Ney retrograded a short distance on the road to Smolensk, and then turned to the north. He resolved to cross the Dnieper on the ice and make his way to Orsha by the right bank. He had the ice on a streamlet broken to ascertain its direction, and followed its course until the Dnieper was reached. He made a show of bivouacking at a village, but left his fires burning, and, guided by a captured peasant, found a place where the ice on the great river would bear. A thaw was, however, setting in, and though the fighting men mostly succeeded in crossing, the ice broke under the first vehicles. Guns, trains, and wounded were left to their fate on the farther bank; there remained with Ney about 3000 exhausted and starving foot-soldiers. The only favourable circumstance was that the cold had ceased. But on the 19th Platov was upon them with his Cossacks, and all the way to Orsha they marched in the midst of his squadrons, repeatedly cannonaded by his sledge-artillery. The details of the daring march are vividly related by De Fezensac, but in a work such as this there is little space for them. Ney kept the weary handful of troops together by the sheer magnetic force of his personality. On nearing Orsha the road was found to be barred by fires, but the Marshal ordered the charge, and they were found unguarded, having been lighted in order to terrorise him into halting. At midnight on the 21st the force reached the Vitebsk road about 8 miles from Orsha, where a column which Eugène had led forth to succour it was encountered. So the heroic episode ended. Of the 3rd Corps and Ricard’s division there survived not 1500 armed men.
While Ney was making his way to Orsha by the north bank of the Dnieper, Napoleon had arrived there on the 19th. Krasnoï, ill-planned and ill-fought as it was, was Kutuzov’s last—or only—serious effort. He remained in the neighbourhood of the battle-field until the 19th, made two marches, halted for a day, and then made two easy marches to Kopys on the Dnieper, south of Orsha. His army was certainly greatly weakened and fatigued; but he might have achieved much by a persistent and resolute advance. The result of his practical inaction was that the small remains of Napoleon’s fighting force were able to make their way to Orsha unmolested by the enemy.
In spite of mismanagement and timidity the fighting round Krasnoï was fearfully disastrous. The Napoleonic army had lost probably 10,000 men in action. The Russians claimed 26,170 prisoners, but at least half of these were the disbanded fugitives; over 100 guns were taken on the field, and 112 more had been abandoned. Baggage had been taken literally in heaps. As against this the Russians only admitted a loss of 2000 men; and it is possible that this is not a gross misstatement.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Poniatowski had met with an accident, and General Zayonczek commanded the 5th Corps.
ORSHA TO THE BEREZINA
Napoleon reached Orsha on November 19th, and at once set strenuously to work to restore order. Stringent orders were given that all stragglers were to rejoin their respective corps in specified localities. What effect these orders produced cannot easily be estimated; demoralisation was so advanced and the mass of disbanded troops so great, that it appears that little could be done to reform the skeleton units.