No sooner was this resolution taken, than Napoleon coolly made his arrangements to carry it into effect. He was not at all shaken by the great movements which the enemy was evidently making around him. He saw that Kutusoff was advancing in order to surround and take him prisoner in Krasnoe. The very night before he had learned that Ojarowski, with a vanguard of Russian infantry, had got beyond him, and taken a position at Maliewo, a village on his left. Irritated instead of being depressed by misfortune, he called his aid-de-camp Rapp, and told him “that he must set out immediately, and during the darkness attack that body of the enemy with the bayonet; this was the first time of his exhibiting so much audacity, and that he was determined to make him repent it, in such a way that he should never again dare approach so near to his head-quarters.” Then instantly recalling him, he exclaimed, “But no: let Roguet and his division go alone. As for you, remain where you are; I don’t wish you killed here; I shall have occasion for you at Dantzic.”
Rapp, as he was carrying this order to Roguet, could not help feeling astonished that his chief, surrounded by eighty thousand of the enemy, whom he was going to attack the next day with nine thousand, should have so little doubt about his safety as to be thinking of what he should have to do at Dantzic, a city from which he was separated by the winter, two hostile armies, famine, and a hundred and eighty leagues of distance.
The nocturnal attack on Ojarowski at Chirkowa and Maliewo proved successful. Roguet formed his idea of the enemy’s position by the direction of their fires: they occupied two villages, connected by a causeway, defended by a ravine. He disposed his troops into three columns of attack: those on the right and left were to advance silently, as close as possible to the Russians; then, at the signal to charge, which he himself would give them from the centre, they were to rush into the midst of the hostile corps without firing a shot, and make use only of their bayonets.
Immediately the two wings of the young guard commenced the action. While the Russians, taken by surprise, and not knowing on which side to defend themselves, were wavering from their right to their left, Roguet, with his column, rushed suddenly upon their centre, and into the midst of their camp, which he entered pell-mell along with them. Thus divided, and in utter confusion, they had barely time to throw the best part of their cannon and small arms into a neighboring lake, and to set fire to their tents, the flames of which, instead of saving them, only gave light to their destruction.
This check stopped the movements of the Russian army for four-and-twenty hours, put it in the Emperor’s power to remain at Krasnoe, and enabled Eugene to rejoin him during the following night. He was received by Napoleon with the greatest joy; whose uneasiness, however, respecting Davoust and Ney, now became proportionably greater.
Around the French, the camp of the Russians presented a spectacle similar to what it had done at Vinkowo, Malo-Yaroslawetz, and Wiazma. Every evening, close to the general’s tent, the relics of the Russian saints, surrounded by an immense number of wax tapers, were exposed to the adoration of the soldiers. While these, according to their custom, were giving proofs of their devotion by endless crossings and genuflexions, the priests were employed in exciting their fanaticism with exhortations that would have been deemed barbarous and absurd by a civilized nation.
It is asserted that a spy had represented to Kutusoff, Krasnoe as being filled with an immense number of the imperial guard, and that the old marshal was afraid of hazarding his reputation by attacking it. But the sight of the distress emboldened Bennigsen; this officer, who was chief of the staff, prevailed upon Strogonoff, Gallitzin, and Miloradowitch, with a force of more than fifty thousand Russians, and one hundred pieces of cannon, to venture to attack at daylight, in spite of Kutusoff, fourteen thousand famished, enfeebled, and half-frozen French and Italians.
This was a danger, the imminence of which Napoleon fully comprehended. He might have escaped from it, for the day had not yet appeared. He was still at liberty to avoid this fatal engagement; by rapid marches along with Eugene and his guard, he might have gained Orcha and Borizoff; there he could have rallied his forces, and strengthened himself with thirty thousand French, under Victor and Oudinot, with the corps of Dombrowski, Regnier, and Schwartzenberg, been within reach of all his depots, and, by the following year, have made himself as formidable as ever.
On the 17th, before daylight, he issued his orders, armed himself, and going out on foot at the head of his Old Guard, began his march. But it was not towards Poland, his ally, that he directed it, nor towards France, where he would still be received as the head of a new dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on grasping his sword on this occasion were, “I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is time I should become the general.” He turned back upon eighty thousand of the enemy, plunging into the thickest of them, in order to draw all their efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favor of Davoust and Ney, and to rescue them from a country, the gates of which were closed against them.
Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on the one part the Russian battalions and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on the right, and in the rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other Napoleon, with his six thousand guards, advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to take his place in the centre of that terrible circle. At the same time, Mortier, a few yards in front of the Emperor, deployed, in the face of the whole Russian army, with the five thousand men still remaining to him.