Вальтер Скотт
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV
General Newerowskoi had been stationed at Krasnoi with above 6000 men, a part of the garrison of Smolensk, which had been sent out for the purpose of making a strong recognisance. But finding himself attacked by a body of infantry stronger than his own, and no less than 18,000 cavalry besides, the Russian general commenced his retreat upon the road to Smolensk. The ground through which the road lay was open, flat, and favourable for the action of cavalry. Murat, who led the pursuit, and, while he affected the dress and appearance of a cavalier of romance, had the fiery courage necessary to support the character, sent some of his light squadrons to menace the front of the Russian corps, while with his heavy horse he annoyed their flanks or thundered upon their rear. To add to the difficulties of the Russians, their columns consisted of raw troops, who had never been under fire, and who might have been expected to shrink from the furious onset of the cavalry. They behaved bravely, however, and availed themselves of a double row of trees which borders the high road to Smolensk on each side, to make their musketry effectual, and to screen themselves from the repeated charges. Protecting themselves as they retreated by a heavy fire, Newerowskoi made good a lion-like retreat into Smolensk, having lost 400 men, chiefly by the artillery, and five guns, but receiving from friend and foe the testimony due to a movement so bravely and ably conducted.131
Upon the 14th of August,132 the same day with this skirmish, Napoleon arrived at Rassassina, upon the Dnieper, and continued during the 15th to press forward towards Smolensk, in the rear of Ney and Murat. Prince Bagration, in the meantime, threw General Raefskoi into Smolensk, with a strong division, to reinforce Newerowskoi, and advanced himself to the Dnieper, along the left bank of which he pressed with all possible speed towards the endangered town. Barclay de Tolly was now made aware, as we have already stated, that while he was engaged in false manœuvres to the right, his left had been in fact turned, and that Smolensk was in the utmost danger. Thus the two Russian generals pressed forward from different points to the relief of the city, whilst Napoleon used every effort to carry the place before their arrival.
SMOLENSK
Smolensk, a town of consequence in the empire, and, like Moscow, honoured by the appellation of the Sacred, and of the Key of Russia, contains about 12,600 inhabitants. It is situated on the heights of the left bank of the Dnieper, and was then surrounded by fortifications of the ancient Gothic character. An old wall, in some places dilapidated, was defended by about thirty towers, which seemed to flank the battlements; and there was an ill-contrived work, called the Royal Bastion, which served as a species of citadel. The walls, however, being eighteen feet thick, and twenty-five high, and there being a ditch of some depth, the town, though not defensible if regularly approached, might be held out against a coup-de-main. The greatest inconvenience arose from the suburbs of the place, which, approaching near to the wall of the town, preserved the assailants from the fire of the besieged, as they approached it. Raefskoi prepared to defend Smolensk at the head of about sixteen thousand men. He was reinforced on the 16th of August by a division of grenadiers under Prince Charles of Mecklenberg, who were detached for that purpose by Bagration.
Ney arrived first under the walls of the city, and instantly rushed forward to attack the citadel. He failed entirely, being himself wounded, and two-thirds of the storming party cut off. A second attempt was made to as little purpose, and at length he was forced to confine his efforts to a cannonade, which was returned from the place with equal spirit. Later in the day, the troops of Napoleon appeared advancing from the eastward on one side of the Dnieper, while almost at the same moment there were seen upon the opposite bank clouds of dust enveloping long columns of men, moving from different points with uncommon celerity. This was the grand army of Russia under Barclay, and the troops of Bagration, who, breathless with haste and anxiety, were pressing forward to the relief of Smolensk.
"At length," said Napoleon, as he gazed on the advance from the opposite side, "at length I have them!"133 He had no doubt it was the purpose of the Russians to pass through the city, and, deploying from its gates, to offer him under the walls that general action for which he longed, and on which so much depended. He took all the necessary measures for preparing his line of battle.
But the cautious Barclay de Tolly was determined, that not even for the protection of the sacred city would he endanger the safety of his army, so indispensably necessary to the defence of the empire. He dismissed to Ellnia his more impatient coadjutor, Prince Bagration, who would willingly have fought a battle, incensed as he was at beholding the cities of Russia sacked, and her fields laid waste, without the satisfaction either of resistance or revenge. Barclay in the meanwhile occupied Smolensk, but only for the purpose of covering the flight of the inhabitants, and emptying the magazines.
