Forty thousand men, of whom a large proportion were veteran soldiers of the second military power in Greece, ought to have made a better defence. But they were dispirited, and commanded by a general unequal to the emergency. Nicias possessed many admirable qualities; respect for the gods, honesty, personal courage, and dignity of character when not confronted with an Athenian assembly; and they shone perhaps more brightly in the concluding than in any other scene of his life; but his courage was of the passive rather than the active sort, and he did not possess the power of rapid observation and decision which mark the accomplished general, and are most especially required to extricate an army from a false position. So far from pursuing the plan laid down in his speech, the first day’s retreat did not exceed five miles, the next was less than three; and when, after eight days of marching and fighting, the Athenian army surrendered, it was not twenty miles distant from Syracuse. Want of promptitude in the first instance suffered the Syracusans to pre–occupy the passes. How far the obstacles which Nicias had then to surmount may justify his tardiness it is difficult to say. Superior numbers and discipline in the hands of an able general might have done much to counterbalance the advantage of position. The Athenians were placed in difficult circumstances; yet not so difficult as the 10,000 in Persia, or many others who have yet lived to laugh at their enemy.
It is not fair to estimate the character of this expedition by its results, for no foresight could have anticipated that Athens, the mistress of the sea, would be so completely foiled on her own element, as that even the power of return should be denied to her defeated army. But without judging things by their events, a method which renders criticism of the past comparatively easy, there are ample grounds to prove the impolicy of entering upon such a scheme of conquest at such a time. The Athenians were already engaged in a war fully commensurate with their strength, and which their utmost exertions had been unable to bring to a happy close. Their wealth and power were derived chiefly from colonies and subject cities, of which several were in open revolt, and all more or less disaffected. Eubœa itself, the most important, and from its situation the most easily controlled, of these dependencies, was so discontented, that to prevent its defection was the first care of the administration, as soon as news arrived of the Sicilian defeat. It was under these circumstances that they undertook a war, characterized by Thucydides as not much less than that against the Peloponnesians,[159] and having for its object the conquest[160] of an island about nine times as large as Attica, and inhabited not by a rude or effeminate population, but by rich and powerful cities of their own countrymen. The enterprise, hazardous in itself, was rendered more so by the length of the voyage, according to the methods of navigation then in use, which prevented succour being sent, or remedy applied to any sudden reverse; and on this hazardous service, at this critical time, a body of troops was sent, not too large for its object, but far larger than the state could afford to lose. That their destruction was believed to be a deathblow is evident from Thucydides. “Everything from every place grieved them, and fear and astonishment, the greatest that ever they were in, beset them round. For they were not only grieved for the loss, which both every man in particular and the whole city sustained, of so many men–at–arms, horsemen and serviceable men, the like whereof they saw was not left: but seeing they had neither galleys enough in their haven, nor money in their treasury, nor able seamen[161] in their galleys, were even desperate at that present of their safety, and thought the enemy out of Sicily would come forthwith with their fleet into Piræus (especially after vanquishing of so great a navy), and that the enemy here would surely now, with double preparation in every kind, press them to the utmost both by sea and land, and be aided therein by their revolting confederates.”[162] Thanks to their own activity and to the supineness of their enemy, this loss did not immediately prove fatal; but the result of the war would probably have been very different, had the lives and treasure wasted in Sicily been devoted for their country in some better chosen cause.
“Nick, young Nick, the deacon used to say to me (his name was Nicol as well as mine; sae folk ca’d us in their daffin’, young Nick and auld Nick), Nick, said he, never put your arm out further than you can easily draw it back again.” Baillie Jarvie’s maxim is as applicable to political affairs as to commercial and good in both. He whose fortune is already desperate may stake all on one cast; for the prosperous and powerful to do so is madness. Had Napoleon’s ambition not blinded him to this simple rule of caution, he might have died on the imperial throne: he stretched his arm too far when he marched to Moscow. No two persons could be more unlike than Napoleon and Nicias: and it is worth observing that tempers diametrically opposite led these two generals into the same error. Both tempted their fortune after the hour of success was past, and, when active measures could no longer be pursued, remained in idleness, from mere want of resolution to confess a failure by their actions; Nicias, for want of moral courage to face an unreasonable master, whose mortification was not likely to be anywise lessened by being reminded that the defeated general had always disapproved of his commission; Napoleon, from his sensitive pride, which clung to any pretence, however thin, which could conceal from himself, if not from others, that the victor of a hundred battles was at length foiled. The celebrated campaign of 1812 bears indeed a nearer resemblance to the Sicilian than to the Scythian war, and on that account might better have been reserved for this place. But there is one portion of it still unnoticed, which displays in their perfection those military qualities, the want of which proved fatal to Nicias and the Athenian army.
We allude to the remarkable skill, courage, and good fortune with which Marshal Ney extricated himself from circumstances apparently as hopeless as any that men could be placed in. It has already been stated that the French army on quitting Smolensk was distributed into four divisions, which marched on different days.[163] Ney commanded the last. The Russian army lay in strength between that city and Oreza, but their opposition was undecided, and the three first divisions forced their way past, though with severe loss. When he had only the rear guard to deal with, Kutusoff came to a resolution which if adopted in the first instance might have ended at once the campaign and the reign of Napoleon, and took post across the road, so as to bar all passage, except such as should be cut through the centre of his army. On the second afternoon after he left Smolensk, Ney came in view of the Russians. They consisted of 80,000 men, with a powerful artillery. The two armies were posted on opposite sides of a deep ravine, which at this point intersected the plain. Kutusoff sent an officer to summon Ney to surrender, stating the amount of his force, and offering permission to send one of his officers to verify his representations by inspection. While the envoy was still speaking, forty guns opened their fire upon the French. Ney exclaimed in anger, “A marshal never surrenders; neither do men treat under fire. You are my prisoner.” The artillery redoubled their thunder; the hills, before cold and silent, resembled volcanoes in eruption, and then, said the French soldiers, enthusiastic in praise of their favourite leader, this man of fire seemed to feel in his true element.
