Still, some degree of order is so essential to human society, that, even in that disorganised mass, the stragglers, which now comprehended almost the whole army, divided into little bands, who assisted each other, and had sometimes the aid of a miserable horse, which, when it fell down under the burden of what they had piled on it, was torn to pieces and eaten, while life was yet palpitating in its veins. These bands had chiefs selected from among themselves. But this species of union, though advantageous on the whole, led to particular evils. Those associated into such a fraternity, would communicate to none save those of their own party, a mouthful of rye-dough, which, seasoned with gunpowder for want of salt, and eaten with a bouillé of horse-flesh, formed the best part of their food. Neither would they permit a stranger to warm himself at their fires, and when spoil was found, two of these companies often, especially if of different countries, fought for the possession of it; and a handful of meal was a sufficient temptation for putting to death the wretch who could not defend his booty. The prisoners, it is said (and we heartily wish the fact could be refuted,) were parked every night, without receiving any victuals whatever, and perished, like impounded cattle, from want of food, cold, and the delirious fury which such treatment inspired. Among these unfortunates some became cannibals, and the same horrible reproach has been cast on the French themselves.231
To enhance misfortunes so dreadful, the cold, which had been for some time endurable, increased on the 6th December to the most bitter degree of frost, being twenty-seven or twenty-eight degrees below zero. Many dropped down and expired in silence, the blood of others was determined to the head by the want of circulation; it gushed at length from eyes and mouth, and the wretches sunk down on the gory snow, and were relieved by death. At the night bivouacs, the soldiers approached their frozen limbs to the fire so closely, that, falling asleep in that posture, their feet were scorched to the bone, while their hair was frozen to the ground. In this condition they were often found by the Cossacks, and happy were those upon whom the pursuers bestowed a thrust with the lance to finish their misery. Other horrors there were, which are better left in silence. Enough has been said to show, that such a calamity, in such an extent, never before darkened the pages of history. In this horrible retreat, 20,000 recruits had joined the army since crossing the Beresina, where, including the corps of Oudinot and Victor, they amounted to 80,000 men. But of this sum of 80,000 men, one-half perished betwixt the Beresina and the walls of Wilna.232
In such a plight did the army arrive at Wilna, where great provision had been made for their reception. The magazines were groaning with plenty, but, as at Smolensk, the administrators and commissioners, terrified for their own responsibility, dared not issue provisions to a disorderly mob, who could neither produce authority for drawing rations, nor give a regular receipt. The famished wretches fell down in the streets before the magazines, and died there, cursing with their latest breath the ill-timed punctiliousness of office, which refused to starving men the morsel that might have saved their lives. In other places of the town, stores both of provision and liquor were broken open by the desperate soldiery, plundered and wasted. Numbers became intoxicated, and to those, as they sunk down in the street, death came before sobriety. The sick who went to the hospitals found them crowded, not only with the dying, but with the dead, whose corpses were left to freeze or to putrefy on the stairs and in the corridors, and sometimes in the apartments of those who yet survived. Such were the comforts of Wilna, from which so much had been hoped.
Still, however, some of the citizens, moved by pity or terror, or from desire of gain (for many soldiers had still about their persons some remnants of the spoils of Moscow,) were willing to give lodging and food to these exhausted phantoms, who begged such relief sometimes with furious threats and imprecations, sometimes in the plaintive tone of men ready to perish. Distributions began also to be made at the public stores; and men who for long had not eat a morsel of bread, or reposed themselves upon any better lair than the frozen earth, or under any other canopy save that of the snow-fraught sky, deemed it Paradise to enjoy the most common household comforts, of which we think so little while we enjoy them, yet are miserable when they are abridged or withdrawn. Some wept for joy at receiving an ordinary loaf of bread, and finding themselves at liberty to eat it, seated, and under a roof.
