As Napoleon left Moscow he said to Mortier: "Pay every attention to the sick and wounded. Sacrifice your baggage,—everything to them. Let the wagons be devoted to their use, and, if necessary your own saddles. This was the course I pursued at St. Jean d' Acre. The officers will first relinquish their horses, then the sub-officers, and finally the men. Assemble the generals and officers under your command, and make them sensible how necessary, in their circumstances, is humanity. The Romans bestowed civic crowns on those who preserved their citizens; I shall not be less grateful."
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 upon one division at Kolotsk, near Borodino, on the 1st of November, and gave them a total defeat. A second division was attacked the day after and with nearly equal success, by the irregular troops of Count Orloff Denizoff. The French now became separated by attacks made by Milarodowitch and the soldiers began to suffer from extreme hunger. On the 6th of November their miseries were heightened by the setting in of the Russian winter. 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 like the Mamelukes of Egypt, disturbing every bivouac, breaking up bridges before, and destroying every straggler behind them, to the terrible severity of the climate, the frost, the snow, the wind—the sufferings of this once magnificent army were such as have hardly been equalled in the world's history.
The enormous train of artillery which Napoleon brought 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! All discipline had vanished.
They were able to keep together some battalions of the rear-guard, and present a bold aspect to the pursuers, the heroic Marshal Ney not disdaining to bear a firelock, and share the meanest fatigues of his brave followers.
The main Russian army, having advanced side by side with the French, was now stationed to the southwest of Smolensk, in readiness to break the enemy's march whenever Kutusoff should choose. Milarodowitch and Platoff were hanging close behind, and thinning every hour the miserable bands which had no longer heart, nor, for the most part, arms of any kind wherewith to resist them. All the reports brought to headquarters by the officers, represented Kutusoff as disposed to oppose the French army and risk a battle, rather than abandon his positions which were on the road he wished to close against the continued retreat of the Emperor. Napoleon was not convinced by these reports. At daybreak, mounted on horseback, he started out to reconnoitre the camp and disposition of the enemy who was preparing to dispute Kalouga. As the Emperor arrived near Malojaroslawetz a body of Cossacks was seen approaching. Napoleon and his escort prepared to defend themselves. Rapp had scarcely time to seize his chief's bridle and say, "It is the Cossacks, turn back!" ere a fierce band galloped towards them. The Emperor, scorning flight, drew his sword, and reigned his horse to the side of the road. The troop dashed past wounding Rapp and his horse. "When Napoleon saw my horse covered with blood," says Rapp in his "Memoirs," "he demanded if I had been wounded. I replied that I had come off with a few bruises, upon which he began to laugh at our adventure, although I, for my part, found it anything but amusing." The appearance of Marshal Bessieres, who arrived at the head of some squadrons of grenadiers of the Guard, sufficed to stay the disorder and put the Cossacks to flight.
The Grand Army had mustered 120,000 men when it left Moscow. Including the fragments of various divisions which met the Emperor at Smolensk it was with great difficulty that 40,000 men could now be brought together in anything like fighting condition. These Napoleon divided into four columns, nearly equal in numbers; of the first which included 6,000 of the Imperial Guard, he himself took the command, and marched with it towards Krasnoi. The second corps was that of Eugene Beauharnais; the third Davoust's; and the fourth destined for the perilous service of the rear, and accordingly strengthened with 3,000 of the Guard, was intrusted to the guidance of Marshal Ney.
Eugene and Ney at length entered Smolensk. The name of that town had hitherto been the only spell that preserved any hope within the soldiers of the retreat. There, they had been told, they should find food, clothing, and supplies of all kinds, and there being once more assembled under the eye of Napoleon, speedily reassume an aspect such as none of the northern barbarians would dare to brave.
These expectations were far from realized. Smolensk had been almost entirely destroyed by the Russians in the early part of the campaign. Its ruined walls afforded only a scant shelter to the famished and shivering fugitives, and the provisions assembled there were so inadequate to the demands of the troops, that after the lapse of a few days Napoleon found himself under the necessity of once more renewing his disastrous march. While at Smolensk Napoleon received dispatches from France, informing him that a false report of his death had occasioned an outbreak and which threatened for a brief period the colossal Empire he controlled. On receiving the news he exclaimed, with deep feeling, and in the presence of his generals: "Does my power then, hang on so slender a thread? Is my tenure of sovereignty so frail that a single person can place it in jeopardy? Truly my crown is but ill-fitted to my head if, in my very capital, the audacious attempt of two or three adventurers can make it totter. After twelve years of government,—after my marriage—after the birth of my son—after my oaths—my death would have again plunged the country into the midst of revolutionary horrors. And Napoleon II., was he no longer thought of?"
Napoleon left Smolensk on the 13th of November, 1812, having ordered that the other corps should follow him on the 14th, 15th and 16th respectively thus interposing a day's march between every two divisions.
It seems to be generally accepted that the name of Napoleon saved whatever part of his host finally escaped from the territory of Russia. Kutusoff appears to have exhausted the better part of his daring at Borodino and thenceforth adhered to the plan of avoiding battle. He seems to have been unable to again shake off that awe which had been the growth of a hundred of Napoleon's victories;—had he been able to do so the Emperor would probably have died on some battlefield between Smolensk and the Beresina, or been taken a prisoner in the country which three months before he had invaded at the head of half a million of men. The army of Napoleon had been already reduced to a very small fragment of its original strength, and even that fragment was now split into four divisions against any one of which it would have been easy to concentrate a force overwhelmingly superior.