The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

Kutusoff was no longer disposed to witness in inaction the progress of Murat. He divined that Napoleon must at last be convinced of the necessity of abandoning Moscow, and determined that at all events he should not make his retreat in the direction of Kalouga. General Bennigsen was ordered to attack Murat, on the 18th October, at Vincovo: and the result was decidedly in favour of the Russians, in whose hands there remained nearly 3000 prisoners, and forty pieces of artillery. The cannonade was heard at the Kremlin; and no sooner did the issue of the day reach Napoleon, than he made up his mind to march his whole army to the support of the King of Naples. That same evening, several divisions were put in motion; he himself, at the head of others, left Moscow on the 19th; and the metropolis was wholly evacuated on the morning of the 22nd. Russian troops entered it immediately afterwards, in time to preserve the Kremlin, which had been undermined and attempted to be blown up in a last access of rage; and within a few hours, so completely had the patriotic peasants baffled Napoleon, the town swarmed with people, and all the market-places were crowded with every species of provision. The Emperor's bulletins announced that "Moscow had been found not to be a good military position,"—that it was "necessary for the army to breathe on a wider space." The precipitancy, however, with which the French retired was such that they left their sick and wounded to the mercy of the Russians; and yet thousands of waggons, laden with the spoil of Moscow, attended and encumbered their march.

Kutusoff now perceived that he had to expect the attack of a greater than Murat. The Russian general occupied a position at Taroutino, on the old road to Kalouga (the central one of three nearly parallel routes), so strong by nature, and so improved by art, that Napoleon judged it hopeless to attack him there. He therefore made a lateral movement, and pushed on by the western road—meaning, after he had passed Taroutino, to strike back again into the central one, and so interpose himself between Kutusoff and Kalouga. The old Russian, however, penetrated this plan; and instantly, by a manœuvre of precisely the same kind—marching to the eastward, and thence back to the centre again,—baffled it. The French van, having executed the first part of their orders, and regained the middle road in the rear of Taroutino, advanced without opposition as far as Malo-Yaraslovetz, and occupied that town. But at midnight they were assaulted furiously within it, and driven back across the river Louja, where the leading divisions of the army bivouacked. Early in the morning the French retook Malo-Yaraslovetz at the point of the bayonet, and the greater part of the day was spent in a succession of obstinate contests, in the course of which the town five times changed masters. In the evening, Napoleon came up with his main body. He found his troops, indeed, in possession of the place; but beyond it, his generals informed him, Kutusoff and his whole army were now posted, and this on a position at least as strong as that of Taroutino, which he himself had considered unassailable.

The Emperor's headquarters were in the wretched and filthy hut of a poor weaver, and here an angry debate ensued between Murat and Davoust; the former of whom urged the necessity of instantly attacking the Russian, while the latter pronounced such an attempt to be worthy of a madman. The Emperor heard them in gloomy silence, and declared that he would judge for himself in the morning. He dismissed them all, and, if Segur may be believed, spent the night in great agitation; now rising, now lying down again—incessantly calling out—yet refusing to admit anyone within a temporary screen of cloth which concealed his person from the eyes of his attendants. This was the first occasion on which Buonaparte betrayed in his demeanour that dark presentiment which had settled on his mind ever since he beheld the flames of Moscow.

At daybreak he passed the Louja with a few attendants, for the purpose of reconnoitring Kutusoff's position. He had scarcely crossed the bridge, when a party of Platoff's Cossacks, galloping furiously, and sweeping some scattered companies of the French before them, came full upon the Emperor and his suite. Napoleon was urged to seek safety in flight; but he drew his sword and took post on the bank by the way-side. The wild spearmen, intent on booty, plunged on immediately below him, and, after stripping some soldiers, retired again at full speed to their Pulk, without having observed the inestimable prize. The Emperor watched their retreat, and continued his reconnaissance. It satisfied him that Davoust had judged rightly.

He made another effort to force a passage southwards at Medyn; but here also he was repelled, and forced to abandon the attempt. Meantime the army which had occupied Moscow begun to send forth its Cossacks on his rear. In a word, it became apparent that if the retreat were to be urged, it must now be in the direction of Verreia and Smolensko; that is, through the same provinces which had been entirely wasted in the earlier part of the campaign.

Kutusoff, whether merely overpowered for the moment with that vague sentiment which Buonaparte's name had hitherto been accustomed to inspire, or that he knew of a still better position nearer Kalouga, was, in fact, retiring from his strong ground behind Malo-Yaraslovetz, at the moment when the French began to break up from the Louja. No sooner, however, was that movement known, than the Russian penetrated the extent of his adversary's embarrassments; and Platoff, with the Cossacks, received orders to hang close on the French rear—while Milarodowitch, with 18,000 men, pushed directly on Viasma; and the main army taking a parallel, and a shorter, though less practicable route, marched also with the view of watching the retreat on Smolensko.

