§ 1. Description of Moscow; arrival of the Czar.

The ancient capital of Russia, appropriately denominated by its poets "Moscow[130] with the gilded cupolas," was a vast and fantastic assemblage of two hundred and ninety-five churches, and fifteen hundred palaces, with their gardens and dependencies. These larger mansions of brick, and their parks, intermixed with neat houses of wood, and even thatched cottages, were spread over several square leagues of irregular ground. They were grouped round the Kremlin, a lofty triangular fortress. The vast double enclosure in which this was situated was about two miles in circuit. It contained, first, several palaces, some churches, and rocky and uncultivated spots, and secondly, a prodigious bazaar,—the town of the merchants and shopkeepers,—where was displayed the collected wealth of the four quarters of the globe.

These palaces, these edifices, nay, the very shops themselves, were all covered with burnished and painted iron. The churches, each surmounted by a balcony and several steeples, terminating in golden balls, then the crescent, and lastly the cross, reminded the spectator of the history of this nation: it was Asia and its religion, at first victorious, subsequently vanquished, so that finally the cross of Christ surmounted the crescent of Mohammed.

A ray of sunshine caused this splendid city to glisten with a thousand varied colors. At sight of it the traveller paused, delighted and astonished. It reminded him of the prodigies with which the Eastern poets had amused his childhood. On entering it, a nearer view served but to heighten his astonishment: he recognized the nobles by the manners, the habits, and the different languages of modern Europe, and by the rich and airy elegance of their dress. He beheld, with surprise, the luxury and the Asiatic form of that of the traders, the peculiar costumes of the common people, and their long beards. He was struck by the same variety in the edifices; and all this was tinged with a local and sometimes harsh coloring, such as befitted the country of which Moscow was the ancient capital.

When, lastly, he observed the grandeur and magnificence of the numerous palaces, the wealth which they displayed, the luxury of the equipages, the multitude of slaves and of obsequious menials, the splendor of all these gorgeous spectacles, and heard the noise of those sumptuous festivities, entertainments, and rejoicings which incessantly resounded within its walls, he fancied himself transported to a city of kings—into the midst of an assemblage of princes, who had brought with them their manners, customs, and attendants from every quarter of the world.

These princes were nevertheless but subjects, still opulent and powerful subjects: grandees, vain of their ancient nobility, strong in their collected numbers and in the general ties of blood contracted during the seven centuries which this capital had existed. They were also landed proprietors, proud of their vast possessions; for almost the whole territory of the government of Moscow belonged to them, and they there reigned over a million of serfs.[131] Finally, they were nobles, resting with a patriotic and religious pride upon "the cradle and the tomb of their nobility"; for such is the appellation they give to Moscow.

To this ancient capital necessity brought the Czar[132] Alexander. His first appearance was in the midst of the assembled nobles. There everything was great: the circumstances, the assembly, the speaker, and the resolutions which he inspired. His voice betrayed emotion: no sooner did he cease speaking, than one simultaneous cry burst from all hearts: "Sire, ask what you please! we offer you everything! take our all!"

One of the nobles then proposed the levy of a militia, and for its formation, the gift of one peasant or serf in twenty-five. But a hundred voices interrupted him, exclaiming that "the country required a greater sacrifice; that they should grant one serf in ten, ready armed, equipped, and supplied with provisions for three months." This was offering, for the single government of Moscow, 80,000 men, and a great quantity of warlike stores.

The latter proposition was immediately voted without discussion; some say with enthusiasm; and that it was executed in like manner, so long as the danger was at hand. Others attribute the consent of the assembly to a sentiment of submission alone; which, indeed, in the presence of absolute power, is apt to absorb every other.They add, that on the breaking up of the meeting, the principal nobles were heard to murmur among themselves against the extravagance of such a measure. "Was the danger, then, so pressing? Did the Russian army, which, as they were told, still numbered 400,000 men, no longer exist? Why deprive them of so many peasants? The service of these men would be, it is said, only temporary; but who could ever hope for their return? and was not even this an event to be dreaded? Would these serfs, habituated to the irregularities of war, bring back their former habits of submission? Undoubtedly not; they would return full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would give infinite trouble to the master by spoiling the slave."

Be this as it may, the resolution of the assembly was generous, and worthy of so great a nation. The details are of little consequence. We well know that it is the same everywhere; that everything in the world loses by being seen too near; and, lastly, that nations should be judged by the general mass and by results.

Alexander then addressed the merchants, but more briefly: he ordered the proclamation to be read to them, in which Napoleon was represented as "a perfidious wretch; a Moloch, who, with treachery in his heart and loyalty on his lips, was striving to blot out Russia from the face of the earth."