On a sudden the repast, which seemed earnest of a return to safety and to social life, was disturbed by a distant cannonade, which came nigher and nigher – then by the fire of musketry – at length by their own drums beating to arms in the streets. Every alarm was in vain; even the Imperial Guard no longer attended to the summons. The soldiers were weary of their lives, and it seemed as if they would have been contented to perish like the Jews in the wilderness, with their food betwixt their teeth. At length the distant hourra, and the nearer cry of Cossacks! Cossacks! which for some time had been their most available signal for marching, compelled them to tear themselves from their refreshment, and rush into the street. There they found their rear-guard and Loison, although they had been reinforced by the body of Bavarians commanded by Wrede, who had been left on the verge of Volhynia, hurrying into the town in disorder like men defeated, and learned that they had been driven back by Witgenstein, with Platoff and other partisan leaders, who had followed them up to the gates.
WILNA – KOWNO
Wilna, besides the immense magazines belonging to the French army, contained a vast deposit of wealth and property, which had been left there in the advance upon Moscow, and, in particular, a quantity of treasure belonging to Napoleon. The town, though open, might have been made good till the magazines were destroyed and the baggage removed; but such was the confusion of the moment, that the Russians forced their way into the town by one access, whilst the French left it by another, directing their flight upon Kowno, with the most valuable part of their baggage, or such as could be most speedily harnessed. The inhabitants of the town, the lower orders that is, and particularly the Jews, now thought of propitiating the victors by butchering the wretches whom they had received into their houses; or, at best, stripping and thrusting them naked into the streets. For this inhumanity the Jews are said to have been afterwards punished by the Russians, who caused several of them to be hanged.
Meanwhile, the flying column had attained a hill and defile, called Ponari, when the carriages became entangled, and at length one of the treasure-waggons being overturned, burst, and discovered its contents. All shadow of discipline was then lost; and, as if to anticipate the Russians, the French soldiers themselves fell upon the baggage, broke open the wains, and appropriated their contents. The Cossacks rode up during the fray, and so rich was the booty, that even they were content to plunder in company, suspending for the instant their national animosity, where there seemed wealth enough for all, and no time to lose in fighting. Yet it is said that the privates of the Imperial Guard displayed a rare example of honour and discipline. The Count de Turenne, having beaten off the Cossacks who pressed in, distributed the private treasure of Napoleon among his guard, the individuals of which afterwards restored them. "Not a single piece of money," says Ségur, "was lost." This, however, must be partly imagination; for many of the guard fell after this, and the Cossacks, who became their executors, could have had little idea of making restitution.
It is not worth while to trace further the flight of this miserable body of wanderers. They arrived at length at Kowno, the last town of Russian Poland, Ney alone endeavouring to give them some military direction and assistance, while they were at every instant deserting him and themselves. At Kowno, it seems that about 1000 men were still under arms, about twenty times that number in total dispersion. The pursuit of the Russians appeared to cease after the fugitives had recrossed the Niemen on the ice; they did not choose to push the war into Prussia.
At Gumbinnen, the remaining maréchals and commanders held a council, in which Murat gave way to the stifled resentment he had long entertained against his brother-in-law. He had been displeased with Napoleon, for not severely repressing the insolence with which, as he conceived, he had been treated by Davoust, and at another time by Ney; and he openly inveighed against his relative as a madman, upon whose word no reliance was to be placed. In these moments of anger and mutiny, Murat blamed himself for rejecting the proposals of the English. Had he not done so, he said, he might still have been a great king, like the sovereigns of Austria and Russia. "These kings," answered Davoust, bitterly, "are monarchs by the grace of God, by the sanction of time, and the course of custom. But you – you are only a king by the grace of Napoleon, and through the blood of Frenchmen. You are grossly ungrateful, and as such I will denounce you to the Emperor."233 Such was this strange scene, of which the maréchals were silent witnesses. It served to show how little unity there was in their councils when the Master Spirit ceased to preside among them.
From Gumbinnen the French went to show their miseries at Königsberg. Every where they were coldly, yet not coarsely, treated by the Prussians, who had before felt their oppression, but did not consider them in their present state as becoming objects of vengeance. At Königsberg they learnt the fate of their two extreme wings, which was of a nature to close all hopes.
