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.