While making a show of preparations for the fortification and provisioning of Moscow the French Emperor, on October 4, sent his aide-de-camp, General Lauriston, who had been Ambassador at St. Petersburg before the war, on a mission to Kutuzov. Lauriston’s real object was to ascertain the chances of peace. It was certain that his mission could have no success. Apart from the firm resolve of the Tzar the generals at Tarutino were bitterly determined, and kept a close watch upon their commander-in-chief. Kutuzov consented to receive Lauriston; and thereupon his subordinates requested Wilson to inform him that if he conferred privately with Lauriston he would be deposed from the command. Kutuzov himself, not very confident of the ability of his army to beat Napoleon’s, persisted in his determination to receive Lauriston, but consented to do so publicly in the first instance. He then had a private conversation with the French general, of which he afterwards gave an account to Count Langeron. He ultimately consented to pass on a letter brought by Lauriston to St. Petersburg; but declared that he had no power to conclude an armistice.
The successes of Schwarzenberg and St. Cyr appeared to make the French line of communications fairly safe, and the calling up of Victor’s 9th Corps to Smolensk was an additional measure of security. The 9th Corps crossed the frontier on September 3. It was increased by the addition of four German regiments to a strength of 33,500 men. Victor left Coutard’s German brigade at Vilna, and with the rest of the corps marched for Smolensk, where he arrived on September 27. Napoleon had appointed Comte Baraguay d’Hilliers Governor-General of the province of Smolensk, but he could do little to collect supplies and keep the roads clear. The country was infested by small parties of Cossacks and of armed peasantry on the one hand, and on the other by numbers of stragglers, disbanded troops and marauders belonging to the invading army.
Until the arrival of the 9th Corps troops were entirely lacking wherewith to suppress the disorder, and it will soon be seen that Victor could make but a brief stay at Smolensk. Baraguay d’Hilliers, worried and distracted by Napoleon’s angry complaints, gave his master the facts of the situation in two letters, which enable us to appreciate the precise state of things in rear of the Grande Armée.
The armed peasants and Cossack detachments checked foraging operations and cut off detachments. At Smolensk, indeed, there was a strong garrison. A provisional administration had been organised, on paper, under the superintendence of M. de Villeblanche; but the town was ruined and nearly deserted. General Charpentier could organise strong foraging parties, but had no artisans to construct barracks and bakeries, or to manufacture clothing and equipment. From Smolensk to Gzhatsk there was hardly any protection for the road. Baraguay d’Hilliers declared that, after providing for the necessary garrisons of the posts, he could dispose of only 600 men, in three detachments, for police and foraging operations on a line of some 200 miles! As to establishing markets as Napoleon ordered, he frankly exposed the utter absurdity of the idea. For removing wounded and forwarding supplies there were not a fifth of the vehicles required.
MARSHAL VICTOR, DUKE OF BELLUNO
Commander of the 9th French Army Corps
From the painting by Gros at Versailles
Detachments on the march to Moscow straggled for many miles north and south of the high-road in order to forage, and it was impossible to keep them in hand. One officer, in charge of a convoy, reported that his escorts melted away one after another; and he entered Moscow alone! The marauders committed nameless atrocities, which amply explain and to some extent justify the terrible retaliations of the peasants during the retreat. It is an ungrateful task to allude to these horrors, but one hideous incident given by Löwenstern must be mentioned, if only to afford a proper impression of what a state of warfare in Napoleonic days implied.
Among the Russian leaders of irregulars Captain Figner early acquired a terrible reputation for blood-thirsty cruelty towards his French and Polish foes, to whom he gave no quarter in battle, and whom, when captured, he massacred without pity. His savagery was strongly reprobated in the Russian army, except in the case of a number of fierce spirits whom the sufferings of their country had maddened. Even the wild irregulars looked askance at Figner; and for the execution of his savage orders he could not always rely upon them.
Figner himself declared that he acted from conscientious motives. While on one of his expeditions he surprised a marauding party—evidently consisting of Frenchmen and Poles—in a village which they had sacked. In the church they had penned a number of women and girls, and outraged and tortured them with horrible barbarity, crucifying them about the building—partly in order the more easily to gratify their brutal lust, partly no doubt from sheer love of cruelty. Into this hideous orgy burst Figner and his Cossacks. Most of the ravishers were captured. The unhappy victims—such of them as survived—were rescued; and there and then, before the desecrated altar, the Russian leader swore a solemn oath never to spare a Frenchman. He shut his prisoners up in the church and fired it over them; and thereafter, until he was killed in the following year, Frenchmen were to him but as vermin to be exterminated. It is futile to comment upon the moral ethics of his determination. It is only evident that in Russia, as in Spain, the brutality and lust of the French conquerors sowed the seeds of a terrible harvest of vengeance.