The emperor, stopped by the frivolous obstacle of a broken bridge, confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and contempt, to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On this particular point he had received no orders from the emperor: he therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear, and distinct, he, so to speak, exactly repeated the emperor, reflected him, but added nothing of his own; and what Napoleon forgot was never supplied.
After passing the Kologa we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes, uttered a cry of horror. Each one instantly looked about him, and there lay stretched before us a plain trampled, bare, and devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface, and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared misshapen, and bore a striking resemblance to an extinguished volcano. The ground around us was everywhere covered with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, with broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms, and standards dyed with blood.
On this desolate spot[167] lay thirty thousand half-devoured corpses; while a pile of skeletons on the summit of one of the hills overlooked the whole. It seemed as though Death had here fixed his throne. Presently the cry was heard, "It is the field of the great battle!" forming a long and doleful murmur. The emperor passed quickly by. No one stopped. Cold, hunger, and the enemy were urging us on: we merely turned our faces as we marched along to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so many companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whose remains we were obliged to leave behind, unheeded and uninterred.
§ 13. Napoleon reaches Viazma. Battle near that place.
At length the emperor reached Viazma.[168] He here halted to wait for Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the road to Medyn and Yucknow, which at this place unites with the high road to Smolensk. It was this cross-road which might possibly bring the Russian army from Malo-jaroslavetz on his passage. But on the first of November, after waiting thirty-six hours and seeing no indications of that army, he again set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had fallen asleep, and the fear lest he might have left Viazma on his right, and proceeded two marches farther to cut off his retreat. He left Ney, however, at Viazma to collect the first and fourth corps, and to relieve, by forming the rear guard, Davoust, whom he judged to be fatigued.
He complained of the tardiness of the latter, and wrote to reproach him with being still five marches behind, when he ought to have been no more than three: the genius of that marshal he considered too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.
But this delay was accounted for by the fact that Davoust had found a marsh without a bridge, and completely encumbered with wagons. He had dragged them out of the slough in sight of the enemy, and so near them that their fires lighted his labors, and the sound of their drums mingled with that of his own voice. For the marshal and his generals could not yet resolve on abandoning to the enemy so many trophies; nor did they make up their minds to it until after fruitless exertions, and in the last extremity.
The road they were traversing was crossed at short intervals by marshy hollows. A slope, slippery as glass with the ice, hurried the carriages into them, and there they stuck fast: to draw them out it was necessary to climb on the opposite side a similar slope, where the horses, whose shoes were worn entirely smooth, could obtain no footing, and where every moment they and their drivers dropped down exhausted together. The famished soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they broiled the yet bleeding flesh, and devoured it.
Meanwhile the artillerymen, a chosen corps, and their officers, all brought up in the first military school in the world, kept off these unfortunate wretches whenever they could, and took the horses from their own carriages and wagons, which they abandoned to save the guns. To these they harnessed their horses, nay, even themselves; while the Cossacks, observing their disasters from a distance, though they dared not attack, with their light pieces mounted on sledges, threw their balls among these disorderly groups, and increased the confusion.