-twenty
+hours, put it in the Emperor's power to remain at Krasnoe, and enabled
+Eugene to rejoin him during the following night. He was received by
+Napoleon with the greatest joy; but the Emperor's uneasiness respecting
+Davoust and Ney became shortly after proportionably greater.
+
+Around us the camp of the Russians presented a spectacle similar to what
+it had done at Vinkowo, Malo-Yaroslawetz, and Wiazma. Every evening,
+close to the general's tent, the relics of the Russian saints,
+surrounded by an immense number of wax tapers, were exposed to the
+adoration of the soldiers. While each of these was, according to custom,
+giving proofs of his devotion by an endless repetition of crossings and
+genuflections, the priests were addressing them with fanatical
+exhortations, which would appear barbarous and absurd to every civilized
+nation.
+
+In spite, however, of the great power of such means, of the number of
+the Russians, and of our weakness, Kutusoff, who was only at two
+leagues' distance from Miloradowitch, while the latter was beating
+Prince Eugene, remained immoveable. During the following night,
+Beningsen, urged on by the ardent Wilson, in vain attempted to animate
+the old Russian. Elevating the faults of his age into virtues, he
+applied the names of wisdom, humanity, and prudence, to his dilatoriness
+and strange circumspection; he was resolved to finish as he had begun.
+For if we may be allowed to compare small things with great, his renown
+had been established on a principle directly contrary to that of
+Napoleon, fortune having made the one, and the other having created his
+fortune.
+
+He made a boast of "advancing only by short marches; of allowing his
+soldiers to rest every third day; he would blush, and halt immediately,
+if they wanted bread or spirits for a single moment." Then, with great
+self-gratulation, he pretended that "all the way from Wiazma, he had
+been escorting the French army as his prisoners; chastising them
+whenever they wished to halt, or strike out of the high road; that it
+was useless to run any risks with captives; that the Cossacks, a
+vanguard, and an army of artillery, were quite sufficient to finish
+them, and make them pass successively under the yoke; and that in this
+plan, he was admirably seconded by Napoleon himself. Why should he seek
+to _purchase_ of Fortune what she was so generously giving him? Was not
+the term of Napoleon's destiny already irrevocably marked? it was in the
+marshes of the Berezina that this meteor would be extinguished, this
+colossus overthrown, in the midst of Wittgenstein, Tchitchakof, and
+himself, and in the presence of the assembled Russian armies. As for
+himself, he would have the glory of delivering him up to them,
+enfeebled, disarmed, and dying; and to him that glory was sufficient."
+
+To this discourse the English officer, still more active and eager,
+replied only by entreating the field-marshal "to leave his head-quarters
+only for a few moments, and advance upon the heights; there he would see
+that the last moment of Napoleon was already come. Would he allow him
+even to get beyond the frontiers of Russia proper, which loudly called
+for the sacrifice of this great victim? Nothing remained but to strike;
+let him only give the order, one charge would be sufficient, and in two
+hours the face of Europe would be entirely changed!"
+
+Then, gradually getting warmer at the coolness with which Kutusoff
+listened to him, Wilson, for the third time, threatened him with the
+general indignation. "Already, in his army, at the sight of the
+straggling, mutilated, and dying column, which was about to escape from
+him, he might hear the Cossacks exclaiming, what a shame it was to allow
+these skeletons to escape in this manner out of their tomb!" But
+Kutusoff, whom old age, that misfortune without hope, rendered
+indifferent, became angry at the attempts made to rouse him, and by a
+short and violent answer, shut the indignant Englishman's mouth.
+
+It is asserted that the report of a spy had represented to him Krasnoe
+as filled with an enormous mass of the imperial guard, and that the old
+marshal was afraid of compromising his reputation by attacking it. But
+the sight of our distress emboldened Beningsen; this chief of the staff
+prevailed upon Strogonof, Gallitzin, and Miloradowitch, with a force of
+more than fifty thousand Russians, and one hundred pieces of cannon, to
+venture to attack at daylight, in spite of Kutusoff, fourteen thousand
+famished, enfeebled, and half-frozen French and Italians.
+
+This was a danger, the imminence of which Napoleon fully comprehended.
+He might escape from it; daylight had not yet appeared. He was at
+liberty to avoid this fatal engagement; to gain Orcha and Borizof by
+rapid marches along with Eugene and his guard; there he could rally his
+forces with thirty thousand French under Victor and Oudinot, with
+Dombrowski, with Regnier, with Schwartzenberg, and with all his depots,
+and be might again, the following year, make his appearance as
+formidable as ever.
+
+On the 17th, before daylight, he issued his orders, armed himself, and
+going out on foot, at the head of his old guard, began his march. But it
+was not towards Poland, his ally, that it was directed, nor towards
+France, where he would be still received as the head of a rising
+dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on taking up his sword
+on this occasion, were "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is
+time that I should become the general." He turned back into the midst of
+eighty thousand enemies, plunged into the thickest of them, in order to
+draw all their efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favour of
+Davoust and Ney, and to tear them from a country, the gates of which had
+been closed upon them.
+
+Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on one side the Russian battalions
+and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right, and in our
+rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other, Napoleon with his six
+thousand guards advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to take his
+place in the middle of that terrible circle. At the same time Mortier, a
+few yards in front of his Emperor, displayed in the face of the whole
+Russian army, the five thousand men which still remained to him.
+
+Their object was to defend the right flank of the great road from
+Krasnoe to the great ravine in the direction of Stachowa. A battalion of
+_chasseurs_ of the old guard, formed in a square like a fortress, was
+planted close to the high road, and acted as a support to the left wing
+of our young soldiers. On their right, in the snowy plains which
+surrounded Krasnoe, the remains of the cavalry of the guard, a few
+cannon, and the four hundred cavalry of Latour-Maubourg (as, since they
+left Smolensk, the cold had killed or dispersed fourteen hundred of
+them) occupied the place of the battalions and batteries which the
+French army no longer possessed.
+
+The artillery of the Duke of Treviso was reinforced by a battery
+commanded by Drouot; one of those men who are endowed with the whole
+strength of virtue, who think that duty embraces every thing, and are
+capable of making the noblest sacrifices simply and without the least
+effort.
+
+Claparede remained at Krasnoe, where, with a few soldiers, he protected
+the wounded, the baggage, and the retreat. Prince Eugene continued his
+retreat towards Liady. His engagement of the preceding day and his night
+march had entirely broken up his corps; his divisions only retained
+sufficient unity to drag themselves along, and to perish, but not to
+fight.
+
+Meantime Roguet had been recalled to the field of battle from Maliewo.
+The enemy kept pushing columns across that village, and was extending
+more and more beyond our right in order to surround us. The battle then
+commenced. But what kind of battle? The Emperor had here no sudden
+illumination to trust to, no flashes of momentary inspiration, none of
+these great strokes so unforeseen from their boldness, which ravish
+fortune, extort a victory, and by which he had so often disconcerted,
+stunned, and crushed his enemies. All _their_ movements were now free,
+all _ours_ enchained, and this genius of attack was reduced to defend
+himself.
+
+Here therefore it became perfectly evident that renown is not a vain
+shadow, that she is real strength, and doubly powerful by the inflexible
+pride which she imparts to her favourites, and the timid precautions
+which she suggests to them who venture to attack her. The Russians had
+only to march forward without manoeuvring, even without firing: their
+mass was sufficient, they might have crushed Napoleon and his feeble
+troop: but they did not dare to come to close quarters with him. They
+were awed by the presence of the conqueror of Egypt and of Europe. The
+Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, an army of victories, seemed
+to rise between him and the whole of the Russians. We might almost fancy
+that, in the eyes of that submissive and superstitious people, a renown
+so extraordinary appeared like some thing supernatural; that they
+regarded it as beyond their reach; that they believed they could only
+attack and demolish it from a distance; and in short, that against that
+old guard, that living fortress, that column of granite, as it had been
+styled by its leader, human efforts were impotent, and that cannon alone
+could demolish it.
+
+These made wide and deep breaches in the ranks of Roguet and the young
+guard, but they killed without vanquishing. These young soldiers, one
+half of whom had never before been in an engagement, received the shock
+of death during three hours without retreating one step, without making
+a single movement to escape it, and without being able to return it,
+their artillery having been broken, and the Russians keeping beyond the
+reach of their musketry.
+
+But every instant strengthened the enemy and weakened Napoleon. The
+noise of the cannon as well as Claparede apprised him, that in the rear
+of Krasnoe and his army, Beningsen was proceeding to take possession of
+the road to Liady, and cut off his retreat. The east, the west, and the
+south were sparkling with the enemy's fires; one side only remained
+open, that of the north and the Dnieper, towards an eminence, at the
+foot of which were the high road and the Emperor. We fancied we saw the
+enemy covering this eminence with his cannon: in that situation they
+were just over Napoleon's head, and might have crushed him at a few
+yards' distance. He was apprised of his danger, cast his eyes for an
+instant upon it, and uttered merely these words, "Very well, let a
+battalion of my _chasseurs_ take possession of it!" Immediately
+afterwards, without paying farther attention to it, his whole looks and
+attention reverted to the perilous situation of Mortier.
+
+Then at last Davoust made his appearance, forcing his way through a
+swarm of Cossacks, whom he drove away by a precipitate march. At the
+sight of Krasnoe, this marshal's troops disbanded themselves, and ran
+across the fields to get beyond the right of the enemy's line, in the
+rear of which they had come up. Davoust and his generals could only
+rally them at Krasnoe.
+
+The first corps was thus preserved, but we learned at the same time,
+that our rear-guard could no longer defend itself at Krasnoe; that Ney
+was probably still at Smolensk, and that we must give up waiting for him
+any longer. Napoleon, however, still hesitated; he could not determine
+on making this great sacrifice.
+
+But at last, as all were likely to perish, his resolution was fixed. He
+called Mortier, and squeezing his hand sorrowfully, told him, "that he
+had not a moment to lose; that the enemy were overwhelming him in all
+directions; that Kutusoff might already reach Liady, perhaps Orcha, and
+the last winding of the Boristhenes before him; that he would therefore
+proceed thither rapidly with his old guard, in order to occupy that
+passage. Davoust would relieve Mortier; but both of them must endeavour
+to hold out in Krasnoe until night, after which they must come and
+rejoin him." Then with his heart full of Ney's misfortune, and of
+despair at abandoning him, he withdrew slowly from the field of battle,
+traversed Krasnoe, where he again halted, and then cleared his way to
+Liady.
+
+Mortier was anxious to obey, but at that moment the Dutch troops of the
+guard had lost, along with a third part of their number, an important
+post which they were defending, which the enemy immediately after
+covered with his artillery. Roguet, feeling the destructive effects of
+its fire, fancied he was able to extinguish it. A regiment which he sent
+against the Russian battery was repulsed; a second (the 1st of the
+_voltigeurs_) got into the middle of the Russians, and stood firm
+against two charges of their cavalry. It continued to advance, torn to
+pieces by their grape-shot, when a third charge overwhelmed it. Fifty
+soldiers and eleven officers were all of it that Roguet was able to
+preserve.
+
+That general had lost the half of his men. It was now two o'clock, and
+his unshaken fortitude still kept the Russians in astonishment, when at
+last, emboldened by the Emperor's departure, they began to press upon
+him so closely, that the young guard was nearly hemmed in, and very soon
+in a situation in which it could neither hold out, nor retreat.
+
+Fortunately, some platoons which Davoust had rallied, and the appearance
+of another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy's attention.
+Mortier availed himself of it. He gave orders to the three thousand men
+he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty
+thousand enemies. "Do you hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde, "the
+marshal orders ordinary time! Ordinary time, soldiers!" And this brave
+and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a
+shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as slowly from this field of
+carnage, as they would have done from a field of manoeuvre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoe between him and
+Beningsen, he was in safety. The communication between that town and
+Liady was only interrupted by the fire of the enemy's batteries, which
+flanked the left side of the great road. Colbert and Latour-Maubourg
+kept them in check upon their heights. In the course of this march a
+most singular accident occurred. A howitzer shell entered the body of a
+horse, burst there, and blew him to pieces without wounding his rider,
+who fell upon his legs, and went on.
+
+The Emperor, meanwhile, halted at Liady, four leagues from the field of
+battle. When night came on, he learned that Mortier, who he thought was
+in his rear, had got before him. Melancholy and uneasy, he sent for him,
+and with an agitated voice, said to him, "that he had certainly fought
+gloriously, and suffered greatly. But why had he placed his Emperor
+between him and the enemy? why had he exposed himself to be cut off?"
+
+The marshal had got the start of Napoleon without being aware of it. He
+exclaimed, "that he had at first left Davoust in Krasnoe, again
+endeavouring to rally his troops, and that he himself had halted, not
+far from that: but that the first corps, having been driven back upon
+him, had obliged him to retrograde. That besides, Kutusoff did not
+follow up his victory with vigour, and appeared to hang upon our flank
+with all his army with no other view than to feast his eyes with our
+distress, and gather up our fragments."
+
+Next day the march was continued with hesitation. The impatient
+stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of Napoleon; he
+was on foot, with a stick in his hand, walking with difficulty and
+repugnance, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to
+tear himself from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then passing,
+and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.
+
+In the evening he reached Dombrowna, a wooden town, with a population
+like Liady; a novel sight for an army, which had for three months seen
+nothing but ruins. We had at last emerged from old Russia and her
+deserts of snow and ashes, and entered into a friendly and inhabited
+country, whose language we understood. The weather just then became
+milder, a thaw had begun, and we received some provisions.
+
+Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and with some famine and bivouacs,
+all ceased at once; but it was too late. The Emperor saw that his army
+was destroyed; every moment the name of Ney escaped from his lips, with
+exclamations of grief. That night particularly he was heard groaning and
+exclaiming, "That the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to the heart,
+and yet that he could not succour them without fixing himself in some
+place: but where was it possible for him to rest, without ammunition,
+provisions, or artillery? He was no longer strong enough to halt; he
+must reach Minsk as quickly as possible."
+
+He had hardly spoken the words, when a Polish officer arrived with the
+news, that Minsk itself, his magazine, his retreat, his only hope, had
+just fallen into the hands of the Russians, Tchitchakof having entered
+it on the 16th. Napoleon, at first, was mute and overpowered at this
+last blow; but immediately afterwards, elevating himself in proportion
+to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now nothing to do,
+but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets."
+
+But in order to reach this new enemy, who had escaped from
+Schwartzenberg, or whom Schwartzenberg had perhaps allowed to pass, (for
+we knew nothing of the circumstances,) and to escape from Kutusoff and
+Wittgenstein, we must cross the Berezina at Borizof. With that view
+Napoleon (on the 19th of November, from Dombrowna) sent orders to
+Dombrowski to give up all idea of fighting Hoertel, and proceed with all
+haste to occupy that passage. He wrote to the Duke of Reggio, to march
+rapidly to the same point, and to hasten to recover Minsk; the Duke of
+Belluno would cover his march. After giving these orders, his agitation
+was appeased, and his mind, worn out with suffering, sunk into
+depression.
+
+It was still far from daylight, when a singular noise drew him out of
+his lethargy. Some say that shots were at first heard, which had been
+fired by our own people, in order to draw out of the houses such as had
+taken shelter in them, that they might take their places; others assert,
+that from a disorderly practice, too common in our bivouacs, of
+vociferating to each other, the name of _Hausanne_, a grenadier, being
+suddenly called out loudly, in the midst of a profound silence, was
+mistaken for the alert cry of _aux armes_, which announced a surprise by
+the enemy.
+
+Whatever might be the cause, every one immediately saw, or fancied he
+saw, the Cossacks, and a great noise of war and of alarm surrounded
+Napoleon. Without disturbing himself, he said to Rapp, "Go and see, it
+is no doubt some rascally Cossacks, determined to disturb our rest!" But
+it became very soon a complete tumult of men running to fight or to
+flee, and who, meeting in the dark, mistook each other for enemies.
+
+Napoleon for a moment imagined that a serious attack had been made. As
+an embanked stream of water ran through the town, he inquired if the
+remaining artillery had been placed behind that ravine, and being
+informed that the precaution had been neglected, he himself immediately
+ran to the bridge, and caused his cannon to be hurried over to the other
+side.
+
+He then returned to his old guard, and stopping in front of each
+battalion: "Grenadiers!" said he to them, "we are retreating without
+being conquered by the enemy, let us not be vanquished by ourselves! Set
+an example to the army! Several of you have already deserted their
+eagles, and even thrown away their arms. I have no wish to have recourse
+to military laws to put a stop to this disorder, but appeal entirely to
+yourselves! Do justice among yourselves. To your own honour I commit the
+support of your discipline!"
+
+The other troops he harangued in a similar style. These few words were
+quite sufficient to the old grenadiers, who probably had no occasion for
+them. The others received them with acclamation, but an hour afterwards,
+when the march was resumed, they were quite forgotten. As to his
+rear-guard, throwing the greatest part of the blame of this hot alarm
+upon it, he sent an angry message to Davoust on the subject.
+
+At Orcha we found rather an abundant supply of provisions, a bridge
+equipage of sixty boats, with all its appurtenances, which were entirely
+burnt, and thirty-six pieces of cannon, with their horses, which were
+distributed between Davoust, Eugene, and Latour-Maubourg.
+
+Here for the first time we again met with the officers and gendarmes,
+who had been sent for the purpose of stopping on the two bridges of the
+Dnieper the crowd of stragglers, and making them rejoin their columns.
+But those eagles, which formerly promised every thing, were now looked
+upon as of fatal omen, and deserted accordingly.
+
+Disorder was already regularly organized, and had enlisted in its ranks
+men who showed their ability in its service. When an immense crowd had
+been collected, these wretches called out "the Cossacks!" with a view to
+quicken the march of those who preceded them and to increase the tumult.
+They then took advantage of it, to carry off the provisions and cloaks
+of those whom they had thrown off their guard.
+
+The gendarmes, who again saw this army for the first time since its
+disaster, were astonished at the sight of such misery, terrified at the
+great confusion, and became discouraged. This friendly frontier was
+entered tumultuously; it would have been given up to pillage, had it not
+been for the guard, and a few hundred men who remained, with Prince
+Eugene.
+
+Napoleon entered Orcha with six thousand guards, the remains of
+thirty-five thousand! Eugene, with eighteen hundred soldiers, the
+remains of forty-two thousand! Davoust, with four thousand, the remains
+of seventy thousand!
+
+This marshal had lost every thing, was actually without linen, and
+emaciated with hunger. He seized upon a loaf which was offered him by
+one of his comrades, and, voraciously devoured it. A handkerchief was
+given him to wipe his face, which was covered with rime. He exclaimed,
+"that none but men of iron constitutions could support such trials, that
+it was physically impossible to resist them; that there were limits to
+human strength, the utmost of which had been exceeded."
+
+He it was who at first supported the retreat as far as Wiazma. He was
+still, according to his custom, halting at all the defiles, and
+remaining there the very last, sending every one to his ranks, and
+constantly struggling with the disorder. He urged his soldiers to insult
+and strip of their booty such of their comrades as threw away their
+arms; the only means of retaining the first and punishing the last.
+Nevertheless, his methodical and severe genius, so much out of its
+element in that scene of universal confusion, has been accused of being
+too much intimidated at it.
+
+The Emperor made fruitless attempts to check this discouragement. When
+alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers; but
+in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear inflexible.
+He issued a proclamation, "ordering every one to return to their ranks;
+if they did not, he would strip the officers of their grades, and put
+the soldiers to death."
+
+A threat like this produced neither good nor bad impression upon men who
+had become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from
+danger, but from suffering, and less apprehensive of the _death_ with
+which they were threatened than of the _life_ that was offered to them.
+
+But Napoleon's confidence increased with his peril; in his eyes, and in
+the midst of these deserts of mud and ice, this handful of men was still
+the grand army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! and there was no
+infatuation in this firmness; we were certain of it, when, in this very
+town, we saw him burning with his own hands every thing belonging to
+him, which might serve as trophies to the enemy, in the event of his
+fall.
+
+There also were unfortunately consumed all the papers which he had
+collected in order to write the history of his life, for such was his
+intention when he set out for this fatal war. He had then determined to
+halt as a threatening conqueror on the borders of the Duena and the
+Boristhenes, to which he now returned as a disarmed fugitive. At that
+time he regarded the _ennui_ of six winter months, which he would have
+been detained on these rivers, as his greatest enemy, and to overcome
+it, this second Caesar intended there to have dictated his Commentaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Every thing, however, was now changed; two hostile armies were cutting
+off his retreat. The question to decide was, through which of them he
+must attempt to force his way: and as he knew nothing of the Lithuanian
+forests into which he was about to penetrate, he summoned such of his
+officers as had passed through them in order to reach him.
+
+The Emperor began by telling them, that "Too much familiarity with great
+victories was frequently the precursor of great disasters, but that
+recrimination was now out of the question." He then mentioned the
+capture of Minsk, and after admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff's
+persevering manoeuvres on his right flank, declared "that he meant to
+abandon his line of operations on the Minsk, unite with the Dukes of
+Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein's army, and regain
+Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina."
+
+Jomini combated this plan. That Swiss general described the position of
+Wittgenstein as a series of long defiles, in which his resistance might
+be either obstinate or flexible, but in either way sufficiently long to
+consummate our destruction. He added, that in this season, and in such a
+state of disorder, a change of route would complete the destruction of
+the army; that it would lose itself in the cross-roads of these barren
+and marshy forests; he maintained that the high road alone could keep it
+in any degree of union. Borizof, and its bridge over the Berezina, were
+still open; and it would be sufficient to reach it.
+
+He then stated that he knew of a road to the right of that town,
+constructed on wooden bridges, and passing across the marshes of
+Lithuania. This was the only road, by his account, by which the army
+could reach Wilna by Zembin and Malodeczno, leaving Minsk on the left,
+its road a day's journey longer, its fifty broken bridges rendering a
+passage impracticable, and Tchitchakof in possession of it. In this
+manner we should pass between the two hostile armies, avoiding them
+both.
+
+The Emperor was staggered; but as his pride revolted at the appearance
+of avoiding an engagement, and he was anxious to signalize his departure
+from Russia by a victory, he sent for General Dodde, of the engineers.
+As soon as he saw him he called out to him, "Whether shall we retreat by
+Zembin, or go and beat Wittgenstein at Smoliantzy?" and knowing that
+Dodde had just come from the latter position, he asked him if it was
+approachable?
+
+His reply was, that Wittgenstein occupied a height which entirely
+commanded that miry country; that it would be necessary for us to tack
+about, within his sight and within his reach, by following the windings
+and turnings of the road, in order to ascend to the Russian camp; that
+thus our column of attack would be long exposed to their fire, first its
+left and then its right flank; that this position was therefore
+unapproachable in front, and that to turn it, it would be necessary to
+retrograde towards Witepsk, and take too long a circuit.
+
+Disappointed in this last hope of glory, Napoleon then decided for
+Borizof. He ordered General Eble to proceed with eight companies of
+sappers and pontonniers to secure the passage of the Berezina, and
+General Jomini to act as his guide. But he said at the same time, "that
+it was cruel to retreat without fighting, to have the appearance of
+flight. If he had any magazine, any point of support, which would allow
+him to halt, he would still prove to Europe that he always knew how to
+fight and to conquer."
+
+All these illusions were now destroyed. At Smolensk, where he arrived
+first, and from which he was the first to depart, he had rather been
+informed of, than witnessed his disaster. At Krasnoe, where our miseries
+had successively been unrolled before his eyes, the peril had distracted
+his attention; but at Orcha he could contemplate, at once and leisurely,
+the full extent of his misfortunes.
+
+At Smolensk, thirty-six thousand combatants, one hundred and fifty
+cannon, the army-chest, and the hope of life and breathing at liberty on
+the other side of the Berezina, still remained; here, there were
+scarcely ten thousand soldiers, almost without clothing or shoes,
+entangled amidst a crowd of dying men, with a few cannon, and a pillaged
+army-chest.
+
+In five days, every evil had been aggravated; destruction and
+disorganization had made frightful progress; Minsk had been taken. He
+had no longer to look for rest and abundance on the other side of the
+Berezina, but fresh contests with a new enemy. Finally, the defection of
+Austria from his alliance seemed to be declared, and perhaps it was a
+signal given to all Europe.
+
+Napoleon was even uncertain whether he should reach Borizof in time to
+meet the new peril, which Schwartzenberg's hesitation seemed to have
+prepared for him. We have seen that a third Russian army, that of
+Wittgenstein, menaced, on his right, the interval which separated him
+from that town; that he had sent the Duke of Belluno against him, and
+had ordered that marshal to retrieve the opportunity he had lost on the
+1st of November, and to resume the offensive.
+
+In obedience to these orders, on the 14th of November, the very day
+Napoleon quitted Smolensk, the Dukes of Belluno and of Reggio had
+attacked and driven back the out-posts of Wittgenstein towards
+Smoliantzy, preparing, by this engagement, for a battle which they
+agreed should take place on the following day.
+
+The French were thirty thousand against forty thousand; there, as well
+as at Wiazma, the soldiers were sufficiently numerous, if they had not
+had too many leaders.
+
+The two Marshals disagreed. Victor wished to manoeuvre on the enemy's
+left wing, to overthrow Wittgenstein with the two French corps, and
+march by Botscheikowo on Kamen, and from Kamen by Pouichna on Berezina.
+Oudinot warmly disapproved of this plan, saying that it would separate
+them from the grand army, which required their assistance.
+
+Thus, one of the leaders wishing to manoeuvre, and the other to attack
+in front, they did neither the one nor the other. Oudinot retired during
+the night to Czereia, and Victor, discovering this retreat at daybreak,
+was compelled to follow him.
+
+He halted within a day's march of the Lukolmlia, near Sienno, where
+Wittgenstein did not much disturb him; but the Duke of Reggio having at
+last received the order dated from Dombrowna, which directed him to
+recover Minsk, Victor was about to be left alone before the Russian
+general. It was possible that the latter would then become aware of his
+superiority: and the Emperor, who at Orcha, on the 20th of November, saw
+his rear-guard, lost, his left flank menaced by Kutusoff, and his
+advance column stopped at the Berezina by the army of Volhynia, learned
+that Wittgenstein and forty thousand more enemies, far from being beaten
+and repulsed, were ready to fall upon his right, and that he had no time
+to lose.
+
+But Napoleon was long before he could determine to quit the Boristhenes.
+It appeared to him that this was like a second abandonment of the
+unfortunate Ney, and casting off for ever his intrepid companion in
+arms. There, as he had done at Liady and Dombrowna, he was calling every
+hour of the day and night, and sending to inquire if no tidings had been
+heard of that marshal; but not a trace of his existence had transpired
+through the Russian army; four days this mortal silence had lasted, and
+yet the Emperor still continued to hope.
+
+At last, being compelled, on the 20th of November, to quit Orcha, he
+still left there Eugene, Mortier, and Davoust, and halted at two leagues
+from thence, inquiring for Ney, and still expecting him. The same
+feeling of grief pervaded the whole army, of which Orcha then contained
+the remains. As soon as the most pressing wants allowed a moment's rest,
+the thoughts and looks of every one were directed towards the Russian
+bank. They listened for any warlike noise which might announce the
+arrival of Ney, or rather his last sighs; but nothing was to be seen but
+enemies who were already menacing the bridges of the Boristhenes! One of
+the three leaders then wished to destroy them, but the others refused
+their consent, on the ground, that this would be again separating them
+from their companion in arms, and a confession that they despaired of
+saving him, an idea to which, from their dread of so great a misfortune,
+they could not reconcile themselves.
+
+But with the fourth day all hope at last vanished. Night only brought
+with it a wearisome repose. They blamed themselves for Ney's misfortune,
+forgetting that it was utterly impossible to wait longer for the third
+corps in the plains of Krasnoe, where they must have fought for another
+twenty-eight hours, when they had merely strength and ammunition left
+for one.
+
+Already, as is the case in all cruel losses, they began to treasure up
+recollections. Davoust was the last who had quitted the unfortunate
+marshal, and Mortier and the viceroy were inquiring of him what were his
+last words! At the first reports of the cannonade opened on the 15th on
+Napoleon, Ney was anxious immediately to evacuate Smolensk in the suite
+of the viceroy; Davoust refused, pleading the orders of the Emperor, and
+the obligation to destroy the ramparts of the town. The two chiefs
+became warm, and Davoust persisting to remain until the following day,
+Ney, who had been appointed to bring up the rear, was compelled to wait
+for him.