It is said that, at these words, his auditors, to whose strongly-marked and flushed faces their long beards imparted a look at once antique, majestic, and wild, were inflamed with rage. Their eyes flashed fire; they were seized with a convulsive fury, of which their stiffened arms, their clenched fists, the gnashing of their teeth, and their subdued execrations, expressed the vehemence. The effect was correspondent. Their chief, whom they elect themselves, proved himself worthy of his station: he put down his name at once for 50,000 rubles.[133] It was two-thirds of his fortune, and he paid it the next day.

These merchants were divided into three classes, and they proceeded to fix the contribution for each; but one of the assembly, who was included in the lowest class, declared that his patriotism would brook no limit, and he immediately subscribed a sum far surpassing the standard proposed: the others all followed his example more or less closely. Advantage was taken of their first emotions. Everything was at hand that was requisite to bind them irrevocably while they were yet together, excited by one another and by the words of their sovereign.

The patriotic donation amounted, it is said, to two millions of rubles. The other governments repeated, like so many echoes, the national cry of Moscow. The emperor accepted all; but all could not be given immediately; and when, in order to complete his work, he claimed the rest of the promised succor, he was obliged to have recourse to constraint, the danger which had alarmed some and inflamed others having by that time ceased to exist.

§ 2. Alarm in Moscow at the advance of the French army; preparations for destroying the city.

After the reduction of Smolensk,[134] and when Napoleon reached Viazma, a town about one hundred and seventy miles from Moscow, consternation reigned in Moscow. The great battle had not yet been lost, and already people began to abandon that capital.

In his proclamation, the governor-general, Count Rostopchin,[135] told the women that "he should not detain them, as the less fear there was, the less danger there would be; but that their brothers and husbands must stay, or they would cover themselves with infamy." He then added encouraging particulars concerning the hostile force, which consisted, according to his statement, of "one hundred and fifty thousand men, who were reduced to the necessity of feeding on horseflesh. The emperor Alexander was about to return to his faithful capital; eighty-three thousand Russians, recruits and militia, with eighty pieces of cannon were marching towards Borodino, to join Kutusoff."[136]

He thus concluded: "If these forces are not sufficient, I will say to you, 'Come, my Muscovite[137] friends, let us march also! We will assemble one hundred thousand men; we will take the image of the Blessed Virgin, and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and put an end to the business at once!'"

It has been remarked, as a purely local singularity, that most of these proclamations were in the scriptural style, and highly poetical in their character.

At the same time, a sort of balloon of prodigious size was constructed by command of Alexander, not far from Moscow, under the direction of a German artificer. The destination of this aerial machine was to hover over the French army, to single out its chief, and destroy him by a shower of balls and fire. Several attempts were made to raise it, but without success, the springs by which the wings were to be worked always breaking.

Rostopchin, nevertheless, affecting to persevere in the plan, is said to have caused a great quantity of rockets and other combustibles to be prepared. Moscow itself was destined to be the great infernal machine, the sudden nocturnal explosion of which was to destroy the emperor and his army. Should the enemy escape this danger, he would at least no longer have an asylum or resources; and the horror of this tremendous calamity, charged to his account, as had been the disasters of Smolensk, Viazma, and other towns, would not fail to rouse the whole of Russia.[138]

Adverse, therefore, to any treaty, this governor foresaw that in the populous capital, which the Russians themselves style the oracle, the exemplar of the whole empire, Napoleon would have recourse to the weapon of revolution, the only one that would be left him to accomplish his purpose. For this reason he resolved to raise a barrier of fire between that great captain and all weaknesses, from whatever quarter they might proceed, whether from the throne or from his countrymen, either nobles or senators; and more especially between a population of serfs and the soldiers of a free nation; in short, between the latter and that mass of artisans and tradesmen who form in Moscow the commencement of an intermediate class; a class for which the French Revolution was especially brought about.All the preparations were made in silence, without the knowledge either of the people, the proprietors of all classes, or perhaps of their emperor. The nation was ignorant that it was sacrificing itself. This is so strictly true, that, when the moment for execution arrived, we heard the inhabitants who had fled to the churches execrating this destruction. Those who beheld it from a distance, the most opulent of the nobles, deceived like their peasants, charged us with it: and, in short, those by whom it was ordered threw the odium of it upon us, having engaged in the work of destruction in order to render us objects of detestation, and caring but little about the maledictions of so many unfortunate creatures, provided they could throw upon us the weight of them.

The silence of Alexander leaves room to doubt whether he approved this dreadful determination or not. What part he took in the catastrophe is still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the subject, or they make a secret of the matter: the effect of despotism, which enjoins ignorance or silence.

Some think that no individual in the empire, excepting the sovereign, would have dared to take on himself so heavy a responsibility. His subsequent conduct disavowed without disproving it. Others are of opinion that this was one of the causes of his absence from the army, and that, not wishing to appear either to order or to forbid it, he would not stay to be a witness of the catastrophe.