Buonaparte's last look that evening, was on the still empty fields betwixt his army and Smolensk. There was no sign of any advance from its gates, and Murat prophesied that the Russians had no purpose of fighting. Davoust entertained a different opinion; and Napoleon, continuing to believe what he most wished, expected with the peep of day to see the whole Russian army drawn up betwixt his own front and the walls of Smolensk. Morning came, however, and the space in which he expected to see the enemy was vacant as before. On the other hand, the high-road on the opposite side of the Dnieper was filled with troops and artillery, which showed that the grand army of the Russians was in full retreat. Disappointed and incensed, Napoleon appointed instant measures to be taken to storm the place, resolving as speedily as possible to possess himself of the town, that he might have the use of its bridge in crossing to the other side of the Dnieper, in order to pursue the fugitive Russians. There are moments when men of ordinary capacity may advise the wisest. Murat remarked to Buonaparte, that as the Russians had retired, Smolensk, left to its fate, would fall without the loss that must be sustained in an attack by storm, and he more than hinted the imprudence of penetrating farther into Russia at this late season of the year. The answer of Napoleon134 must have been almost insulting; for Murat, having exclaimed that a march to Moscow would be the destruction of the army, spurred his horse like a desperate man to the banks of the river, where the Russian guns from the opposite side were cannonading a French battery, placed himself under a tremendous fire, as if he had been courting death, and was with difficulty forced from the dangerous spot.135
BATTLE OF SMOLENSK
Meantime, the attack commenced on Smolensk, but the place was defended with the same vigour as on the day before. The field-guns were found unable to penetrate the walls; and the French lost four or five thousand men in returning repeatedly to the attack. But this successful defence did not alter Barclay's resolution of evacuating the place. It might no doubt have been defended for several days more, but the Russian general feared that a protracted resistance on this advanced point might give Napoleon time to secure the road to Moscow, and drive the Russian armies back upon the barren and exhausted provinces of the northwest, besides getting betwixt them and the ancient capital of Russia. In the middle of the night, then, while the French were throwing some shells into the place, they saw fires beginning to kindle, far faster and more generally than their bombardment could have occasioned.136 They were the work of the Russian troops, who, having completed their task of carrying off or destroying the magazines, and having covered the flight of the inhabitants, had now set the dreadful example of destroying their own town, rather than that its houses or walls should afford assistance to the enemy.
SMOLENSK
When the Frenchmen entered Smolensk, which they did the next morning, 18th August, most of the town, which consisted chiefly of wooden houses, was yet blazing – elsewhere they found nothing but blood and ashes.137 The French troops were struck with horror at the inveterate animosity of the Russians, and the desperation of the resistance which they met with; and all began to wish a period to a war, where there was nothing to be gained from the retreating enemy, except a long vista of advance through an inhospitable wilderness of swamps, pine-forests, and deserts; without provisions, and without shelter; without hospitals for the sick, and dressings for the wounded; and without even a shed where the weary might repose, or the wounded might die.
Buonaparte himself hesitated,138 and is reported to have then spoken of concluding the campaign at Smolensk, which would, he said, be an admirable head of cantonments.139 "Here," he said, "the troops might rest and receive reinforcements. Enough was done for the campaign. Poland was conquered, which seemed a sufficient result for one year. The next year they would have peace, or they would seek it at Moscow." But in the interior of his councils, he held a different language, and endeavoured to cover, with the language of prudence, the pride and pertinacity of character which forbade him to stop short in an enterprise which had yet produced him no harvest of renown. He stated to his generals the exhausted state of the country, in which his soldiers were living from hand to mouth; and the risk and difficulty of drawing his supplies from Dantzic or Poland, through Russian roads, and in the winter season. He alleged the disorganised state of the army, which might move on, though it was incapable of stopping. "Motion," he said, "might keep it together; a halt or a retreat would be at once to dissolve it. It was an army of attack, not of defence; an army of operation, not of position. The result was, they must advance on Moscow, possess themselves of the capital, and there dictate a peace."140
The language which Ségur has placed in the mouth of the Emperor, by no means exaggerates the dreadful condition of the French army. When Napoleon entered the country, only six weeks before, the corps which formed his operating army amounted to 297,000 men; and by the 5th August, when preparing to break up from Witepsk, that number was diminished to 185,000, not two-thirds of their original number, and a great additional loss had been sustained in the movements and encounters on the Dnieper. The wounded of the army were in the most miserable state, and it was in vain that the surgeons tore up their own linen for dressings; they were obliged to use parchment, and the down that grows on the birch-trees; it is no wonder that few recovered.