+
+It is true, that on the 16th, Davoust sent to warn him of his danger;
+but Ney, either from a change of opinion, or from an angry feeling
+against Davoust, then returned him for answer, "That all the Cossacks in
+the universe should not prevent him from executing his instructions."
+
+After exhausting these recollections and all their conjectures, they
+again relapsed into a more gloomy silence, when suddenly they heard the
+steps of several horses, and then the joyful cry, "Marshal Ney is safe!
+here are some Polish cavalry come to announce his approach!" One of his
+officers then galloped in, and informed them that the marshal was
+advancing on the right bank of the Boristhenes, and had sent him to ask
+for assistance.
+
+Night had just set in; Davoust, Eugene, and Mortier had only its short
+duration to revive and animate the soldiers, who had hitherto always
+bivouacked. For the first time since they left Moscow, these poor
+fellows had received a sufficient quantum of provisions; they were about
+to prepare them and to take their rest, warm and under cover: how was it
+possible to make them resume their arms, and turn them from their
+asylums during that night of rest, whose inexpressible sweets they had
+just begun to taste? Who could persuade them to interrupt it, to retrace
+their steps, and return once more into the darkness and frozen deserts
+of Russia?
+
+Eugene and Mortier disputed the honour of this sacrifice, and the first
+only carried it in right of his superior rank. Shelter and the
+distribution of provisions had effected that which threats had failed to
+do. The stragglers were rallied, the viceroy again found himself at the
+head of four thousand men; all were ready to march at the news of Ney's
+danger; but it was their last effort.
+
+They proceeded in the darkness, by unknown roads, and had marched two
+leagues at random, halting every few minutes to listen. Their anxiety
+was already increased. Had they lost their way? were they too late? had
+their unfortunate comrades fallen? was it the victorious Russian army
+they were about to meet? In this uncertainty, Prince Eugene directed
+some cannon shot to be fired. Immediately after they fancied they heard
+signals of distress on that sea of snow; they proceeded from the third
+corps, which, having lost all its artillery, answered the cannon of the
+fourth by some volleys of platoon firing.
+
+The two corps were thus directed towards their meeting. Ney and Eugene
+were the first to recognize each other; they ran up, Eugene more
+precipitately, and threw themselves into each other's arms. Eugene wept,
+Ney let some angry words escape him. The first was delighted, melted,
+and elevated by the warlike heroism which his chivalrous heroism had
+just saved! The latter, still heated from the combat, irritated at the
+dangers which the honour of the army had run in his person, and blaming
+Davoust, whom he wrongfully accused of having deserted him.
+
+Some hours afterwards, when the latter wished to excuse himself, he
+could draw nothing from Ney but a severe look, and these words,
+"Monsieur le Marechal, I have no reproaches to make to you; God is our
+witness and your judge!"
+
+When the two corps had fairly recognized each other, they no longer kept
+their ranks. Soldiers, officers, generals, all ran towards each other.
+Those of Eugene shook hands with those of Ney; they touched them with a
+joyful mixture of astonishment and curiosity, and pressed them to their
+bosoms with the tenderest compassion. The refreshments and brandy which
+they had just received they lavished upon them; they overwhelmed them
+with questions. They then all proceeded together in company, towards
+Orcha, all impatient, Eugene's soldiers to hear, and Ney's to tell their
+story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+They stated, that on the 17th of November they had quitted Smolensk with
+twelve cannon, six thousand infantry, and three hundred cavalry, leaving
+there five thousand sick at the mercy of the enemy; and that had it not
+been for the noise of Platof's cannon, and the explosion of the mines,
+their marshal would never have been able to bring away from the ruins of
+that city seven thousand unarmed stragglers who had taken shelter in
+them. They dwelt upon the attentions which their leader had shown to the
+wounded, and to the women and their children, proving upon this occasion
+that the bravest was again the most humane.
+
+At the gates of the city an unnatural action struck them with a degree
+of horror which was still undiminished. A mother had abandoned her
+little son, only five years old; in spite of his cries and tears she had
+driven him away from her sledge which was too heavily laden. She herself
+cried out with a distracted air, "that _he_ had never seen France! that
+_he_ would not regret it! as for _her_, _she_ knew France! _she_ was
+resolved to see France once more!" Twice did Ney himself replace the
+unfortunate child in the arms of his mother, twice did she cast him off
+on the frozen snow.
+
+This solitary crime, amidst a thousand instances of the most devoted and
+sublime tenderness, they did not leave unpunished. The unnatural mother
+was herself abandoned to the same snow from which her infant was
+snatched, and entrusted to another mother; this little orphan was
+exhibited in their ranks; he was afterwards seen at the Berezina, then
+at Wilna, even at Kowno, and finally escaped from all the horrors of the
+retreat.
+
+The officers of Ney continued, in answer to the pressing questions of
+those of Eugene; they depicted themselves advancing towards Krasnoe,
+with their marshal at their head, completely across our immense wrecks,
+dragging after them one afflicted multitude, and preceded by another,
+whose steps were quickened by hunger.
+
+They described how they found the bottom of each ravine filled with
+helmets, hussar-caps, trunks broken open, scattered garments, carriages
+and cannon, some overturned, others with the horses still harnessed, and
+the poor animals worn out, expiring and half devoured.
+
+How, near Korythinia, at the end of their first day's march, a violent
+cannonading and the whistling of several bullets over their heads, had
+led them to imagine that a battle had just commenced. This discharge
+appeared to proceed from before and quite close to them even upon the
+road, and yet they could not get sight of a single enemy. Ricard and his
+division advanced with a view to discover them, but they only found, in
+a turn of the road, two French batteries abandoned, with their
+ammunition, and in the neighbouring field a horde of wretched Cossacks,
+who immediately fled, terrified at their audacity in setting fire to
+them, and at the noise they had made.
+
+Ney's officers here interrupted their narrative to inquire in their turn
+what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why
+had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had
+time to spike them, or at least to spoil their ammunition?
+
+In continuation, they said they had hitherto only discovered the traces
+of a disastrous march. But next morning there was a complete change, and
+they confessed their unlucky presentiments when they arrived at that
+field of snow reddened with blood, sprinkled with broken cannon and
+mutilated corses. The dead bodies still marked the ranks and places of
+battle; they pointed them out to each other. _There_ had been the 14th
+division; _there_ were still to be seen, on the broken plates of their
+caps, the numbers of its regiments. _There_ had been the Italian guard;
+there were its dead, whose uniforms were still distinguishable! But
+where were its living remnants? Vainly did they interrogate that field
+of blood, these lifeless forms, the motionless and frozen silence of the
+desert and the grave! they could neither penetrate into the fate of
+their companions, nor into that which awaited themselves.
+
+Ney hurried them rapidly over all these ruins, and they had advanced
+without impediment to a part of the road, where it descends into a deep
+ravine, from which it rises into a broad and level height. It was that
+of Katova, and the same field of battle, where, three months before, in
+their triumphant march, they had beat Newerowskoi, and saluted Napoleon
+with the cannon which they had taken the day before from his enemies.
+They said they recollected the situation, notwithstanding the different
+appearance given to it by the snow.
+
+Mortier's officers here exclaimed, "that it was in that very position
+that the Emperor and they had waited for them on the 17th, fighting all
+the time." Very well, replied those of Ney, Kutusoff, or rather
+Miloradowitch, occupied Napoleon's place, for the old Russian general
+had not yet quitted Dobroe.
+
+Their disbanded men were already retrograding, pointing to the snowy
+plains completely black with the enemy's troops, when a Russian,
+detaching himself from their army, descended the hill; he presented
+himself alone to their marshal, and either from an affectation of
+extreme politeness, respect for the misfortune of their leader, or dread
+of the effects of his despair, covered with honied words the summons to
+surrender.
+
+It was Kutusoff who had sent him. "That field-marshal would not have
+presumed to make so cruel a proposal to so great a general, to a warrior
+so renowned, if there remained a single chance of safety for him. But
+there were eighty thousand Russians before and around him, and if he had
+any doubt of it, Kutusoff offered to let him send a person to go through
+his ranks, and count his forces."
+
+The Russian had not finished his speech, when suddenly forty discharges
+of grape shot, proceeding from the right of his army, and cutting our
+ranks to pieces, struck him with amazement, and interrupted what he had
+to say. At the same moment a French officer darted forward, seized, and
+was about to kill him as a traitor, when Ney, checking this fury, called
+to him angrily, "A marshal never surrenders; there is no parleying under
+an enemy's fire; you are my prisoner." The unfortunate officer was
+disarmed, and placed in a situation of exposure to the fire of his own
+army. He was not released until we reached Kowno, after twenty-six days
+captivity, sharing all our miseries, at liberty to escape, but
+restrained by his parole.
+
+At the same time the enemy's fire became still hotter, and, as they
+said, all the hills, which but an instant before looked cold and silent,
+became like so many volcanoes in eruption, but that Ney became still
+more elevated at it: then with a burst of enthusiasm that seemed to
+return every time they had occasion to mention his name in their
+narrative, they added, that in the midst of all this fire that ardent
+man seemed to breathe an element exclusively his own.
+
+Kutusoff had not deceived him. On the one side, there were eighty
+thousand men in complete ranks, full, deep, well-fed, and in double
+lines, a numerous cavalry, an immense artillery occupying a formidable
+position, in short, every thing, and fortune to boot, which alone is
+equal to all the rest. On the other side, five thousand soldiers, a
+straggling and dismembered column, a wavering and languishing march,
+arms defective and dirty, the greatest part mute and tottering in
+enfeebled hands.
+
+And yet the French leader had no thought of yielding, nor even of dying,
+but of penetrating and cutting his way through the enemy; and that
+without the least idea that he was attempting a sublime effort. Alone,
+and looking no where for support, while all were supported by him, he
+followed the impulse of a strong natural temperament, and the pride of a
+conqueror, whom the habit of gaining improbable victories had impressed
+with the belief that every thing was possible.
+
+But what most astonished them, was, that they had been all so docile;
+for all had shown themselves worthy of him, and they added, that it was
+there they clearly saw that it is not merely great obstinacy, great
+designs, or great temerity which constitute the great man, but
+principally the power of influencing and supporting others.
+
+Ricard and his fifteen hundred soldiers were in front. Ney impelled them
+against the enemy, and prepared the rest of his army to follow them.
+That division descended with the road into the ravine, but in ascending,
+was driven back into it, overwhelmed by the first Russian line.
+
+The marshal, without being intimidated, or allowing others to be so,
+collected the survivors, placed them in reserve, and proceeded forward
+in their place; Ledru, Razont, and Marchand seconded him. He ordered
+four hundred Illyrians to take the enemy on their left flank, and with
+three thousand men, he himself mounted in front to the assault. He made
+no harangue; he marched at their head, setting the example, which, in a
+hero, is the most eloquent of all oratorical movements, and the most
+imperious of all orders. All followed him. They attacked, penetrated,
+and overturned the first Russian line, and without halting were
+precipitating themselves upon the second; but before they could reach
+it, a volley of artillery and grape shot poured down upon them. In an
+instant Ney saw all his generals wounded, the greatest part of his
+soldiers killed; their ranks were empty, their shapeless column whirled
+round, tottered, fell back, and drew him along with it.
+
+Ney found that he had attempted an impossibility, and he waited until
+the flight of his men had once more placed the ravine between them and
+the enemy, that ravine which was now his sole resource; there, equally
+hopeless and fearless, he halted and rallied them. He drew up two
+thousand men against eighty thousand; he returned the fire of two
+hundred cannon with six pieces, and made fortune blush that she should
+ever betray such courage.
+
+She it was, doubtless, who then struck Kutusoff with the palsy of
+inertness. To their infinite surprise, they saw this Russian Fabius
+running into extremes like all imitators, persisting in what he called
+his humanity and prudence, remaining upon his heights with his pompous
+virtues, without allowing himself, or daring to conquer, as if he was
+astonished at his own superiority. Seeing that Napoleon had been
+conquered by his rashness, he pushed his horror of that fault to the
+very extreme of the opposite vice.
+
+It required, however, but a transport of indignation in any one of the
+Russian corps to have completely extinguished them; but all were afraid
+to make a decisive movement; they remained clinging to their soil with
+the immobility of slaves, as if they had no boldness but in their
+watchword, or energy but in their obedience. This discipline, which
+formed their glory in _their_ retreat, was their disgrace in _ours_.
+
+They were for a long time uncertain, not knowing which enemy they were
+fighting with; for they had imagined that Ney had retreated from
+Smolensk by the right bank of the Dnieper; they were mistaken, as is
+frequently the case, from supposing that their enemy had done what he
+ought to have done.
+
+At the same time, the Illyrians had returned completely in disorder;
+they had had a most singular adventure. In their advance to the left
+flank of the enemy's position, these four hundred men had met with five
+thousand Russians returning from a partial engagement, with a French
+eagle, and several of our soldiers prisoners.
+
+These two hostile troops, the one returning to its position, the other
+going to attack it, advanced in the same direction, side by side,
+measuring each other with their eyes, but neither of them venturing to
+commence the engagement. They marched so close to each other, that from
+the middle of the Russian ranks the French prisoners stretched out their
+arms towards their friends, conjuring them to come and deliver them. The
+latter called out to them to come to them, and they would receive and
+defend them; but no one moved on either side. Just then Ney was
+overthrown, and they retreated along with him.
+
+Kutusoff, however, relying more on his artillery than his soldiers,
+sought only to conquer at a distance. His fire so completely commanded
+all the ground occupied by the French, that the same bullet which
+prostrated a man in the first rank proceeded to deal destruction in the
+last of the train of carriages, among the women who had fled from
+Moscow.
+
+Under this murderous hail, Ney's soldiers remained astonished,
+motionless, looking at their chief, waiting his decision to be satisfied
+that they were lost, hoping they knew not why, or rather, according to
+the remark of one of their officers, because in the midst of this
+extreme peril they saw his spirit calm and tranquil, like any thing in
+its place. His countenance became silent and devout; he was watching the
+enemy's army, which, becoming more suspicious since the successful
+artifice of Prince Eugene, extended itself to a great distance on his
+flanks, in order to shut him out from all means of preservation.
+
+The approach of night began to render objects indistinct; winter, which
+in that sole point was favourable to our retreat, brought it on quickly.
+Ney had been waiting for it, but the advantage he took of the respite
+was to order his men to return to Smolensk. They all said that at these
+words they remained frozen with astonishment. Even his aide-de-camp
+could not believe his ears; he remained silent like one who did not
+understand what he heard, and looked at his general with amazement. But
+the marshal repeated the same order; in his brief and imperious tone,
+they recognized a resolution taken, a resource discovered, that
+self-confidence which inspires others with the same quality, and a
+spirit which commands his position, however strong that may be. They
+immediately obeyed, and without hesitation turned their backs on their
+own army, on Napoleon, and on France! They returned once more into that
+fatal Russia. Their retrograde march lasted an hour; they passed again
+over the field of battle marked by the remains of the army of Italy;
+there they halted, and their marshal, who had remained alone in the
+rear-guard, then rejoined them.
+
+Their eyes followed his every movement. What was he going to do; and
+whatever might be his plan, whither would he direct his steps, without a
+guide, in an unknown country? But he, with his warlike instinct, halted
+on the edge of a ravine of such depth, as to make it probable that a
+rivulet ran through it. He made them clear away the snow and break the
+ice; then consulting his map, he exclaimed "That this was one of the
+streams which flowed into the Dnieper! this must be our guide, and we
+must follow it; that it would lead us to that river, which we must
+cross, and that on the other side we should be safe!" He immediately
+proceeded in that direction.
+
+However at a little distance from the high road which he had abandoned,
+he again halted in a village, the name of which they knew not, but
+believed that it was either Fomina, or Danikowa. There he rallied his
+troops, and made them light their fires, as if he intended to take up
+his quarters in it for the night. Some Cossacks who followed him took it
+for granted, and no doubt sent immediately to apprise Kutusoff of the
+spot where, next day, a French marshal would surrender his arms to him;
+for shortly after the noise of their cannon was heard.
+
+Ney listened: "Is this Davoust at last," he exclaimed, "who has
+recollected me?" and he listened a second time. But there were regular
+intervals between the firing; it was a salvo. Being then fully satisfied
+that the Russian army was triumphing by anticipation over his captivity,
+he swore he would give the lie to their joy, and immediately resumed his
+march.
+
+At the same time his Poles ransacked the country. A lame peasant was the
+only inhabitant they had discovered; this was an unlooked-for piece of
+good fortune. He informed them that they were within the distance of a
+league from the Dnieper, but that it was not fordable there, and could
+not yet be frozen over. "It will be so," was the marshal's remark; but
+when it was observed to him that the thaw had just commenced, he added
+"that it did not signify, we must pass, as there was no other resource."
+
+At last, about eight o'clock, after passing through a village, the
+ravine terminated, and the lame Russian, who walked first, halted and
+pointed to the river. They imagined that this must have been between
+Syrokorenia and Gusinoe. Ney, and those immediately behind him, ran up
+to it. They found the river sufficiently frozen to bear their weight,
+the course of the flakes which it bore along to that point, being
+counteracted by a sudden turn in its banks, was there suspended; the
+winter had completely frozen it over only in that single spot; both
+above and below it, its surface was still moveable.
+
+This observation was sufficient to make their first sensation of joy
+give way to uneasiness. This hostile river might only offer them a
+treacherous appearance. One officer devoted himself for the rest; he
+crossed to the other side with great difficulty. He returned and
+reported, that the men, and perhaps some of the horses might pass over,
+but that the rest must be abandoned, and there was no time to lose, as
+the ice was beginning to give way in consequence of the thaw.
+
+But in this nocturnal and silent march across fields, of a column
+composed of weakened and wounded men, and women with their children,
+they had been unable to keep close enough, to prevent their extending,
+separating, and losing the traces of each other in the darkness. Ney
+perceived that only a part of his people had come up; nevertheless, he
+might have always surmounted the obstacle, thereby secured his own
+safety, and waited on the other side. The idea never once entered his
+mind; some one proposed it to him, but he rejected it instantly. He
+allowed three hours for the rallying; and without suffering himself to
+be agitated by impatience, or the danger of waiting so long, he wrapped
+himself up in his cloak, and passed these three dangerous hours in a
+profound sleep on the bank of the river. So much did he possess of the
+temperament of great men, a strong mind in a robust body, and that
+vigorous health, without which no man can ever expect to be a hero.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+At last, about midnight, the passage began; but the first persons who
+ventured on the ice, called out that the ice was bending under them,
+that it was sinking, that they were up to their knees in water;
+immediately after which that frail support was heard splitting with
+frightful cracks, which were prolonged in the distance, as in the
+breaking up of a frost. All halted in consternation.
+
+Ney ordered them to pass only one at a time; they proceeded with
+caution, not knowing sometimes in the darkness if they were putting
+their feet on the flakes or into a chasm; for there were places where
+they were obliged to clear large crevices, and jump from one piece of
+ice to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing for
+ever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling to
+them to make haste.
+
+When at last, after several of these dreadful panics, they reached the
+opposite bank and fancied themselves saved, a perpendicular steep,
+entirely covered with rime, again opposed their landing. Many were
+thrown back upon the ice which they broke in their fall, or which
+bruised them. By their account, this Russian river and its banks
+appeared only to have contributed with regret, by surprise, and as it
+were by compulsion, to their escape.
+
+But what seemed to affect them with the greatest horror in their
+relation, was the trouble and distraction of the females and the sick,
+when it became necessary to abandon, along with the baggage, the remains
+of their fortune, their provisions, and in short, their whole resources
+against the present and the future. They saw them stripping themselves,
+selecting, throwing away, taking up again, and falling with exhaustion
+and grief upon the frozen bank of the river. They seemed to shudder
+again at the recollection of the horrible sight of so many men scattered
+over that abyss, the continual noise of persons falling, the cries of
+such as sunk in, and, above all, of the wailing and despair of the
+wounded, who, from their carts, which durst not venture on this weak
+support, stretched out their hands to their companions, and intreated
+not to be left behind.
+
+Their leader then determined to attempt the passage of several waggons,
+loaded with these poor creatures; but in the middle of the river, the
+ice sunk down and separated. Then were heard, on the opposite bank,
+proceeding from the gulf, first, cries of anguish long and piercing,
+then stifled and feeble groans, and last of all an awful silence. All
+had disappeared!
+
+Ney was looking stedfastly at the abyss with an air of consternation,
+when through the darkness, he imagined he saw an object still moving; it
+turned out to be one of those unfortunate persons, an officer, named
+Briqueville, whom a deep wound in the groin had disabled from standing
+upright. A large piece of ice had borne him up. He was soon distinctly
+seen, dragging himself from one piece to another on his knees and hands,
+and on his getting near enough to the side, the marshal himself caught
+hold of, and saved him.
+
+The losses since the preceding day amounted to four thousand stragglers
+and three thousand soldiers, either killed, dead, or missing; the cannon
+and the whole of the baggage were lost; there remained to Ney scarcely
+three thousand soldiers, and about as many disbanded men. Finally, when
+all these sacrifices were consummated, and all that had been able to
+cross the river were collected, they resumed their march, and the
+vanquished river became once more their friend and their guide.
+
+They proceeded at random and uncertain, when one of them happening to
+fall, recognised a beaten road; it was but too much so, for those who
+were marching first, stooping and using their hands, as well as their
+eyes, halted in alarm, exclaiming, "that they saw the marks quite fresh
+of a great quantity of cannon and horses." They had, therefore, only
+avoided one hostile army to fall into the midst of another; at a time
+when they could scarcely walk, they must be again obliged to fight! The
+war was therefore everywhere! But Ney made them push on, and without
+disturbing himself, continued to follow these menacing traces.
+
+They brought them to a village called Gusinoe, into which they entered
+suddenly, and seized every thing; they found in it all that they had
+been in want of since they left Moscow, inhabitants, provisions, repose,
+warm dwellings, and a hundred Cossacks, who awoke to find themselves
+prisoners. Their reports, and the necessity of taking some refreshment
+to enable him to proceed, detained the marshal there a few minutes.
+
+About ten o'clock, they reached two other villages, and were resting
+themselves there, when suddenly they saw the surrounding forests filled
+with movements. They had scarcely time to call to each other, to look
+about, and to concentrate themselves in the village which was nearest to
+the Boristhenes, when thousands of Cossacks came pouring out from
+between the trees, and surrounded the unfortunate troop with their
+lances and their cannon.
+
+These were Platof, and his hordes, who were following the right bank of
+the Dnieper. They might have burnt the village, discovered the weakness
+of Ney's force, and exterminated it; but for three hours they remained
+motionless, without even firing; for what reason, is not known. The
+account since given by themselves is, that they had no orders; that at
+that moment their leader was not in a state to give any: and that in
+Russia no one dares to take upon himself a responsibility that does not
+belong to him.
+
+The bold countenance of Ney kept them in check. He himself and a few
+soldiers were sufficient; he even ordered the rest of his people to
+continue their repast till night came on. He then caused the order to be
+circulated to decamp in silence, to give notice to each other in a low
+tone of voice, and to march as compact as possible. Afterwards, they all
+began their march together; but their very first step was like a signal
+given to the enemy, who immediately discharged the whole of his
+artillery at them: all his squadrons also put themselves in movement at
+once.
+
+At the noise occasioned by this, the disarmed stragglers, of whom there
+were yet between three and four thousand, took the alarm. This flock of
+men wandered here and there; the great mass of them kept reeling about
+in uncertainty, sometimes attempting to throw themselves into the ranks
+of the soldiers, who drove them back. Ney contrived to keep them between
+him and the Russians, whose fire was principally absorbed by these
+useless beings. The most timid, therefore, in this instance, served as a
+covering to the bravest.
+
+At the same time that the marshal made a rampart of these poor wretches
+to cover his right flank, he regained the banks of the Dnieper, and by
+that covered his left flank; he marched on thus between the two,
+proceeding from wood to wood, from one turning to another, taking
+advantage of all the windings, and of the least accidents of the soil.
+Whenever he ventured to any distance from the river, which he was
+frequently obliged to do, Platof then surrounded him on all sides.
+
+[Illustration: Portrait of Marshal Ney]
+
+In this manner, for two days and a distance of twenty leagues, did six
+thousand Cossacks keep constantly buzzing about the flanks of their
+column, now reduced to fifteen hundred men in arms, keeping it in a
+state of siege, disappearing before its sallies, and returning again
+instantly, like their Scythian ancestors; but with this fatal
+difference, that they managed their cannon mounted on sledges, and
+discharged their bullets in their flight, with the same agility which
+their forefathers exhibited in the management of their bows and the
+discharge of their arrows.
+
+The night brought some relief, and at first they plunged into the
+darkness with a degree of joy; but then, if any one halted for a moment
+to bid a last adieu to some worn out or wounded comrade, who sunk to
+rise no more, he ran the risk of losing the traces of his column. Under
+such circumstances there were many cruel moments, and not a few
+instances of despair. At last, however, the enemy slackened his pursuit.
+
+This unfortunate column was proceeding more tranquilly, groping its way
+through a thick wood, when all at once, a few paces before it, a
+brilliant light and several discharges of cannon flashed in the faces of
+the men in the first rank. Seized with terror, they fancied that there
+was an end of them, that they were cut off, that their end was now come,
+and they fell down terrified; those who were behind, got entangled among
+them, and were brought to the ground. Ney, who saw that all was lost,
+rushed forward, ordered the charge to be beat, and, as if he had
+foreseen the attack, called out, "Comrades, now is your time: forward!
+They are our prisoners!" At these words, his soldiers, who but a minute
+before were in consternation, and fancied themselves surprised, believed
+they were about to surprise their foes; from being vanquished, they rose
+up conquerors; they rushed upon the enemy, who had already disappeared,
+and whose precipitate flight through the forest they heard at a
+distance.
+
+They passed quickly through this wood; but about ten o'clock at night,
+they met with a small river embanked in a deep ravine, which they were
+obliged to cross one by one, as they had done the Dnieper. Intent on the
+pursuit of these poor fellows, the Cossacks again got sight of them, and
+tried to take advantage of that moment: but Ney, by a few discharges of
+his musketry, again repulsed them. They surmounted this obstacle with
+difficulty, and in an hour after reached a large village, where hunger
+and exhaustion compelled them to halt for two hours longer.
+
+The next day, the 19th of Nov., from midnight till ten o'clock in the
+morning, they kept marching on, without meeting any other enemy than a
+hilly country; about that time Platof's columns again made their
+appearance, and Ney halted and faced them, under the protection of the
+skirts of a wood. As long as the day lasted, his soldiers were obliged
+to resign themselves to see the enemy's bullets overturning the trees
+which served to shelter them, and furrowing their bivouacs; for they had
+now nothing but small arms, which could not keep the Cossack artillery
+at a sufficient distance.
+
+On the return of night, the marshal gave the usual signal, and they
+proceeded on their march to Orcha. During the preceding day, he had
+already despatched thither Pchebendowski with fifty horse, to require
+assistance; they must already have arrived there, unless the enemy had
+already gained possession of that town.
+
+Ney's officers concluded their narrative by saying, that during the rest
+of their march, they had met with several formidable obstacles, but that
+they did not think them worth relating. They continued, however,
+speaking enthusiastically of their marshal, and making us sharers of
+their admiration of him; for even his equals had no idea of being
+jealous of him. He had been too much regretted, and his preservation had
+excited too agreeable emotions, to allow envy to have any part in them;
+besides, Ney had placed himself completely beyond its reach. As to
+himself, in all this heroism, he had gone so little beyond his natural
+disposition, that had it not been for the eclat of his glory in the
+eyes, the gestures, and the acclamations of every one, he would never
+have imagined that he had done a sublime action.
+
+And this was not an enthusiasm of surprise. Each of the latter days had
+had its remarkable men; amongst others, that of the 16th had Eugene,
+that of the 17th Mortier; but from this time, Ney was universally
+proclaimed the hero of the retreat.
+
+The distance between Smolensk and Orcha is hardly five days' march. In
+that short passage, what a harvest of glory had been reaped! how little
+space and time are required to establish an immortal renown! Of what
+nature then are these great inspirations, that invisible and impalpable
+germ of great devotion, produced in a few moments, issuing from a single
+heart, and which must fill time and eternity?