As to the general abandonment of the houses all the way from Smolensk, it was compulsory, the Russian army defending them till they were carried sword in hand, and describing us everywhere as destructive monsters. The country suffered but little from this emigration. The peasants residing near the high-road escaped through byways to other villages belonging to their lords, where they found accommodation.

The forsaking of their huts, made of trunks of trees laid one upon another, which a hatchet suffices for building, and of which a bench, a table, and an image constitute the whole furniture, was scarcely any sacrifice for serfs who had nothing of their own, whose persons did not even belong to themselves, and whose masters were obliged to provide for them, since they were their property and the source of all their income.

These peasants, moreover, in removing their carts, their implements, and their cattle, carried everything with them, most of them being able with their own hands to supply themselves with habitation, clothing, and all other necessaries: for these people are still in but the first stage of civilization, and far from that division of labor which denotes the extension and high improvement of commerce and of society.

But in the towns, and especially in the great capital, how could they be expected to quit so many establishments, to resign so many conveniences and enjoyments, so much wealth, movable and immovable? and yet it cost little or no more to obtain the total abandonment of Moscow than that of the meanest village. There, as at Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, the principal nobles hesitated not to retire on our approach; for, with them, to remain would seem to be the same as to betray. But here, tradesmen, artisans, day-laborers, all thought it their duty to flee as well as the most powerful of the grandees. There was no occasion to command: these people have not yet ideas sufficient to judge for themselves, to distinguish and to weigh differences; the example of the nobles was sufficient. The few foreigners remaining at Moscow might have enlightened them; some of these were exiled, and terror hindered the rest.

It was, besides, an easy task to excite apprehensions of profanation, pillage, and devastation in the minds of people so cut off from other nations, and in the inhabitants of a city which had been so often plundered and burned by the Tartars. With these examples before their eyes, they could not await an impious and ferocious enemy but for the purpose of fighting him: the rest must necessarily shun his approach with horror, if they would save themselves in this life or in the next. Thus obedience, honor, religion, fear, everything, in short, enjoined them to flee, with all that they could carry with them.

A fortnight before our arrival, the departure of the records, the public chests and treasure, and that of the nobles and of the principal merchants, together with their most valuable effects, indicated to the rest of the inhabitants what course they should pursue. The governor, already impatient to see Moscow evacuated, appointed superintendents to expedite the emigration.

On the 3d of September, a French woman, living in the city, ventured to leave her hiding-place, at the risk of being torn in pieces by the furious Muscovites. She wandered a long time through extensive quarters, the solitude of which astonished her, when a distant and doleful sound thrilled her with terror. It was like the funeral dirge of this vast city: fixed in motionless suspense, she beheld an immense multitude of persons, of both sexes, in deep affliction, carrying their effects and their sacred images, and leading their children along with them. Their priests, laden with the sacred symbols of religion, headed the procession. They were invoking Heaven in hymns of lamentation, in which all of them joined with tears.

On reaching the gates of the city, this crowd of unfortunate creatures passed through them with painful hesitation: turning their eyes once more towards Moscow, they seemed to be bidding a last farewell to their holy city; but, by degrees, their sobs and the doleful tones of their hymns died away in the vast plains by which it is surrounded.

§ 3. Departure of the Russian governor from Moscow.

Thus was this population dispersed in detail or in masses. The roads were covered to the distance of forty leagues by fugitives on foot, and several unbroken files of vehicles of every kind. At the same time, the measures of Rostopchin to prevent dejection and preserve order detained many of these unfortunate people till the very last moment.

To this must be added the appointment of Kutusoff, which had revived their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and, for those of moderate means, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning the only home which they possessed. Lastly, the inadequacy of the means of transport, either because at this time heavy requisitions for the exigencies of the army had reduced the number of vehicles, or because they were too small, as it is customary to make the carriages in this country very light, on account of the sandy soil, and of the roads, which may be said to be rather marked out than constructed.

Kutusoff, although defeated at Borodino, had sent letters to all quarters announcing that he was victorious. He deceived Moscow, St. Petersburg, and even the commanders of the other Russian armies. Alexander communicated this false intelligence to his allies. In the first transports of his joy he hastened to the altars, loaded the army and the family of his general with honors and money, gave directions for rejoicings, returned thanks to Heaven, and appointed Kutusoff a field-marshal of the empire.

Most of the Russians affirm that their emperor was grossly imposed upon by this report. They are still unacquainted with the motives of such a deception, which at first procured Kutusoff unbounded favors, that were not withdrawn from him, and afterward, it is said, dreadful menaces, that were not put in execution.

If we may credit several of his countrymen, who were perhaps his enemies, it would appear that he had two motives. In the first place, he wished not to shake by disastrous intelligence the little firmness which, in Russia, Alexander was generally, though erroneously, thought to possess. In the second, as his despatch would probably arrive on the very birthday of his sovereign, it is added that his object was to obtain from him the rewards for which this kind of anniversaries affords occasion.

