History of the Expedition to Russia / Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812

by comte de Philippe-Paul Ségur

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.