On the right of the French original line of advance, Schwartzenberg had no sooner learned that the Emperor was totally defeated, and his army irretrievably dispersed, than, in the quality of a mere auxiliary, he thought himself no longer entitled to hazard a single Austrian life in the quarrel. There was an armistice concluded between the Austrians and Russians, by the terms of which they agreed to manœuvre as at a game of chess, but not to fight. Thus, when the Russians should gain such a position, as in actual war would have given them an advantage, the Austrians were under the engagement to retreat; and the campaign resembled nothing so much as a pacific field-day, in which two generals in the same service venture upon a trial of skill. Schwartzenberg, by his manœuvres, protected the French corps under Regnier as long as possible, obtained good terms for Warsaw, and gained for Regnier three days advantage, when at last he ceased to cover the place. Having thus protected his allies to the last, he retired into the Austrian territories; and although Regnier was finally overtaken and surprised at Khalish, it could not be imputed to Schwartzenberg's desertion of him, but to his own making too long a halt to protect some Polish depôts. The relics of Regnier's army, such at least as fled into the Austrian territories, were well received there, and afterwards restored to their own banners. Still the alliance with Austria, which in one sense had cost Napoleon so dear, was now dissolved, and his right wing totally dissipated by the defection of his allies. On the left wing matters had no better, or rather, they had a much worse appearance.
PRECARIOUS STATE OF MACDONALD
During the eventful six months of the Russian campaign, Macdonald, who commanded the left wing, had remained in Courland, with an army of about 30,000 men, of whom 22,000 were Prussians, the rest Germans of different countries. It would seem that Napoleon had been averse from the beginning to employ these unwilling auxiliaries upon any service where their defection might influence the other parts of his army. Yet they behaved well upon several occasions, when Macdonald had occasion to repel the attacks and sallies of the numerous garrison of Riga, and their active exertions enabled him to save the park of heavy artillery destined for the siege of that place, which had almost fallen into the hands of the Russian general Lewis, at Mittau, on the 29th of September. But on this occasion, though having every reason to be pleased with the soldiers, Macdonald saw room to suspect their leader, D'Yorck, of coldness to the French cause. That officer was, indeed, engaged in a service which at heart he detested. He was one of the Tugend-Bund, so often mentioned, an ardent Prussian patriot, and eager to free his native country from a foreign yoke. He therefore eagerly watched for a plausible opportunity when he might, without dishonour, disunite his forces from those of the French maréchal.
About the beginning of December, the situation of Macdonald became precarious. Nothing was heard on every side, save of the rout and disasters of the French grand army, and the maréchal anxiously expected orders for a retreat while it was yet open to him. But such was the confusion at the headquarters after the Emperor's departure, that neither Murat nor Berthier thought of sending the necessary authority to Macdonald; and when they did, though the order to retreat might have reached him in five days, it was ten days on the road.
He commenced his retreat upon Tilsit, his vanguard consisting of Massenbach's Prussian division, chiefly cavalry, he himself following with the Bavarians, Saxons, &c., and D'Yorck bringing up the rear with 15,000 Prussians, the residue of that auxiliary army. In this order, with the Prussians divided into two corps, and his own posted between them, as if to secure against their combining, the maréchal marched on in sufficient anxiety, but without complaint on his side, or difficulties on that of the Prussian general. But when the maréchal, upon 28th January, arrived at Tilsit, which was in the line of their retreat, and had sent forward the cavalry of Massenbach as far as Regnitz, the troops of D'Yorck in the rear had detached themselves so far that Macdonald was obliged to halt for them. He sent letters to D'Yorck, pressing him to come up – he sent to the cavalry of Massenbach in the van, commanding them to return. From D'Yorck came no answer. At Regnitz, the French general, Bachelu, who had been sent to act as adjutant-general with Massenbach's corps, could find no obedience. The colonels of the Prussian cavalry objected to the weather, and the state of the roads; they would not give the order to sound to horse; and when the horses were at length reluctantly ordered out and produced, the soldiers were equally restive, they would not mount. While the Prussian troops were in this state of mutiny, a Russian emissary was heard to press them to deliver up the Frenchman; but the soldiers, though resolved to leave Bachelu, would not betray him. The proposal shocked their feelings of honour, and they mounted and marched back to Tilsit, to restore Bachelu to Macdonald's army. But their purpose was unchanged. As at Regnitz they had refused to mount their horses, so at Tilsit they refused to alight. At length they were prevailed upon to dismount and retire to their quarters, but it was only a feint; for, shortly after they were supposed asleep, the Prussians mounted in great silence, and, with Massenbach and their officers at their head, marched off to join their countrymen under D'Yorck.
