Napoleon for a time contemplated spending the winter in Russia, since he recognized the practical difficulties of the retreat and the loss of prestige due to his withdrawal. Finally he decided to return by the southern provinces. The start west began on the 19th of November, 1812, with a force of 100,000 men; the way south was made impracticable by the obstinate resistance of the Russian general Kutusoff, with his army of only 50,000 men. Therefore the route over which they had come had to be taken for the return. The rearguard was constantly harassed by the enemy, and early in November there was a battle at Viazma, in which the French lost from 15,000 to 18,000 men. Snow began to fall, food was scarce, the troops were badly prepared to endure the wintry weather; out of 100,000 men there were soon only 40,000 left able to bear arms, and at Smolensk on the 12th of November only 34,000 were left.

No French army corps actually surrendered, but they suffered terrible losses, some of them losing half their effective strength. The Russians who followed the retreat were also reduced from 60,000 to 30,000. At the Berezina, where three Russian armies were joined to dispute the passage, the French with unheard-of bravery rescued themselves from capture by forces three times as numerous, and inflicted on the Russians a loss of 14,000 men. When the remnants of the army reached Lithuania, Napoleon left them there in order to make a rapid return to Paris and to counteract by his presence in his capital the bad effect of the news of the defeat in Russia. New armies had to be raised, for it was practically certain that a large part of Germany would soon be in revolt. Though temporarily strengthened by the various contingents left to protect the communications eastward, the final stage of the retreat from Russia, which was conducted by Murat, bore witness to the frightful straits and demoralization of the French. The sick and wounded were abandoned; there were no provisions for carrying the artillery or the pontoons; even the army treasure and the secret archives had to be left behind. Before the end of the journey west Ney, who commanded the rearguard, had with him no more than 500 or 600 men, and when the Old Guard entered Königsberg, it was reduced to 1500 men, of whom only 500 were fit to bear arms.

The extent of the Russian disaster may be measured by a few statistics; 533,000 soldiers crossed the actual frontier into Russia in the summer of 1812; 18,000 of the main army returned in the December following; about 130,000 men had been made prisoners in Russia, 55,000 had deserted at the opening of the campaign, and there were 55,000 survivors of the various corps that had been stationed as reserves along the line outside of the Russian territory. Altogether 250,000 must be reckoned as having perished during the course of the march to Moscow and the retreat from that city. The disaster meant that Napoleon’s schemes of European domination were checked and his military resources much diminished. It was no longer a question of new conquests, but of turning to face the nations who had suffered so long from French despotic rule.

VIII
DEFEAT AND EXILE

From every quarter came the word that, with the Grand Army destroyed, the French Cæsar must now yield; his system, it was said, had expired on the plains of Russia. The hostile spirit of a subject population was seen as the straggling French passed through Prussia; soldiers who dropped out of the ranks were disarmed by the peasants, insulted and badly handled. The Prussians and Austrians made separate arrangements with the Russians, by which hostilities, so far as each were concerned, were to be suspended. Most of Prussia was abandoned; there were only 40,000 French left to oppose a revolted Germany. Even Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, abandoned the failing cause and retired suddenly to Naples, to make from there arrangements on his own account with the Austrian Prime Minister Metternich.

The activity of Napoleon in such a desperate situation was marvelous. As to money, he collected nearly $100,000,000 by using his own private treasury and selling large amounts of communal estates. Every available man was placed under arms, including the National Guard and even by anticipation the conscripts of 1814—there were already 140,000 of the conscripts of 1813 under training—the sailors in the seaports were enrolled as soldiers; and many regiments were taken from Spain. Altogether there was collected and sent in detachments to Germany an army of 500,000 men, mostly made up of youths less than twenty years of age. In order to give them discipline and stability, veterans were incorporated in the new regiments.

Napoleon was not so alert as he had been; he was suffering from an internal disease, and sometimes for weeks he was incapable of effort. There were frequent attacks also of drowsiness, all indicative of exhaustion of his powers. He was more intolerant than ever of criticism, refused to take advice, was suspicious of his counselors, and contemptuous of the ability of his commanders, an attitude somewhat justified by the fact that many of his best marshals were now replaced by men of second-rate ability, while others, who were fitted to command, were unwilling from jealousy to work together. Marbot declared that, “if the Emperor had wished to punish all those who were lacking in zeal, he would have been obliged to dispense with the services of nearly all his marshals.”

The service of supplies for the army was most defective. In the beginning of the year 1813, by the carelessness of the administrative work in this department, the Prussians got possession of over $6,000,000 worth of supplies, intended for the French armies. The consequence was that the soldiers depended on pillage; even the officers lived on what they could get from the country. Worse than all was the inability of the Emperor himself to gauge the changed conditions produced by his defeat. He still behaved as if he were invincible, and refused to make terms with Prussia or to conciliate Austria by well-timed territorial concessions. To the end he would not believe that his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, would take up arms against him. If, at this time, he had accepted a smaller, compact France, confined to its natural limits, he might have avoided the disasters of 1813 and 1814, and yet ruled over a territory larger than that ever held by Louis XIV.

In the new coalition Prussia was most anxious to restore her prestige; the uprising against the French was a national movement common to all classes of the population. Finally, even the timorous King was induced to side with the Russians and to issue an appeal to his people. There were 150,000 Prussians under arms, and in order to receive the help of other German states, proclamations were issued under Russian auspices, making generous promises of national independence and personal liberty. So were transplanted to German soil the watchwords of the French Revolution. Austria made many open professions of fidelity to the alliance with France, but Metternich was actively intriguing with the smaller German courts. He even tried to detach Jerome of Westphalia and Murat of Naples from the French, and he did all in his power to urge Frederick William, the Prussian king, to take up arms in behalf of the independence of Europe.

In the military operations of 1813, while the French were opposed only by the allied forces of Prussia and Russia, the advantage continued on the side of the French Emperor; by the autumn, however, Austria and many of the German vassal states had joined the coalition and the defeat of Napoleon was the certain outcome. As a result of a series of battles around Dresden, the cause of the allies was in a critical position; both sides had lost heavily but Napoleon was much chagrined that there had been no signal positive advantage from the constant butchery of his men. He was weak in cavalry, and so could not follow up his successes; the terrible loss of horses in Russia had not been made up. But at any rate he was steadily getting back the territory in Germany he had previously held. On the other side, the Russian and Prussian generals were blaming one another for their failures, and so making the continuance of the coalition problematical.