Napoleon entered Moscow with ninety thousand fighting men, and twenty thousand sick and wounded, and quitted it with more than a hundred thousand combatants. He left there with only twelve hundred sick. His stay, therefore, notwithstanding daily losses, had served to rest his infantry, to complete his stores, to augment his force by ten thousand men, and to protect the recovery or the retreat of a great part of his wounded. But on this very first day he could perceive that his cavalry and artillery might be said rather to crawl than to march.
A melancholy spectacle added to the gloomy presentiments of our chief. The army had, ever since the preceding day, been pouring out of Moscow without intermission. In this column of one hundred and forty thousand men and about fifty thousand horses of all kinds, the hundred thousand combatants marching at its head with their knapsacks and their arms, upward of five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand artillery wagons, still exhibited a formidable appearance, worthy of soldiers who had conquered the world. But the rest, whose numbers were in an alarming proportion, resembled a horde of Tartars after a successful invasion. They formed three or four files of almost infinite length, in which there was a confused mixture of chaises, ammunition wagons, handsome carriages, and, in short, vehicles of every kind. Here trophies of Russian, Turkish, and Persian colors, and the gigantic cross of Ivan the Great; there, long-bearded Russian peasants carrying or driving along our booty, of which they constituted a part; and some dragging even wheelbarrows filled with whatever they could remove. The fools were not likely to proceed in this manner till the conclusion of the first day, and yet their senseless avidity made them think nothing of battles and a march of two hundred leagues.
Among these followers of the army were particularly remarked a multitude of men of all nations, without uniform and without arms, and servants swearing in every language, and urging by dint of shouts and blows the progress of elegant carriages, drawn by pigmy horses harnessed with ropes. These were filled with provisions, or with booty saved from the flames. They carried, also, many French women with their children. Formerly these females had been happy inhabitants of Moscow; but they now fled from the hatred of the Muscovites, which the invasion had drawn upon their heads, and the army was their only asylum.
A few Russian girls, voluntary captives, also followed. It looked like a caravan, a wandering nation, or, rather, one of those armies of antiquity returning loaded with slaves and with spoils after a great devastation. It was inconceivable how the head of this column could draw and protect such a prodigious mass of equipages in so long a route.
Notwithstanding the width of the road and the shouts of his escort, Napoleon had great difficulty in obtaining a passage through this immense throng. No doubt the obstruction of a defile, a few forced marches, or a handful of Cossacks would have been sufficient to rid us all of this encumbrance; but fortune or the enemy had alone a right to lighten us in this manner. As for the emperor, he was fully sensible that he could neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor reproach them for securing it. Besides, provisions concealed the booty; and was it for him, who could not give his troops the subsistence he should have done, to forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly, in case of the failure of military conveyances, these vehicles would be the only means of preservation for the sick and wounded.
Napoleon therefore extricated himself in silence from the immense train which he drew after him, and advanced on the old road leading to Kaluga. He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that he would go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all at once, about midday, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three marches across the country gained the new road to Kaluga.
The rain, which overtook him in the midst of this manœuvre, spoiled the cross-roads, and obliged him to halt in them. This was a most unfortunate circumstance. It was with difficulty that our cannon were drawn out of the sloughs.
At any rate, the emperor had masked his movement by Ney's corps and the remnants of Murat's cavalry, which had remained behind the Motscha and at Woronowo. Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the Grand Army on the old road, while, on the 23d of October, the whole of it had been transferred to the new one, and had but one march to make in order to pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kaluga.
On the first day of this flanking march, a letter was sent from Berthier to Kutusoff, as a last attempt at peace, or perhaps merely as a ruse. No satisfactory answer was returned to it.
On the 23d the imperial quarters were at Borowsk. That night was an agreeable one for the emperor: he was informed that, at six in the evening, Delzons with his division, who was four leagues in advance of him, had found the town of Malo-jaroslavetz and the woods which command it unoccupied: this was a strong position within reach of Kutusoff, and the only point where he could cut us off from the new road to Kaluga.