That general had, now and for ever, separated his troops from the French. Upon 30th December, he had concluded an armistice with the Russian general, Dibbeitsch. By this agreement, the Prussian troops were to be cantoned in their own territories, and remain neutral for two months; at the end of that period, if their king so determined, they should be at liberty to rejoin the French troops. Both D'Yorck and Massenbach wrote to Macdonald, announcing their secession from his army. D'Yorck contented himself with stating, that he cared not what opinion the world might form on his conduct, it was dictated by the purest motives – his duty to his troops and to his country. Massenbach expressed his respect and esteem for General Macdonald, and declared, that his reason for leaving him without an interview, was the fear he felt that his personal regard for the Maréchal might have prevented his obeying the call of duty.
Thus did a Prussian general first set the example of deserting the cause in which he served so unwillingly – an example which soon spread fast and far. It was a choice of difficulties on D'Yorck's side, for his zeal as a patriot was in some degree placed in opposition to the usual ideas of soldierly honour. But he had not left Macdonald till the Maréchal's safety, and that of the remainder of his army, was in some measure provided for. He was out of the Russian territory, and free, or nearly so, from Russian pursuit. D'Yorck had become neutral, but not the enemy or his late commander.
Here the question arises, how long were the Prussians to be held bound to sacrifice their blood for the foreigners, by whom they had been conquered, pillaged, and oppressed; and to what extent were they bound to endure adversity for those who had uniformly trampled on them during their prosperity? One thing, we believe, we may affirm with certainty, namely, that D'Yorck acted entirely on his own responsibility, and without any encouragement, direct or indirect, from his sovereign. Nay, there is room to suppose, that though the armistice of Taurogen was afterwards declared good service by the King of Prussia, yet D'Yorck was not entirely forgiven by his prince for having entered into it. It was one of the numerous cases, in which a subject's departing from the letter of the sovereign's command, although for that sovereign's more effectual service, is still a line of conduct less grateful than implicit obedience. Upon receiving the news, Frederick disavowed the conduct of his general, and appointed Massenbach and him to be sent to Berlin for trial. But the officers retained their authority, for the Prussian army and people considered their sovereign as acting under the restraint of the French troops under Augereau, who then occupied his capital.
Macdonald, with the remains of his army, reduced to about 9000 men, accomplished his retreat to Königsberg after a sharp skirmish.
CLOSE OF THE RUSSIAN EXPEDITION
And thus ended the memorable Russian expedition, the first of Napoleon's undertakings in which he was utterly defeated, and of which we scarce know whether most to wonder at the daring audacity of the attempt, or the terrific catastrophe. The loss of the grand army was total, and the results are probably correctly stated by Boutourlin as follows: —
The relics of the troops which escaped from that overwhelming disaster, independent of the two auxiliary armies of Austrians and Prussians, who were never much engaged in its terrors, might be about 40,000 men, of whom scarcely 10,000 were Frenchmen.234 The Russians, notwithstanding the care that was taken to destroy these trophies, took seventy-five eagles, colours, or standards, and upwards of 900 pieces of cannon.
Thus had the greatest military captain of the age, at the head of an innumerable array, rushed upon his gigantic adversary, defeated his army, and destroyed, or been the cause of the destruction of his capital, only to place himself in a situation where the ruin of nearly the whole of his own force, without even the intervention of a general action, became the indispensable price of his safe return.