But at Moscow the delusive impression was of short continuance. The rumor of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately propagated in that city, from the singular commotion produced by extraordinary events, which is known frequently to spread almost instantaneously to prodigious distances. Still, however, the language of the chiefs, the only persons who dared to speak, continued haughty and threatening: many of the inhabitants, trusting to it, remained; but they were every day more and more tormented by a painful anxiety. At nearly one and the same moment, they were transported with rage, elevated by hope, and overwhelmed with fear.

During one of these periods of dejection and dismay, while, prostrate before the altars, or in their own houses before the images of their saints, they had abandoned all hope but in Heaven, shouts of joy were suddenly heard: the people instantly thronged the streets and the public places to learn the cause. Intoxicated with delight, their eyes were fixed on the cross of the principal church. A vulture had entangled himself in the chains which supported it, and was held suspended by them. This was a certain presage to minds whose natural superstition was heightened by extraordinary anxiety: it was thus that their God would seize and deliver Napoleon into their power.

Rostopchin took advantage of all these movements, which he excited or checked according as they were favorable to him or otherwise. He caused the most diminutive to be selected from the prisoners taken from the French, and exhibited them to the people, that the latter might derive courage from the sight of their weakness; and yet he emptied Moscow of every kind of supplies, in order to feed the vanquished and to famish the conquerors. This measure was easily carried into effect, as Moscow was provisioned in spring and autumn by water only, and in winter by sledges.

He was still attempting to preserve, with a remnant of hope, the order that was necessary, especially in such a flight, when the effects of the disaster at Borodino were fully manifested. The long train of wounded, their groans, their garments and linen dyed with blood; their most powerful nobles struck and overthrown like the rest: all this was a novel and alarming sight to a city which had for such a length of time been exempt from the horrors of war. The police redoubled their activity; but the terror which they excited could not long make head against a still greater terror.

Rostopchin once more addressed the people. He declared that "he would defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the courts were already closed, but that was of no consequence; that there was no occasion for tribunals to try the guilty": he added that "in two days he would give the signal." He recommended to the people to "arm themselves with hatchets, and especially with three-pronged forks, as the French were not heavier than a sheaf of wheat." As for the wounded, he said he should cause "masses to be said, and the water to be blessed, in order to their speedy recovery. The next day," he added, "he should repair to Kutusoff, to take final measures for exterminating the enemy."

The Russian army, in their position in front of Moscow, numbered ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were Cossacks,[139] sixty-five thousand veteran troops (the remnant of one hundred and twenty-one thousand engaged at the Moskwa),[140] and twenty thousand recruits, armed half with muskets and half with pikes.

The French army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong the day before the great battle, had lost about forty thousand men at Borodino, and still consisted of ninety thousand. Some regiments on the march, and the divisions of Laborde and Pino, had just joined it: so that, on its arrival before Moscow, it still amounted to nearly one hundred thousand men. Its march was retarded by six hundred and seven pieces of cannon, two thousand five hundred artillery carriages, and five thousand baggage-wagons: it had no more ammunition than would suffice for one engagement. Kutusoff perhaps calculated the disproportion between his effective force and ours. On this point, however, nothing but conjecture can be advanced, for he assigned purely military motives for his retreat.

Thus much is certain, that Kutusoff deceived Rostopchin to the very last moment. He even swore to him "by his gray hair that he would perish with him before Moscow," when all at once the governor was informed that, in a council of war held at night in the camp, it had been determined to abandon the capital without a battle.

Rostopchin was incensed at this intelligence, but his resolution remained unshaken. There was now no time to be lost; no farther pains were taken to conceal from Moscow the fate that was destined for it; indeed it was not worth while to dissemble for the sake of the few inhabitants who were left; and, besides, it was necessary to induce them to seek their safety in flight.

At night, therefore, emissaries went round, knocking at every door and announcing the conflagration. Fuses were introduced at every favorable aperture, especially into the shops covered with iron, in the tradesmen's quarter, and the fire-engines were carried off. The desolation had now attained its highest pitch, and each individual, according to his disposition, was either overwhelmed with despair or urged to a decision. Most of those who were left formed groups in the public places; they crowded together, questioned each other, and asked each other's advice; while many wandered about at random, some depressed by terror, others in a frightful state of exasperation. At length the army, their last hope, deserted them: the troops began to traverse the city, and in their retreat they hurried along with them the still considerable remnant of its population.

They departed by the Kolomna gate,[141] surrounded by a multitude of women, children, and aged persons, in the deepest affliction. The fields were covered with them. They fled in all directions, by every path, across the country, without provisions, and laden with such of their effects as, in their agitation, they had first laid their hands on. Some, for want of horses, had harnessed themselves to carts, and in this manner dragged along their infant children, a sick wife, or an infirm father; in short, whatever they held most dear. The woods afforded them shelter, and they subsisted on the charity of their countrymen.