+
+When Napoleon, who was two leagues farther on, heard that Ney had just
+re-appeared, he leaped and shouted for joy, and exclaimed, "I have then
+saved my eagles! I would have given three hundred millions from my
+treasury, sooner than have lost such a man."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+The army had thus for the third and last time repassed the Dnieper, a
+river half Russian and half Polish, but of Russian origin. It runs from
+east to west as far as Orcha, where it appears as if it would penetrate
+into Poland; but there the heights of Lithuania oppose its farther
+progress, and compel it to turn towards the south, and to become the
+frontier of the two countries.
+
+Kutusoff and his eighty thousand Russians halted before this feeble
+obstacle. Hitherto they had been rather the spectators than the authors
+of our calamities; we saw them no more; our army was released from the
+punishment of their joy.
+
+In this war, and as always happens, the character of Kutusoff availed
+him more than his talents. So long as it was necessary to deceive and
+temporize, his crafty spirit, his indolence, and his great age, acted of
+themselves; he was the creature of circumstances, which he ceased to be
+as soon as it became necessary to march rapidly, to pursue, to
+anticipate, and to attack.
+
+But after passing Smolensk, Platof passed over to the right flank of the
+road, in order to join Wittgenstein. The war was then entirely
+transferred to that side.
+
+On the 22d of November, the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to
+Borizof, on a wide road, (skirted by a double row of large birch trees,)
+in which the snow had melted, and through a deep and liquid mud. The
+weakest were drowned in it; it detained and delivered to the Cossacks
+such of our wounded, as, under the idea of a continuance of the frost,
+had exchanged their waggons for sledges.
+
+In the midst of this gradual decay, an action was witnessed exhibiting
+something of antique energy. Two marines of the guard were cut off from
+their column by a band of Cossacks, who seemed determined to take them.
+One became discouraged, and wished to surrender; the other continued to
+fight, and called out to him, that if he was coward enough to do so, he
+would certainly shoot him. In fact, seeing his companion throw away his
+musket, and stretching out his arms to the enemy, he brought him to the
+ground just as he fell into the hands of the Cossacks; then profiting by
+their surprise, he quickly reloaded his musket, with which he threatened
+the most forward. He kept them thus at bay, retreated from tree to tree,
+gained ground upon them, and succeeded in rejoining his troop.
+
+It was during the first days of the march to Borizof, that the news of
+the fall of Minsk became generally known in the army. The leaders
+themselves began then to look around them with consternation; their
+imagination, tormented with such a long continuance of frightful
+spectacles, gave them glimpses of a still more fatal futurity. In their
+private conversations, several exclaimed, that, "like Charles XII. in
+the Ukraine, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow only to destroy
+it."
+
+Others would not agree in attributing the calamities we at present
+suffered to that incursion. Without wishing to excuse the sacrifices to
+which we had submitted, by the hope of terminating the war in a single
+campaign, they asserted, "that that hope had been well founded; that in
+pushing his line of operation as far as Moscow, Napoleon had given to
+that lengthened column a base sufficiently broad and solid."
+
+They showed "the trace of this base marked out by the Duena, the Dnieper,
+the Ula, and the Berezina, from Riga to Bobruisk; they said that
+Macdonald, Saint Cyr and De Wrede, Victor and Dombrowski were there
+waiting for them; there were thus, including Schwartzenberg, and even
+Augereau, (who protected the interval between the Elbe and the Niemen
+with fifty thousand men,) nearly two hundred and eighty thousand
+soldiers on the defensive, who, from the north to the south, supported
+the attack of one hundred and fifty thousand men upon the east; and from
+thence they argued, that this _point_ upon Moscow, however hazardous it
+might appear, had been both sufficiently prepared, and was worthy of the
+genius of Napoleon, and that its success was possible; in fact, its
+failure had been entirely occasioned by errors of detail."
+
+They then brought to mind our useless waste of lives before Smolensk,
+Junot's inaction at Valoutina, and they maintained, "that in spite of
+all these losses, Russia would have been completely conquered on the
+field of battle of the Moskwa, if Marshal Ney's first successes had been
+followed up.
+
+"Even at the last, although the expedition had failed in a military
+point of view, by the indecision of that day, and politically by the
+burning of Moscow, the army might still have returned from it safe and
+sound. From the time of our entrance into that capital, had not the
+Russian general and the Russian winter allowed us, the one forty, and
+the other fifty days, to recover ourselves, and to make our retreat?"
+
+Deploring afterwards the rash obstinacy of losing so much time at
+Moscow, and the fatal hesitation at Malo-Yaroslawetz, they proceeded to
+reckon up their losses. Since their leaving Moscow, they had lost all
+their baggage, five hundred cannon, thirty-one eagles, twenty-seven
+generals, forty thousand prisoners, sixty thousand dead: all that
+remained were forty thousand stragglers, unarmed, and eight thousand
+effective soldiers.
+
+Last of all, when their column of attack had been destroyed, they asked,
+"by what fatality it had happened, that the remains of this column, when
+collected at its base, which had been vigorously supported, were left
+without knowing where to halt, or to take breath? Why could they not
+even concentrate themselves at Minsk and at Wilna, behind the marshes of
+the Berezina, and there keep back the enemy, at least for some time,
+take advantage of the winter and recruit themselves?
+
+"But no, all is lost by another side, by the fault of entrusting an
+Austrian to guard the magazines, and cover the retreat of all these
+brave armies, and not placing a military leader at Wilna or Minsk, with
+a force sufficient either to supply the insufficiency of the Austrian
+army to meet the combined armies of Moldavia and Volhynia, or to prevent
+its betraying us."
+
+Those who made such complaints were not unaware of the presence of the
+Duke of Bassano at Wilna; but notwithstanding the talents of that
+minister, and the great confidence the Emperor placed in him, they
+considered that being a stranger to the art of war, and overloaded with
+the cares of a great administration, and of every thing political, the
+direction of military affairs should not have been left to him. Such
+were the complaints of those, whose sufferings left them the leisure
+necessary for observation. That a fault had been committed, it was
+impossible to deny; but to say how it might have been avoided, to weigh
+the value of the motives which had occasioned it, in so great a crisis,
+and in the presence of so great a man, is more than one would venture to
+undertake. Who is there besides that does not know, that in these
+hazardous and gigantic enterprises, every thing becomes a fault, when
+the object of them has failed?
+
+Although the treachery of Schwartzenberg was by no means so evident, it
+is certain, that, with the exception of the three French generals who
+were with him, the whole of the grand army considered it as beyond a
+doubt. They said, "that Walpole's only object at Vienna was to act as a
+secret agent of England; that he and Metternich composed between them
+the perfidious instructions which were sent to Schwartzenberg. Hence it
+was that ever since the 20th of September, the day when the arrival of
+Tchitchakof and the battle of Lutsk closed the victorious career of
+Schwartzenberg, that marshal had repassed the Bug, and covered Warsaw by
+uncovering Minsk; hence his perseverance in that false manoeuvre:
+hence, after a feeble effort towards Bresk-litowsky on the 10th of
+October, his neglect to avail himself of Tchitchakof's inaction by
+getting between him and Minsk, and hence his losing his time in military
+promenades, and insignificant marches towards Briansk, Bialystok, and
+Volkowitz.
+
+"He had thus allowed the admiral to take rest, and rally his sixty
+thousand men, to divide them into two, to leave one half with Sacken to
+oppose him, and to set out on the 27th of October with the other half to
+take possession of Minsk, of Borizof, of the magazine, of the passage of
+Napoleon, and of his winter quarters. Then only did Schwartzenberg put
+himself in the rear of this hostile movement, instead of anticipating
+it, as he had orders to do, leaving Regnier in the presence of Sacken,
+and marching so slowly, that from the very first the admiral had got
+five marches the start of him.
+
+"On the 14th of November, at Volkowitz, Sacken attacked Regnier,
+separated him from the Austrians, and pressed him so closely, that he
+was obliged to call Schwartzenberg to his aid. Immediately, the latter,
+as if he had been expecting the summons, retrograded, leaving Minsk to
+its fate. It is true that he released Regnier, that he beat Sacken and
+destroyed half his army, pursuing him as far as the Bug; but on the 16th
+of November, the very day of his victory, Minsk was taken by
+Tchitchakof: this was a double victory for Austria. Thus all appearances
+were preserved; the new field-marshal satisfied the wishes of his
+government, which was equally the enemy of the Russians whom he had just
+weakened on one side, and of Napoleon, whom on the other he had betrayed
+to them."
+
+Such was the language of almost the whole of the grand army; its leader
+was silent, either because he expected no more zeal on the part of an
+ally, or from policy, or because he believed that Schwartzenberg had
+acted with sufficient honour, in sending him the sort of notice which he
+did six weeks before, when he was at Moscow.
+
+However, he did address some reproaches to the field-marshal. To these
+the latter replied, by complaining bitterly, first, of the double and
+contradictory instructions which he had received, to cover Warsaw and
+Minsk at the same time; and second, of the false news which had been
+transmitted to him by the Duke of Bassano.
+
+He said, "that minister had constantly represented to him that the grand
+army was retreating safe and sound, in good order, and always
+formidable. Why had he been trifled with, by sending him bulletins made
+to deceive the idlers of the capital? His only reason for not making
+greater efforts to join the grand army was, because he believed that it
+was fully able to protect itself."
+
+He also alleged his own weakness. "How could it be expected that with
+twenty-eight thousand men he could so long keep sixty thousand in check?
+In that situation, if Tchitchakof stole a few marches on him, was it at
+all wonderful? Had he then hesitated to follow him, to leave Gallicia,
+his point of departure, his magazines, and his depot? If he ceased his
+pursuit, it was only because Regnier and Durutte, the two French
+generals, summoned him in the most urgent manner to come to their
+assistance. Both they and he had reason to expect that Maret, Oudinot,
+or Victor, would provide for the safety of Minsk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+In fact, no one had any right to accuse another of treachery, when we
+had betrayed ourselves, for all had been wanting in the time of need.
+
+At Wilna, they appeared to have had no suspicion of the real state of
+affairs; and at a time when the garrisons, the depots, the marching
+battalions, and the divisions of Durutte, Loison, and Dombrowski,
+between the Berezina and the Vistula, might have formed at Minsk an army
+of thirty thousand men, three thousand men, headed by a general of no
+reputation, were the only forces which Tchitchakof found there to oppose
+him. It was a known fact that this handful of young soldiers was exposed
+in front of a river, into which they were precipitated by the admiral,
+whereas, if they had been placed on the other side, that obstacle would
+have protected them for some time.
+
+For thus, as frequently happens, the faults of the general plan had led
+to faults of detail. The governor of Minsk had been negligently chosen.
+He was, it was said, one of those men who undertake every thing, who
+promise every thing, and who do nothing. On the 16th of November, he
+lost that capital, and with it four thousand seven hundred sick, the
+warlike ammunition, and two million rations of provisions. It was five
+days since the news of this loss had reached Dombrowna, and the news of
+a still greater calamity came on the heels of it.
+
+This same governor had retreated towards Borizof. There he neglected to
+inform Oudinot, who was only at the distance of two marches, to come to
+his assistance; and failed to support Dombrowski, who made a hasty march
+thither from Bobruisk and Igumen. The latter did not arrive, however, in
+the night of the 20th and 21st, at the _tete-du-pont_, until after the
+enemy had taken possession of it; notwithstanding, he expelled
+Tchitchakof's vanguard, took possession of it, and defended himself
+gallantly there until the evening of the 21st; but being then
+overwhelmed by the fire of the Russian artillery, which took him in
+flank, and attacked by a force more than double his own, he was driven
+across the river, and out of the town, as far as the road to Moscow.
+
+Napoleon was wholly unprepared for this disaster; he fancied that he had
+completely prevented it by the instructions he had sent to Victor from
+Moscow, on the 6th of October. These instructions "anticipated a warm
+attack from Wittgenstein or Tchitchakof; they recommended Victor to keep
+within reach of Polotsk and of Minsk; to have a prudent, discreet, and
+intelligent officer about Schwartzenberg; to keep up a regular
+correspondence with Minsk, and to send other agents in different
+directions."
+
+But Wittgenstein having made his attack before Tchitchakof, the nearer
+and more pressing danger had attracted every one's attention; the wise
+instructions of the 6th of October had not been repeated by Napoleon,
+and they appeared to have been entirely forgotten by his lieutenant.
+Finally, when the Emperor learned at Dombrowna the loss of Minsk, he had
+no idea that Borizof was in such imminent danger, as when he passed the
+next day through Orcha, he had the whole of his bridge-equipage burnt.
+
+His correspondence also of the 20th of November with Victor proved his
+security; it supposed that Oudinot would have nearly arrived on the 25th
+at Borizof, while that place had been taken possession of by Tchitchakof
+on the 21st.
+
+It was on the day immediately subsequent to that fatal catastrophe, at
+the distance of three marches from Borizof, and upon the high road, that
+an officer arrived and announced to Napoleon this fresh disaster. The
+Emperor, striking the ground with his stick, and darting a furious look
+to heaven, pronounced these words, "It is then written above that we
+shall now commit nothing but faults!"
+
+Meanwhile Marshal Oudinot, who was already marching towards Minsk,
+totally ignorant of what had happened, halted on the 21st between Bobr
+and Kroupki, when in the middle of the night General Brownikowski
+arrived to announce to him his own defeat, as well as that of General
+Dombrowski; that Borizof was taken, and that the Russians were following
+hard at his heels.
+
+On the 22d the marshal marched to meet them, and rallied the remains of
+Dombrowski's force.
+
+On the 23d, at three leagues on the other side of Borizof, he came in
+contact with the Russian vanguard, which he overthrew, taking from it
+nine hundred men and fifteen hundred carriages, and drove back by the
+united force of his artillery, infantry, and cavalry, as far as the
+Berezina; but the remains of Lambert's force, on repassing Borizof and
+that river, destroyed the bridge.
+
+Napoleon was then at Toloczina: he made them describe to him the
+position of Borizof. They assured him that at that point the Berezina
+was not merely a river but a lake of moving ice; that the bridge was
+three hundred fathoms in length; that it had been irreparably destroyed,
+and the passage by it rendered completely impracticable.
+
+At that moment arrived a general of engineers, who had just returned
+from the Duke of Belluno's corps. Napoleon interrogated him; the general
+declared "that he saw no means of escape but through the middle of
+Wittgenstein's army." The Emperor replied, "that he must find a
+direction in which he could turn his back to all the enemy's generals,
+to Kutusoff, to Wittgenstein, to Tchitchakof;" and he pointed with his
+finger on the map to the course of the Berezina below Borizof; it was
+there he wished to cross the river. But the general objected to him the
+presence of Tchitchakof on the right bank; the Emperor then pointed to
+another passage below the first, and then to a third, still nearer to
+the Dnieper. Recollecting, however, that he was then approaching the
+country of the Cossacks, he stopped short, and exclaimed, "Oh yes!
+Pultawa! that is like Charles XII.!"
+
+In fact, every disaster which Napoleon could anticipate had occurred;
+the melancholy conformity, therefore, of his situation with that of the
+Swedish conqueror, threw his mind into such a state of agitation, that
+his health became still more seriously affected than it had been at
+Malo-Yaroslawetz. Among the expressions he made use of, loud enough to
+be overheard, was this: "See what happens when we heap faults on
+faults!"
+
+Nevertheless, these first movements were the only ones that had escaped
+him, and the valet-de-chambre who assisted him, was the only person that
+witnessed his agitation. Duroc, Daru, and Berthier have all said, that
+they knew nothing of it, that they saw him unshaken; this was very true,
+humanly speaking, as he retained sufficient command over himself to
+avoid betraying his anxiety, and as the strength of man most frequently
+consists in concealing his weakness.
+
+A remarkable conversation, which was overheard the same night, will show
+better than any thing else, how critical was his position, and how well
+he bore it. It was getting late; Napoleon had gone to bed. Duroc and
+Daru, who remained in his chamber, fancying that he was asleep, were
+giving way, in whispers, to the most gloomy conjectures; he overheard
+them, however, and the word "prisoner of state," coming to his ear,
+"How!" exclaimed he, "do you believe they would dare?" Daru, after his
+first surprise, immediately answered, "that if we were compelled to
+surrender, we must be prepared for every thing; that he had no reliance
+on an enemy's generosity; that we knew too well that great state-policy
+considered itself identified with morality, and was regulated by no
+law." "But France," said the Emperor, "what would France say?" "Oh, as
+to France," continued Daru, "we are at liberty to make a thousand
+conjectures more or less disagreeable, but none of us can know what will
+take place there." And he then added, "that for the sake of the
+Emperor's chief officers, as well as the Emperor himself, the most
+fortunate thing would be, if by the air or otherwise, as the earth was
+closed upon us, the Emperor could reach France, from whence he could
+much more certainly provide for their safety, than by remaining among
+them!" "Then I suppose I am in your way?" replied the Emperor, smiling.
+"Yes, Sire." "And you have no wish to be a prisoner of state?" Daru
+replied in the same tone, "that it was enough for him to be a prisoner
+of war." On which the Emperor remained for some time in a profound
+silence; then with a more serious air: "Are all the reports of my
+ministers burnt?" "Sire, hitherto you would not allow that to be done."
+"Very well, go and destroy them; for it must be confessed, we are in a
+most melancholy position." This was the sole avowal which it wrested
+from him, and on that idea he went to sleep, knowing, when it was
+necessary, how to postpone every thing to the next day.
+
+His orders displayed equal firmness. Oudinot had just sent to inform him
+of his determination to overthrow Lambert; this he approved of, and he
+also urged him to make himself master of a passage, either above or
+below Borizof. He expressed his anxiety, that by the 24th this passage
+should be fixed on, and the preparations begun, and that he should be
+apprised of it, in order to make his march correspond. Far from thinking
+of making his escape through the midst of these three hostile armies,
+his only idea now was, that of beating Tchitchakof, and retaking Minsk.
+
+It is true, that eight hours afterwards, in a second letter to the Duke
+of Reggio, he resigned himself to cross the Berezina near Veselowo, and
+to retreat directly upon Wilna by Vileika, avoiding the Russian admiral.
+
+But on the 24th he learned that the passage could only be attempted near
+Studzianka; that at that spot the river was only fifty-four fathoms
+wide, and six feet deep; that they would land on the other side, in a
+marsh, under the fire of a commanding position strongly occupied by the
+enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+All hope of passing between the Russian armies was thus lost; driven by
+the armies of Kutusoff and Wittgenstein upon the Berezina, there was no
+alternative but to cross that river in the teeth of the army of
+Tchitchakof, which lined its banks.
+
+Ever since the 23d, Napoleon had been preparing for it, as for a
+desperate action. And first he had the eagles of all the corps brought
+to him, and burnt. He formed into two battalions, eighteen hundred
+dismounted cavalry of his guard, of whom only eleven hundred and
+fifty-four were armed with muskets and carbines.
+
+The cavalry of the army of Moscow was so completely destroyed, that
+Latour-Maubourg had not now remaining under his command more than one
+hundred and fifty men on horseback. The Emperor collected around his
+person all the officers of that arm who were still mounted; he styled
+this troop, of about five hundred officers, his _sacred squadron_.
+Grouchy and Sebastiani had the command of them; generals of division
+served in it as captains.
+
+Napoleon ordered further that all the useless carriages should be burnt;
+that no officer should keep more than one; that half the waggons and
+carriages of all the corps should also be burnt, and that the horses
+should be given to the artillery of the guard. The officers of that arm
+had orders to take all the draught-cattle within their reach, even the
+horses of the Emperor himself, sooner than abandon a single cannon, or
+ammunition waggon.
+
+After giving these orders, he plunged into the gloomy and immense forest
+of Minsk, in which a few hamlets and wretched habitations have scarcely
+cleared a few open spots. The noise of Wittgenstein's artillery filled
+it with its echo. That Russian general came rushing from the north upon
+the right flank of our expiring column; he brought back with him the
+winter which had quitted us at the same time with Kutusoff; the news of
+his threatening march quickened our steps. From forty to fifty thousand
+men, women, and children, glided through this forest as precipitately as
+their weakness and the slipperiness of the ground, from the frost
+beginning again to set in, would allow.
+
+These forced marches, commenced before daylight, and which did not
+finish at its close, dispersed all that had remained together. They lost
+themselves in the darkness of these great forests and long nights. They
+halted at night and resumed their march in the morning, in darkness, at
+random, and without hearing the signal; the dissolution of the remains
+of the corps was then completed; all were mixed and confounded together.
+
+In this last stage of weakness and confusion, as we were approaching
+Borizof, we heard loud cries before us. Some ran forward fancying it was
+an attack. It was Victor's army, which had been feebly driven back by
+Wittgenstein to the right side of our road, where it remained waiting
+for the Emperor to pass by. Still quite complete and full of animation,
+it received the Emperor, as soon as he made his appearance, with the
+customary but now long forgotten acclamations.
+
+Of our disasters it knew nothing; they had been carefully concealed even
+from its leaders. When therefore, instead of that grand column which had
+conquered Moscow, its soldiers perceived behind Napoleon only a train of
+spectres covered with rags, with female pelisses, pieces of carpet, or
+dirty cloaks, half burnt and holed by the fires, and with nothing on
+their feet but rags of all sorts, their consternation was extreme. They
+looked terrified at the sight of those unfortunate soldiers, as they
+defiled before them, with lean carcasses, faces black with dirt, and
+hideous bristly beards, unarmed, shameless, marching confusedly, with
+their heads bent, their eyes fixed on the ground and silent, like a
+troop of captives.
+
+But what astonished them more than all, was to see the number of
+colonels and generals scattered about and isolated, who seemed only
+occupied about themselves, and to think of nothing but saving the wrecks
+of their property or their persons; they were marching pell-mell with
+the soldiers, who did not notice them, to whom they had no longer any
+commands to give, and of whom they had nothing to expect, all ties
+between them being broken, and all ranks effaced by the common misery.
+
+The soldiers of Victor and Oudinot could not believe their eyes. Moved
+with compassion, their officers, with tears in their eyes, detained such
+of their companions as they recognised in the crowd. They first supplied
+them with clothes and provisions, and then asked them where were their
+_corps d'armee_? And when the others pointed them out, seeing, instead
+of so many thousand men, only a weak platoon of officers and
+non-commissioned officers round a commanding officer, their eyes still
+kept on the look out.
+
+The sight of so great a disaster struck the second and the ninth corps
+with discouragement, from the very first day. Disorder, the most
+contagious of all evils, attacked them; for it would seem as if order
+was an effort against nature. And yet the disarmed, and even the dying,
+although they were now fully aware that they had to fight their way
+across a river, and through a fresh enemy, never doubted of their being
+victorious.
+
+It was now merely the shadow of an army, but it was the shadow of the
+grand army. It felt conscious that nature alone had vanquished it. The
+sight of its Emperor revived it. It had been long accustomed not to look
+to him for its means of support, but solely to lead it to victory. This
+was its first unfortunate campaign, and it had had so many fortunate
+ones! it only required to be able to follow him. He alone, who had
+elevated his soldiers so high, and now sunk them so low, was yet able to
+save them. He was still, therefore, cherished in the heart of his army,
+like hope in the heart of man.
+
+Thus, amid so many beings who might have reproached him with their
+misfortunes, he marched on without the least fear, speaking to one and
+all without affectation, certain of being respected as long as glory
+could command our respect. Knowing perfectly that he belonged to us, as
+much as we to him, his renown being a species of national property, we
+should have sooner turned our arms against ourselves, (which was the
+case with many,) than against him, and it was a minor suicide.
+
+Some of them fell and died at his feet, and though in the most frightful
+delirium, their sufferings never gave its wanderings the turn of
+reproach, but of entreaty. And in fact did not he share the common
+danger? Which of them all risked so much as he? Who suffered the
+greatest loss, in this disaster?
+
+If any imprecations were uttered, it was not in his presence; it seemed,
+that of all misfortunes, that of incurring his displeasure was still the
+greatest; so rooted were their confidence in, and submission to that man
+who had subjected the world to them; whose genius, hitherto uniformly
+victorious and infallible, had assumed the place of their free-will, and
+who having so long in his hands the book of pensions, of rank, and of
+history, had found wherewithal to satisfy not only covetous spirits, but
+also every generous heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+We were now approaching the most critical moment; Victor was in the rear
+with 15,000 men; Oudinot in front with 5,000, and already on the
+Berezina; the Emperor, between them, with 7,000 men, 40,000 stragglers,
+and an enormous quantity of baggage and artillery, the greatest part of
+which belonged to the second and the ninth corps.
+
+On the 25th, as he was about to reach the Berezina, he appeared to
+linger on his march. He halted every instant on the high road, waiting
+for night to conceal his arrival from the enemy, and to allow the Duke
+of Reggio time to evacuate Borizof.
+
+This marshal, when he entered that town upon the 23d, found the bridge,
+which was 300 fathoms in length, destroyed at three different points,
+and that the vicinity of the enemy rendered it impossible to repair it.
+He had ascertained, that on his left, two miles lower down the river,
+there was, near Oukoholda, a deep and unsafe ford; that at the distance
+of a mile above Borizof, namely, at Stadhof, there was another, but of
+difficult approach. Finally, he had learned within the last two days,
+that at Studzianka, two leagues above Stadhof, there was a third
+passage;--for the knowledge of this he was indebted to Corbineau's
+brigade.
+
+This was the same brigade which the Bavarian general, De Wrede, had
+taken from the second corps, in his march to Smoliantzy. He had retained
+it until he reached Dokszitzi, from whence he sent it back to the second
+corps by way of Borizof. When Corbineau arrived there, he found
+Tchitchakof already in possession of it, and was compelled to make his
+retreat by ascending the Berezina, and concealing his force in the
+forests which border that river. Not knowing at what point to cross it,
+he accidentally saw a Lithuanian peasant, whose horse seemed to be quite
+wet, as if he had just come through it. He laid hold of this man, and
+made him his guide; he got up behind him, and crossed the river at a
+ford opposite to Studzianka. He immediately rejoined Oudinot, and
+informed him of the discovery he had made.
+
+As Napoleon's intention was to retreat directly upon Wilna, the marshal
+saw at once that this passage was the most direct, as well as the least
+dangerous. It was also observed, that even if our infantry and artillery
+should be too closely pressed by Wittgenstein and Kutusoff, and
+prevented from crossing the river on bridges, there was at least a
+certainty, from the ford having been tried, that the Emperor and the
+cavalry would be able to pass; that all would not then be lost, both
+peace and war, as if Napoleon himself remained in the enemy's hands. The
+marshal therefore did not hesitate. In the night of the 23d, the general
+of artillery, a company of pontonniers, a regiment of infantry, and the
+brigade Corbineau, took possession of Studzianka.
+
+At the same time the other two passages were reconnoitred, and both
+found to be strongly observed. The object therefore was to deceive and
+displace the enemy. As force could do nothing, recourse was had to
+stratagem; in furtherance of which, on the 24th, three hundred men and
+several hundred stragglers were sent towards Oukoholda, with
+instructions to collect there, with as much noise as possible, all the
+necessary materials for the construction of a bridge; the whole division
+of the cuirassiers was also made to promenade on that side within view
+of the enemy.
+
+In addition to this, Major General Lorence had several Jews sought out
+and brought to him; he interrogated them with great apparent minuteness
+relative to that ford, and the roads leading from it to Minsk. Then,
+affecting to be mightily pleased with their answers, and to be satisfied
+that there was no better passage to be found, he retained some of these
+rascals as guides, and had the others conveyed beyond our out-posts. But
+to make still more sure of the latter _not_ keeping their word with him,
+he made them swear that they would return to meet us, in the direction
+of lower Berezina, in order to inform us of the enemy's movements.
+
+While these attempts were making to draw Tchitchakof's attention
+entirely to the left, the means of effecting a passage were secretly
+preparing at Studzianka. It was only on the 25th, at five in the
+evening, that Eble arrived there, followed only by two field forges, two
+waggons of coal, six covered waggons of utensils and nails, and some
+companies of pontonniers. At Smolensk he had made each workman provide
+himself with a tool and some cramp-irons.
+
+But the tressels, which had been made the day before, out of the beams
+of the Polish cabins, were found to be too weak. The work was all to do
+over again. It was found to be quite impossible to finish the bridge
+during the night; it could only be fixed during the following day, the
+26th, in full daylight, and under the enemy's fire; but there was no
+room for hesitation.