CAUSES OF THE CATASTROPHE
The causes of this total and calamitous failure lay in miscalculations, both moral and physical, which were involved in the first concoction of the enterprise, and began to operate from its very commencement. We are aware that this is, with the idolaters of Napoleon, an unpalatable view of the case. They believe, according to the doctrine which he himself promulgated, that he could be conquered by the elements alone. This was what he averred in the twenty-ninth bulletin. Till the 6th November he stated that he had been uniformly successful. The snow then fell, and in six days destroyed the character of the army, depressed their courage, elated that of the "despicable" Cossacks, deprived the French of artillery, baggage, and cavalry, and reduced them, with little aid from the Russians, to the melancholy state in which they returned to Poland. This opinion Napoleon wished to perpetuate in a medal, on which the retreat from Moscow is represented by the figure of Eolus blowing upon the soldiers, who are shown shrinking from the storm, or falling under it. The same statement he always supported; and it is one of those tenets which his extravagant admirers are least willing to relinquish.
Three questions, however, remain to be examined ere we can subscribe to this doctrine. – I. Does the mere fall of snow, nay, a march through a country covered with it, necessarily, and of itself, infer the extent of misfortune here attributed to its agency? – II. Was not the possibility of such a storm a contingency which ought in reason to have entered into Napoleon's calculations? – III. Was it the mere severity of the snow-storm, dreadful as it was, which occasioned the destruction of Buonaparte's army; or, did not the effects of climate rather come in to aid various causes of ruin, which were inherent in this extravagant expedition from the very beginning, and were operating actively, when the weather merely came to their assistance?
On the first question it is needless to say much. A snow, accompanied with hard frost, is not necessarily destructive to a retreating army. The weaker individuals must perish, but, to the army, it affords, if they are provided for the season, better opportunities of moving than rainy and open weather. In the snow, hard frozen upon the surface, as it is in Russia and Canada, the whole face of the country becomes a road; and an army, lightly equipped, and having sledges instead of wains, may move in as many parallel columns as they will, instead of being confined, as in moist weather, to one high-road, along which the divisions must follow each other in succession. Such an extension of the front, by multiplying the number of marching columns, must be particularly convenient to an army which, like that of Napoleon, is obliged to maintain itself as much as possible at the expense of the country. Where there are only prolonged columns, following each other over the same roads, the marauders from the first body must exhaust the country on each side; so that the corps which follow must send their purveyors beyond the ground which has been already pillaged, until at length the distance becomes so great, that the rearward must satisfy themselves with gleaning after the wasteful harvest of those who have preceded them. Supposing six, eight, or ten columns marching in parallel lines upon the same front, and leaving an interval betwixt each, they will cover six, eight, or ten times the breadth of country, and of course supply themselves more plentifully, as well as much more easily. Such columns, keeping a parallel front, can, if attacked, receive reciprocal aid by lateral movements more easily than when assistance must be sent from the van to the rear of one long moving line; and the march being lateral on such occasions, does not infer the loss of time, and other inconveniences inferred by a counter-march from the front to support the rear. Lastly, the frost often renders bridges unnecessary, fills ravines, and makes morasses passable; thus compensating, in some degree, to a marching army, for the rigorous temperature to which it subjects them.
But, 2dly, It may be asked, if frost and snow are so irresistible and destructive in Russia, as to infer the destruction of whole armies, why did not these casualties enter into the calculations of so great a general entering on such an immense undertaking? Does it never snow in Russia, or is frost a rare phenomenon there in the month of November? It is said that the cold weather began earlier than usual. This, we are assured, was not the case; but, at any rate, it was most unwise to suffer the safety of an army, and an army of such numbers and importance, to depend on the mere chance of a frost setting in a few days sooner or later.235
The fact is, that Napoleon, whose judgment was seldom misled save by the ardour of his wishes, had foreseen, in October, the coming of the frost, as he had been aware, in July, of the necessity of collecting sufficient supplies of food for his army, yet without making adequate provision against what he knew was to happen, in either case. In the 22d bulletin, it is intimated, that the Moskwa, and other rivers of Russia, might be expected to be frozen over about the middle of November, which ought to have prepared the Emperor for the snow and frost commencing five or six days sooner; which actually took place. In the 26th bulletin, the necessity of winter-quarters is admitted, and the Emperor is represented as looking luxuriously around him, to consider whether he should choose them in the south of Russia, or in the friendly country of Poland. The weather is then stated to be fine, "but on the first days of November cold was to be expected. Winter-quarters, therefore, must be thought upon; the cavalry, above all, stand in need of them."