On that day a terrific scene terminated this melancholy drama. This, the last day of Moscow, having arrived, Rostopchin collected together all whom he had been able to retain and arm. The prisons were thrown open. A squalid and disgusting crew tumultuously issued from them. These wretches rushed into the streets with ferocious joy. Two men, a Russian and a Frenchman, the one accused of treason, the other of political indiscretion, were selected from among this horde, and dragged before Rostopchin, who fiercely reproached the Russian with his crime. He was the son of a tradesman, and had been apprehended while exciting the people to insurrection. A circumstance which occasioned alarm was the discovery that he belonged to a sect of German religious and political fanatics. His audacity had never failed him in prison. It was imagined, for a moment, that the spirit of equality had penetrated into Russia. He did not, however, disclose any accomplices.

At this crisis his father arrived. It was expected that he would intercede for his son; but, on the contrary, he insisted on his death. The governor granted him a few moments, that he might once more speak to and bless him. "What, I! I bless a traitor!" exclaimed the enraged Russian, and, turning to his son, with a horrid voice and gesture he pronounced a curse upon him.

This was the signal for his execution. The poor wretch was struck down by an ill-directed blow of a sabre. He fell, but wounded only, and perhaps the arrival of the French might have saved him, had not the people perceived that he was yet alive. They forced the barrier, fell upon him, and tore him to pieces.

The Frenchman, during this scene, was petrified with terror. "As for thee," said Rostopchin, turning towards him, "being a Frenchman, thou canst not but wish for the arrival of the French army: be free, then, and go and tell thy countrymen that Russia had but one traitor, and that he has been punished." Then, addressing himself to the wretches who surrounded him, he called them sons of Russia, and exhorted them to make atonement for their crimes by serving their country. He was the last to quit the doomed city, and he then rejoined the Russian army.

From that moment the mighty Moscow belonged neither to the Russians nor to the French, but to that guilty horde whose fury was directed by a few officers and soldiers of the police. They were organized, and each had his post allotted to him, in order that pillage, fire, and devastation might commence everywhere at once.

§ 4. Napoleon's first view of Moscow; the French enter the city.

That very day (September the 14th), Napoleon, being at length satisfied that Kutusoff had not thrown himself on his right flank, rejoined his advanced guard. He mounted his horse a few leagues from Moscow. He marched slowly and cautiously, sending scouts before him to examine the woods and the ravines, and to ascend all the eminences to look out for the enemy's army. A battle was expected, and the ground favored the opinion: works also had been begun, but they had all been abandoned, and we experienced not the slightest resistance.

At length the last eminence only remained to be passed: it is contiguous to Moscow, which it commands. It is called The Hill of Salvation, because on its summit the inhabitants, at sight of their holy city, cross and prostrate themselves. Our scouts soon gained the top of this hill. It was two o'clock: the sun caused this great city to glisten with a thousand colors. Struck with astonishment at the sight, they paused, exclaiming, "Moscow! Moscow!" Every one quickened his pace; the troops hurried on in disorder; and the whole army, clapping their hands, repeated with transport, "Moscow! Moscow!" just as sailors shout "Land! land!" at the conclusion of a long and toilsome voyage.

At the sight of this gilded city, of this splendid capital, uniting Europe and Asia, of this magnificent emporium of the luxury and arts of the two fairest divisions of the globe, we stood still, in proud contemplation. What a glorious day had now arrived! It would furnish the grandest, the most brilliant recollection of our whole lives. We felt at this moment that all our actions would engage the attention of the astonished world, and that every movement we made, however trivial, would be recorded by history.

At that moment dangers and sufferings were all forgotten: was it possible to purchase too dearly the proud felicity of being able to say during the rest of life, "I belonged to the army of Moscow!"

Napoleon himself hastened up. He paused in transport: an exclamation of delight escaped his lips. Ever since the great battle, the discontented marshals had shunned him; but at the sight of captive Moscow, at the intelligence of the arrival of a flag of truce, struck with so important a result, and intoxicated with all the enthusiasm of glory, they forgot their grievances. They pressed around the emperor, paying homage to his good fortune, and already tempted to attribute to the foresight of his genius the little pains he had taken on the 7th to complete his victory.

But in Napoleon, first emotions were of short duration. He had too much to think of to indulge his sensations for any length of time. His first exclamation was, "There at last is that famous city!" and the second, "It was high time!"

His eyes fixed on this capital, already expressed nothing but impatience: in it he beheld in imagination the whole Russian empire. Its walls enclosed all his hopes, peace, the expenses of the war, immortal glory: his eager looks, therefore, intently watched all its outlets. When would its gates at length open? When should he see that deputation come forth, which would place its wealth, its population, its senate, and the principal of the Russian nobility at his disposal? Henceforth that enterprise in which he had so rashly engaged, brought to a successful termination by dint of boldness, would pass for the result of a deep combination; his imprudence for greatness: henceforth his victory at the Moskwa, incomplete as it was, would be deemed his greatest achievement. Thus all that might have turned to his ruin would begin to decide whether he was the greatest man in the world, or the most rash; in short, whether he had raised himself an altar or dug for himself a grave.