+
+On the first approach of that decisive night, Oudinot ceded to Napoleon
+the occupation of Borizof, and went to take position with the rest of
+his corps at Studzianka. They marched in the most profound obscurity,
+without making the least noise, and mutually recommending to each other
+the deepest silence.
+
+By eight o'clock at night Oudinot and Dombrowski had taken possession of
+the heights commanding the passage, while General Eble descended from
+them. That general placed himself on the borders of the river, with his
+pontonniers and a waggon-load of the irons of abandoned wheels, which at
+all hazards he had made into cramp-irons. He had sacrificed every thing
+to preserve that feeble resource, and it saved the army.
+
+At the close of the night of the 25th he made them sink the first
+tressel in the muddy bed of the river. But to crown our misfortunes, the
+rising of the waters had made the traces of the ford entirely disappear.
+It required the most incredible efforts on the part of our unfortunate
+sappers, who were plunged in the water up to their mouths, and had to
+contend with the floating pieces of ice which were carried along by the
+stream. Many of them perished from the cold, or were drowned by the ice
+flakes, which a violent wind drove against them.
+
+They had every thing to conquer but the enemy. The rigour of the
+atmosphere was just at the degree necessary to render the passage of the
+river more difficult, without suspending its course, or sufficiently
+consolidating the moving ground upon which we were about to venture. On
+this occasion the winter showed itself more Russian than even the
+Russians themselves. The latter were wanting to their season, which
+never failed them.
+
+The French laboured during the whole night by the light of the enemy's
+fires, which shone on the heights of the opposite bank, and within reach
+of the artillery and musketry of the division Tchaplitz. The latter,
+having no longer any doubt of our intentions, sent to apprise his
+commander-in-chief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+The presence of a hostile division deprived us of all hope of deceiving
+the Russian admiral. We were expecting every instant to hear the whole
+fire of his artillery directed upon our workmen; and even if he did not
+discover them until daylight, their labours would not then be
+sufficiently advanced; and the opposite bank, being low and marshy, was
+too much commanded by Tchaplitz's positions to make it at all possible
+for us to force a passage.
+
+When he quitted Borizof, therefore, at ten o'clock at night, Napoleon
+imagined that he was setting out for a most desperate contest. He
+settled himself for the night, with the 6,400 guards which still
+remained to him, at Staroi-Borizof, a chateau belonging to Prince
+Radzivil, situated on the right of the road from Borizof to Studzianka,
+and equidistant from these two points.
+
+He passed the remainder of that night on his feet, going out every
+moment, either to listen, or to repair to the passage where his destiny
+was accomplishing; for the magnitude of his anxieties so completely
+filled his hours, that as each revolved, he fancied that it was morning.
+Several times he was reminded of his mistake by his attendants.
+
+Darkness had scarcely disappeared when he joined Oudinot. The sight of
+danger tranquillized him, as it always did; but on seeing the Russian
+fires and their position, his most determined generals, such as Rapp,
+Mortier, and Ney, exclaimed, "that if the Emperor escaped this danger,
+they must absolutely believe in the influence of his star!" Murat
+himself thought it was now time to think of nothing but saving Napoleon.
+Some of the Poles proposed it to him.
+
+The Emperor was waiting for the approach of daylight in one of the
+houses on the borders of the river, on a steep bank which was crowned
+with Oudinot's artillery. Murat obtained access to him; he declared to
+his brother-in-law, "that he looked upon the passage as impracticable;
+he urged him to save his person while it was yet time. He informed him
+that he might, without any danger, cross the Berezina a few leagues
+above Studzianka; that in five days he would reach Wilna; that some
+brave and determined Poles, perfectly acquainted with all the roads, had
+offered themselves for his guards, and to be responsible for his
+safety."
+
+But Napoleon rejected this proposition as an infamous plan, as a
+cowardly flight, and was indignant that any one should dare to think for
+a moment that he would abandon his army, so long as it was in danger. He
+was not, however, at all displeased with Murat, probably because that
+prince had afforded him an opportunity of showing his firmness, or
+rather because he saw nothing in his proposal but a mark of devotion,
+and because the first quality in the eyes of sovereigns is attachment to
+their persons.
+
+At that moment the appearance of daylight made the Russian fires grow
+pale and disappear. Our troops stood to their arms, the artillerymen
+placed themselves by their pieces, the generals were observing, and the
+looks of all were steadily directed to the opposite bank, preserving
+that silence which betokens great expectation, and is the forerunner of
+great danger.
+
+Since the day before, every blow struck by our pontonniers, echoing
+among the woody heights, must, we concluded, have attracted the whole
+attention of the enemy. The first dawn of the 26th was therefore
+expected to display to us his battalions and artillery, drawn up, in
+front of the weak scaffolding, to the construction of which Eble had yet
+to devote eight hours more. Doubtless they were only waiting for
+daylight to enable them to point their cannon with better aim. When day
+appeared, we saw their fires abandoned, the bank deserted, and upon the
+heights, thirty pieces of artillery in full retreat. A single bullet of
+theirs would have been sufficient to annihilate the only plank of
+safety, which we were about to fix, in order to unite the two banks; but
+that artillery retreated exactly as ours was placed in battery.
+
+Farther off, we perceived the rear of a long column, which was moving
+off towards Borizof without ever looking behind it; one regiment of
+infantry, however, and twelve cannon remained, but without taking up any
+position; we also saw a horde of Cossacks wandering about the skirts of
+the wood: they formed the rear-guard of Tchaplitz's division, six
+thousand strong, which was thus retiring, as if for the purpose of
+delivering up the passage to us.
+
+The French, at first could hardly venture to believe their eyes. At
+last, transported with joy, they clapped their hands, and uttered loud
+shouts. Rapp and Oudinot rushed precipitately into the house where the
+Emperor was. "Sire," they said to him, "the enemy has just raised his
+camp, and quitted his position!"--"It is not possible!" he replied; but
+Ney and Murat just then entered and confirmed this report. Napoleon
+immediately darted out; he looked, and could just see the last files of
+Tchaplitz's column getting farther off and disappearing in the woods.
+Transported with joy, he exclaimed, "I have outwitted the admiral!"
+
+During this first movement, two of the enemy's pieces re-appeared, and
+fired. An order was given to remove them by a discharge of our
+artillery.
+
+One salvo was enough; it was an act of imprudence which was not
+repeated, for fear of its recalling Tchaplitz. The bridge was as yet
+scarcely begun; it was eight o'clock, and the first tressels were only
+then fixing.
+
+The Emperor, however, impatient to get possession of the opposite bank,
+pointed it out to the bravest. Jacqueminot, aide-de-camp to the Duke of
+Reggio, and the Lithuanian count Predziecski, were the first who threw
+themselves into the river, and in spite of the pieces of ice, which cut
+and bled the chests and sides of their horses, succeeded in reaching the
+other side. Sourd, chief of the squadron, and fifty chasseurs of the
+7th, each carrying a voltigeur _en croupe_, followed them, as well as
+two frail rafts which transported four hundred men in twenty trips. The
+Emperor having expressed a wish to have a prisoner to interrogate,
+Jacqueminot, who overheard him, had scarcely crossed the river, when he
+saw one of Tchaplitz's soldiers; he rushed after, attacked, and disarmed
+him; then seizing and placing him on the bow of his saddle, he brought
+him through the river and the ice to Napoleon.
+
+About one o'clock the bank was entirely cleared of the Cossacks, and the
+bridge for the infantry finished. The division Legrand crossed it
+rapidly with its cannon, the men shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" in the
+presence of their sovereign, who was himself actively pressing the
+passage of the artillery, and encouraged his brave soldiers by his voice
+and example.
+
+He exclaimed, when he saw them fairly in possession of the opposite
+bank, "Behold my star again appear!" for he was a believer in fatality,
+like all conquerors, those men, who, having the largest accounts with
+Fortune, are fully aware how much they are indebted to her, and who,
+moreover, having no intermediate power between themselves and heaven,
+feel themselves more immediately under its protection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+At that moment, a Lithuanian nobleman, disguised as a peasant, arrived
+from Wilna with the news of Schwartzenberg's victory over Sacken.
+Napoleon appeared pleased in proclaiming it aloud, with the addition,
+that "Schwartzenberg had immediately returned upon the heels of
+Tchitchakof, and that he was coming to our assistance." A conjecture, to
+which the disappearance of Tchaplitz gave considerable probability.
+
+Meantime, as the first bridge which was just finished had only been made
+for the infantry, a second was begun immediately after, a hundred
+fathoms higher up, for the artillery and baggage, which was not finished
+until four o'clock in the afternoon. During that interval, the Duke of
+Reggio, with the rest of the second corps, and Dombrowski's division,
+followed General Legrand to the other side; they formed about seven
+thousand men.
+
+The marshal's first care was to secure the road to Zembin, by a
+detachment which chased some Cossacks from it; to push the enemy towards
+Borizof, and to keep him as far back as possible from the passage of
+Studzianka.
+
+Tchaplitz, in obedience to the admiral's orders, proceeded as far as
+Stakhowa, a village close to Borizof, he then turned back, and
+encountered the first troops of Oudinot commanded by Albert. Both sides
+halted. The French, finding themselves rather too far off from their
+main body, only wanted to gain time, and the Russian general waited for
+orders.
+
+Tchitchakof had found himself in one of those difficult situations, in
+which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between
+several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one
+side, than it removes and gets overturned upon another.
+
+His march from Minsk to Borizof in three columns, not only by the high
+road, but by the roads of Antonopolia, Logoisk, and Zembin, showed that
+his whole attention was at first directed to that part of the Berezina,
+above Borizof. Feeling himself then so strong upon his left, he felt
+only that his right was weakened, and in consequence, his anxiety was
+entirely transferred to that side.
+
+The error which led him into that false direction had other and stronger
+foundations. Kutusoff's instructions directed his responsibility to that
+point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused
+to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend
+that part of the river. He alleged, as his justification for refusal,
+the danger of a distemper among the cattle, a pretext unheard of and
+improbable, but perfectly true, as Tchitchakof himself has admitted.
+
+The admiral adds further, that information sent to him by Wittgenstein
+directed his anxiety towards Lower Berezino, as well as the supposition,
+natural enough, that the presence of that general on the right flank of
+the grand army and above Borizof, would push Napoleon below that town.
+
+The recollection of the passages of Charles XII. and of Davoust at
+Berezino, might also be another of his motives. By taking that
+direction, Napoleon would not only escape Wittgenstein, but he might
+retake Minsk, and form a junction with Schwartzenberg. This last was a
+serious consideration with Tchitchakof, Minsk being his conquest, and
+Schwartzenberg his first adversary. Lastly, and principally, Oudinot's
+demonstration near Ucholoda, and probably the report of the Jews,
+determined him.
+
+The admiral, completely deceived, had therefore resolved, on the evening
+of the 25th, to descend the Berezina, at the very moment that Napoleon
+had determined to re-ascend it. It might almost be said that the French
+Emperor dictated the Russian general's resolution, the time for adopting
+it, the precise moment, and every detail of its execution. Both started
+at the same time from Borizof, Napoleon for Studzianka, Tchitchakof for
+Szabaszawiczy, turning their backs to each other as if by mutual
+agreement, and the admiral recalling all the troops which he had above
+Borizof, with the exception of a small body of light troops, and without
+even taking the precaution of breaking up the roads.
+
+Notwithstanding, at Szabaszawiczy, he was not more than five or six
+leagues from the passage which was effectuating. On the morning of the
+26th he must have been informed of it. The bridge of Borizof was only
+three hours' march from the point of attack. He had left fifteen
+thousand men before that bridge; he might therefore have returned in
+person to that point, rejoined Tchaplitz at Stakhowa, on the same day
+made an attack, or at least made preparations for it, and on the
+following day, the 27th, overthrown with eighteen thousand men the seven
+thousand soldiers of Oudinot and Dombrowski; and finally resumed, in
+front of the Emperor and of Studzianka, the position which Tchaplitz had
+quitted the day before.
+
+But great errors are seldom repaired with the same readiness with which
+they are committed; either because it is in our nature to be at first
+doubtful of them, and that no one is disposed to admit them until they
+are completely certain; or because they confuse, and in the distrust of
+our own judgment, we hesitate, and require the support of other
+opinions.
+
+Thus it was, that the admiral lost the remainder of the 26th and the
+whole of the 27th in consultations, in feeling his way, and in
+preparations. The presence of Napoleon and his grand army, of the
+weakness of which it was impossible for him to have any idea, dazzled
+him. He saw the Emperor every where; before his right, in the simulated
+preparations for a passage; opposite his centre at Borizof, because in
+fact the arrival of the successive portions of our army filled that
+place with movements; and finally, at Studzianka before his left, where
+the Emperor really was.
+
+On the 27th, so little had he recovered from his error that he made his
+chasseurs reconnoitre and attack Borizof; they crossed over upon the
+beams of the burnt bridge, but were repulsed by the soldiers of
+Partouneaux's division.
+
+On the same day, while he was thus irresolute, Napoleon, with about five
+thousand guards, and Ney's corps, now reduced to six hundred men,
+crossed the Berezina about two o'clock in the afternoon; he posted
+himself in reserve to Oudinot, and secured the outlet from the bridges
+against Tchitchakof's future efforts.
+
+He had been preceded by a crowd of baggage and stragglers. Numbers of
+them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted.
+The army of Victor, at the same time, succeeded the guard in its
+position on the heights of Studzianka.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+Hitherto all had gone on well. But Victor, in passing through Borizof,
+had left there Partouneaux with his division. That general had orders to
+stop the enemy in the rear of that town, to drive before him the
+numerous stragglers who had taken shelter there, and to rejoin Victor
+before the close of the day. It was the first time that Partouneaux had
+seen the disorder of the grand army. He was anxious, like Davoust at the
+beginning of the retreat, to hide the traces of it from the Cossacks of
+Kutusoff, who were at his heels. This fruitless attempt, the attacks of
+Platof by the high road of Orcha, and those of Tchitchakof by the burnt
+bridge of Borizof, detained him in that place until the close of the
+day.
+
+He was preparing to quit it, when an order reached him from the Emperor
+himself, to remain there all night. Napoleon's idea, no doubt, was, in
+that manner to direct the whole attention of the three Russian generals
+upon Borizof, and that Partouneaux's keeping them back upon that point,
+would allow him sufficient time to operate the passage of his whole
+army.
+
+But Wittgenstein left Platof to pursue the French army along the high
+road, and directed his own march more to the right. He debouched the
+same evening on the heights which border the Berezina, between Borizof
+and Studzianka, intercepted the road between these two points, and
+captured all that was found there. A crowd of stragglers, who were
+driven back on Partouneaux, apprised him that he was separated from the
+rest of the army.
+
+Partouneaux did not hesitate: although he had no more than three cannon
+with him, and three thousand five hundred soldiers, he determined to cut
+his way through, made his dispositions accordingly, and began his march.
+He had at first to march along a slippery road, crowded with baggage and
+runaways; with a violent wind blowing directly in his face, and in a
+dark and icy-cold night. To these obstacles were shortly added the fire
+of several thousand enemies, who lined the heights upon his right. As
+long as he was only attacked in flank, he proceeded; but shortly after,
+he had to meet it in front from numberless troops well posted, whose
+bullets traversed his column through and through.
+
+This unfortunate division then got entangled in a shallow; a long file
+of five or six hundred carriages embarrassed all its movements; seven
+thousand terrified stragglers, howling with terror and despair, rushed
+into the midst of its feeble lines. They broke through them, caused its
+platoons to waver, and were every moment involving in their disorder
+fresh soldiers who got disheartened. It became necessary to retreat, in
+order to rally, and take a better position, but in falling back, they
+encountered Platof's cavalry.
+
+Half of our combatants had already perished, and the fifteen hundred
+soldiers who remained found themselves surrounded by three armies and by
+a river.
+
+In this situation, a flag of truce came, in the name of Wittgenstein and
+fifty thousand men, to order the French to surrender. Partouneaux
+rejected the summons. He recalled into his ranks such of his stragglers
+as yet retained their arms; he wanted to make a last effort, and clear a
+sanguinary passage to the bridge of Studzianka; but these men, who were
+formerly so brave, were now so degraded by their miseries, that they
+would no longer make use of their arms.
+
+At the same time, the general of his vanguard apprised him that the
+bridges of Studzianka were burnt; an aide-de-camp, named Rochex, who had
+just brought the report, pretended that he had seen them burning.
+Partouneaux believed this false intelligence, for, in regard to
+calamities, misfortune is credulous.
+
+He concluded that he was abandoned and sacrificed; and as the night, the
+incumbrances, and the necessity of facing the enemy on three sides,
+separated his weak brigades, he desired each of them to be told to try
+and steal off, under favour of the darkness, along the flanks of the
+enemy. He himself, with one of these brigades, reduced to four hundred
+men, ascended the steep and woody heights on his right, with the hope of
+passing through Wittgenstein's army in the darkness, of escaping him,
+and rejoining Victor; or, at all events, of getting round by the sources
+of the Berezina.
+
+But at every point where he attempted to pass, he encountered the
+enemy's fires, and he turned again; he wandered about for several hours
+quite at random, in plains of snow, in the midst of a violent hurricane.
+At every step he saw his soldiers transfixed by the cold, emaciated with
+hunger and fatigue, falling half dead into the hands of the Russian
+cavalry, who pursued him without intermission.
+
+This unfortunate general was still struggling with the heavens, with
+men, and with his own despair, when he felt even the earth give way
+under his feet. In fact, being deceived by the snow, he had fallen into
+a lake, which was not frozen sufficiently hard to bear him, and in which
+he would have been drowned. Then only he yielded and gave up his arms.
+
+While this catastrophe was accomplishing, his other three brigades,
+being more and more hemmed in upon the road, lost all power of movement.
+They delayed their surrender till the next morning, first by fighting,
+and then by parleying; they then all fell in their turn; a common
+misfortune again united them with their general.
+
+Of the whole division, a single battalion only escaped: it had been left
+the last in Borizof. It quitted it in the midst of the Russians of
+Platof and of Tchitchakof, who were effecting in that town, and at that
+very moment, the junction of the armies of Moscow and of Moldavia. This
+battalion, being alone and separated from its division, might have been
+expected to be the first to fall, but that very circumstance saved it.
+Several long trains of equipages and disbanded soldiers were flying
+towards Studzianka in different directions; drawn aside by one of these
+crowds, mistaking his road, and leaving on his right that which had been
+taken by the army, the leader of this battalion glided to the borders of
+the river, followed all its windings and turnings, and protected by the
+combat of his less fortunate comrades, by the darkness, and the very
+difficulties of the ground, moved off in silence, escaped from the
+enemy, and brought to Victor the confirmation of Partouneaux's
+surrender.
+
+When Napoleon heard the news, he was struck with grief, and exclaimed,
+"How unfortunate it was, that when all appeared to be saved, as if
+miraculously, this _defection_ had happened, to spoil all!" The
+expression was improper, but grief extorted it from him, either because
+he anticipated that Victor, being thus weakened, would be unable to hold
+out long enough next day; or because he had made it a point of honour to
+have left nothing during the whole of his retreat in the hands of the
+enemy, but stragglers, and no armed and organised corps. In fact, this
+division was the first and the only one which laid down its arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+This success encouraged Wittgenstein. At the same time, after two days
+feeling his way, the report of a prisoner, and the recapture of Borizof
+by Platof had opened Tchitchakof's eyes. From that moment the three
+Russian armies of the north, east, and south, felt themselves united;
+their commanders had mutual communications. Wittgenstein and Tchitchakof
+were jealous of each other, but they detested us still more; hatred, and
+not friendship, was their bond of union. These generals were therefore
+prepared to attack in conjunction the bridges of Studzianka, on both
+sides of the river.
+
+This was on the 28th of November. The grand army had had two days and
+two nights to effect its passage; it ought to have been too late for the
+Russians. But the French were in a state of complete disorder, and
+materials were deficient for two bridges. Twice during the night of the
+26th, the one for the carriages had broke down, and the passage had been
+retarded by it for seven hours: it broke a third time on the 27th, about
+four in the afternoon. On the other hand, the stragglers, who had been
+dispersed in the woods and surrounding villages, had not taken advantage
+of the first night, and on the 27th, when daylight appeared, they all
+presented themselves at once in order to cross the bridges.
+
+This was particularly the case when the guard, by whose movements they
+regulated themselves, began its march. Its departure was like a signal;
+they rushed in from all parts, and crowded upon the bank. Instantly
+there was seen a deep, broad, and confused mass of men, horses, and
+chariots, besieging the narrow entrance of the bridge, and overwhelming
+it. The first, pushed forward by those behind them, and driven back by
+the guards and pontonniers, or stopped by the river, were crushed, trod
+underfoot, or precipitated among the floating ices of the Berezina. From
+this immense and horrible rabble-rout there arose at times a confused
+buzzing noise, at others a loud clamour, mingled with groans and fearful
+imprecations.
+
+The efforts of Napoleon and his lieutenants to save these desperate men
+by restoring order among them, were for a long time completely
+fruitless. The disorder was so great, that, about two o'clock, when the
+Emperor presented himself in his turn, it was necessary to employ force
+to open a passage for him. A corps of grenadiers of the guard, and
+Latour-Maubourg, out of pure compassion, declined clearing themselves a
+way through these poor wretches.
+
+The imperial head-quarters were established at the hamlet of Zaniwki,
+which is situated in the midst of the woods, within a league of
+Studzianka. Eble had just then made a survey of the baggage with which
+the bank was covered; he apprised the Emperor that six days would not be
+sufficient to enable so many carriages to pass over. Ney, who was
+present, immediately called out, "that in that case they had better be
+burnt immediately." But Berthier, instigated by the demon of courts,
+opposed this; he assured the Emperor that the army was far from being
+reduced to that extremity, and the Emperor was led to believe him, from
+a preference for the opinion which flattered him the most, and from a
+wish to spare so many men, whose misfortunes he reproached himself as
+the cause of, and whose provisions and little all these carriages
+contained.
+
+In the night of the 27th the disorder ceased by the effect of an
+opposite disorder. The bridges were abandoned, and the village of
+Studzianka attracted all these stragglers; in an instant, it was pulled
+to pieces, disappeared, and was converted into an infinite number of
+bivouacs. Cold and hunger kept these wretched people fixed around them;
+it was found impossible to tear them from them. The whole of that night
+was again lost for their passage.
+
+Meantime Victor, with six thousand men, was defending them against
+Wittgenstein. But with the first dawn of the 28th, when they saw that
+marshal preparing for a battle, when they heard the cannon of
+Wittgenstein thundering over their heads, and that of Tchitchakof at the
+same time on the opposite bank, they rose all at once, they descended,
+precipitated themselves tumultuously, and returned to besiege the
+bridges.
+
+Their terror was not without foundation; the last day of numbers of
+these unfortunate persons was come. Wittgenstein and Platof, with forty
+thousand Russians of the armies of the north and east, attacked the
+heights on the left bank, which Victor, with his small force, defended.
+On the right bank, Tchitchakof, with his twenty-seven thousand Russians
+of the army of the south, debouched from Stachowa against Oudinot, Ney,
+and Dombrowski. These three could hardly reckon eight thousand men in
+their ranks, which were supported by the sacred squadron, as well as by
+the old and young guard, who then consisted of three thousand eight
+hundred infantry and nine hundred cavalry.
+
+The two Russian armies attempted to possess themselves at once of the
+two outlets from the bridges, and of all who had been unable to push
+forward beyond the marshes of Zembin. More than sixty thousand men, well
+clothed, well fed, and completely armed, attacked eighteen thousand
+half-naked, badly armed, dying of hunger, separated by a river,
+surrounded by morasses, and additionally encumbered with more than fifty
+thousand stragglers, sick or wounded, and by an enormous mass of
+baggage. During the last two days, the cold and misery had been such
+that the old guard had lost two-thirds, and the young guard one-half of
+their effective men.
+
+This fact, and the calamity which had fallen upon Partouneaux's
+division, sufficiently explain the frightful diminution of Victor's
+corps, and yet that marshal kept Wittgenstein in check during the whole
+of that day, the 28th. As to Tchitchakof, he was beaten. Marshal Ney,
+with his eight thousand French, Swiss, and Poles, was a match for
+twenty-seven thousand Russians.
+
+The admiral's attack was tardy and feeble. His cannon cleared the road,
+but he durst not venture to follow his bullets, and penetrate by the
+chasm which they made in our ranks. Opposite to his right, however, the
+legion of the Vistula gave way to the attack of a strong column.
+Oudinot, Albert, Dombrowski, Claparede, and Kosikowski were then
+wounded; some uneasiness began to be felt. But Ney hastened forward; he
+made Doumerc and his cavalry dash quite across the woods upon the flank
+of that Russian column; they broke through it, took two thousand
+prisoners, cut the rest to pieces, and by this vigorous charge decided
+the fate of the battle, which was dragging on in uncertainty.
+Tchitchakof, thus defeated, was driven back into Stachowa.
+
+[Illustration: Passage of the Berezina]
+
+On our side, most of the generals of the second corps were wounded; for
+the less troops they had, the more they were obliged to expose their
+persons. Many officers on this occasion took the muskets and the places
+of their wounded men. Among the losses of the day, that of young
+Noailles, Berthier's aide-de-camp, was remarkable. He was struck dead by
+a ball. He was one of those meritorious but too ardent officers, who are
+incessantly exposing themselves, and are considered sufficiently
+rewarded by being employed.
+
+During this combat, Napoleon, at the head of his guard, remained in
+reserve at Brilowa, covering the outlet of the bridges, between the two
+armies, but nearer to that of Victor. That marshal, although attacked in
+a very dangerous position, and by a force quadruple his own, lost very
+little ground. The right of his _corps d'armee_, mutilated by the
+capture of Partouneaux's division, was protected by the river, and
+supported by a battery which the Emperor had erected on the opposite
+bank. His front was defended by a ravine, but his left was in the air,
+without support, and in a manner lost, in the elevated plain of
+Studzianka.
+
+Wittgenstein's first attack was not made until ten o'clock in the
+morning of the 28th, across the road of Borizof, and along the Berezina,
+which he endeavoured to ascend as far as the passage, but the French
+right wing stopped him, and kept him back for a considerable time, out
+of reach of the bridges. He then deployed, and extended the engagement
+with the whole front of Victor, but without effect. One of his attacking
+columns attempted to cross the ravine, but it was attacked and
+destroyed.
+
+At last, about the middle of the day, the Russian discovered the point
+where his superiority lay: he overwhelmed the French left wing. Every
+thing would then have been lost had it not been for an effort of
+Fournier, and the devotion of Latour-Maubourg. That general was passing
+the bridges with his cavalry; he perceived the danger, retraced his
+steps, and the enemy was again stopped by a most sanguinary charge.
+Night came on before Wittgenstein's forty thousand men had made any
+impression on the six thousand of the Duke of Belluno. That marshal
+remained in possession of the heights of Studzianka, and still preserved
+the bridges from the attacks of the Russian infantry, but he was unable
+to conceal them from the artillery of their left wing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+During the whole of that day, the situation of the ninth corps was so
+much more critical, as a weak and narrow bridge was its only means of
+retreat; in addition to which its avenues were obstructed by the baggage
+and the stragglers. By degrees, as the action got warmer, the terror of
+these poor wretches increased their disorder. First of all they were
+alarmed by the rumours of a serious engagement, then by seeing the
+wounded returning from it, and last of all by the batteries of the
+Russian left wing, some bullets from which began to fall among their
+confused mass.
+
+They had all been already crowding one upon the other, and the immense
+multitude heaped upon the bank pell-mell with the horses and carriages,
+there formed a most alarming incumbrance. It was about the middle of the
+day that the first Russian bullets fell in the midst of this chaos; they
+were the signal of universal despair.
+
+Then it was, as in all cases of extremity, that dispositions exhibited
+themselves without disguise, and actions were witnessed, most base, and
+others most sublime. According to their different characters, some
+furious and determined, with sword in hand, cleared for themselves a
+horrible passage. Others, still more cruel, opened a way for their
+carriages by driving them without mercy over the crowd of unfortunate
+persons who stood in the way, whom they crushed to death. Their
+detestable avarice made them sacrifice their companions in misfortune to
+the preservation of their baggage. Others, seized with a disgusting
+terror, wept, supplicated, and sunk under the influence of that passion,
+which completed the exhaustion of their strength. Some were observed,
+(and these were principally the sick and wounded,) who, renouncing life,
+went aside and sat down resigned, looking with a fixed eye on the snow
+which was shortly to be their tomb.