Thus it may be concluded, that this rash enterprise carried with it, from the beginning, the seeds of destruction, which, even without the conflagration of Moscow, or the Russian climate, though the latter must have been at all events included, made the expedition resemble that of Cambyses into Egypt; of Crassus, and after him Julian, into Parthia; and so many others of the same character, where the extent of preparation only rendered the subsequent fate of the invaders more signally calamitous.
While the French army was thus suffering a gradual or rather hasty decay, that of the Russians was now receiving rapid reinforcements. The Emperor Alexander, on leaving the army for Moscow, had convoked the nobles and the merchants of that capital in their several assemblies, had pledged to them his purpose never to make peace while a Frenchman remained in Russia, and had received the most enthusiastic assurances from both ranks of the state, of their being devoted to his cause with life and property. A large sum was voted by the merchants as a general tax, besides which, they opened a voluntary subscription, which produced great supplies. The nobility offered a levy of ten men in the hundred through all their estates; many were at the sole expense of fitting out and arming their recruits, and some of these wealthy boyards furnished companies, nay battalions, entirely at their own expense. The word peace was not mentioned, or only thought of as that which could not be concluded with an invader, without an indelible disgrace to Russia.
Other external circumstances occurred, which greatly added to the effect of these patriotic exertions.
A peace with England, and the restoration of commerce, was the instant consequence of war with France. Russia had all the support which British diplomacy could afford her, in operating a reconciliation with Sweden, and a peace with Turkey. The former being accomplished, under the mediation of England, and the Crown Prince being assured in possession of Norway, the Russian army under General Steigenteil, or Steingel, which was, while Bernadotte's amicable disposition might be doubted, necessarily detained in Finland, was now set at liberty, for the more pressing service of defending the empire.
A peace, even still more important, was made with the Turks, at Bucharest, on the 16th May. The Porte yielded up to Russia, Bessarabia, and that part of Moldavia situated on the left of the river Pruth, and Russia renounced all claim to the rest of the two provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. But the great advantage which accrued to Russia by this treaty, was its setting at liberty a veteran army of 45,000 men, and rendering them a disposable force in the rear of the French troops.
If the able statesman who at that period conducted the foreign affairs of Great Britain [Lord Castlereagh] had never rendered to his own country and to the world any other service than the influence which he successfully exercised in these important diplomatic affairs, he must have gone down to posterity as the minister who had foreseen and provided, in the most critical moment, the mode of strengthening Russia to combat with her formidable invaders, and which, after all her exertions, was the means of turning the balance in her favour.
It was at Witepsk that Napoleon learned that the Turks had made peace; and as it had only instigated him to precipitate his measures against Smolensk, so now the same reason urged him to continue his march on Moscow. Hitherto his wings had had the advantage of the enemy. Macdonald, in blockading Riga, kept all Courland at his disposal, and alarmed St. Petersburgh. More to the south, Saint Cyr had some hard fighting with Witgenstein, and, after a severe battle at Polotsk, had reduced that enterprising officer to the defensive.