Anxiety, however, soon began to take possession of his mind. On his left and right he beheld Prince Eugene and Poniatowski approaching the hostile city; Murat, with his scouts, had already reached the entrance of the suburbs, and yet no deputation appeared: an officer sent by Miloradovitch[142] merely came to declare that his general would set fire to the city if his rear was not allowed time to evacuate it.

Napoleon granted every demand. The troops of the two armies were for a short time intermingled. Murat was recognized by the Cossacks, who, with the familiarity of the wandering tribes, and curious and ardent as the people of the south, thronged around him: then by their gestures and exclamations they extolled his valor and intoxicated him with their admiration. Murat took the watches of his officers, and distributed them among these barbarous warriors. One of them called him his chief.Murat was tempted to believe that among them he should find a new Mazeppa,[143] or that he himself might become one: he imagined that he had completely gained them over. This momentary armistice, under the actual circumstances, sustained the hopes of Napoleon, such need had he of self-delusion. He was amused in this way for two hours.

Meanwhile the day was declining, and Moscow continued dull, silent, and seemingly inanimate. The anxiety of the emperor increased, and the impatience of the soldiers could scarcely be repressed. Some officers ventured within the walls of the city. Moscow was deserted!

At this intelligence, which he angrily refused to credit, Napoleon ascended the Hill of Salvation, and approached the Moskwa and the Dorogomilow gate.[144] He paused once more, but in vain, at the entrance of that barrier. Murat pressed him to permit his soldiers to occupy the city. "Well!" he replied, "let them enter, then, since they wish it!" He recommended the strictest discipline: he still indulged hopes. "Perhaps these inhabitants," he said, "do not even know how to surrender, for here everything is new; they to us, and we to them."

Reports now began rapidly to succeed each other: they all agreed. Some Frenchmen, residents of Moscow, ventured to quit the hiding-places which for some days had concealed them from the fury of the populace, and confirmed the fatal tidings. The emperor called Daru.[145] "Moscow deserted!" he exclaimed: "what an improbable story! We must know the truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars."[146] He imagined that those men, stiff with pride or paralyzed by terror, remained motionless in their houses; and he, who had hitherto been always met by the submission of the vanquished, would encourage their confidence and anticipate their prayers.

How, indeed, was it possible for him to persuade himself that so many magnificent palaces, so many splendid temples, so many rich mercantile establishments, had been forsaken by their owners, like the paltry hamlets through which he had recently passed? Daru's mission, however, was fruitless. Not a Muscovite was to be seen; not a particle of smoke arose from a single chimney; not the slightest noise issued from this vast and populous city: its three hundred thousand inhabitants seemed to be struck dumb and motionless by enchantment: it was the silence of the desert!

But such was the incredulity of Napoleon that he was not yet convinced, and waited for further information. At length an officer, wishing to gratify him, or persuaded that whatever he willed must necessarily be accomplished, entered the city, seized five or six vagabonds, drove them before his horse to the emperor, and presented them to him as a deputation. From the first words they uttered, however, Napoleon detected the imposture, and perceived that they were only poor laborers.

It was not till then that he ceased to doubt the entire evacuation of Moscow, and gave up all the hopes that he had built upon it. He shrugged his shoulders, and with that contemptuous look with which he met everything that crossed his wishes, he exclaimed, "Ah! the Russians do not know yet the effect which the taking of their capital will produce upon them!"

It was now an hour since Murat and the long and close column of his cavalry had entered Moscow: they penetrated to the centre of that gigantic body, as yet untouched, but inanimate. Struck with profound astonishment at finding a solitude so complete, they replied to the stillness of this modern Thebes by a silence equally solemn. These warriors listened, with a secret shuddering, to the sound of their horses' steps among these deserted palaces. They were amazed to hear nothing but the noise they themselves made amid such numerous habitations. No one thought of stopping or of plundering, either from prudence, or because highly civilized nations respect themselves in enemies' capitals.

Meanwhile they were silently observing this mighty city, which would have been truly remarkable had they met with it in a flourishing and populous country, but which was here in these deserts still more astonishing. It was like a rich and beautiful oasis. They had at first been struck by the sudden view of so many magnificent palaces, but they now perceived that they were intermingled with mean cottages: a circumstance which indicated the want of gradation among the classes, and that luxury had not been generated there, as in other countries, by industry, but had preceded it; whereas, in the natural order, it ought to be more or less its proper consequence.