+
+Numbers of those who started first among this crowd of desperadoes
+missed the bridge, and attempted to scale it by the sides, but the
+greater part were pushed into the river. There were seen women in the
+midst of the ice, with their children in their arms, raising them as
+they felt themselves sinking, and even when completely immerged, their
+stiffened arms still held them above them.
+
+In the midst of this horrible disorder, the artillery bridge burst and
+broke down. The column, entangled in this narrow passage, in vain
+attempted to retrograde. The crowds of men who came behind, unaware of
+the calamity, and not hearing the cries of those before them, pushed
+them on, and threw them into the gulf, into which they were precipitated
+in their turn.
+
+Every one then attempted to pass by the other bridge. A number of large
+ammunition waggons, heavy carriages, and cannon crowded to it from all
+parts. Directed by their drivers, and carried along rapidly over a rough
+and unequal declivity, in the midst of heaps of men, they ground to
+powder the poor wretches who were unlucky enough to get between them;
+after which, the greater part, driving violently against each other and
+getting overturned, killed in their fall those who surrounded them.
+Whole rows of these desperate creatures being pushed against these
+obstacles, got entangled among them, were thrown down and crushed to
+pieces by masses of other unfortunates who succeeded each other
+uninterruptedly.
+
+Crowds of them were rolling in this way, one over the other, nothing was
+heard but cries of rage and suffering. In this frightful medley, those
+who were trod under and stifled, struggled under the feet of their
+companions, whom they laid hold of with their nails and teeth, and by
+whom they were repelled without mercy, as if they had been enemies.
+
+Among them were wives and mothers, calling in vain, and in tones of
+distraction, for their husbands and their children, from whom they had
+been separated but a moment before, never more to be united: they
+stretched out their arms and entreated to be allowed to pass in order to
+rejoin them; but being carried backwards and forwards by the crowd, and
+overcome by the pressure, they sunk under without being even remarked.
+Amidst the tremendous noise of a furious hurricane, the firing of
+cannon, the whistling of the storm and of the bullets, the explosion of
+shells, vociferations, groans, and the most frightful oaths, this
+infuriated and disorderly crowd heard not the complaints of the victims
+whom it was swallowing up.
+
+The more fortunate gained the bridge by scrambling over heaps of
+wounded, of women and children thrown down and half suffocated, and whom
+they again trod down in their attempts to reach it. When at last they
+got to the narrow defile, they fancied they were safe, but the fall of a
+horse, or the breaking or displacing of a plank again stopped all.
+
+There was also, at the outlet of the bridge, on the other side, a
+morass, into which many horses and carriages had sunk, a circumstance
+which again embarrassed and retarded the clearance. Then it was, that in
+that column of desperadoes, crowded together on that single plank of
+safety, there arose an internal struggle, in which the weakest and worst
+situated were thrown into the river by the strongest. The latter,
+without turning their heads, and carried away by the instinct of
+self-preservation, pushed on toward the goal with fury, regardless of
+the imprecations of rage and despair, uttered by their companions or
+their officers, whom they had thus sacrificed.
+
+But on the other hand, how many noble instances of devotion! and why are
+time and space denied me to relate them? There were seen soldiers, and
+even officers, harnessing themselves to sledges, to snatch from that
+fatal bank their sick or wounded comrades. Farther off, and out of reach
+of the crowd, were seen soldiers motionless, watching over their dying
+officers, who had entrusted themselves to their care; the latter in vain
+conjured them to think of nothing but their own preservation, they
+refused, and, sooner than abandon their leaders, were contented to wait
+the approach of slavery or death.
+
+Above the first passage, while the young Lauriston threw himself into
+the river, in order to execute the orders of his sovereign more
+promptly, a little boat, carrying a mother and her two children, was
+overset and sunk under the ice; an artilleryman, who was struggling like
+the others on the bridge to open a passage for himself, saw the
+accident; all at once, forgetting himself, he threw himself into the
+river, and by great exertion, succeeded in saving one of the three
+victims. It was the youngest of the two children; the poor little thing
+kept calling for its mother with cries of despair, and the brave
+artilleryman was heard telling it, "not to cry; that he had not
+preserved it from the water merely to desert it on the bank; that it
+should want for nothing; that he would be its father, and its family."
+
+The night of the 28th added to all these calamities. Its darkness was
+insufficient to conceal its victims from the artillery of the Russians.
+Amidst the snow, which covered every thing, the course of the river, the
+thorough black mass of men, horses, carriages, and the noise proceeding
+from them, were sufficient to enable the enemy's artillerymen, to direct
+their fire.
+
+About nine o'clock at night there was a still farther increase of
+desolation, when Victor began his retreat, and his divisions came and
+opened themselves a horrible breach through these unhappy wretches, whom
+they had till then been protecting. A rear-guard, however, having been
+left at Studzianka, the multitude, benumbed with cold, or too anxious to
+preserve their baggage, refused to avail themselves of the last night
+for passing to the opposite side. In vain were the carriages set fire
+to, in order to tear them from them. It was only the appearance of
+daylight, which brought them all at once, but too late, to the entrance
+of the bridge, which they again besieged. It was half-past eight in the
+morning, when Eble, seeing the Russians approaching, at last set fire to
+it.
+
+The disaster had reached its utmost bounds. A multitude of carriages,
+three cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were
+abandoned on the hostile bank. They were seen wandering in desolate
+troops on the borders of the river. Some threw themselves into it in
+order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice
+which were floating along: some there were also who threw themselves
+headlong into the flames of the burning bridge, which sunk under them;
+burnt and frozen at one and the same time, they perished under two
+opposite punishments. Shortly after, the bodies of all sorts were
+perceived collecting together and the ice against the tressels of the
+bridge. The rest awaited the Russians. Wittgenstein did not show himself
+upon the heights until an hour after Eble's departure, and, without
+having gained a victory, reaped all the fruits of one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+While this catastrophe was accomplishing, the remains of the grand army
+on the opposite bank formed nothing but a shapeless mass, which
+unravelled itself confusedly, as it took the road to Zembin. The whole
+of this country is a high and woody plain of great extent, where the
+waters, flowing in uncertainty between different inclinations of the
+ground, form one vast morass. Three consecutive bridges, of three
+hundred fathoms in length, are thrown over it; along these the army
+passed, with a mingled feeling of astonishment, fear, and delight.
+
+These magnificent bridges, made of resinous fir, began at the distance
+of a few wersts from the passage. Tchaplitz had occupied them for
+several days. An _abatis_ and heaps of bavins of combustible wood,
+already dry, were laid at their entrance, as if to remind him of the use
+he had to make of them. It would not have required more than the fire
+from one of the Cossacks' pipes to set these bridges on fire. In that
+case all our efforts and the passage of the Berezina would have been
+entirely useless. Caught between the morass and the river, in a narrow
+space, without provisions, without shelter, in the midst of a tremendous
+hurricane, the grand army and its Emperor must have been compelled to
+surrender without striking a blow.
+
+In this desperate situation, in which all France seemed destined to be
+taken prisoner in Russia, where every thing was against us and in favour
+of the Russians, the latter did nothing but by halves. Kutusoff did not
+reach the Dnieper, at Kopis, until the very day that Napoleon approached
+the Berezina. Wittgenstein allowed himself to be kept in check during
+the time that the former required for his passage. Tchitchakof was
+defeated; and of eighty thousand men, Napoleon succeeded in saving sixty
+thousand.
+
+He remained till the last moment on these melancholy banks, near the
+ruins of Brilowa, unsheltered, and at the head of his guards, one-third
+of whom were destroyed by the storm. During the day they stood to arms,
+and were drawn up in order of battle; at night, they bivouacked in a
+square round their leader; there the old grenadiers incessantly kept
+feeding their fires. They sat upon their knapsacks, with their elbows
+planted on their knees, and their hands supporting their head;
+slumbering in this manner doubled upon themselves, in order that one
+limb might warm the other, and that they should feel less the emptiness
+of their stomachs.
+
+During these three days and three nights, spent in the midst of them,
+Napoleon, with his looks and his thoughts wandering on three sides at
+once, supported the second corps by his orders and his presence,
+protected the ninth corps and the passage with his artillery, and united
+his efforts with those of Eble in saving as many fragments as possible
+from the wreck. He at last directed the remains to Zembin, where Prince
+Eugene had preceded him.
+
+It was remarked that he still gave orders to his marshals, who had no
+soldiers to command, to take up positions on that road, as if they had
+still armies at their beck. One of them made the observation to him with
+some degree of asperity, and was beginning an enumeration of his losses;
+but Napoleon, determined to reject all reports, lest they should
+degenerate into complaints, warmly interrupted him with these words:
+"why then do you wish to deprive me of my tranquillity?" and as the
+other was persisting, he shut his mouth at once, by repeating, in a
+reproachful manner, "I ask you, sir, why do you wish to deprive me of my
+tranquillity?" An expression, which in his adversity, explained the
+attitude which he imposed upon himself, and that which he exacted of
+others.
+
+Around him during these mortal days, every bivouac was marked by a heap
+of dead bodies. There were collected men of all classes, of all ranks,
+of all ages; ministers, generals, administrators. Among them was
+remarked an elderly nobleman of the times long passed, when light and
+brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was
+seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of a tree, occupying himself with
+unruffled gaiety every morning with the details of his toilette; in the
+midst of the hurricane, he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered
+with the greatest care, amusing himself in this manner with all the
+calamities, and with the fury of the combined elements which assailed
+him.
+
+Near him were officers of the scientific corps still finding subjects of
+discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age, which a few discoveries
+have encouraged to find explanations for every thing, the latter, amidst
+the acute sufferings which were inflicted upon them by the north wind,
+were endeavouring to ascertain the cause of its constant direction.
+According to them, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun,
+by warming the southern hemisphere, converted all its emanations into
+vapour, elevated them, and left on the surface of that zone a vacuum,
+into which the vapours of our hemisphere, which were lower, on account
+of being less rarefied, rushed with violence. From one to another, and
+from a similar cause, the Russian pole, completely surcharged with
+vapours which it had emanated, received, and cooled since the last
+spring, greedily followed that direction. It discharged itself from it
+by an impetuous and icy current, which swept the Russian territory quite
+bare, and stiffened or destroyed every thing which it encountered in its
+passage.
+
+Several others of these officers remarked with curious attention the
+regular hexagonal crystallization of each of the flakes of snow which
+covered their garments.
+
+The phenomenon of parhelias, or simultaneous appearances of several
+images of the sun, reflected to their eyes by means of icicles suspended
+in the atmosphere, was also the subject of their observations, and
+occurred several times to divert them from their sufferings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+On the 29th the Emperor quitted the banks of the Berezina, pushing on
+before him the crowd of disbanded soldiers, and marching with the ninth
+corps, which was already disorganized. The day before, the second and
+the ninth corps, and Dombrowski's division presented a total of fourteen
+thousand men; and now, with the exception of about six thousand, the
+rest had no longer any form of division, brigade, or regiment.
+
+Night, hunger, cold, the fall of a number of officers, the loss of the
+baggage on the other side of the river, the example of so many runaways,
+and the much more forbidding one of the wounded, who had been abandoned
+on both sides of the river, and were left rolling in despair on the
+snow, which was covered with their blood--every thing; in short, had
+contributed to discourage them; they were confounded in the mass of
+disbanded men who had come from Moscow.
+
+The whole still formed sixty thousand men, but without the least order
+or unity. All marched pell-mell, cavalry, infantry, artillery, French
+and Germans; there was no longer either wing or centre. The artillery
+and carriages drove on through this disorderly crowd, with no other
+instructions than to proceed as quickly as possible.
+
+On this narrow and hilly causeway, many were crushed to death in
+crowding together through the defiles, after which there was a general
+dispersion to every point where either shelter or provisions were likely
+to be found. In this manner did Napoleon reach Kamen, where he slept,
+along with the prisoners made on the preceding day, who were put into a
+fold like sheep. These poor wretches, after devouring even the dead
+bodies of their fellows, almost all perished of cold and hunger.
+
+On the 30th he reached Pleszezenitzy. Thither the Duke of Reggio, after
+being wounded, had retired the day before, with about forty officers and
+soldiers. He fancied himself in safety, when all at once the Russian
+partizan, Landskoy, with one hundred and fifty hussars, four hundred
+Cossacks, and two cannon, penetrated, into the village, and filled all
+the streets of it.
+
+Oudinot's feeble escort was dispersed. The marshal saw himself reduced
+to defend himself with only seventeen others, in a wooden house, but he
+did so with such audacity and success, that the enemy was astonished,
+quitted the village, and took position on a height, from which he
+attacked it with his cannon. The relentless destiny of this brave
+marshal so ordered it, that in this skirmish he was again wounded by a
+splinter of wood.
+
+Two Westphalian battalions, which preceded the Emperor, at last made
+their appearance and disengaged him, but not till late, and not until
+these Germans and the marshal's escort (who at first did not recognize
+each other as friends) had taken a long and anxious survey of each
+other.
+
+On the 3d of December, Napoleon arrived in the morning at Malodeczno,
+which was the last point where Tchitchakof was likely to have got the
+start of him. Some provisions were found there, the forage was abundant,
+the day beautiful, the sun shining, and the cold bearable. There also
+the couriers, who had been so long in arrears arrived all at once. The
+Poles were immediately directed forward to Warsaw through Olita, and the
+dismounted cavalry by Merecz to the Niemen; the rest of the army was to
+follow the high road, which they had again regained.
+
+Up to that time, Napoleon seemed to have entertained no idea of quitting
+his army. But about the middle of that day, he suddenly informed Daru
+and Duroc of his determination to set off immediately for Paris.
+
+Daru did not see the necessity of it. He objected, "that the
+communication with France was again opened, and the most dangerous
+crisis passed; that at every retrograde step he would now be meeting the
+reinforcements sent him from Paris and from Germany." The Emperor's
+reply was, "that he no longer felt himself sufficiently strong to leave
+Prussia between him and France. What necessity was there for his
+remaining at the head of a routed army? Murat and Eugene would be
+sufficient to direct it, and Ney to cover its retreat.
+
+"That his return to France was become indispensable, in order to secure
+her tranquillity, and to summon her to arms; to take measures there for
+keeping the Germans steady in their fidelity to him; and finally, to
+return with new and sufficient forces to the assistance of his grand
+army.
+
+"But, in order to attain that object, it was necessary that he should
+travel alone over four hundred leagues of the territories of his allies;
+and to do so without danger, that his resolution should be there
+unforeseen, his passage unknown, and the rumour of his disastrous
+retreat still uncertain; that he should precede the news of it, and
+anticipate the effect which it might produce on them, and all the
+defections to which it might give rise. He had, therefore, no time to
+lose, and the moment of his departure was now arrived."
+
+He only hesitated in the choice of the leader whom he should leave in
+command of the army; he wavered between Murat and Eugene. He liked the
+prudence and devotedness of the latter; but Murat had greater celebrity,
+which would give him more weight. Eugene would remain with that monarch;
+his youth and his inferior rank would be a security for his obedience,
+and his character for his zeal. He would set an example of it to the
+other marshals.
+
+Finally, Berthier, the channel, to which they had been so long
+accustomed, of all the imperial orders and rewards, would remain with
+them; there would consequently be no change in the form or the
+organization of the army; and this arrangement, at the same time that it
+would be a proof of the certainty of his speedy return, would serve both
+to keep the most impatient of his own officers in their duty, and the
+most ardent of his enemies in a salutary dread.
+
+Such were the motives assigned by Napoleon. Caulaincourt immediately
+received orders to make secret preparations for their departure. The
+rendezvous was fixed at Smorgoni, and the time, the night of the 5th of
+December.
+
+Although Daru was not to accompany Napoleon, who left him the heavy
+charge of the administration of the army, he listened in silence, having
+nothing to urge in reply to motives of such weight; but it was quite
+otherwise with Berthier. This enfeebled old man, who had for sixteen
+years never quitted the side of Napoleon, revolted at the idea of this
+separation.
+
+The private scene which took place was most violent. The Emperor was
+indignant at his resistance. In his rage he reproached him with all the
+favours with which he had loaded him; the army, he told him, stood in
+need of the reputation which he had made for him, and which was only a
+reflection of his own; but to cut the matter short, he allowed him
+four-and-twenty hours to decide; and if he then persisted in his
+disobedience, he might depart for his estates, where he should order him
+to remain, forbidding him ever again to enter Paris or his presence.
+Next day, the 4th of December, Berthier, excusing himself for his
+previous refusal by his advanced age and impaired health, resigned
+himself sorrowfully to his sovereign's pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+But at the very moment that Napoleon determined on his departure, the
+winter became terrible, as if the Russian atmosphere, seeing him about
+to escape from it, had redoubled its severity in order to overwhelm him
+and destroy us. On the 4th of December, when we reached Bienitza, the
+thermometer was at 26 degrees.
+
+The Emperor had left Count Lobau and several hundred men of his old
+guard at Malodeczno, at which place the road to Zembin rejoins the
+high-road from Minsk to Wilna. It was necessary to guard this point
+until the arrival of Victor, who in his turn would defend it until that
+of Ney.
+
+For it was still to this marshal, and to the second corps commanded by
+Maison, that the rear-guard was entrusted. On the night of the 29th of
+November, when Napoleon quitted the banks of the Berezina, Ney, and the
+second and third corps, now reduced to three thousand soldiers, passed
+the long bridges leading to Zembin, leaving at their entrance Maison,
+and a few hundred men to defend and to burn them.
+
+Tchitchakof made a late but warm attack, and not only with musketry, but
+with the bayonet: but he was repulsed. Maison at the same time caused
+these long bridges to be loaded with the bavins, of which Tchaplitz,
+some days before, had neglected to make use. When every thing was ready,
+the enemy completely sickened of fighting, and night and the bivouacs
+well advanced, he rapidly passed the defile, and set fire to them. In a
+few minutes these long causeways were burnt to ashes, and fell into the
+morasses, which the frost had not yet rendered passable.
+
+These quagmires stopped the enemy and compelled him to make a _detour_.
+During the following day, therefore, the march of Ney and of Maison was
+unmolested. But on the day after, the 1st of December, as they came in
+sight of Pleszezenitzy, lo and behold! the whole of the Russian cavalry
+were seen rushing forward impetuously, and pushing Doumerc and his
+cuirassiers on their right. In an instant they were attacked and
+overwhelmed on all sides.
+
+At the same time, Maison saw that the village through which he had to
+retreat, was entirely filled with stragglers. He sent to warn them to
+flee directly; but these unfortunate and famished wretches, not seeing
+the enemy, refused to leave their meals which they had just begun;
+Maison was driven back upon them into the village. Then only, at the
+sight of the enemy, and the noise of the shells, the whole of them
+started up at once, rushed out, and crowded and encumbered every part of
+the principal street.
+
+Maison and his troop found themselves all at once in a manner lost in
+the midst of this terrified crowd, which pressed upon them, almost
+stifled them, and deprived them of the use of their arms. This general
+had no other remedy than to desire his men to remain close together and
+immoveable, and wait till the crowd had dispersed. The enemy's cavalry
+then came up with this mass, and got entangled with it, but it could
+only penetrate slowly and by cutting down. The crowd having at last
+dispersed, discovered to the Russians, Maison and his soldiers waiting
+for them with a determined countenance. But in its flight, the crowd had
+drawn along with it a portion of our combatants. Maison, in an open
+plain, and with seven or eight hundred men against thousands of enemies,
+lost all hope of safety; he was already seeking only to gain a wood not
+far off, in order to sell their lives more dearly, when he saw coming
+out of it eighteen hundred Poles, a troop quite fresh, which Ney had met
+with and brought to his assistance. This reinforcement stopped the
+enemy, and secured the retreat as far as Malodeczno.
+
+On the 4th of December, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Ney and
+Maison got within sight of that village, which Napoleon had quitted in
+the morning. Tchaplitz followed them close. Ney had now only six hundred
+men remaining with him. The weakness of this rear-guard, the approach of
+night, and the prospect of a place of shelter, excited the ardour of the
+Russian general; he made a warm attack. Ney and Maison, perfectly
+certain that they would die of cold on the high-road, if they allowed
+themselves to be driven beyond that cantonment, preferred perishing in
+defending it.
+
+They halted at its entrance, and as their artillery horses were dying,
+they gave up all idea of saving their cannon; determined however that it
+should do its duty for the last time in crushing the enemy, they formed
+every piece they possessed into a battery, and made a tremendous fire.
+Tchaplitz's attacking column was entirely broken by it, and halted. But
+that general, availing himself of his superior forces, diverted a part
+of them to another entrance, and his first troops had already crossed
+the inclosures of Malodeczno, when all at once, they there encountered a
+fresh enemy.
+
+As good luck would have it, Victor, with about four thousand men, the
+remains of the ninth corps, still occupied this village. The fury on
+both sides was extreme; the first houses were several times taken and
+retaken. The combat on both sides was much less for glory than to keep
+or acquire a refuge against the destructive cold. It was not until
+half-past eleven at night that the Russians gave up the contest, and
+went from it half frozen, to seek for another in the surrounding
+villages.
+
+The following day, December 5th, Ney and Maison had expected that the
+Duke of Belluno would replace them at the rear-guard; but they found
+that that marshal had retired, according to his instructions, and that
+they were left alone in Malodeczno with only sixty men. All the rest had
+fled; the rigour of the climate had completely knocked up their
+soldiers, whom the Russians to the very last moment were unable to
+conquer; their arms fell from their hands, and they themselves fell at a
+few paces distance from their arms.
+
+Maison, who united great vigour of mind with a very strong constitution,
+was not intimidated; he continued his retreat to Bienitza, rallying at
+every step men who were incessantly escaping from him, but still
+continuing to give proofs of the existence of a rear-guard, with a few
+foot-soldiers. This was all that was required; for the Russians
+themselves were frozen, and obliged to disperse before night into the
+neighbouring habitations, which they durst not quit until it was
+completely daylight. They then recommenced their pursuit of us, but
+without making any attack; for with the exception of some numb efforts,
+the violence of the temperature was such as not to allow either party to
+halt with the view of making an attack, or of defending themselves.
+
+In the mean time, Ney, being surprised at Victor's departure, went after
+him, overtook him, and tried to prevail upon him to halt; but the Duke
+of Belluno, having orders to retreat, refused. Ney then wanted him to
+give him up his soldiers, offering to take the command of them; but
+Victor would neither consent to do that, nor to take the rear-guard
+without express orders. In the altercation which arose in consequence
+between these two, the Prince of the Moskwa gave way to his passion in a
+most violent manner, without producing any effect on the coolness of
+Victor. At last an order of the Emperor arrived; Victor was instructed
+to support the retreat, and Ney was summoned to Smorgoni.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XIII.
+
+
+Napoleon had just arrived there amidst a crowd of dying men, devoured
+with chagrin, but not allowing the least emotion to exhibit itself in
+his countenance, at the sight of these unhappy men's sufferings, who, on
+the other hand, had allowed no murmurs to escape them in his presence.
+It is true that a seditious movement was impossible; it would have
+required an additional effort, as the strength of every man was fully
+occupied in struggling with hunger, cold, and fatigue; it would have
+required union, agreement, and mutual understanding, while famine and so
+many evils separated and isolated them, by concentrating every man's
+feelings completely in himself. Far from exhausting themselves in
+provocations or complaints, they marched along silently, exerting all
+their efforts against a hostile atmosphere, and diverted from every
+other idea by a state of continual action and suffering. Their physical
+wants absorbed their whole moral strength; they thus lived mechanically
+in their sensations, continuing in their duty from recollection, from
+the impressions which they had received in better times, and in no
+slight degree from that sense of honour and love of glory which had been
+inspired by twenty years of victory, and the warmth of which still
+survived and struggled within them.
+
+The authority of the commanders also remained complete and respected,
+because it had always been eminently paternal, and because the dangers,
+the triumphs, and the calamities had always been shared in common. It
+was an unhappy family, the head of which was perhaps the most to be
+pitied. The Emperor and the grand army, therefore, preserved towards
+each other a melancholy and noble silence; they were both too proud to
+utter complaints, and too experienced not to feel the inutility of them.
+
+Meantime, however, Napoleon had entered precipitately into his last
+imperial head-quarters; he there finished his final instructions, as
+well as the 29th and last bulletin of his expiring army. Precautions
+were taken in his inner apartment, that nothing of what was about to
+take place there should transpire until the following day.
+
+But the presentiment of a last misfortune seized his officers; all of
+them would have wished to follow him. Their hearts yearned after France,
+to be once more in the bosom of their families, and to flee from this
+horrible climate; but not one of them ventured to express a wish of the
+kind; duty and honour restrained them.
+
+While they affected a tranquillity which they were far from tasting, the
+night and the moment which the Emperor had fixed for declaring his
+resolution to the commanders of the army arrived. All the marshals were
+summoned. As they successively entered, he took each of them aside in
+private, and first of all gained their approbation of his plan, of some
+by his arguments, and of others by confidential effusions.
+
+Thus it was, that on perceiving Davoust, he ran forward to meet him, and
+asked him why it was that he never saw him, and if he had entirely
+deserted him? And upon Davoust's reply that he fancied he had incurred
+his displeasure, the Emperor explained himself mildly, received his
+answers favourably, confided to him the road he meant to travel, and
+took his advice, respecting its details.
+
+His manner was kind and flattering to them all; afterwards, having
+assembled them at his table, he complimented them for their noble
+actions during the campaign. As to himself, the only confession he made
+of his temerity was couched in these words: "If I had been born to the
+throne, if I had been a Bourbon, it would have been easy for me not to
+have committed any faults."
+
+When their entertainment was over, he made Prince Eugene read to them
+his twenty-ninth bulletin; after which, declaring aloud what he had
+already confided to each of them, he told them, "that he was about to
+depart that very night with Duroc, Caulaincourt, and Lobau, for Paris.
+That his presence there was indispensable for France as well as for the
+remains of his unfortunate army. It was there only he could take
+measures for keeping the Austrians and Prussians in check. These nations
+would certainly pause before they declared war against him, when they
+saw him at the head of the French nation, and a fresh army of twelve
+hundred thousand men."
+
+He added, that "he had ordered Ney to proceed to Wilna, there to
+reorganise the army. That Rapp would second him, and afterwards go to
+Dantzic, Lauriston to Warsaw, and Narbonne to Berlin; that his household
+would remain with the army; but that it would be necessary to strike a
+blow at Wilna, and stop the enemy there. There they would find Loison,
+De Wrede, reinforcements, provisions, and ammunition of all sorts;
+afterwards they would go into winter-quarters on the other side of the
+Niemen; that he hoped the Russians would not pass the Vistula before his
+return."
+
+In conclusion, "I leave the King of Naples to command the army. I hope
+that you will yield him the same obedience as you would to myself, and
+that the greatest harmony will prevail among you."
+
+As it was now ten o'clock at night, he then rose, squeezed their hands
+affectionately, embraced them, and departed.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK XII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+
+Comrades! I must confess that my spirit, discouraged, refused to
+penetrate farther into the recollection of so many horrors. Having
+arrived at the departure of Napoleon, I had flattered myself that my
+task was completed. I had announced myself as the historian of that
+great epoch, when we were precipitated from the highest summit of glory
+to the deepest abyss of misfortune; but now that nothing remains for me
+to retrace but the most frightful miseries, why should we not spare
+ourselves, you the pain of reading them, and myself that of tasking a
+memory which has now only to rake up embers, nothing but disasters to
+reckon, and which can no longer write but upon tombs?
+
+But as it was our fate to push bad as well as good fortune to the utmost
+verge of improbability, I will endeavour to keep the promise I have made
+you to the conclusion. Moreover, when the history of great men relates
+even their last moments, how can I conceal the last sighs of the grand
+army when it was expiring? Every thing connected with it appertains to
+renown, its dying groans as well as its cries of victory. Every thing in
+it was grand; it will be our lot to astonish future ages with our glory
+and our sorrow. Melancholy consolation! but the only one that remains to
+us; for doubt it not, comrades, the noise of so great a fall will echo
+in that futurity, in which great misfortunes immortalize as much as
+great glory.