Equally favourable intelligence had reached from Volhynia, the extreme right of the terrible line of invasion. The Russian General Tormasoff had made, when least expected, his appearance in the grand duchy, driven before him Regnier, who was covering that part of Poland, destroyed a Saxon brigade, and alarmed Warsaw. But Regnier united himself with the Austrian general Schwartzenberg, advanced on Tormasoff, and engaging him near a place called Gorodeczna, defeated him with loss, and compelled him to retreat. It was obvious, however, that the advantage of these two victories at Polotsk and Gorodeczna, would be entirely lost, if General Steingel, with the Finland army, should join Witgenstein, while Tormasoff fell back on the Moldavian army of Russia, commanded by Admiral Tchitchagoff.141
ADVANCE UPON MOSCOW
For Napoleon to await in cantonments at Smolensk, in a wasted country, the consequences of these junctions, which were likely to include the destruction of his two wings, would have been a desperate resolution. It seemed waiting for the fate which he had been wont to command. To move forward was a bold measure. But the French army, in its state of disorganisation, somewhat resembled an intoxicated person, who possesses the power to run, though he is unable to support himself if he stand still. If Napoleon could yet strike a gallant blow at the Russian grand army; if he could yet obtain possession of Moscow the Holy, he reckoned on sending dismay into the heart of Alexander, and dictating to the Czar, as he had done to many other princes, the conditions of peace from within the walls of his own palace. Buonaparte, therefore, resolved to advance upon Moscow. And perhaps, circumstanced as he was, he had no safer course, unless he had abandoned his whole undertaking, and fallen back upon Poland, which would have been an acknowledgment of defeat that we can hardly conceive his stooping to, while he was yet at the head of an army.
CHAPTER LIX
Napoleon detaches Murat and other Generals in pursuit of the Russians – Bloody, but indecisive Action, at Valoutina – Barclay de Tolly's defensive system relinquished, and Koutousoff appointed to the chief command of the Russian Army – Napoleon advances from Smolensk – Battle of Borodino fought, on 5th September – Prince Bagration slain – Koutousoff retreats upon Mojaisk, and thence upon Moscow – Napoleon continues his advance on the 12th – Count Rostopchin, Governor of Moscow – His Character – The Russians abandon Moscow, which is evacuated by the Inhabitants – The Grand Russian Army marches through Moscow – Last public Court of Justice held there by Rostopchin, after which he follows the march of the Army.
Without communicating his purpose of advancing in person from Smolensk, and completing, without any interval of delay, his great undertaking, Napoleon failed not to detach Murat, Ney, Junot, and Davoust, in pursuit of the Russians, as they retired from Smolensk. Either, however, his own mind was not made up, or he did not wish his purpose of going onward to be known. He represented this demonstration as arising merely out of the desire of pressing the Russian retreat, though in fact it was preliminary to his own advance.
Barclay de Tolly having performed the stern duty of burning Smolensk, had retired for two or three miles along the road to St. Petersburgh, which route he chose in order to avoid a cannonade from the left side of the Dnieper. Having proceeded a little way in this direction, he turned southward to regain the road to Moscow, which he would have taken at first, but for its exposing him to loss from the enemy's artillery, where it bordered on the river. The French could not for some time determine on which route they were to pursue the Russians. At length, finding the track, they overtook the rear-guard at a place called Valoutina, encumbered as it was with guns and baggage. Here a desperate action took place, the Russians reinforcing their rear-guard as fast as the French brought new bodies to attack them. Both parties fought most obstinately, and the distinguished French general Gudin was mortally wounded. The French blamed Junot,142 who having been despatched across the Dnieper, showed no alertness in advancing to charge the enemy. There was seen, indeed, in this affair of Valoutina, or Lombino, that the marshals and the great officers who had been accustomed each to command a separate corps d'armée, disdained to receive either orders, or even advice or hints, from a brother of the same rank. Wherever there were two or three of these dignitaries on the field, it was necessary Buonaparte should be within reach, to issue the necessary orders; for no voice save that of the Emperor was implicitly obeyed by all.143
ACTION AT VALOUTINA
In the meantime, the bloody action of Valoutina had an unsatisfactory result. The Russians, whose rear-guard had been attacked, had moved off without losing either guns, prisoners, or baggage. They had lost equal numbers with the French, but the time was fast approaching when they must possess a numerical superiority, and when, of course, an equal loss would tell in favour of the party which was nearest to its resources.144
The plan of Barclay de Tolly had hitherto been scrupulously adhered to. All general actions had been cautiously avoided; and while no means were left unemployed to weaken the enemy in partial actions, and to draw him on from swamp to swamp, from conflagration to conflagration, from one wild and waste scene to another of equal sterility and disconsolation, the end had been in a great measure attained, of undermining the force and breaking the moral courage of the invading army, who wandered forward like men in a dream, feeling on all hands a sense of oppressive and stifling opposition, yet unable to encounter any thing substantial which the slumberer can struggle with and overcome. Barclay de Tolly, if he had made some faults by extending his line too much at the commencement of the campaign, and afterwards by his false movements upon Rudneia, had more than atoned for these errors by the dexterity with which he had manœuvred before Smolensk, and the advantages which he had gained over the enemy on various other occasions. But they were now approaching Moscow the Grand, the Sanctified – and the military councils of Russia were about to change their character.
