The fate of the day seemed more than once so critical, that Napoleon was strongly urged on more than one occasion to bring up the Young Guard, whom he had in reserve, as the last means of deciding the contest. He was censured by some of those around him for not having done so; and it has been imputed to illness, as he had passed a bad night, and seemed unusually languid during the whole of the day. But the secret of his refusal seems to be contained in his reply to Berthier, when he urged him on the subject—"And if there is another battle to-morrow, where is my army?"[152] The fact is, that this body of 10,000 household troops were his last reserve. They had been spared as far as possible in the march, and had, of course, retained their discipline in a proportional degree; and had they sustained any considerable loss, which, from the obstinate resistance and repeated efforts of the Russians, was to be apprehended, Buonaparte, whom even victory must leave in a perilous condition, would in that case have lost the only corps upon whom, in the general disorganisation of his army, he could thoroughly depend. The compromising the last reserve is an expedient reluctantly resorted to by prudent generals; and perhaps, if Napoleon had been as circumspect on that subject at Waterloo as at Borodino, his retreat from that bloody field might have been less calamitous than it proved.
The Russians, whose desperate efforts to recover their line of redoubts had exposed them to so much loss, were at length commanded to retreat; and although the victory was certainly with the French, yet their enemies might be said rather to desist from fighting, than to have suffered a defeat. Indeed, it was the French who, after the battle, drew off to their original ground, and left the Russians in possession of the bloody field of battle, where they buried their dead, and carried off their wounded, at their leisure. Their cavalry even alarmed the French camp on the very night of their victory.
Both parties sustained a dreadful loss in this sanguinary battle. Among that of the Russians, the death of the gallant Prince Bagration, whose admirable retreat from Poland we have had occasion to commemorate, was generally lamented. General Touczkoff also died of his wounds; and many other Russian generals were wounded. Their loss amounted to the awful sum total of 15,000 men killed, and more than 30,000 wounded. The French were supposed to have at least 10,000 men killed, and double the number wounded. Of these last few recovered, for the great convent of Kolotskoi, which served them as an hospital, was very ill-provided with any thing for their relief; and the medical attendants could not procure a party to scour the neighbouring villages, to obtain lint and other necessaries—for it seems even the necessaries of an hospital could, in this ill-fated army, only be collected by marauding. Eight French generals were slain, of whom Monbrun and Caulaincourt, brother of the grand equerry, were men of distinguished reputation. About thirty other generals were wounded. Neither party could make any boast of military trophies, for the Russians made a thousand prisoners, and the French scarce twice the number; and Koutousoff carried away ten pieces of cannon belonging to the French, leaving in their hands thirteen guns of his own. So slight, except in the numbers of slain, had been the consequences of the battle, that it might have seemed to have been fought, as in the games of chivalry, merely to ascertain which party had the superior strength and courage.[153]
MOJAISK.
According to the Russian accounts, Koutousoff entertained thoughts of giving battle again the next day; but the reports from various corps having made him acquainted with the very large loss they had sustained, he deemed the army too much exhausted to incur such a risk. He retreated the next day upon Mojaisk, without leaving behind him a single fragment to indicate that he had the day before sustained such an immense loss. Upon the 9th September, the French arrived at Mojaisk, and came again in sight of the Russian rear-guard, and made dispositions to attack them. But on the 11th, they found that the Russian army had again disappeared, by a retreat so well conducted, and so effectually masked and concealed, as to leave Napoleon altogether uncertain whether they had taken the road to Moscow, or to Kalouga. Owing to this uncertainty, Napoleon was obliged to remain at Mojaisk till the 12th, when he received positive intelligence that the Russian army had retreated upon their capital.
It is impossible to avoid observing, how often the Russian army, though large, and consisting of new levies, had, in the course of this campaign, escaped from the front of the French, and left Napoleon at a loss to conjecture whither they had gone. Besides the present occasion, the same circumstance took place at Witepsk, and again before the walls of Moscow. No doubt the Russians were in their own country, and possessed clouds of Cossacks, by means of whom they might cover the retreat of their main body; yet with all these advantages, we are led to admire the natural spirit of obedience, and instinct of discipline, by which they were brought to execute that movement with such steadiness, that not a single straggler remained to betray their secret.
On the 12th September, Buonaparte resumed his march, the army having no better guide than the direction of the high road, and the men no better food than horse flesh and bruised wheat. Upon the previous day, Murat and Mortier, who led the vanguard, found the Russians strongly posted near Krymskoie, where the inconsiderate valour of the King of Naples brought on an action, in which the French lost two thousand men. Still Buonaparte pursued the traces of the Russians, because he could not suppose it possible that they would resign their capital without a second struggle. He was the more anxious to meet it, as two divisions of the Italian army, under Laborde and Pino, had joined him from Smolensk, which again carried his numbers, sore thinned after the battle of Borodino, to upwards of one hundred thousand men.
A council of war, of the Russian generals, had been called to deliberate on the awful question, whether they should expose the only army which they had in the centre of Russia, to the consequences of a too probable defeat, or whether they should abandon without a struggle, and as a prey to the spoiler, the holy Moscow—the Jerusalem of Russia—the city beloved of God and dear to man, with the name and existence of which so many historical, patriotic, national, and individual feelings were now involved. Reason spoke one language, pride and affection held another.
To hazard a second battle, was in a great measure to place the fate of their grand army upon the issue; and this was too perilous an adventure, even for the protection of the capital. The consideration seems to have prevailed, that Napoleon being now in the centre of Russia, with an army daily diminishing, and the hard season coming on, every hour during which a decisive action could be delayed was a loss to France, and an advantage to Russia. This was the rather the case, that Witgenstein, on the northern frontier, being reinforced by Steingel with the army of Finland; and, on the south, that of Moldavia being united to Tormasoff—Lithuania, and Poland, which formed the base of Napoleon's operations, were in hazard of being occupied by the Russians from both flanks, an event which must endanger his supplies, magazines, reserves, and communications of every kind, and put in peril at once his person and his army. Besides, the Russian generals reflected, that by evacuating Moscow, a measure which the inhabitants could more easily accomplish than those of any other city in the civilized world, they would diminish the prize to the victor, and leave him nothing to triumph over save the senseless buildings. It was therefore determined, that the preservation of the army was more essential to Russia than the defence of Moscow, and it was agreed that the ancient capital of the Czars should be abandoned to its fate.
Count Rostopchin, the governor of Moscow, was a man of worth and talent, of wit also, as we have been informed, joined to a certain eccentricity. He had, since the commencement of the war, kept up the spirits of the citizens with favourable reports and loyal declarations, qualified to infuse security into the public mind. After the fate of Smolensk, however, and especially after the recommencement of Buonaparte's march eastward, many of the wealthy inhabitants of Moscow removed or concealed their most valuable effects, and left the city themselves. Rostopchin continued, however, his assurances, and took various means to convince the people that there was no danger. Among other contrivances, he engaged a great number of females in the task of constructing a very large balloon, from which he was to shower down fire, as the people believed, upon the French army. Under this pretext, he is stated to have collected a large quantity of fire-work and combustibles, actually destined for a very different purpose.