+
+Napoleon passed through the crowd of his officers, who were drawn up in
+an avenue as he passed, bidding them adieu merely by forced and
+melancholy smiles; their good wishes, equally silent, and expressed only
+by respectful gestures, he carried with him. He and Caulaincourt shut
+themselves up in a carriage; his Mameluke, and Wonsowitch, captain of
+his guard, occupied the box; Duroc and Lobau followed in a sledge.
+
+His escort at first consisted only of Poles; afterwards of the
+Neapolitans of the royal guard. This corps consisted of between six and
+seven hundred men, when it left Wilna to meet the Emperor; it perished
+entirely in that short passage; the winter was its only adversary. That
+very night the Russians surprised and afterwards abandoned Youpranoui,
+(or, as others say, Osmiana,) a town through which the escort had to
+pass. Napoleon was within an hour of falling into that affray.
+
+He met the Duke of Bassano at Miedniki. His first words to him were,
+"that he had no longer an army; that for several days past he had been
+marching in the midst of a troop of disbanded men wandering to and fro
+in search of subsistence; that they might still be rallied by giving
+them bread, shoes, clothing, and arms; but that the Duke's military
+administration had anticipated nothing, and his orders had not been
+executed." But upon Maret replying, by showing him a statement of the
+immense magazines collected at Wilna, he exclaimed, "that he gave him
+fresh life! that he would give him an order to transmit to Murat and
+Berthier to halt for eight days in that capital, there to rally the
+army, and infuse into it sufficient heart and strength to continue the
+retreat less deplorably."
+
+The subsequent part of Napoleon's journey was effected without
+molestation. He went round Wilna by its suburbs, crossed Wilkowiski,
+where he exchanged his carriage for a sledge, stopped during the 10th at
+Warsaw, to ask the Poles for a levy of ten thousand Cossacks, to grant
+them some subsidies, and to promise them he would speedily return at the
+head of three hundred thousand men. From thence he rapidly crossed
+Silesia, visited Dresden, and its monarch, passed through Hanau, Mentz,
+and finally got to Paris, where he suddenly made his appearance on the
+19th of December, two days after the appearance of his twenty-ninth
+bulletin.
+
+From Malo-Yaroslawetz to Smorgoni, this master of Europe had been no
+more than the general of a dying and disbanded army. From Smorgoni to
+the Rhine, he was an unknown fugitive, travelling through a hostile
+country; beyond the Rhine he again found himself the master and the
+conqueror of Europe. A last breeze of the wind of prosperity once more
+swelled his sails.
+
+Meanwhile, his generals, whom he left at Smorgoni, approved of his
+departure, and, far from being discouraged, placed all their hopes in
+it. The army had now only to flee, the road was open, and the Russian
+frontier at a very short distance. They were getting within reach of a
+reinforcement of eighteen thousand men, all fresh troops, of a great
+city, and immense magazines. Murat and Berthier, left to themselves,
+fancied themselves able to regulate the flight. But in the midst of the
+extreme disorder, it required a colossus for a rallying point, and he
+had just disappeared. In the great chasm which he left, Murat was
+scarcely perceptible.
+
+It was then too clearly seen that a great man is not replaced, either
+because the pride of his followers can no longer stoop to obey another,
+or that having always thought of, foreseen, and ordered every thing
+himself, he had only formed good instruments, skilful lieutenants, but
+no commanders.
+
+The very first night, a general refused to obey. The marshal who
+commanded the rear-guard was almost the only one who returned to the
+royal head-quarters. Three thousand men of the old and young guard were
+still there. This was the whole of the grand army, and of that gigantic
+body there remained nothing but the head. But at the news of Napoleon's
+departure, these veterans, spoiled by the habit of being commanded only
+by the conqueror of Europe, being no longer supported by the honour of
+serving him, and scorning to act as guards to another, gave way in their
+turn, and voluntarily fell into disorder.
+
+Most of the colonels of the army, who had hitherto been such subjects of
+admiration, and had marched on, with only four or five officers or
+soldiers around their eagle, preserving their place of battle, now
+followed no orders but their own; each of them fancied himself entrusted
+with his own safety, and looked only to himself for it. Men there were
+who marched two hundred leagues without even looking round. It was an
+almost general _sauve-qui-peut_.
+
+The Emperor's disappearance and Murat's incapacity were not, however,
+the only causes of this dispersion; the principal certainly was the
+severity of the winter, which at that moment became extreme. It
+aggravated every thing, and seemed to have planted itself completely
+between Wilna and the army.
+
+Till we arrived at Malodeczno, and up to the 4th of December, the day
+when it set in upon us with such violence, the march, although painful,
+had been marked by a smaller number of deaths than before we reached the
+Berezina. This respite was partly owing to the vigorous efforts of Ney
+and Maison, which had kept the enemy in check, to the then milder
+temperature, to the supplies which were obtained from a less ravaged
+country, and, finally, to the circumstance that they were the strongest
+men who had escaped from the passage of the Berezina.
+
+The partial organization which had been introduced into the disorder was
+kept up. The mass of runaways kept on their way, divided into a number
+of petty associations of eight or ten men. Many of these bands still
+possessed a horse, which carried their provisions, and was himself
+finally destined to be converted to that purpose. A covering of rags,
+some utensils, a knapsack, and a stick, formed the accoutrements and the
+armour of these poor fellows. They no longer possessed either the arms
+or the uniform of a soldier, nor the desire of combating any other
+enemies than hunger and cold; but they still retained perseverance,
+firmness, the habit of danger and suffering, and a spirit always ready,
+pliant, and quick in making the most of their situation. Finally, among
+the soldiers still under arms, the dread of a nickname, by which they
+themselves ridiculed their comrades who had fallen into disorder,
+retained some influence.
+
+But after leaving Malodeczno, and the departure of Napoleon, when winter
+with all its force, and doubled in severity, attacked each of us, there
+was a complete dissolution of all those associations against misfortune.
+It was no longer any thing but a multitude of isolated and individual
+struggles. The best no longer respected themselves; nothing stopped
+them; no speaking looks detained them; misfortune was hopeless of
+assistance, and even of regret; discouragement had no longer judges to
+condemn, or witnesses to prove it; all were its victims.
+
+Henceforward there was no longer fraternity in arms, there was an end to
+all society, to all ties; the excess of evils had brutified them.
+Hunger, devouring hunger, had reduced these unfortunate men to the
+brutal instinct of self-preservation, all which constitutes the
+understanding of the most ferocious animals, and which is ready to
+sacrifice every thing to itself; a rough and barbarous nature seemed to
+have communicated to them all its fury. Like savages, the strongest
+despoiled the weakest; they rushed round the dying, and frequently
+waited not for their last breath. When a horse fell, you might have
+fancied you saw a famished pack of hounds; they surrounded him, they
+tore him to pieces, for which they quarrelled among themselves like
+ravenous dogs.
+
+The greater number, however, preserved sufficient moral strength to
+consult their own safety without injuring others; but this was the last
+effort of their virtue. If either leader or comrade fell by their side,
+or under the wheels of the cannon, in vain did they call for assistance,
+in vain did they invoke the names of a common country, religion, and
+cause; they could not even obtain a passing look. The cold inflexibility
+of the climate had completely passed into their hearts; its rigour had
+contracted their feelings equally with their countenances. With the
+exception of a few of the commanders, all were absorbed by their
+sufferings, and terror left no room for compassion.
+
+Thus it was that the same egotism with which excessive prosperity has
+been reproached, was produced by the excess of misfortune, but much more
+excusable in the latter; the first being voluntary, and the last
+compulsive; the first a crime of the heart, and the other an impulse of
+instinct entirely physical; and certainly it was hazarding one's life to
+stop for an instant. In this universal shipwreck, the stretching forth
+one's hand to a dying leader or comrade was a wonderful act of
+generosity. The least movement of humanity became a sublime action.
+
+There were a few, however, who stood firm against both heaven and earth;
+these protected and assisted the weakest; but these were indeed rare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II.
+
+
+On the 6th of December, the very day after Napoleon's departure, the sky
+exhibited a still more dreadful appearance. You might see icy particles
+floating in the air; the birds fell from it quite stiff and frozen. The
+atmosphere was motionless and silent; it seemed as if every thing which
+possessed life and movement in nature, the wind itself, had been seized,
+chained, and as it were frozen by an universal death. Not the least word
+or murmur was then heard: nothing but the gloomy silence of despair and
+the tears which proclaimed it.
+
+We flitted along in this empire of death like unhappy spirits. The dull
+and monotonous sound of our steps, the cracking of the snow, and the
+feeble groans of the dying, were the only interruptions to this vast and
+doleful silence. Anger and imprecations there were none, nor any thing
+which indicated a remnant of heat; scarcely did strength enough remain
+to utter a prayer; most of them even fell without complaining, either
+from weakness or resignation, or because people only complain when they
+look for kindness, and fancy they are pitied.
+
+Such of our soldiers as had hitherto been the most persevering, here
+lost heart entirely. Sometimes the snow opened under their feet, but
+more frequently its glassy surface affording them no support, they
+slipped at every step, and marched from one fall to another. It seemed
+as if this hostile soil refused to carry them, that it escaped under
+their efforts, that it led them into snares, as if to embarrass and
+slacken their march, and deliver them to the Russians who were in
+pursuit of them, or to their terrible climate.
+
+And really, whenever they halted for a moment from exhaustion, the
+winter, laying his heavy and icy hand upon them, was ready to seize upon
+his prey. In vain did these poor unfortunates, feeling themselves
+benumbed, raise themselves, and already deprived of the power of speech
+and plunged into a stupor, proceed a few steps like automatons; their
+blood freezing in their veins, like water in the current of rivulets,
+congealed their heart, and then flew back to their head; these dying men
+then staggered as if they had been intoxicated. From their eyes, which
+were reddened and inflamed by the continual aspect of the snow, by the
+want of sleep, and the smoke of bivouacs, there flowed real tears of
+blood; their bosom heaved heavy sighs; they looked at heaven, at us, and
+at the earth, with an eye dismayed, fixed and wild; it expressed their
+farewell, and perhaps their reproaches to the barbarous nature which
+tortured them. They were not long before they fell upon their knees, and
+then upon their hands; their heads still wavered for a few minutes
+alternately to the right and left, and from their open mouth some
+agonizing sounds escaped; at last it fell in its turn upon the snow,
+which it reddened immediately with livid blood; and their sufferings
+were at an end.
+
+Their comrades passed by them without moving a step out of their way,
+for fear of prolonging their journey, or even turning their head, for
+their beards and their hair were stiffened with the ice, and every
+moment was a pain. They did not even pity them; for, in short, what had
+they lost by dying? what had they left behind them? They suffered so
+much; they were still so far from France; so much divested of feelings
+of country by the surrounding aspect, and by misery; that every dear
+illusion was broken, and hope almost destroyed. The greater number,
+therefore, were become careless of dying, from necessity, from the habit
+of seeing it, and from fashion, sometimes even treating it
+contemptuously; but more frequently, on seeing these unfortunates
+stretched out, and immediately stiffened, contenting themselves with the
+thought that they had no more wishes, that they were at rest, that their
+sufferings were terminated! And, in fact, death, in a situation quiet,
+certain, and uniform, may be always a strange event, a frightful
+contrast, a terrible revolution; but in this tumult and violent and
+continual movement of a life of constant action, danger, and suffering,
+it appeared nothing more than a transition, a slight change, an
+additional removal, and which excited little alarm.
+
+Such, were the last _days_ of the grand army. Its last _nights_ were
+still more frightful; those whom they surprised marching together, far
+from every habitation, halted on the borders of the woods; there they
+lighted their fires, before which they remained the whole night, erect
+and motionless like spectres. They seemed as if they could never have
+enough of the heat; they kept so close to it as to burn their clothes,
+as well as the frozen parts of their body, which the fire decomposed.
+The most dreadful pain then compelled them to stretch themselves, and
+the next day they attempted in vain to rise.
+
+In the mean time, such as the winter had almost wholly spared, and who
+still retained some portion of courage, prepared their melancholy meal.
+It consisted, ever since they had left Smolensk, of some slices of
+horse-flesh broiled, and some rye-meal diluted into a _bouillie_ with
+snow water, or kneaded into muffins, which they seasoned, for want of
+salt, with the powder of their cartridges.
+
+The sight of these fires was constantly attracting fresh spectres, who
+were driven back by the first comers. These poor wretches wandered about
+from one bivouac to another, until they were struck by the frost and
+despair together, and gave themselves up for lost. They then laid
+themselves down upon the snow, behind their more fortunate comrades, and
+there expired. Many of them, devoid of the means and the strength
+necessary to cut down the lofty fir trees, made vain attempts to set
+fire to them at the trunk; but death speedily surprised them around
+these trees in every sort of attitude.
+
+Under the vast pent-houses which are erected by the sides of the high
+road in some parts of the way, scenes of still greater horror were
+witnessed. Officers and soldiers all rushed precipitately into them, and
+crowded together in heaps. There, like so many cattle, they squeezed
+against each other round the fires, and as the living could not remove
+the dead from the circle, they laid themselves down upon them, there to
+expire in their turn, and serve as a bed of death to some fresh victims.
+In a short time additional crowds of stragglers presented themselves,
+and being unable to penetrate into these asylums of suffering, they
+completely besieged them.
+
+It frequently happened that they demolished their walls, which were
+formed of dry wood, in order to feed their fires; at other times,
+repulsed and disheartened, they were contented to use them as shelters
+to their bivouacs, the flames of which very soon communicated to these
+habitations, and the soldiers whom they contained, already half dead
+with the cold, were completely killed by the fire. Such of us as these
+places of shelter preserved, found next day our comrades lying frozen
+and in heaps around their extinguished fires. To escape from these
+catacombs, a horrible effort was required to enable them to climb over
+the heaps of these poor wretches, many of whom were still breathing.
+
+At Youpranoui, the same village where the Emperor only missed by an hour
+being taken by the Russian partizan Seslawin, the soldiers burnt the
+houses completely as they stood, merely to warm themselves for a few
+minutes. The light of these fires attracted some of these miserable
+wretches, whom the excessive severity of the cold and their sufferings
+had rendered delirious; they ran to them like madmen, and gnashing their
+teeth and laughing like demons, they threw themselves into these
+furnaces, where they perished in the most horrible convulsions. Their
+famished companions regarded them undismayed; there were even some who
+drew out these bodies, disfigured and broiled by the flames, and it is
+but too true, that they ventured to pollute their mouths with this
+loathsome food!
+
+This was the same army which had been formed from the most civilized
+nation in Europe; that army, formerly so brilliant, which was victorious
+over men to its last moment, and whose name still reigned in so many
+conquered capitals. Its strongest and bravest warriors, who had recently
+been proudly traversing so many scenes of their victories, had lost
+their noble countenance; covered with rags, their feet naked and torn,
+supporting themselves on branches of fir tree, they dragged themselves
+along; all the strength and perseverance which they had hitherto put
+forth in order to conquer, they now made use of to flee.
+
+Then it was, that, like superstitious nations, we also had our
+prognostications, and heard talk of prophecies. Some pretended that a
+comet had enlightened our passage across the Berezina with its
+ill-omened fire; it is true that they added, "that doubtless these stars
+did not foretel the great events of this world, but that they might
+certainly contribute to modify them; at least, if we admitted their
+material influence upon our globe, and all the consequences which that
+influence may exercise upon the human mind, so far as it is dependant on
+the matter which it animates."
+
+There were others who quoted ancient predictions, which, they said, "had
+announced for that period, an invasion of the Tartars as far as the
+banks of the Seine. And, behold! they were already at liberty to pass
+over the overthrown French army, and in a fair way to accomplish that
+prediction."
+
+Some again there were, who were reminding each other of the awful and
+destructive storm which had signalized our entrance on the Russian
+territory. "Then it was heaven itself that spoke! Behold the calamity
+which it predicted! Nature had made an effort to prevent this
+catastrophe! Why had we been obstinately deaf to her voice?" So much did
+this simultaneous fall of four hundred thousand men (an event which was
+not in fact more extraordinary than the host of epidemical disorders and
+of revolutions which are constantly ravaging the globe) appear to them
+an extraordinary and unique event, which must have occupied all the
+powers of heaven and earth; so much is our understanding led to bring
+home every thing to itself; as if Providence, in compassion to our
+weakness, and from the fear of its annihilating itself at the prospect
+of eternity, had so ordered it, that every man, a mere point in space,
+should act and feel as if he himself was the centre of immensity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+
+The army was in this last state of physical and moral distress, when its
+first fugitives reached Wilna. Wilna! their magazine, their depot, the
+first rich and inhabited city which they had met with since their
+entrance into Russia. Its name alone, and its proximity, still supported
+the courage of a few.
+
+On the 9th of December, the greatest part of these poor soldiers at last
+arrived within sight of that capital. Instantly, some dragging
+themselves along, others rushing forward, they all precipitated
+themselves headlong into its suburbs, pushing obstinately before them,
+and crowding together so fast, that they formed but one mass of men,
+horses, and chariots, motionless, and deprived of the power of movement.
+
+The clearing away of this crowd by a narrow passage became almost
+impossible. Those who came behind, guided by a stupid instinct, added to
+the incumbrance, without the least idea of entering the city by its
+other entrances, of which there were several. But there was such
+complete disorganization, that during the whole of that fatal day, not a
+single staff-officer made his appearance to direct these men to them.
+
+For the space of ten hours, with the cold at 27 and even at 28 degrees,
+thousands of soldiers who fancied themselves in safety, died either from
+cold or suffocation, just as had happened at the gates of Smolensk, and
+at the bridges across the Berezina. Sixty thousand men had crossed that
+river, and twenty thousand recruits had since joined them; of these
+eighty thousand, half had already perished, the greater part within the
+last four days, between Malodeczno and Wilna.
+
+The capital of Lithuania was still ignorant of our disasters, when, all
+at once, forty thousand famished soldiers filled it with groans and
+lamentations. At this unexpected sight, its inhabitants became alarmed,
+and shut their doors. Deplorable then was it to see these troops of
+wretched wanderers in the streets, some furious and others desperate,
+threatening or entreating, endeavouring to break open the doors of the
+houses and the magazines, or dragging themselves to the hospitals.
+Everywhere they were repulsed; at the magazines, from most unseasonable
+formalities, as, from the dissolution of the corps and the mixture of
+the soldiers, all regular distribution had become impossible.
+
+There had been collected there sufficient flour and bread to last for
+forty days, and butcher's meat for thirty-six days, for one hundred
+thousand men. Not a single commander ventured to step forward and give
+orders for distributing these provisions to all that came for them. The
+administrators who had them in charge were afraid of being made
+responsible for them; and the others dreaded the excesses to which the
+famished soldiers would give themselves up, when every thing was at
+their discretion. These administrators besides were ignorant of our
+desperate situation, and when there was scarcely time for pillage, had
+they been so inclined, our unfortunate comrades were left for several
+hours to die of hunger at the very doors of these immense magazines of
+provisions, all of which fell into the enemy's hands the following day.
+
+At the barracks and the hospitals they were equally repulsed, but not by
+the living, for there death held sway supreme. The few who still
+breathed complained that for a long time they had been without beds,
+even without straw, and almost deserted. The courts, the passages, and
+even the apartments were filled with heaps of dead bodies; they were so
+many charnel houses of infection.
+
+At last, the exertions of several of the commanders, such as Eugene and
+Davoust, the compassion of the Lithuanians, and the avarice of the Jews,
+opened some places of refuge. Nothing could be more remarkable than the
+astonishment which these unfortunate men displayed at finding themselves
+once more in inhabited houses. How delicious did a loaf of leavened
+bread appear to them, and how inexpressible the pleasure of eating it
+seated! and afterwards, with what admiration were they struck at seeing
+a scanty battalion still under arms, in regular order, and uniformly
+dressed! They seemed to have returned from the very extremities of the
+earth; so much had the violence and continuity of their sufferings torn
+and cast them from all their habits, so deep had been the abyss from
+which they had escaped!
+
+But scarcely had they begun to taste these sweets, when the cannon of
+the Russians commenced thundering over their heads and upon the city.
+These threatening sounds, the shouts of the officers, the drums beating
+to arms, and the wailings and clamour of an additional multitude of
+unfortunates, which had just arrived, filled Wilna with fresh confusion.
+It was the vanguard of Kutusoff and Tchaplitz, commanded by O'Rourke,
+Landskoy, and Seslawin, which had attacked Loison's division, which was
+protecting the city, as well as the retreat of a column of dismounted
+cavalry, on its way to Olita, by way of Novoi-Troky.
+
+At first an attempt was made to resist. De Wrede and his Bavarians had
+also just rejoined the army by Naroc-Zwiransky and Niamentchin. They
+were pursued by Wittgenstein, who from Kamen and Vileika hung upon our
+right flank, at the same time that Kutusoff and Tchitchakof pursued us.
+De Wrede had not two thousand men left under his command. As to Loison's
+division and the garrison of Wilna, which had come to meet us as far as
+Smorgoni, and render us assistance, the cold had reduced them from
+fifteen thousand men to three thousand in the space of three days.
+
+De Wrede defended Wilna on the side of Rukoni; he was obliged to fall
+back after a gallant resistance. Loison and his division, on his side,
+which was nearer to Wilna, kept the enemy in check. They had succeeded
+in making a Neapolitan division take arms, and even to go out of the
+city, but the muskets actually slipped from the hands of these "children
+of the sun" transplanted to a region of ice. In less than an hour they
+all returned disarmed, and the best part of them maimed.
+
+At the same time, the _generale_ was ineffectually beat in the streets;
+the old guard itself, now reduced to a few platoons, remained dispersed.
+Every one thought much more of disputing his life with famine and the
+cold than with the enemy. But when the cry of "Here are the Cossacks"
+was heard, (which for a long time had been the only signal which the
+greater number obeyed,) it echoed immediately throughout the whole city,
+and the rout again began.
+
+De Wrede presented himself unexpectedly before the king of Naples. He
+said, "the enemy were close at his heels! the Bavarians had been driven
+back into Wilna, which they could no longer defend." At the same time,
+the noise of the tumult reached the king's ears. Murat was astonished;
+fancying himself no longer master of the army, he lost all command of
+himself. He instantly quitted his palace on foot, and was seen forcing
+his way through the crowd. He seemed to be afraid of a skirmish, in the
+midst of a crowd similar to that of the day before. He halted, however,
+at the last house in the suburbs, from whence he despatched his orders,
+and where he waited for daylight and the army, leaving Ney in charge of
+the rest.
+
+Wilna might have been defended for twenty-four hours longer, and many
+men might have been saved. This fatal city retained nearly twenty
+thousand, including three hundred officers and seven generals. Most of
+them had been wounded by the winter more than by the enemy, who had the
+merit of the triumph. Several others were still in good health, to all
+appearance at least, but their moral strength was completely exhausted.
+After courageously battling with so many difficulties, they lost heart
+when they were near the port, at the prospect of four more days' march.
+They had at last found themselves once more in a civilized city, and
+sooner than make up their minds to return to the desert, they placed
+themselves at the mercy of Fortune; she treated them cruelly.
+
+It is true that the Lithuanians, although we had compromised them so
+much, and were now abandoning them, received into their houses and
+succoured several; but the Jews, whom we had protected, repelled the
+others. They did even more; the sight of so many sufferers excited their
+cupidity. Had their detestable avarice been contented with speculating
+upon our miseries, and selling us some feeble succours for their weight
+in gold, history would scorn to sully her pages with the disgusting
+detail; but they enticed our unhappy wounded men into their houses,
+stripped them, and afterwards, on seeing the Russians, threw the naked
+bodies of these dying victims from the doors and windows of their houses
+into the streets, and there unmercifully left them to perish of cold;
+these vile barbarians even made a merit in the eyes of the Russians of
+torturing them there; such horrible crimes as these must be denounced to
+the present and to future ages. Now that our hands are become impotent,
+it is probable that our indignation against these monsters may be their
+sole punishment in this world; but a day will come, when the assassins
+will again meet their victims, and there certainly, divine justice will
+avenge us!
+
+On the 10th of December, Ney, who had again voluntarily taken upon
+himself the command of the rear-guard, left that city, which was
+immediately after inundated by the Cossacks of Platof, who massacred all
+the poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way. In the midst of this
+butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from
+the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At
+sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying
+up, besetting them with loud cries, and assailing them on all sides.
+
+But the officer commanding this piquet had already drawn up his soldiers
+in a circle. Without hesitation, he ordered them to fire, and then,
+making them present bayonets, proceeded at the _pas de charge_. In an
+instant all fled before him; he remained in possession of the city; but
+without feeling more surprise about the cowardice of the Cossacks, than
+he had done at their attack, he took advantage of the moment, turned
+sharply round, and succeeded in rejoining the rear-guard without any
+loss.
+
+The latter was engaged with Kutusoff's vanguard, which it was
+endeavouring to drive back; for another catastrophe, which it vainly
+attempted to cover, detained it at a short distance from Wilna.
+
+There, as well as at Moscow, Napoleon had given no regular order for
+retreat; he was anxious that our defeat should have no forerunner, but
+that it should proclaim itself, and take our allies and their ministers
+by surprise, and that, taking advantage of their first astonishment, it
+might be able to pass through those nations before they were prepared to
+join the Russians and overpower us.
+
+This was the reason why the Lithuanians, foreigners, and every one at
+Wilna, even to the minister himself, had been deceived. They did not
+believe our disaster until they saw it; and in that, the almost
+superstitious belief of Europe in the infallibility of the genius of
+Napoleon was of use to him against his allies. But the same confidence
+had buried his own officers in a profound security; at Wilna, as well as
+at Moscow, not one of them was prepared for a movement of any
+description.
+
+This city contained a large proportion of the baggage of the army, and
+of its treasures, its provisions, a crowd of enormous waggons, loaded
+with the Emperor's equipage, a large quantity of artillery, and a great
+number of wounded men. Our retreat had come upon them like an unexpected
+storm, almost like a thunderbolt. Some were terrified and thrown into
+confusion, while consternation kept others motionless. Orders, men,
+horses, and carriages, were running about in all directions, crossing
+and overturning each other.
+
+In the midst of this tumult, several of the commanders pushed forward
+out of the city, towards Kowno, with every thing they could contrive to
+carry with them; but at the distance of a league from the latter place
+this heavy and frightened column had encountered the height and the
+defile of Ponari.
+
+During our conquering march, this woody hillock had only appeared to our
+hussars a fortunate accident of the ground, from which they could
+discover the whole plain of Wilna, and take a survey of their enemies.
+Besides, its rough but short declination had scarcely been remarked.
+During a regular retreat it would have presented an excellent position
+for turning round and stopping the enemy: but in a disorderly flight,
+where every thing that might be of service became injurious, where in
+our precipitation and disorder, every thing was turned against
+ourselves, this hill and its defile became an insurmountable obstacle, a
+wall of ice, against which all our efforts were powerless. It detained
+every thing, baggage, treasure, and wounded. The evil was sufficiently
+great in this long series of disasters to form an epoch.
+
+Here, in fact, it was, that money, honour, and every remains of
+discipline and strength were completely lost. After fifteen hours of
+fruitless efforts, when the drivers and the soldiers of the escort saw
+the King of Naples and the whole column of fugitives passing them by the
+sides of the hill, when turning their eyes at the noise of the cannon
+and musquetry which was coming nearer them every instant they saw Ney
+himself retreating with three thousand men (the remains of De Wrede's
+corps and Loison's division); when at last turning their eyes back to
+themselves, they saw the hill completely covered with cannon and
+carriages, broken or overturned, men and horses fallen to the ground,
+and expiring one upon the other,--then it was, that they gave up all
+idea of saving any thing, and determined only to anticipate the enemy by
+plundering themselves.
+
+One of the covered waggons of treasure, which burst open of itself,
+served as a signal; every one rushed to the others; they were
+immediately broken, and the most valuable effects taken from them. The
+soldiers of the rear-guard, who were passing at the time of this
+disorder, threw away their arms to join in the plunder; they were so
+eagerly engaged in it as neither to hear nor to pay attention to the
+whistling of the balls and the howling of the Cossacks in pursuit of
+them.