The spirit of the Russians, especially of the new levies, was more and more exasperated at the retreat, which seemed to have no end; and at the style of defence, which seemed only to consist in inflicting on the country, by the hands of Cossacks or Tartars, the very desolation which was perhaps the worst evil they could experience from the French. The natural zeal of the new levies, their confidence and their desire to be led to fight in the cause for which they were enlisted, eagerly declared against further retreat; and they demanded a halt, and a battle under a Russian general, more interested, as they supposed such must be, in the defence of the country, than a German stranger. The Emperor almost alone continued to adhere to the opinion of Barclay de Tolly. But he could not bid defiance to the united voice of his people and his military council. The political causes which demanded a great battle in defence of Moscow, were strong and numerous, and overcame the military reasons which certainly recommended that a risk so tremendous should not be incurred.
In compliance, therefore, with the necessity of the case, the Emperor sacrificed his own opinion. General Koutousoff, an officer high in military esteem among the Russians, was sent for from the corps which had been employed on the Danube against the Turks, to take the chief command of the grand army; and it was to Barclay's great honour, that, thus superseded, he continued to serve with the utmost zeal and good faith in a subordinate situation.
The French were not long of learning that their enemy's system of war was to be changed, and that the new Russian general was to give them battle, the object which they had so long panted for. Buonaparte, who had halted six days at Smolensk, moved from thence on the 24th August, and now pressed forward to join the advanced guard of his army at Gjatz. In this place his followers found a Frenchman who had dwelt long in Russia. They learned from this man the promotion of Koutousoff to the chief command of the army opposed to them, and that he was placed there for the express purpose of giving battle to the French army. The news were confirmed by the manner of a Russian officer, who arrived under some pretext with a flag of truce, but probably to espy the state of the invader's army. There was defiance in the look of this man; and when he was asked by a French general what they would find between Wiazma and Moscow, he answered sternly, "Pultowa." There was, therefore, no doubt, that battle was approaching.145
But the confusion of Buonaparte's troops was still such, that he was obliged to halt two days at Gjatz,146 in order to collect and repose his army. He arrived at the destined field of battle, an elevated plain, called Borodino, which the Russians had secured with lines and batteries.
BATTLE OF BORODINO
The French army were opposed to them on the 5th September, having consumed seventeen days in marching 280 wersts. Their first operation was a successful attack upon a redoubt in the Russian front, but which – a great error in war – was situated too distant from it to be effectually supported. The French gained it and kept it. The armies lay in presence of each other all the next day, preparing for the approaching contest. Upon a position naturally strong, the Russians had raised very formidable fieldworks. Their right flank rested on a wood, which was covered by some detached intrenchments. A brook, occupying in its course a deep ravine, covered the front of the right wing and the centre of the position as far as the river of Borodino; from that village the left extended down to another village, called Semoneskoie, which is more open, yet protected by ravines and thickets in front. This, as the most accessible point, was anxiously secured by redoubts and batteries; and in the centre of the position, upon a gentle elevation, arose a sort of double battery, like a citadel, for the protection of the whole line.
In this strong position was stationed the Russian army, equal now in numbers to the French, as each army might be about 120,000 men. They were commanded by a veteran, slow, cautious, tenacious of his purpose, wily, too, as Napoleon afterwards found to his cost, but perhaps not otherwise eminent as a military leader. The army he led were of one nation and language, all conscious that this battle had been granted to their own ardent wishes, and determined to make good the eagerness with which they had called for it.
