ARMED RUSSIAN PEASANTS IN AMBUSH IN THE WOODS WAITING TO CUT OFF FRENCH STRAGGLERS
From the picture by Verestchagin
On the evening of the 28th Davout was near Vereia. He reported that the Russians were already showing infantry—these were of course Paskievich’s division. He begged the Emperor to put a stop to the wholesale burning of villages by the corps ahead of him. Demoralisation was spreading fast, and the men were abandoning the ranks in crowds. The usual straggling array of march of the Napoleonic hosts was a bad preparation for a retreat in face of an enemy. The field of Borodino was crossed by the Guard at daybreak on the 29th. It still presented a fearful spectacle. Junot’s men had been unable to bury many even of the French dead; and the ground was strewn with rotting corpses mingled with the wreckage of the terrible struggle. The hospitals at Kolotskoï and elsewhere were mere charnel-houses in which the dead lay heaped with the living, amid pestilence, filth, and destitution. About 1500 unhappy creatures still remained, Junot having been unable to remove them. Napoleon issued an order that every private carriage or other non-military vehicle was to carry one or two. Its effect was simply to hasten the end of the unfortunate invalids, who were so much additional encumbrance to men already beginning to feel the pinch of want. They were abandoned by the drivers at the earliest opportunity: some apparently were murdered outright; not one, probably, lived to reach Smolensk. Food was becoming scarce. As far as Mozhaïsk the country was not entirely devastated, and the leading troops had been able to feed their horses; but there was nothing for the rear-guard, whose plight was rendered all the worse by the reckless destruction of shelter by the corps ahead of them. After Mozhaïsk the wasted countryside afforded little or no forage; the horses, already exhausted and over-worked, were reduced to such substitutes for fodder as thatch and autumn leaves, and died by hundreds every day. The destruction of the means of transport meant the loss of much of the already too scanty supply of food. When it was not lost outright it was pillaged by the stragglers and simply served to keep alive these useless beings, while better and braver men died of starvation. By November 3rd such supplies as had been brought were almost entirely exhausted; the only resource of the starving horde was the flesh of the horses which were continually breaking down. The officers, of course, and the head-quarters, were better provided; and some of the men had still remains of their plunder, but these were the exceptions.
The weather was still fine, but it was steadily growing colder, and the half-famished men, ill-clothed, ill-shod, weary with marching, obtained little rest in their chilly bivouacs, and became day by day less able to endure their trials. Those who left the line of march were commonly slaughtered or captured. Capture was often the same thing as lingering death. The peasants, naturally half barbarous, and maddened by the excesses of the invaders, showed little mercy. Sir Robert Wilson tells from his own knowledge how they burned and buried alive their prisoners. Sometimes they were massacred by the women. Even when their lives were spared they were often wholly or partially stripped, and the effect upon frames enfeebled by privation was generally fatal. It is useless to dwell in detail upon the hideous barbarities perpetrated, still less is it profitable to reprobate them. It must be said that if there be but too much testimony to the barbarity of the infuriated Russians, there is also plenty of evidence as to their frequent kindliness and humanity. At their worst be it remembered that they were but retaliating for their own wrongs.
The mass of disbanded troops, which every day grew at the expense of those who remained faithful, consisted in the first place of men already weakened, who therefore fell out early and of course died. Then there were many who had not the spirit to bear up under their misery and wandered along in the crowd until they also fell and died. Lastly, there were large numbers who were simply deserters—often of the worst kind—men who left the ranks before they were disabled and subsisted by murder and robbery. They did more than anything to destroy the army. Some of the leaders of the faithful troops were aware of it. De Fezensac tells how he ordered that no mercy or consideration was to be shown them.
On the other hand, there were very many gallant soldiers of every rank who kept their ranks and did their duty to the bitter end. Russian eye-witnesses were full of admiration at the martial bearing of the scanty and ever dwindling battalions which, with eagles in their midst, moved doggedly on through the miserable horde of skulkers. The officers, with few exceptions, remained firm to their duty. Their intellectual and educational level was upon the whole naturally higher than that of their men, and general good conduct among them was to be expected. They were, too, generally better supplied with food and clothing, and exercised more judgment in providing themselves.
The extent to which demoralisation affected the strategic units of the army is difficult to decide; and the task is a somewhat invidious one. The 3rd Corps certainly appears to have kept the best order and discipline. It had taken a very small part in the demoralising sack of Moscow; but a great deal of its persistent good conduct must be attributed to the personal influence of its chief. The 1st Corps, on the other hand, seems to have crumbled early. Davout was not a very sympathetic personage, and perhaps the care which he had always taken of his men, and his firm discipline, really unfitted them to bear the strain of being in a condition of inferiority to the enemy. At any rate the early demoralisation of the 1st Corps is an established fact. The 4th Corps also rapidly disbanded, as did also, apparently, the 5th and 8th. Of the cavalry we hear little. The Guard took the lion’s share of whatever food and shelter was to be had; nevertheless its conduct was not relatively better than that of the 3rd Corps—perhaps not so good, since it never experienced the same trials.
Plan of the approximate positions of the French and Russian Main Armies on October 31st, to indicate the danger incurred by Napoleon’s extended order of march