+
+It is even said that the Cossacks got mixed among them without being
+observed. For some minutes, French and Tartars, friends and foes, were
+confounded in the same greediness. French and Russians, forgetting they
+were at war, were seen pillaging together the same treasure-waggons. Ten
+millions of gold and silver then disappeared.
+
+But amidst all these horrors, there were noble acts of devotion. Some
+there were, who abandoned every thing to save some unfortunate wounded
+by carrying them on their shoulders; several others, being unable to
+extricate their half-frozen comrades from this medley, lost their lives
+in defending them from the attacks of their countrymen, and the blows of
+their enemies.
+
+On the most exposed part of the hill, an officer of the Emperor, Colonel
+the Count de Turenne, repulsed the Cossacks, and in defiance of their
+cries of rage and their fire, he distributed before their eyes the
+private treasure of Napoleon to the guards whom he found within his
+reach. These brave men, fighting with one hand and collecting the spoils
+of their leader with the other, succeeded in saving them. Long
+afterwards, when they were out of all danger, each man faithfully
+restored the depot which had been entrusted to him. Not a single piece
+of money was lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+
+This catastrophe at Ponari was the more disgraceful, as it was easy to
+foresee, and equally easy to prevent it; for the hill could have been
+turned by its sides. The fragments which we abandoned, however, were at
+least of some use in arresting the pursuit of the Cossacks. While these
+were busy in collecting their prey, Ney, at the head of a few hundred
+French and Bavarians, supported the retreat as far as Eve. As this was
+his last effort, we must not omit the description of his method of
+retreat which he had followed ever since he left Wiazma, on the 3d of
+November, during thirty-seven days and thirty-seven nights.
+
+Every day, at 5 o'clock in the evening, he took his position, stopped
+the Russians, allowed his soldiers to eat and take some rest, and
+resumed his march at 10 o'clock. During the whole of the night, he
+pushed the mass of the stragglers before him, by dint of cries, of
+entreaties, and of blows. At daybreak, which was about 7 o'clock, he
+halted, again took position, and rested under arms and on guard until 10
+o'clock; the enemy then made his appearance, and he was compelled to
+fight until the evening, gaining as much or as little ground in the rear
+as possible. That depended at first on the general order of march, and
+at a later period upon circumstances.
+
+For a long time this rear-guard did not consist of more than two
+thousand, then of one thousand, afterwards about five hundred, and
+finally of sixty men; and yet Berthier, either designedly or from mere
+routine, made no change in his instructions. These were always addressed
+to the commander of a corps of thirty-five thousand men; in them he
+coolly detailed all the different positions, which were to be taken up
+and guarded until the next day, by divisions and regiments which no
+longer existed. And every night, when, in consequence of Ney's urgent
+warnings, he was obliged to go and awake the King of Naples, and compel
+him to resume his march, he testified the same astonishment.
+
+In this manner did Ney support the retreat from Wiazma to Eve, and a few
+wersts beyond it. There, according to his usual custom, he had stopped
+the Russians, and was giving the first hours of the night to rest, when,
+about ten o'clock, he and De Wrede perceived that they had been left
+alone. Their soldiers had deserted them, as well as their arms, which
+they saw shining and piled together close to their abandoned fires.
+
+Fortunately the intensity of the cold, which had just completed the
+discouragement of our people, had also benumbed their enemies. Ney
+overtook his column with some difficulty; it was now only a band of
+fugitives; a few Cossacks chased it before them; without attempting
+either to take or to kill them; either from compassion, for one gets
+tired of every thing in time, or that the enormity of our misery had
+terrified even the Russians themselves, and they believed themselves
+sufficiently revenged, and many of them behaved generously; or, finally,
+that they were satiated and overloaded with booty. It might be also,
+that in the darkness, they did not perceive that they had only to do
+with unarmed men.
+
+Winter, that terrible ally of the Muscovites, had sold them his
+assistance dearly. Their disorder pursued our disorder. We often saw
+prisoners who had escaped several times from their frozen hands and
+looks. They had at first marched in the middle of their straggling
+column without being noticed by it. There were some of them, who, taking
+advantage of a favourable moment, ventured to attack the Russian
+soldiers when isolated, and strip them of their provisions, their
+uniforms, and even their arms, with which they covered themselves. Under
+this disguise, they mingled with their conquerors; and such was the
+disorganization, the stupid carelessness; and the numbness into which
+their army had fallen, that these prisoners marched for a whole month in
+the midst of them without being recognised. The hundred and twenty
+thousand men of Kutusoff's army were then reduced to thirty-five
+thousand. Of Wittgenstein's fifty thousand, scarcely fifteen thousand
+remained. Wilson asserts, that of a reinforcement of ten thousand men,
+sent from the interior of Russia with all the precautions which they
+know how to take against the winter, not more than seventeen hundred
+arrived at Wilna. But a head of a column was quite sufficient against
+our disarmed soldiers. They attempted in vain to tally a few of them,
+and he who had hitherto been almost the only one whose commands had been
+obeyed in the rout, was now compelled to follow it.
+
+He arrived along with it at Kowno, which was the last town of the
+Russian empire. Finally, on the 13th of December, after marching
+forty-six days under a terrible yoke, they once more came in sight of a
+friendly country. Instantly, without halting or looking behind them, the
+greater part plunged into, and dispersed themselves, in the forests of
+Prussian Poland. Some there were, however, who, on their arrival on the
+allied bank of the Niemen, turned round. There, when they, cast a last
+look on that land of suffering from which they were escaping, when they
+found themselves on the same spot, whence five months previously their
+countless eagles had taken their victorious flight, it is said that
+tears flowed from their eyes, and that they uttered exclamations of
+grief.
+
+"This then was the bank which they had studded with their bayonets! this
+the allied country which had disappeared only five months before, under
+the steps of their immense united army, and seemed to them then to be
+metamorphosed into moving hills and valleys of men and horses! These
+were the same valleys, from which, under the rays of a burning sun,
+poured forth the three long columns of dragoons and cuirassiers,
+resembling three rivers of glittering iron and brass. And now men, arms,
+eagles, horses, the sun itself, and even this frontier river, which they
+had crossed replete with ardour and hope, all have disappeared. The
+Niemen is now only a long mass of flakes of ice, caught and chained to
+each other by the increasing severity of the winter. Instead of the
+three French bridges, brought from a distance of five hundred leagues,
+and thrown across it with such audacious promptitude, a Russian bridge
+is alone standing. Finally, in the room of these innumerable warriors,
+of their four hundred thousand comrades, who had been so often their
+partners in victory, and who had dashed forward with such joy and pride
+into the territory of Russia, they saw issuing from these pale and
+frozen deserts, only a thousand infantry and horsemen still under arms,
+nine cannon, and twenty thousand miserable wretches covered with rags,
+with downcast looks, hollow eyes, earthy and livid complexions, long
+beards matted with the frost; some disputing in silence the narrow
+passage of the bridge, which, in spite of their small number was not
+sufficient to the eagerness of their flight; others fleeing dispersed
+over the asperities of the river, labouring and dragging themselves from
+one point of ice to another; and this was the whole grand army! Besides,
+many of these fugitives were recruits who had just joined it."
+
+Two kings, one prince, eight marshals followed by a few officers,
+generals on foot, dispersed, and without any attendants; finally, a few
+hundred men of the old guard, still armed, were its remains; they alone
+represented it.
+
+Or rather, I should say, it still breathed completely and entirely in
+Marshal Ney. Comrades! allies! enemies! here I invoke your testimony;
+let us pay the homage which is due to the memory of an unfortunate hero:
+the facts will be sufficient.
+
+All were flying, and Murat himself, traversing Kowno as he had done
+Wilna, first gave, and then withdrew the order to rally at Tilsit, and
+subsequently fixed upon Gumbinnen. Ney then entered Kowno, accompanied
+only by his aides-de-camp, for all besides had given way, or fallen
+around him. From the time of his leaving Wiazma, this was the fourth
+rear-guard which had been worn out and melted in his hands. But winter
+and famine, still more than the Russians, had destroyed them. For the
+fourth time, he remained alone before the enemy, and still unshaken, he
+sought for a fifth rear-guard.
+
+At Kowno the marshal found a company of artillery, three hundred German
+soldiers who formed its garrison, and General Marchand with four hundred
+men; of these he took the command. He first walked over the town to
+reconnoitre its position, and to rally some additional forces, but he
+found only some sick and wounded, who were endeavouring, in tears, to
+follow our retreat. For the eighth time since we left Moscow, we were
+obliged to abandon these _en masse_ in their hospitals, as they had been
+abandoned singly along the whole march, on all our fields of battle, and
+at all our bivouacs.
+
+Several thousand soldiers covered the marketplace and the neighbouring
+streets; but they were laid out stiff before the magazines of spirits
+which they had broken open, and where they drank the cup of death, from
+which they fancied they were to inhale fresh life. These were the only
+succours which Murat had left him; Ney found himself left alone in
+Russia, with seven hundred foreign recruits. At Kowno, as it had been
+after the disasters of Wiazma, of Smolensk, of the Berezina, and of
+Wilna, it was to him that the honour of our arms and all the peril of
+the last steps of our retreat were again confided.
+
+On the 14th, at daybreak, the Russians commenced their attack. One of
+their columns made a hasty advance from the Wilna road, while another
+crossed the Niemen on the ice above the town, landed on the Prussian
+territory, and, proud of being the first to cross its frontier, marched
+to the bridge of Kowno, to close that outlet upon Ney, and completely
+cut off his retreat.
+
+The first firing was heard at the Wilna gate; Ney ran thither, with a
+view to drive away Platof's artillery with his own; but he found his
+cannon had been already spiked, and that his artillerymen had fled!
+Enraged, he darted forward, and elevating his sword, would have killed
+the officer who commanded them, had it not been for his aide-de-camp,
+who warded off the blow, and enabled this miserable fellow to make his
+escape.
+
+Ney then summoned his infantry, but only one of the two feeble
+battalions of which it was composed had taken up arms; it consisted of
+the three hundred Germans of the garrison. He drew them up, encouraged
+them, and as the enemy was approaching, was just about to give them the
+order to fire, when a Russian cannon ball, grazing the palisade, came
+and broke the thigh of their commanding officer. He fell, and without
+the least hesitation, finding that his wound was mortal, he coolly drew
+out his pistols and blew out his brains before his troop. Terrified at
+this act of despair, his soldiers were completely scared, all of them at
+once threw down their arms, and fled in disorder.
+
+Ney, abandoned by all, neither deserted himself nor his post. After vain
+efforts to detain these fugitives, he collected their muskets, which
+were still loaded, became once more a common soldier, and with only four
+others, kept facing thousands of the Russians. His audacity stopped
+them; it made some of his artillerymen ashamed, who imitated their
+marshal; it gave time to his aide-de-camp Heymes, and to General Gerard
+to embody thirty soldiers, bring forward two or three light pieces, and
+to Generals Ledru and Marchand to collect the only battalion which
+remained.
+
+But at that moment the second attack of the Russians commenced on the
+other side of the Niemen, and near the bridge of Kowno; it was then
+half-past two o'clock. Ney sent Ludru, Marchand, and their four hundred
+men forward to retake and secure that passage. As to himself, without
+giving way, or disquieting himself farther as to what was passing in his
+rear, he kept on fighting at the head of his thirty men, and maintained
+himself until night at the Wilna gate. He then traversed the town and
+crossed the Niemen, constantly fighting, retreating but never flying,
+marching after all the others, supporting to the last moment the honour
+of our arms, and for the hundredth time during the last forty days and
+forty nights, putting his life and liberty in jeopardy to save a few
+more Frenchmen. Finally, he was the last of the grand army who quitted
+that fatal Russia, exhibiting to the world the impotence of fortune
+against great courage, and proving that with heroes every thing turns to
+glory, even the greatest disasters.
+
+It was eight o'clock at night when he reached the allied bank. Then it
+was, that seeing the completion of the catastrophe, Marchand repulsed to
+the entrance of the bridge, and the road of Wilkowiski which Murat had
+taken, completely covered with the enemy's troops, he darted off to the
+right, plunged into the woods, and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+
+When Murat reached Gumbinnen, he was exceedingly surprised to find Ney
+already there, and to find, that since it had left Kowno, the army was
+marching without a rear-guard. Fortunately, the pursuit of the Russians,
+after they had reconquered their own territory, became slackened. They
+seemed to hesitate on the Prussian frontier, not knowing whether they
+should enter it as allies or as enemies. Murat took advantage of their
+uncertainty to halt a few days at Gumbinnen, and to direct the remains
+of the different corps to the towns on the borders of the Vistula.
+
+Previous to this dislocation of the army, he assembled the commanders of
+it. I know not what evil genius it was that inspired him at this
+council. One would fain believe that it was the embarrassment he felt
+before these warriors for his precipitate flight, and spite against the
+Emperor, who had left him with the responsibility of it; or it might be
+shame at appearing again, vanquished, in the midst of the nations whom
+our victories had most oppressed; but as his language bore a much more
+mischievous character, which his subsequent actions did not belie, and
+as they were the first symptoms of his defection, history must not pass
+over them in silence.
+
+This warrior, who had been elevated to the throne solely by the right of
+victory, now returned discomfited. From the first step he took upon
+vanquished territory, he fancied he felt it everywhere trembling under
+his feet, and that his crown was tottering on his head. A thousand times
+during the campaign, he had exposed himself to the greatest dangers; but
+he, who, as a king, had shown as little fear of death as the meanest
+soldier of the vanguard, could not bear the apprehension of living
+without a crown. Behold him then, in the midst of the commanders, whom
+his brother had placed under his direction, accusing that brother's
+ambition, which he had shared, in order to free himself from the
+responsibility which its gratification had involved.
+
+He exclaimed, "that it was no longer possible to serve such a madman!
+that there was no safety in supporting his cause; that no monarch in
+Europe could now place any reliance on his word, or in treaties
+concluded with him. He himself was in despair for having rejected the
+propositions of the English; had it not been for that, he would still be
+a great monarch, such as the Emperor of Austria, and the King of
+Prussia."
+
+Davoust abruptly cut him short. "The King of Prussia, the Emperor of
+Austria," said he to him, "are monarchs by the grace of God, of time,
+and the custom of nations. But as to you, you are only a king by the
+grace of Napoleon, and of the blood of Frenchmen; you cannot remain so
+but through Napoleon, and by continuing united to France. You are led
+away by the blackest ingratitude!" And he declared to him that he would
+immediately denounce his treachery to his Emperor; the other marshals
+remained silent. They made allowance for the violence of the king's
+grief, and attributed solely to his inconsiderate heat, the expressions
+which the hatred and suspicious character of Davoust had but too clearly
+comprehended.
+
+Murat was put entirely out of countenance; he felt himself guilty. Thus
+was stifled the first spark of treachery, which at a later period was
+destined to ruin France. It is with regret that history commemorates it,
+as repentance and misfortune have atoned for the crime.
+
+We were soon obliged to carry our humiliation to Koenigsberg. The grand
+army, which, during the last twenty years, had shown itself successively
+triumphant in all the capitals of Europe, now, for the first time,
+re-appeared mutilated, disarmed, and fugitive, in one of those which had
+been most humiliated by its glory. Its population crowded on our passage
+to count our wounds, and to estimate, by the extent of our disasters,
+that of the hopes they might venture to entertain; we were compelled to
+feast their greedy looks with our miseries, to pass under the yoke of
+their hope, and while dragging our misfortunes through the midst of
+their odious joy, to march under the insupportable weight of hated
+calamity.
+
+The feeble remnant of the grand army did not bend under this burden. Its
+shadow, already almost dethroned, still exhibited itself imposing; it
+preserved its royal air; although vanquished by the elements, it kept
+up, in the presence of men, its victorious and commanding attitude.
+
+On their side, the Germans, either from slowness or fear, received us
+docilely; their hatred restrained itself under an appearance of
+coolness; and as they scarcely ever act from themselves, they were
+obliged to relieve our miseries, during the time that they were looking
+for a signal. Koenigsberg was soon unable to contain them. Winter, which
+had followed us thither, deserted us there all at once; in one night the
+thermometer fell twenty degrees.
+
+This sudden change was fatal to us. A great number of soldiers and
+generals, whom the tension of the atmosphere had hitherto supported by a
+continued irritation, sunk and fell into decomposition. Lariboissiere,
+general-in-chief of the artillery, fell a sacrifice; Eble, the pride of
+the army, followed him. Every day and every hour, our consternation was
+increased by fresh deaths.
+
+In the midst of this general mourning, a sudden insurrection, and a
+letter from Macdonald, contributed to convert all these sorrows into
+despair. The sick could no longer cherish the expectation of dying free;
+the friend was either compelled to desert his expiring friend, the
+brother his brother, or to drag them in that state to Elbing. The
+insurrection was only alarming as a symptom; it was put down; but the
+intelligence transmitted by Macdonald was decisive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+
+On the side where that marshal commanded, the whole of the war had been
+only a rapid march from Tilsit to Mittau, a display of force from the
+mouth of the Aa to Duenaburg, and finally, a long defensive position in
+front of Riga; the composition of that army being almost entirely
+Prussian, its position and Napoleon's orders so willed it.
+
+It was a piece of great audacity in the Emperor to entrust his left
+wing, as well as his right and his retreat, to Prussians and Austrians.
+It was observed, that at the same time he had dispersed the Poles
+throughout the whole army; many persons thought that it would have been
+preferable to collect in one point the zeal of the latter, and to have
+divided the hatred of the former. But we everywhere required natives as
+interpreters, scouts, or guides, and felt the value of their audacious
+ardour on the true points of attack. As to the Prussians and Austrians,
+it is probable that they would not have allowed themselves to be
+dispersed. On the left, Macdonald, with seven thousand Bavarians,
+Westphalians, and Poles, mixed with twenty-two thousand Prussians,
+appeared sufficient to answer for the latter, as well as for the
+Russians.
+
+In the advance march, there had been at first nothing to do, but to
+drive the Russian posts before them, and to carry off some magazines.
+Afterwards there were a few skirmishes between the Aa and Riga. The
+Prussians, after a rather warm affair, took Eckau from the Russian
+General Lewis; after which both sides remained quiet for twenty days.
+Macdonald employed that time in taking possession of Duenaburg, and in
+getting the heavy artillery brought to Mittau, which was necessary for
+the siege of Riga.
+
+On the intelligence of his approach, on the 23d of August, the
+commander-in-chief at Riga made all his troops march out of the place in
+three columns. The two weakest were to make two false attacks; the first
+by proceeding along the coast of the Baltic sea, and the second directly
+on Mittau; the third, which was the strongest, and commanded by Lewis,
+was at the same time to retake Eckau, drive back the Prussians as far as
+the Aa, cross that river, and either capture or destroy the park of
+artillery.
+
+The plan succeeded as far as beyond the Aa, when Grawert, supported
+latterly by Kleist, repulsed Lewis, and following the Russians closely
+as far as Eckau, defeated them there entirely, Lewis fled in disorder as
+far as the Duena, which he recrossed by fording it, leaving behind a
+great number of prisoners.
+
+Thus far Macdonald was satisfied. It is even said, that at Smolensk,
+Napoleon thought of elevating Yorck to the dignity of a marshal of the
+empire, at the same time that at Vienna he caused Schwartzenberg to be
+named field-marshal. The claims of these two commanders to the honour
+were by no means equal.
+
+In both wings, disagreeable symptoms were manifested; with the
+Austrians, it was among the officers that they were fermenting; their
+general kept them firm in their alliance with us; he even apprised us of
+their bad disposition, and pointed out the means of preventing the
+contagion from spreading among the other allied troops which were mixed
+with his.
+
+The case was quite the contrary with our left wing; the Prussian army
+marched without the least after-thought, at the very time that its
+general was conspiring against us. On the right wing, therefore, during
+the time of combat, it was the leader who drew his troops after him in
+spite of themselves, while, on the left wing, the troops pushed forward
+their commander, almost in spite of himself.
+
+Among the latter, the officers, the soldiers, and Grawert himself, a
+loyal old warrior, who had no political feelings, entered frankly into
+the war. They fought like lions on all occasions when their commander
+left them at liberty to do so; they expressed themselves anxious to wash
+out, in the eyes of the French, the shame of their defeat in 1806, to
+reconquer our esteem, to vanquish in the presence of their conquerors,
+to prove that their defeat was only attributable to their government,
+and that they were worthy of a better fate.
+
+Yorck had higher views. He belonged to the society of the _Friends of
+Virtue_, whose principle was hatred of the French, and whose object was
+their complete expulsion from Germany. But Napoleon was still
+victorious, and the Prussian afraid to commit himself. Besides, the
+justice, the mildness, and the military reputation of Macdonald had
+completely gained the affection of his troops. They said "they had never
+been so happy as when under the command of a Frenchman." In fact, as
+they were united with the conquerors, and shared the rights of conquest
+with them, they had allowed themselves to be seduced by the all-powerful
+attraction of being on the side of the victor.
+
+Every thing contributed to it. Their administration was directed by an
+intendant and agents taken from their own army. They lived in abundance.
+It was on that very point, however, that the quarrel between Macdonald
+and Yorck began, and that the hatred of the latter found an opening to
+diffuse itself.
+
+First of all, some complaints were made in the country against their
+administration. Shortly after, a French administrator arrived, and
+either from rivalry or a spirit of justice, he accused the Prussian
+intendant of exhausting the country by enormous requisitions of cattle.
+"He sent them," it was said, "into Prussia, which had been exhausted by
+our passage; the army was deprived of them, and a dearth would very soon
+be felt in it." By his account, Yorck was perfectly aware of the
+manoeuvre. Macdonald believed the accusation, dismissed the accused
+person, and confided the administration to the accuser; Yorck, filled
+with spite, thought henceforward of nothing but revenge.
+
+Napoleon was then at Moscow. The Prussian was on the watch; he joyfully
+foresaw the consequences of that rash enterprise, and it appears as if
+he yielded to the temptation of taking advantage of it, and of getting
+the start of fortune. On the 29th of September, the Russian general
+learned that Yorck had uncovered Mittau; and either from having received
+reinforcements, (two divisions had actually just arrived from Finland,)
+or from confidence of another kind, he adventured himself as far as that
+city, which he retook, and was preparing to push his advantage. The
+grand park of the besiegers' artillery was about to be carried off;
+Yorck, if we are to believe those who were witnesses, had exposed it, he
+remained motionless, he betrayed it.
+
+It is said that the chief of his staff felt indignant at this treachery;
+we are assured that he represented to his general in the warmest terms,
+that he would ruin himself, and destroy the honour of the Prussian arms;
+and that, finally, Yorck, moved by his representations, allowed Kleist
+to put himself in movement. His approach was quite sufficient. But on
+this occasion, although there was a regular battle, there were scarcely
+four hundred men put _hors du combat_ on both sides. As soon as this
+petty warfare was over, each army tranquilly resumed its former
+quarters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+
+On the receipt of this intelligence, Macdonald became uneasy, and very
+much incensed; he hurried from his right wing, where perhaps he had
+remained too long at a distance from the Prussians. The surprise of
+Mittau, the danger which his park of artillery had run of being
+captured, Yorck's obstinacy in refusing to pursue the enemy, and the
+secret details which reached him from the interior of Yorck's
+head-quarters, were all sufficiently alarming. But the more ground there
+was of suspicion, the more it was necessary to dissemble; for as the
+Prussian army was entirely guiltless of the designs of its leader, and
+had fought readily, and as the enemy had given way, appearances had been
+preserved, and it would have been wise policy in Macdonald if he had
+appeared satisfied.
+
+He did quite the contrary. His quick disposition, or his loyalty, were
+unable to dissemble; he burst out into reproaches against the Prussian
+general, at the very moment when his troops, satisfied with their
+victory, were only looking for praise and rewards. Yorck artfully
+contrived to make his soldiers, whose expectations had been frustrated,
+participators in the disgust of a humiliation which had been reserved
+solely for himself.
+
+We find in Macdonald's letters the real causes of his dissatisfaction.
+He wrote to Yorck, "that it was shameful that his posts were continually
+attacked, and that in return he had never once harassed the enemy; that
+ever since he had been in sight of them, he had done no more than repel
+attacks, and in no one instance had ever acted on the offensive,
+although his officers and troops were filled with the best
+dispositions." This last remark was very true, for in general it was
+remarkable to see the ardour of all these Germans for a cause completely
+foreign to them, and which might to them even appear hostile.
+
+They all rivalled each other in eagerness to rush into the midst of
+danger, in order to acquire the esteem of the grand army, and an
+eulogium from Napoleon. Their princes preferred the plain silver star of
+French honour to their richest orders. At that time the genius of
+Napoleon still appeared to have dazzled or subdued every one. Equally
+munificent to reward as prompt and terrible to punish, he appeared like
+one of those great centres of nature, the dispenser of all good. In many
+of the Germans, there was united with this feeling that of a respectful
+admiration for a life which was so completely stamped with the
+marvellous, which so much affects them.
+
+But their admiration was a consequence of victory, and our fatal retreat
+had already commenced; already, from the north to the south of Europe,
+the Russian cries of vengeance replied to those of Spain. They crossed
+and echoed each other in the countries of Germany, which still remained
+under the yoke; these two great fires, lighted up at the two extremities
+of Europe, were gradually extending towards its centre, where they were
+like the dawn of a new day; they covered sparks which were fanned by
+hearts burning with patriotic hatred, and exalted to fanaticism by
+mystic rites. Gradually, as our disaster approached to Germany, there
+was heard rising from her bosom an indistinct rumour, a general, but
+still trembling, uncertain and confused murmur.
+
+The students of the universities, bred up with ideas of independence,
+inspired by their ancient constitutions, which secure them so many
+privileges, full of exalted recollections of the ancient and chivalrous
+glory of Germany, and for her sake jealous of all foreign glory, had
+always been our enemies. Total strangers to all political calculations,
+they had never bent themselves under our victory. Since it had become
+pale, a similar spirit had caught the politicians and even the military.
+The association of the _Friends of Virtue_ gave this insurrection the
+appearance of an extensive plot; some chiefs did certainly conspire, but
+there was no conspiracy; it was a spontaneous movement, a common and
+universal sensation.
+
+Alexander skilfully increased this disposition by his proclamations, by
+his addresses to the Germans, and by the distinction which he made in
+the treatment of their prisoners. As to the monarchs of Europe, he and
+Bernadotte were as yet the only ones who marched at the head of their
+people. All the others, restrained by policy or feelings of honour,
+allowed themselves to be anticipated by their subjects.
+
+This infection even penetrated to the grand army; after the passage of
+the Berezina, Napoleon had been informed of it. Communications had been
+observed to be going on between the Bavarian, Saxon, and Austrian
+generals. On the left, Yorck's bad disposition increased, and
+communicated itself to a part of his troops; all the enemies of France
+had united, and Macdonald was astonished at having to repel the
+perfidious insinuations of an aide-de-camp of Moreau. The impression
+made by our victories was still however so deep in all the Germans, they
+had been so powerfully kept under, that they required a considerable
+time to raise themselves.
+
+On the 15th of November, Macdonald, seeing that the left of the Russian
+line had extended itself too far from Riga, between him and the Duena,
+made some feigned attacks on their whole front, and pushed a real one
+against their centre, which he broke through rapidly as far as the
+river, near Dahlenkirchen. The whole left of the Russians, Lewis, and
+five thousand men, found themselves cut off from their retreat, and
+thrown back on the Duena. Lewis vainly sought for an outlet; he found his
+enemy every where, and lost at first two battalions and a squadron. He
+would have infallibly been taken with his whole force, had he been
+pressed closer, but he was allowed sufficient space and time to take
+breath; as the cold increased, and the country offered no means of
+escape, he ventured to trust himself to the weak ice which had begun to
+cover the river. He made his troops lay a bed of straw and boards over
+it, in that manner crossed the Duena at two points between Friedrichstadt
+and Lindau, and re-entered Riga, at the very moment his comrades had
+begun to despair of his preservation.
+
+The day after this engagement, Macdonald was informed of the retreat of
+Napoleon on Smolensk, but not of the disorganization of the army. A few
+days after, some sinister reports brought him the news of the capture of
+Minsk. He began to be alarmed, when, on the 4th of December, a letter
+from Maret, magnifying the victory of the Berezina, announced to him the
+capture of nine thousand Russians, nine standards, and twelve cannon.
+The admiral, according to this letter, was reduced to thirteen thousand
+men.