The French army, again, consisted of various nations; but they were the élite, and seasoned soldiers who had survived the distresses of a most calamitous march; they were the veterans of the victors of Europe; they were headed by Napoleon in person, and under his immediate command by those marshals, whose names in arms were only inferior to his own. Besides a consciousness of their superiority in action, of which, from the manner in which they had covered themselves in intrenchments, the enemy seemed aware, the French had before them the prospect of utter destruction, if they should sustain a defeat in a country so difficult that they could hardly advance even as a successful army, and certainly could never hope to retreat as a routed one. Buonaparte's address to his troops147 had less of the tinsel of oratory than he generally used on such occasions. "Soldiers," he said, "here is the battle you have longed for; it is necessary, for it brings us plenty, good winter-quarters, and a safe return to France. Behave yourselves so that posterity may say of each of you, 'He was in that great battle under the walls of Moscow.'"148
In the Russian camp was a scene of a different kind, calculated to awaken feelings to which France had long ceased to appeal. The Greek clergy showed themselves to the troops, arrayed in their rich vestments, and displaying for general worship the images of their holiest saints. They told their countrymen of the wrongs which had been offered by the invaders to earth as well as Heaven, and exhorted them to merit a place in paradise by their behaviour in that day's battle. The Russians answered with shouts.
Two deeply interesting circumstances occurred to Napoleon the day before the battle. An officer brought him a portrait of his boy, the King of Rome, which he displayed on the outside of the tent, not only to satisfy the officers, but the soldiers, who crowded to look upon the son of their Emperor. The other was the arrival of an officer from Spain with despatches, giving Napoleon news of the loss of the battle of Salamanca. He bore the evil tidings with temper and firmness, and soon turned his thoughts alike from domestic enjoyments and foreign defeats, to forming the necessary plans for the action before him.149
Davoust proposed a plan for turning the left of the enemy's intrenched line, by following the old road from Smolensk to Moscow, and placing 35,000 men in the flank and rear of that part of the Russian position. This operation was partly to be accomplished by a night march, partly on the morning, while the rest of the army was engaging the enemy's attention in front. The ground to which this road would have conducted Davoust and his troops, forms the highest land in the neighbourhood, as appears from the rivulets taking their source there. Upon this commanding position the attacking corps might have been formed in the rear of the Russian line. Such a movement on that point must have cut off the Russians from their point of retreat on Mojaisk and Moscow, and Davoust might have come down their line, driving every thing before him, advancing from redoubt to redoubt, and dispersing reserve after reserve, till the Russians should no longer have the semblance of an army. Perhaps Napoleon considered this plan as too hazardous, as it implied a great weakening of his front line, which, in that case, might have been attacked and broken before the corps d'armée under Davoust had attained the desired position.150
The Emperor therefore determined that Poniatowski, with not more than 5000 men, should make a demonstration, that should commence upon their left, in the direction proposed by Davoust, and that then a general attack should commence on the Russian right and centre. Foreseeing an obstinate resistance, he had ordered as much artillery as possible to be brought into line, and the guns on each side are said to have amounted to a thousand.151 The battle began about seven o'clock, by Ney's attacking the bastioned redoubt on the Russian centre, with the greatest violence, while Prince Eugene made equal efforts to dislodge the enemy from the village of Semoneskoie, and the adjoining fortifications. No action was ever more keenly debated, nor at such a wasteful expenditure of human life. The fury of the French onset at length carried the redoubts, but the Russians rallied under the very line of their enemy's fire, and advanced again to the combat, to recover their intrenchments. Regiments of peasants, who till that day had never seen war, and who still had no other uniform than their grey jackets, formed with the steadiness of veterans, crossed their brows, and having uttered their national exclamation – "Gospodee pomiloui nas!– God have mercy upon us!" – rushed into the thickest of the battle, where the survivors, without feeling fear or astonishment, closed their ranks over their comrades as they fell, while, supported at once by enthusiasm for their cause, and by a religious sense of predestination, life and death seemed alike indifferent to them.