Amid these reflections, which were favored by the slowness of our march, the report of firearms was all at once heard: the column halted. Its last horses were still crossing the fields; its centre was in one of the longest streets of the city; its head had reached the Kremlin. The gates of that citadel appeared to be closed; ferocious cries issued from within it; men and women, of savage and disgusting aspect, appeared fully armed upon its walls. In a state of drunken fury, they uttered the most horrible imprecations. Murat sent them amicable proposals, but to no purpose. It was found necessary to employ cannon to break open the gate.

We penetrated, partly without opposition, partly by force, among these wretches. One of them rushed close to Murat and endeavored to kill one of his officers. It was thought sufficient to disarm him; but he again fell upon his victim, threw him to the ground, and attempted to suffocate him; and even after his arms were seized and held, he strove to tear him with his teeth. These were the only Muscovites who had waited our coming! and who seemed to have been left behind as a savage and frightful emblem of the national hatred.

It was easy to perceive, however, that there was no unison in this patriotic fury. Five hundred recruits, who had been forgotten in the Kremlin, took no part in this scene: at the first summons they dispersed; and farther on we overtook a convoy of provisions, the escort of which immediately threw down its arms. Several thousand stragglers and deserters from the enemy voluntarily remained in the power of our advance guard. The latter left to the corps which followed the task of picking them up; these, again, to others, and so on; and thus they remained at liberty in the midst of us, till the conflagration and pillage of the city reminding them of their duty, and rallying in them one general feeling of antipathy, they went and rejoined Kutusoff.Murat, who had been stopped but a few moments by the Kremlin, dispersed this despicable crew. Ardent and indefatigable as in Italy and Egypt, after a march of twenty-seven hundred miles, and sixty battles fought to reach Moscow, he traversed that proud city without deigning to halt in it, and pursuing the Russian rear guard, he boldly and without hesitation took the road for Vladimir and Asia.

Several thousand Cossacks, with four pieces of cannon, were retreating in that direction: the armistice was at an end; and Murat, tired of this peace of half a day, immediately ordered it to be broken by a discharge of carbines. But our cavalry considered the war as finished; Moscow appeared to them to be the goal of it; and the advanced posts of the two empires seemed unwilling to renew hostilities. A fresh order arrived, but the same hesitation prevailed. At length Murat, incensed at this disobedience, gave his commands in person; and the firing, with which he seemed to threaten Asia, but which was not destined to cease till we had retreated to the banks of the Seine, was renewed.

§ 5. Napoleon takes up his quarters in the Kremlin; the city discovered to be on fire.

Napoleon did not enter Moscow till after dark. He stopped in one of the first houses of the Dorogomilow suburb. There he appointed Marshal Mortier governor of that capital. "Above all," he said to him, "no pillage. For this you shall be answerable to me with your life. Defend Moscow against all, whether friend or foe."

That was a gloomy night: sinister reports rapidly followed each other. Some Frenchmen, resident in the country, and even a Russian officer of police, came to give intelligence respecting the conflagration. He related all the particulars of the preparations that had been made for it. The emperor, alarmed by these accounts, strove in vain to compose himself to rest. He called every moment, and fatal tidings were repeated to him. Still he persisted in his incredulity till about two in the morning, when news was brought to him that the fire had actually broken out.

It was at the Exchange, in the centre of the city, in its richest quarter. Instantly he issued orders upon orders. As soon as it was light, he himself hastened to the spot and threatened the Young Guard and Mortier. The marshal pointed out to him some houses covered with iron; they were closely shut up, still untouched and uninjured without, and yet a black smoke was already issuing from them. Napoleon dejectedly entered the Kremlin.

At the sight of this half-Gothic, half-modern palace of the Ruricks and the Romanoffs, of their throne still standing, of the cross of the great Ivan, and of the finest part of the city, which is overlooked by the Kremlin, and which the flames, as yet confined to the bazaar, seemed disposed to spare, his former hopes revived. His ambition was flattered by this great conquest. "At length, then," he exclaimed, "I am in Moscow, in the ancient palace of the Czars, in the Kremlin!" He examined every part of it with pride, curiosity, and gratification.

He required a statement of the resources of the city; and, in this brief moment given to hope, sent proposals of peace to the Emperor Alexander. A superior officer of the enemy had just been found in the great hospital: he was charged with the delivery of this letter. It was by the baleful light of the flames of the bazaar that Napoleon finished it, and the Russian departed. He was to be the bearer of the news of the disaster to his sovereign, whose only answer was the conflagration of his capital.

Daylight favored the efforts of the Duke of Treviso to subdue the flames. The incendiaries kept themselves concealed. Doubts even were entertained of their existence. At length, strict injunctions being issued, order restored, and alarm for a moment suspended, each took possession of a commodious house or sumptuous palace, under the idea of finding comforts that had been dearly purchased by long and excessive privations.