His whole force consisted of only 5000 men and six guns. Opposed were 80,000, well armed and well fed, and strong in cavalry and artillery. The French vanguard of 1500 men passed along the road into the ravine, and dashed gallantly up the opposite side; but the front line of the Russians met them at the top, and at once shattered their feeble column. Ney rallied them, and caused them to be formed in reserve, while he led on in person the main body of 3000 men. He made no speeches; he advanced at their head, which is worth all the oratorical flourishes in the world. Meanwhile 400 Illyrians had been detached to take the enemy in flank. The impetuosity of his charge broke and scattered the first opposing line, and without stop or hesitation he advanced upon the second; but ere they reached it, a tempest of cannon and musket–balls whistled through the column: it staggered, broke, and retreated.
Convinced that it was impossible to force his way, he returned to his former position on the other side of the ravine, drew up what remained of his troops, and awaited the attack. Russian inactivity (we cannot call it caution) saved him, as it had saved those who went before. A single corps might have forced Ney’s position against the weak body who now defended it; but the enemy contented himself with maintaining a murderous cannonade, to which the six guns feebly replied. Still the soldiers, though falling thickly, remained constant at their posts, deriving comfort and confidence from the tranquillity of their chief.
At nightfall Ney gave orders to retreat towards Smolensk. All who heard it were struck with amazement. The Emperor, and their comrades, and France, lay in front: he proposed to turn back into a country which they had too much reason to detest and fly. Even the aide–de–camp to whom the command was issued stood as if he could hardly believe his ears, until it was repeated in a brief and decided tone. They marched backwards for an hour, and then stopped; and the Marshal, who had remained in the rear, rejoined them. Their situation may be thus summed up. Between them and the Emperor lay an army, which they had tried in vain to force. Guides they had none: on the left the country was open, but there was little chance of turning unobserved the flank of an enemy furnished with a numerous and active cavalry; besides that the time consumed in such an operation would have left little hope of ever rejoining the main body of the French. On the right the liberty of movement was curtailed by the Dnieper, which flowed in that direction; its precise situation and the possibility of crossing it being unknown. Ney’s plan was already conceived. He descended into a ravine, and caused the snow to be cleared away until the course of a rivulet was exposed. “This,” he said, “must be one of the feeders of the Dnieper. It will conduct us to the river, and on the further bank of that river lies our safety.” They followed it as their guide, and about eight o’clock in the evening arrived upon the bank of the Dnieper. Their joy was complete on seeing the river frozen over. Above and below it was still open, but just at the spot where they reached it a sharp bend in its course had stopped the floating ice, which the frost had connected into a continuous though a slight bridge. An officer volunteered to try its strength. He reached the opposite bank, and returned. “It would bear the men,” he said, “and some few horses. But a thaw was commencing, and there was no time to be lost.” The fatigue and difficulty of a nocturnal march had scattered the troops, as well as the disorganized band of stragglers which attended on them; and Ney, though pressed to cross at once, resolved to give three hours’ time for rallying. This interval of repose, even at so critical a moment, he spent, wrapped in his cloak, in deep and placid sleep upon the river bank.
Towards midnight they began to pass. Those who first tried the ice warned their companions that it bent under them, and sunk so low that they were up to their knees in water. The deep, threatening sound of cracks was heard on all sides, and those who still remained on the bank hesitated to trust themselves to so frail a support. Ney ordered them to pass one by one. Much precaution was necessary, for large chasms had opened, doubly concealed by the darkness of night, and by the general covering of water. Men hesitated, but they were driven on by the impatient cries of those who remained on the bank, still ignorant of the dangers of the passage, and goaded by the constant fear of the enemy’s approach.
The carriages and cannon attendant on the army were of necessity left behind, and those of the wounded who were unable to make their way across. The chief of the hospital department tried the experiment of sending some waggon–loads of sick and wounded men across the ice. A scream of agony was heard when they had reached the middle of the stream, succeeded by a deep silence. The ice had given way, and all perished except one officer, severely wounded, who supported himself upon a sheet of ice, and, crawling from one piece to another, reached the bank.
Ney had now placed the river between himself and the Russian army by a stroke of promptitude and courage rarely equalled. But his situation was far from enviable. He was in a desert of forests, without roads and without guides, two days’ march from Orcza, where he expected to meet Napoleon. As the troops advanced, the foremost men observed a beaten way; but there was little comfort to be derived from this, for they distinguished the marks of artillery and horses proceeding in the same direction as themselves. Ney as usual took the lion’s counsel, and followed those menacing tracks to a village, which he surrounded and assaulted, in which there were 100 cossacks, who were roused from their sleep only to find themselves prisoners. Here the French found comforts of which they had known little since their departure from Moscow; food, clothes, comfortable quarters, and rest. What a blessed relief to men who within the last twelve hours had been hopeless of escape from death in battle, and then exposed to scarce less imminent danger of perishing in a half–frozen river!