It is impossible that he, under whose eye, or by whose hand, these bulletins were drawn up, could have been surprised by the arrival of snow on the 6th November. It was a probability foreseen, though left unprovided for.
Even the most ordinary precaution, that of rough-shoeing the horses of the cavalry and the draught-horses, was totally neglected; for the bulletins complain of the shoes being smooth. This is saying, in other words, that the animals had not been new-shod at all; for French horses may be termed always rough-shod, until the shoes are grown old and worn smooth through use. If, therefore, frost and snow be so very dangerous to armies, Napoleon wilfully braved their rigour, and by his want of due preparations, brought upon himself the very disaster of which he complained so heavily.
Thirdly, Though unquestionably the severity of the frost did greatly increase the distress and loss of an army suffering under famine, nakedness, and privations of every kind, yet it was neither the first, nor, in any respect, the principal, cause of their disasters. The reader must keep in remembrance the march through Lithuania, in which, without a blow struck, Napoleon lost 10,000 horses at once, and nearly 100,000 men, when passing through a country which was friendly. Did this loss, which happened in June and July, arise from the premature snow, as it has been called, of the 6th of November? No, surely. It arose from what the bulletin itself describes as "the uncertainty, the distresses, the marches and counter-marches of the troops, their fatigues and sufferances;" to the system, in short, of forced marches, by which, after all, Napoleon was unable to gain any actual advance. This cost him one-fourth, or nearly so, of his army, before a blow was struck. If we suppose that he left on both his flanks, and in his rear, a force of 100,000 men, under Macdonald, Schwartzenberg, Oudinot, and others, he commenced the actual invasion of Russia Proper with 200,000 soldiers. A moiety of this large force perished before he reached Moscow, which he entered at the head of less than 100,000 men. The ranks had been thinned by fatigue, and the fields of battle and hospitals must answer for the remainder. Finally, Napoleon left Moscow on the 19th October, as a place where he could not remain, and yet from which he saw no safe mode of exit. He was then at the head of about 120,000 men; so much was his army recruited by convalescents, the collection of stragglers, and some reserves which had been brought up. He fought the unavailing though most honourably sustained battle of Malo-Yarowslavetz; failed in forcing his way to Kalouga and Toula; and, like a stag at bay, was forced back on the wasted and broken-up road to Smolensk by Borodino. On this road was fought the battle of Wiazma, in which the French loss was very considerable; and his columns were harassed by the Cossacks at every point of their march, and many thousands of prisoners were taken. Two battles so severely fought, besides the defeat of Murat and constant skirmishes, cost the French, in killed and wounded, (and every wounded man was lost to Napoleon,) not less than 25,000 men; and so far had the French army been diminished.
This brought him to the 6th November, until which day not a flake had fallen of that snow to which all his disasters are attributed, but which in fact did not commence until he had in a great measure experienced them. By this time also, his wings and reserves had undergone severe fighting and great loss, without any favourable results. Thus, wellnigh three-fourths of his original army were destroyed, and the remnant reduced to a most melancholy and disorderly condition, before commencement of the storm to which he found it afterwards convenient to impute his calamities. It is scarcely necessary to notice, that when the snow did begin to fall, it found Napoleon not a victor, but a fugitive, quitting ground before his antagonists, and indebted for his safety, not to the timidity of the Russians, but to the over-caution of their general. The Cossacks, long before the snow-tempest commenced, were muttering against Koutousoff for letting these skeletons, as they called the French army, walk back into a bloodless grave.
When the severe frost came, it aggravated greatly the misery, and increased the loss, of the French army. But Winter was only the ally of the Russians; not, as has been contended, their sole protectress. She rendered the retreat of the grand army more calamitous, but it had already been an indispensable measure; and was in the act of being executed at the lance-point of the Cossacks, before the storms of the north contributed to overwhelm the invaders.