As Buonaparte was about to leave Verreia, General Witzingerode was brought a prisoner into his presence. This officer had advanced to the Kremlin, ere it was abandoned, with a flag of truce, for the purpose of entering into some arrangements concerning the French wounded; and it is to be supposed, of dissuading the departing garrison from destroying the citadel. He was, however, placed instantly under arrest, and hurried away with the enemy's march. Napoleon, whose temper was by this time embittered into ungovernable rage, charged the General with being the leader of the Cossacks, and threatened to have him shot, on the instant, as a brigand. Witzingerode replied, that "he commanded not the Cossacks, but a part of the regular army; and that, in the character of a Russian soldier, he was at all times prepared for a French bullet." Napoleon, now ascertaining the name, country, and rank of his prisoner, pursued in these angry ejaculations: "Who are you? A man without a country—You have ever been my enemy—You were in the Austrian's ranks at Austerlitz—I now find you in the Russian! Nevertheless, you are a native of the Confederation of the Rhine—therefore my subject—and a rebel.—Seize him, gens-d'armes! Let the traitor be brought to trial." The Emperor's attendants were wise enough to foresee the effects of such violence, if persisted in: they interposed, and Witzingerode was sent on as a prisoner of war towards Smolensko.[62]

On the 28th of October, Napoleon himself, with 6000 chosen horse, began his journey towards Smolensko; the care of bringing up the main body being given to Beauharnois, while Ney commanded the rear. From the commencement of this march, hardly a day elapsed in which some new calamity did not befall those hitherto invincible legions. The Cossacks of Platoff came on one division at Kolotsk, near Borodino, on the 1st of November, and gave them a total defeat. A second division was attacked on the day after, and with nearly equal success, by the irregular troops of Count Orloff Denizoff. On the 3rd, Milarodowitch reached the main road near Viasma, and after routing Ney, Davoust, and Beauharnois, drove them through the town, which he entered with drums beating and colours flying, and making a passage for the rest of the army over the dead bodies of the enemy. Beauharnois, after this, separated his division from the rest, and endeavoured to push for Vitepsk, by the way of Douchowtchina, and Platoff followed him, while Milarodowitch continued the pursuit on the main road. The separation of troops so pressed is a sufficient proof that they were already suffering severely for want of food; but their miseries were about to be heightened by the arrival of a new enemy. On the 6th of November, the Russian winter fairly set in; and thenceforth, between the heavy columns of regular troops which on every side watched and threatened them, the continued assaults of the Cossacks who hung around them in clouds by day and by night, rushing on every detached party, disturbing every bivouack, breaking up bridges before, and destroying every straggler behind them, and the terrible severity of the climate, the frost, the snow, the wind—the sufferings of this once magnificent army were such as to baffle all description.

The accounts of the Russian authorities, of the French eye-witnesses who have since told this story, and, it must be added, of the Emperor's own celebrated "twenty-ninth bulletin," are in harmony with each other. The enormous train of artillery which Napoleon had insisted on bringing away from Moscow was soon diminished; and the roads were blocked up with the spoils of the city, abandoned of necessity as the means of transport failed. The horses, having been ill-fed for months, were altogether unable to resist the united effects of cold and fatigue. They sank and stiffened by hundreds and by thousands. The starving soldiery slew others of these animals, that they might drink their warm blood, and wrap themselves in their yet reeking skins. The discipline of these miserable bands vanished. Ney was indeed able to keep together some battalions of the rear guard, and present a bold aspect to the pursuers—the marshal himself not disdaining to bear a firelock, and share the meanest fatigues of his followers; but elsewhere there remained hardly the shadow of military order. Small and detached bodies of men moved, like soldiers, on the highway—the immense majority dispersed themselves over the ice and snow which equalised the surface of the fields on either side, and there sustained from time to time the rapid and merciless charge of the Cossacks.

Beauharnois, meantime, discovered before he had advanced far on his separate route, that Witgenstein, having defeated successively St. Cyr and Victor on the Dwina, was already in possession of Vitepsk. The viceroy therefore was compelled to turn back towards the Smolensko road. Platoff turned with him, and brought him once more to action, "killing many," said the Hetman's despatch, "but making few prisoners." The army of Italy, if it could still be called an army, mingled with the few troops who still preserved some show of order under Ney, before they came in sight of Smolensko, and communicated to them their own terror and confusion.