+
+On the third of December the Russians were again repulsed in one of
+their sallies from Riga, by the Prussians. Yorck, either from prudence
+or conscience, restrained himself. Macdonald had become reconciled to
+him. On the 19th of December, fourteen days after the departure of
+Napoleon, eight days after the capture of Wilna by Kutusoff, in short
+when Macdonald commenced his retreat, the Prussian army was still
+faithful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+
+It was from Wilna, on the 9th of December, that orders were transmitted
+to Macdonald, of which a Prussian officer was the bearer, directing him
+to retreat slowly upon Tilsit. No care was taken to send these
+instructions by different channels. They did not even think of employing
+Lithuanians to carry a message of that importance. In this manner the
+last army, the only one which remained unbroken, was exposed to the risk
+of destruction. An order, which was written at the distance of only four
+days' journey from Macdonald, lingered so long on the road, that it was
+nine days in reaching him.
+
+The marshal directed his retreat on Tilsit, by passing between Telzs and
+Szawlia. Yorck, with the greatest part of the Prussians, forming his
+rear-guard, marched at a day's distance from him, in contact with the
+Russians, and left entirely to themselves. By some this was regarded as
+a great error on the part of Macdonald; but the majority did not venture
+to decide, alleging that in a situation so delicate, confidence and
+suspicion were alike dangerous.
+
+The latter also said that the French marshal did every thing which
+prudence required of him, by retaining with him one of Yorck's
+divisions; the other, which was commanded by Massenbach, was under the
+direction of the French general Bachelu, and formed the vanguard. The
+Prussian army was thus separated into two corps, Macdonald in the
+middle, and the one seemed to be a guarantee to him for the other.
+
+At first every thing went on well, although the danger was every where,
+in the front, in the rear, and on the flanks; for the grand army of
+Kutusoff had already pushed forward three vanguards, on the retreat of
+the Duke of Tarentum. Macdonald encountered the first at Kelm, the
+second at Piklupenen, and the third at Tilsit. The zeal of the black
+hussars and the Prussian dragoons appeared to increase. The Russian
+hussars of Ysum were sabred and overthrown at Kelm. On the 27th of
+December, at the close of a ten hours' march, these Prussians came in
+sight of Piklupenen, and the Russian brigade of Laskow; without stopping
+to take breath, they charged, threw it into disorder, and cut off two of
+its battalions; next day they retook Tilsit from the Russian commander
+Tettenborn.
+
+A letter from Berthier, dated at Antonowo, on the 14th of December, had
+reached Macdonald several days before, in which he was informed that the
+army no longer existed, and that it was necessary that he should arrive
+speedily on the Pregel, in order to cover Koenigsberg, and to be able to
+retreat upon Elbing and Marienburg. This news the marshal concealed from
+the Prussians. Hitherto the cold and the forced marches had produced no
+complaints from them; there was no symptom of discontent exhibited by
+these allies; brandy and provisions were not deficient.
+
+But on the 28th, when General Bachelu extended to the right, towards
+Regnitz, in order to drive away the Russians, who had taken refuge there
+after their expulsion from Tilsit, the Prussian officers began to
+complain that their troops were fatigued; their vanguard marched
+unwillingly and carelessly, allowed itself to be surprised, and was
+thrown into disorder. Bachelu, however, restored the fortune of the day,
+and entered Regnitz.
+
+During this time, Macdonald, who had arrived at Tilsit, was waiting for
+Yorck and the rest of the Prussian army, which did not make its
+appearance. On the 29th, the officers, and the orders which he sent
+them, were vainly multiplied; no news of Yorck transpired. On the 30th,
+Macdonald's anxiety was redoubled; it was fully exhibited in one of his
+letters of that day's date, in which, however, he did not yet venture to
+appear suspicious of a defection. He wrote "that he could not understand
+the reason of this delay; that he had sent a number of officers and
+emissaries with orders to Yorck to rejoin him, but that he had received
+no answer. In consequence, when the enemy was advancing against him, he
+was compelled to suspend his retreat; for he could not make up his mind
+to desert this corps, to retreat without Yorck; and yet this delay was
+ruinous." This letter concluded thus:--"I am lost in conjectures. If I
+retreat, what would the Emperor say? what would be said by France, by
+the army, by Europe? Would it not be an indelible stain on the tenth
+corps, voluntarily to abandon a part of its troops, and without being
+compelled to it otherwise than by prudence? Oh, no; whatever may be the
+result, I am resigned, and willingly devote myself as a victim, provided
+I am the only one:" and he concluded by wishing the French general "that
+sleep which his melancholy situation had long denied him."
+
+On the same day, he recalled Bachelu and the Prussian cavalry, which was
+still at Regnitz, to Tilsit. It was night when Bachelu received the
+order; he wished to execute it, but the Prussian colonels refused; and
+they covered their refusal under different pretexts. "The roads," they
+said, "were not passable. They were not accustomed to make their men
+march in such dreadful weather, and at so late an hour! They were
+responsible to their king for their regiments." The French general was
+astonished, commanded them to be silent, and ordered them to obey; his
+firmness subdued them, they obeyed, but slowly. A Russian general had
+glided into their ranks, and pressed them to deliver up this Frenchman,
+who was alone in the midst of those who commanded them; but the
+Prussians, although fully prepared to abandon Bachelu, could not resolve
+to betray him: at last they began their march.
+
+At Regnitz, at eight o'clock at night, they had refused to mount their
+horses; at Tilsit, where they arrived at two in the morning, they
+refused to alight from them. At five o'clock in the morning, however,
+they had all gone to their quarters, and as order appeared to be
+restored among them, the general went to take some rest. But the
+obedience had been entirely feigned, for no sooner did the Prussians
+find themselves unobserved, than they resumed their arms, went out with
+Massenbach at their head, and escaped from Tilsit in silence, and by
+favour of the night. The first dawn of the last day of the year 1812,
+informed Macdonald that the Prussian army had deserted him.
+
+It was Yorck, who, instead of rejoining him, deprived him of Massenbach,
+whom he had just recalled. His own defection, which had commenced on the
+26th of December, was just consummated. On the 30th of December, a
+convention between Yorck and the Russian general Dibitch was concluded
+at Taurogen. "The Prussian troops were to be cantoned on their own
+frontiers, and remain neutral during two months, even in the event of
+this armistice being disapproved of by their own government. At the end
+of that time, the roads should be open to them to rejoin the French
+troops, should their sovereign persist in ordering them to do so."
+
+Yorck, but more particularly Massenbach, either from fear of the Polish
+division to which they were united, or from respect for Macdonald,
+showed some delicacy in their defection. They wrote to the marshal.
+Yorck announced to him the convention he had just concluded, which he
+coloured with specious pretexts. "He had been reduced to it by fatigue
+and necessity; but," he added, "that whatever judgment the world might
+form of his conduct, he was not at all uneasy about; that his duty to
+his troops, and the most mature reflexion, had dictated it to him; that,
+finally, whatever might be the appearances, he was actuated by the
+purest motives."
+
+Massenbach excused himself for his clandestine departure. "He had wished
+to spare himself a sensation which his heart felt too painfully. He had
+dreaded, lest the sentiments of respect and esteem which he should
+preserve to the end of his life for Macdonald, should have prevented him
+from doing his duty."
+
+Macdonald saw all at once his force reduced from twenty-nine thousand to
+nine thousand, but in the state of anxiety in which he had been living
+for the last two days, any termination to it was a relief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+
+Thus commenced the defection of our allies. I shall not venture to set
+myself up as a judge of the morality of this event; posterity will
+decide upon it. As a contemporaneous historian, however, I conceive
+myself bound not only to state the facts, but also the impression they
+have left, and such as it still remains, in the minds of the principal
+leaders of the two corps of the allied army, either as actors or
+sufferers.
+
+The Prussians only waited for an opportunity to break our alliance,
+which was forced upon them; when the moment arrived, they embraced it.
+Not only, however, did they refuse to betray Macdonald, but they did not
+even wish to quit him, until they had, as it may be said, drawn him out
+of Russia and placed him in safety. On his side, when Macdonald became
+sensible that he was abandoned, but without having positive proofs of
+it, he obstinately remained at Tilsit, at the mercy of the Prussians,
+sooner than give them a motive of defection, by too speedy a retreat.
+
+The Prussians did not abuse this noble conduct. There was defection on
+their part, but no treachery; which, in this age, and after the evils
+they had endured, may still appear meritorious; they did not join
+themselves with the Russians. When they arrived on their own frontier,
+they could not resign themselves to aid their conqueror in defending
+their native soil against those who came in the character of their
+deliverers, and who were so; they became neutral, and this was not, I
+must repeat, until Macdonald, disengaged from Russia and the Russians,
+had his retreat free.
+
+This marshal continued it from Koenigsberg, by Labiau and Tente. His rear
+was protected by Mortier, and Heudelet's division, whose troops, newly
+arrived, still occupied Insterburg, and kept Tchitchakof in check. On
+the 3d of January he effected his junction with Mortier and covered
+Koenigsberg.
+
+It was, however, a happy circumstance for Yorck's reputation, that
+Macdonald, thus weakened, and whose retreat his defection had
+interrupted, was enabled to rejoin the grand army. The inconceivable
+slowness of Wittgenstein's march saved that marshal; the Russian
+general, however, overtook him at Labiau and Tente; and there, but for
+the efforts of Bachelu and his brigade, the valour of the Polish Colonel
+Kameski, and Captain Ostrowski, and the Bavarian Major Mayer, the corps
+of Macdonald, thus deserted, would have been broken or destroyed; in
+that case Yorck would appear to have betrayed him, and history would,
+with justice, have stigimatized him with the name of traitor. Six
+hundred French, Bavarians, and Poles, remained dead on these two fields
+of battle; their blood accuses the Prussians for not having provided, by
+an additional article, for the safe retreat of the leader whom they had
+deserted.
+
+The King of Prussia disavowed Yorck's conduct. He dismissed him,
+appointed Kleist to succeed him in the command, ordered the latter to
+arrest his late commander, and send him, as well as Massenbach, to
+Berlin, there to undergo their trial. But these generals preserved their
+command in spite of him; the Prussian army did not consider their
+monarch at liberty; this opinion was founded on the presence of Augereau
+and some French troops at Berlin.
+
+Frederick, however, was perfectly aware of the annihilation of our army.
+At Smorgoni, Narbonne refused to accept the mission to that monarch,
+until Napoleon gave him authority to make the most unreserved
+communication. He, Augereau, and several others have declared that
+Frederick was not merely restrained by his position in the midst of the
+remains of the grand army, and by the dread of Napoleon's re-appearance
+at the head of a fresh one, but also by his plighted faith; for every
+thing is of a mixed character in the moral as well as the physical
+world, and even in the most trifling of our actions there is a variety
+of different motives. But, finally, his good faith yielded to necessity,
+and his dread to a greater dread. He saw himself, it was said,
+threatened with a species of forfeiture by his people and by our
+enemies.
+
+It should be remarked that the Prussian nation, which drew its sovereign
+toward Yorck, only ventured to rise successively, as the Russians came
+in sight, and by degrees, as our feeble remains quitted their territory.
+A single fact, which took place during the retreat, will paint the
+dispositions of the people, and show how much, notwithstanding the
+hatred they bore us, they were curbed under the ascendancy of our
+victories.
+
+When Davoust was recalled to France, he passed, with only two
+attendants, through the town of X * * *. The Russians were daily
+expected there; its population were incensed at the sight of these last
+Frenchmen. Murmurs, mutual excitations, and finally, outcries, rapidly
+succeeded each other; the most violent speedily surrounded the carriage
+of the marshal, and were already about to unharness the horses, when
+Davoust made his appearance, rushed upon the most insolent of these
+insurgents, dragged him behind his carriage, and made his servants
+fasten him to it. Frightened at this action, the people stopped short,
+seized with motionless consternation, and then quietly and silently
+opened a passage for the marshal, who passed through the midst of them,
+carrying off his prisoner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+In this sudden manner did our left wing fall. On our right wing, on the
+side of the Austrians, whom a well-cemented alliance retained, a
+phlegmatic people, governed despotically by an united aristocracy, there
+was no sudden explosion to be apprehended. This wing detached itself
+from us insensibly, and with the formalities required by its political
+position.
+
+On the 10th of December, Schwartzenberg was at Slonim, presenting
+successively vanguards towards Minsk, Nowogrodeck, and Bienitza. He was
+still persuaded that the Russians were beaten and fleeing before
+Napoleon, when he was informed at the same moment of the Emperor's
+departure, and of the destruction of the grand army, but in so vague a
+manner that he was for some time without any direction.
+
+In his embarrassment he addressed himself to the French ambassador at
+Warsaw. The answer of that minister authorized him "not to sacrifice
+another man." In consequence, he retreated on the 14th of December from
+Slonim towards Bialystok. The instructions which reached him from Murat
+in the middle of this movement were conformable to it.
+
+About the 21st of December, an order from Alexander suspended
+hostilities on that point, and as the interest of the Russians agreed
+with that of the Austrians, there was very soon a mutual understanding.
+A moveable armistice, which was approved by Murat, was immediately
+concluded. The Russian general and Schwartzenberg were to manoeuvre on
+each other, the Russian on the offensive, and the Austrian on the
+defensive, but without coming to blows.
+
+Regnier's corps, now reduced to ten thousand men, was not included in
+the arrangement; but Schwartzenberg, while he yielded to circumstances,
+persevered in his loyalty. He regularly gave an account of every thing
+to the commander of the army; he covered the whole front of the French
+line with his Austrian troops, and preserved it. This prince was not at
+all complaisant towards the enemy; he believed him not upon his bare
+word; at every position he was about to yield, he would actually satisfy
+himself with his own eyes, that he only yielded it to a superior force,
+ready to combat him. In this manner he arrived upon the Bug and the
+Narew, from Nur to Ostrolenka, where the war terminated.
+
+He was in this manner covering Warsaw, when, on the 22d of January, he
+received instructions from his government to abandon the Grand-duchy, to
+separate his retreat from that of Regnier, and to re-enter Gallicia. To
+these instructions he only yielded a tardy obedience; he resisted the
+pressing solicitations and threatening manoeuvres of Miloradowitch
+until the 25th of January; even then, he effected his retreat upon
+Warsaw so slowly, that the hospitals and a great part of the magazines
+were enabled to be evacuated. Finally, he obtained a more favourable
+capitulation for the Warsavians than they could venture to expect. He
+did more; although that city was to have been delivered up on the 5th,
+he only yielded it on the 8th, and thus gave Regnier the start of three
+days upon the Russians.
+
+Regnier was afterwards, it is true, overtaken and surprised at Kalisch,
+but that was in consequence of halting too long to protect the flight of
+some Polish depots. In the first disorder occasioned by this unexpected
+attack, a Saxon brigade was separated from the French corps, retreated
+on Schwartzenberg, and was well received by him; Austria allowed it to
+pass through her territory, and restored it to the grand army, when it
+was assembled near Dresden.
+
+On the 1st of January, 1813, however, at Koenigsberg, where Murat then
+was, the desertion of the Prussians and the intrigues forming by Austria
+were not known, when suddenly Macdonald's despatch, and an insurrection
+of the people of Koenigsberg, gave information of the beginning of a
+defection, of which it was impossible to foresee the consequences. The
+consternation was excessive. The seditious movement was at first only
+kept down by representations, which Ney very soon changed into threats.
+Murat hastened his departure for Elbing. Koenigsberg was encumbered with
+ten thousand sick and wounded, most of whom were abandoned to the
+generosity of their enemies. Some of them had no reason to complain of
+it; but prisoners who escaped declared that many of their unfortunate
+companions were massacred and thrown out of the windows into the
+streets; that an hospital which contained several hundred sick was set
+fire to; and they accused the inhabitants of committing these horrid
+deeds.
+
+On another side, at Wilna, more than sixteen thousand of our prisoners
+had already perished. The convent of St. Basil contained the greatest
+number; from the 10th to the 23d of December they had only received some
+biscuits; but not a piece of wood nor a drop of water had been given
+them. The snow collected in the courts, which were covered with dead
+bodies, quenched the burning thirst of the survivors. They threw out of
+the windows such of the dead bodies as could not be kept in the
+passages, on the staircases, or among the heaps of corses which were
+collected in all the apartments. The additional prisoners that were
+every moment discovering were thrown into this horrible place.
+
+The arrival of the Emperor Alexander and his brother was the only thing
+that put a stop to these abominations. They had lasted for thirteen
+days, and if a few escaped out of the twenty thousand of our unfortunate
+comrades who were made prisoners, it was to these two princes they owed
+their preservation. But a most violent epidemic had already arisen from
+the poisonous exhalations of so many corses; it passed from the
+vanquished to the victors, and fully avenged us. The Russians, however,
+were living in plenty; our magazines at Smorgoni and Wilna had not been
+destroyed, and they must have found besides immense quantities of
+provisions in the pursuit of our routed army.
+
+But Wittgenstein, who had been detached to attack Macdonald, descended
+the Niemen; Tchitchakof and Platof had pursued Murat towards Kowno,
+Wilkowiski, and Insterburg; shortly after, the admiral was sent towards
+Thorn. Finally, on the 9th of January, Alexander and Kutusoff arrived on
+the Niemen at Merecz. There, as he was about to cross his own frontier,
+the Russian emperor addressed a proclamation to his troops, completely
+filled with images, comparisons, and eulogiums, which the winter had
+much better deserved than his army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XI.
+
+
+It was not until the 22d of January, and the following days, that the
+Russians reached the Vistula. During this tardy march, from the 3d to
+the 11th of January, Murat had remained at Elbing. In this situation of
+extremity, that monarch was wavering from one plan to another, at the
+mercy of the elements which were fermenting around him; sometimes they
+raised his hopes to the highest pitch, at others they sunk him into an
+abyss of disquietude.
+
+He had taken flight from Koenigsberg in a complete state of
+discouragement, when the suspension in the march of the Russians, and
+the junction of Macdonald with Heudelet and Cavaignac, which doubled his
+forces, suddenly inflamed him with vain hopes. He, who had the day
+before believed that all was lost, wished to resume the offensive, and
+began immediately; for he was one of those dispositions who are making
+fresh resolutions every instant. On that day he determined to push
+forward, and the next to flee as far as Posen.
+
+This last determination, however, was not taken without reason. The
+rallying of the army on the Vistula had been completely illusory; the
+old guard had not altogether more than five hundred effective men; the
+young guard scarcely any; the first corps, eighteen hundred; the second,
+one thousand; the third, sixteen hundred; the fourth, seventeen hundred;
+added to which, most of these soldiers, the remains of six hundred
+thousand men, could scarcely handle their arms.
+
+In this state of impotence, with the two wings of the army already
+detached from us, Austria and Prussia failing us together, Poland became
+a snare which might close around us. On the other hand, Napoleon, who
+never consented to any cession, was anxious that Dantzic should be
+defended; it became necessary, therefore, to throw into it all that
+could keep the field.
+
+Besides, if the truth must be told, when Murat, when at Elbing, talked
+of reconstituting the army, and was even dreaming of victories, he found
+that most of the commanders were themselves worn out and disgusted.
+Misfortune, which leads to fear every thing, and to believe readily all
+that one fears, had penetrated into their hearts. Several of them were
+already uneasy about their rank and their grades, about the estates
+which they had acquired in the conquered countries, and the greater part
+only sighed to recross the Rhine.
+
+As to the recruits who arrived, they were a mixture of men from several
+of the German nations. In order to join us they had passed through the
+Prussian states, from whence arose the exhalation of so much hatred. As
+they approached, they encountered our discouragement and our long train
+of disorder; when they entered into line, far from being put into
+companies with, and supported by old soldiers, they found themselves
+left alone, to fight with every kind of scourge, to support a cause
+which was abandoned by those who were most interested in its success;
+the consequence was, that at the very first bivouac, most of these
+Germans disbanded themselves. At sight of the disasters of the army
+returning from Moscow, the tried soldiers of Macdonald were themselves
+shaken. Notwithstanding this corps d'armee, and the completely fresh
+division of Heudelet preserved their unity. All these remains were
+speedily collected into Dantzic; thirty-five thousand soldiers from
+seventeen different nations, were shut up in it. The remainder, in small
+numbers, did not begin rallying until they got to Posen and upon the
+Oder.
+
+Hitherto it was hardly possible for the King of Naples to regulate our
+flight any better; but at the moment he passed through Marienwerder on
+his way to Posen, a letter from Naples again unsettled all his
+resolutions. The impression which it made upon him was so violent, that
+by degrees as he read it, the bile mixed itself with his blood so
+rapidly, that he was found a few minutes after with a complete jaundice.
+
+It appeared that an act of government which the queen had taken upon
+herself had wounded him in one of his strongest passions. He was not at
+all jealous of that princess, notwithstanding her charms, but furiously
+so of his royal authority; and it was particularly of the queen, as
+sister of the Emperor, that he was suspicious.
+
+Persons were astonished at seeing this prince, who had hitherto appeared
+to sacrifice every thing to glory in arms, suffering himself to be
+mastered all at once by a less noble passion; but they forgot that, with
+certain characters, there must be always a ruling passion.
+
+Besides, it was still the same ambition under different forms, and
+always entering completely into each of them; for such are passionate
+characters. At that moment his jealousy of his authority triumphed over
+his love of glory; it made him proceed rapidly to Posen, where, shortly
+after his arrival, he disappeared, and abandoned us.
+
+This defection took place on the 16th of January, twenty-three days
+before Schwartzenberg detached himself from the French army, of which
+Prince Eugene took the command.
+
+Alexander arrested the march of his troops at Kalisch. There, the
+violent and continued war, which had followed us all the way from
+Moscow, slackened: it became only, until the spring, a war of fits, slow
+and intermittent. The strength of the evil appeared to be exhausted; but
+it was merely that of the combatants; a still greater struggle was
+preparing, and this halt was not a time allowed to make peace, but
+merely given to the premeditation of slaughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. XII.
+
+
+Thus did the star of the North triumph over that of Napoleon. Is it then
+the fate of the South to be vanquished by the North? Cannot that subdue
+it in its turn? Is it against nature that that aggression should be
+successful? and is the frightful result of our invasion a fresh proof of
+it?
+
+Certainly the human race does not march in that direction; its
+inclination is towards the south, it turns its back to the north; the
+sun attracts its regards, its wishes, and its steps. We cannot with
+impunity turn back this great current of men; the attempt to make them
+return, to repel them, and confine them within their frozen regions, is
+a gigantic enterprise. The Romans exhausted themselves by it.
+Charlemagne, although he rose when one of these great invasions was
+drawing to a termination, could only check it for a short time; the rest
+of the torrent, driven back to the east of the empire, penetrated it
+through the north, and completed the inundation.
+
+A thousand years have since elapsed; the nations of the north have
+required that time to recover from that great migration, and to acquire
+the knowledge which is now indispensable to a conquering nation. During
+that interval, it was not without reason that the Hanse Towns opposed
+the introduction of the warlike arts into the immense camp of the
+Scandinavians. The event has justified their fears. Scarcely had the
+science of modern war penetrated among them, when Russian armies were
+seen on the Elbe, and shortly after in Italy; they came to reconnoitre
+these countries, some day they will come and settle there.
+
+During the last century, either from philanthropy or vanity, Europe was
+eager in contributing to civilize these men of the north, of whom Peter
+had already made formidable warriors. She acted wisely, in so far as she
+diminished for herself the danger of falling back into fresh barbarism;
+if we allow that a second relapse into the darkness of the middle ages
+is possible, war having become so scientific, that mind predominates in
+it, so that to succeed in it, a degree of instruction is required, which
+nations that still remain barbarous can only acquire by civilization.
+
+But, in hastening the civilization of these Normans, Europe has probably
+hastened the epoch of their next invasion. For let no one believe that
+their pompous cities, their exotic and forced luxury, will be able to
+retain them; that by softening them, they will be kept stationary, or
+rendered less formidable. The luxury and effeminacy which are enjoyed in
+spite of a barbarous climate, can only be the privilege of a few. The
+masses, which are incessantly increasing by an administration which is
+gradually becoming more enlightened, will continue sufferers by their
+climate, barbarous like that, and always more and more envious; and the
+invasion of the south by the north, recommenced by Catherine II. will
+continue.
+
+Who is there that can fancy that the great struggle between the North
+and the South is at an end? Is it not, in its full grandeur, the war of
+privation against enjoyment, the eternal war of the poor against the
+rich, that which devours the interior of every empire?
+
+Comrades, whatever was the motive of our expedition, this was the point
+which made it of importance to Europe. Its object was to wrest Poland
+from Russia, its result would have been to throw the danger of a fresh
+invasion of the men of the north, at a greater distance, to weaken the
+torrent, and oppose a new barrier to it; and was there ever a man, or a
+combination of circumstances, so well calculated to ensure the success
+of so great an enterprise?
+
+After fifteen hundred years of victories, the revolution of the fourth
+century, that of the kings and nobles against the people, was, in its
+turn, vanquished by the revolution of the nineteenth century, that of
+the people against the nobles and kings. Napoleon was born of this
+conflagration; he obtained such complete power over it, that it seemed
+as if that great convulsion had only been that of the bringing into the
+world one man. He commanded the Revolution as if he had been the genius
+of that terrible element. At his voice she became tranquil. Ashamed of
+her excesses, she admired herself in him, and precipitating herself into
+his glory, she had united Europe under his sceptre, and obedient Europe
+rose at his call to drive back Russia within her ancient limits. It
+seemed as if the North was in his turn about to be vanquished, even
+among his own ices.
+
+And yet this great man, with these great circumstances in his favour,
+could not subdue nature! In this powerful effort to re-ascend that rapid
+declivity, so many forces failed him! After reaching these icy regions
+of Europe, he was precipitated from their very summit. The North,
+victorious over the South in her defensive war, as she had been in the
+middle ages in her offensive one, now believes herself invulnerable and
+irresistible.
+
+Comrades, believe it not! Ye might have triumphed over that soil and
+these spaces, that climate, and that rough and gigantic nature, as ye
+had conquered its soldiers.
+
+But some errors were punished by great calamities! I have related both
+the one and the other. On that ocean of evils I have erected a
+melancholy beacon of gloomy and blood-red light; and if my feeble hand
+has been insufficient for the painful task, at least I have exhibited
+the floating wrecks, in order that those who come after us may see the
+peril and avoid it.
+
+Comrades, my task is finished; it is now for you to bear your testimony
+to the truth of the picture. Its colours will no doubt appear pale to
+your eyes and to your hearts, which are still full of these great
+recollections. But which of you is ignorant that an action is always
+more eloquent than its description; and that if great historians are
+produced by great men, the first are still more rare than the last?
+
+
+Volume I
+
+  London: Printed by Thomas Davison,
+  Whitefriars.
+
+Volume II
+
+  London: Printed by C. Roworth.
+  Bell yard, Temple Bar.
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+This was a book of two volumes, written by a Frenchman and printed in
+English by different printers. As a result there was a wide variation in
+spelling.
+
+Original spelling was retained except where noted.
+
+Thus corses for corpses, tressels for trestles, Dantzic for Danzig.
+
+Table of Contents, Volume II, Book IX, Chapter II, Jaroslavetz changed
+to Yaroslawetz to conform to text. Also for Chapters IV and V of same.
+
+Table of Contents, Winkowo changed to Vinkowo to conform to much of
+text.
+
+Table of Contents, Doubrowna changed to Dombrowna.
+
+The use of Chap. and Chapter was retained reflecting the original work.
+
+Book II. Chap. II., Arriere changed to Arriere.
+
+Book V. Chap. I, Duenaburg changed to Duenabourg to match rest of Volume.
+
+Book VIII. Chapter XI, Francaise changed to Francaise.
+
+Book X. Chapter III, Karsnoe changed to Krasnoe.
+
+One instance each of Yuknow, Yuknof and Yucknow appears in the text
+as does Vilkomir/Wilkomer and Doukhowtchina/Dukhowtchina.
+
+Differences that were retained between Volumes I and II:
+  Volume I              Volume II
+  Saint-Cyr             Saint Cyr(also in Table of Contents for Vol. II)
+  Oudinot               Oudinot
+  journeys              journies
+  Dubrowna              Dombrowna
+  Duenabourg             Duenaburg
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Expedition to Russia, by
+Count Philip de Segur
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