Two officers had taken up their quarters in one of the buildings of the Kremlin. The view from thence embraced the north and west of the city. About midnight they were awakened by an extraordinary light. They looked out and beheld palaces filled with flames, which at first merely illuminated, but ere long totally consumed these superb and noble structures. They observed that the north wind drove these flames directly towards the Kremlin, and they became alarmed for the safety of that fortress, in which the flower of their army and its commander reposed. They were apprehensive also for the surrounding houses, where our soldiers, attendants, and horses, weary and exhausted, were doubtless buried in profound sleep. Sparks and burning fragments were already flying over the roofs of the Kremlin, when the wind, shifting from north to west, blew them in another direction.

One of these officers, relieved from apprehension respecting his own corps, then composed himself again to sleep, exclaiming, "Let others look to it; 'tis no affair of ours"; for such was the unconcern produced by the multiplicity of events and misfortunes, such the selfishness arising from excessive suffering and fatigue, that they left to each only just strength and feeling sufficient for his personal service and preservation.

But it was not long before fresh and more vivid lights again awoke them. They beheld other flames rising in the direction which the wind had again taken towards the Kremlin, and they cursed French imprudence and want of discipline, to which they imputed this disaster. Three times did the wind thus change from west to north, and three times did these hostile fires, as if obstinately bent on the destruction of the imperial quarters, appear eager to follow its course.

At this sight a strong suspicion seized their minds. Could the Muscovites, aware of our rash and thoughtless negligence, have conceived the hope of burning, with Moscow, our soldiers, heavy with wine, fatigue, and sleep; or, rather, had they dared to imagine that they should involve Napoleon in this catastrophe, believing that the loss of such a man would be a full equivalent for that of their capital; that it was a result of sufficient importance to justify the sacrifice of all Moscow to obtain it; that Heaven, perhaps, in order to grant them so signal a triumph, had decreed so great a sacrifice?

Whether this was actually their plan we cannot tell; but nothing less than the emperor's good fortune was required to prevent its being realized. In fact, not only did the Kremlin contain, unknown to us, a magazine of powder, but that very night, the guards, asleep and carelessly posted, suffered a whole park of artillery to enter and draw up under the windows of Napoleon.

It was at this moment that the flames were driven from all quarters, with the greatest violence, towards the Kremlin; for the wind, drawn towards this vast conflagration, increased every moment in strength. The flower of the army and the emperor himself would have been destroyed, if but one of the brands that flew over our heads had alighted on one of the powder-wagons. Thus upon a single spark out of the multitudes that were for several hours floating in the air, depended the fate of the whole army.

At length the day, a dismal day it was, appeared; it came only to add to the horrors of the scene, and to take from it all its brilliancy. Many of the officers sought refuge in the halls of the palace. The chiefs, and Mortier himself, who had been contending for thirty-six hours against the fire, there dropped down from fatigue, and in despair.

They said nothing, and we accused ourselves. Most of us supposed that want of discipline on the part of our troops and drunkenness had begun the disaster, and that the high wind had completed it. We viewed ourselves with feelings of disgust. The cry of horror which all Europe would not fail to set up, terrified us. Filled with consternation at so tremendous a catastrophe, we accosted each other with downcast looks. We were roused only by our eagerness to obtain intelligence; and every account now began to accuse the Russians alone of the disaster.

In fact, officers arrived from all quarters, and they all agreed on this point. The very first night, that of the 14th, a fire-balloon had settled on the palace of Prince Trubetskoi, and consumed it: this had been the signal. Fire was now immediately set to the Exchange; and Russian police soldiers had been seen stirring it up with tarred lances. In some places, shells, perfidiously placed in the stoves of the houses, had exploded and wounded the military who crowded around them. Retiring to other quarters still standing, they sought there for fresh retreats; but when on the point of entering houses that were closely shut up and uninhabited, they had heard faint explosions within; these were succeeded by a light smoke, which immediately became thick and black, then reddish, lastly fire was seen, and presently the whole edifice was involved in flames.

All had seen hideous-looking men, covered with rags, and women resembling furies, wandering among these flames. These wretches, intoxicated with wine and with the success of their crimes, no longer took any pains to conceal themselves: they proceeded in triumph through the blazing streets; they were caught, armed with torches, striving to spread the conflagration; and it was necessary to strike down their hands with sabres to oblige them to loose their hold. It was said that these banditti had been let loose from the prisons by the Russian generals for the express purpose of burning the city; and that, in fact, a resolution so extreme could only have been conceived by patriotism, and executed by guilt.

Orders were immediately issued to shoot all the incendiaries on the spot. The army was on foot. The Old Guard, which exclusively occupied one part of the Kremlin, was under arms: the baggage, and the horses ready loaded, filled the courts; we were struck dumb with astonishment, surprise, and disappointment at witnessing the destruction of such admirable quarters. Though masters of Moscow, we were forced to go and bivouac,[147] without provisions, outside its gates.While our troops were yet struggling with the conflagration, and disputing their prey with the flames, Napoleon, whose sleep none had dared to disturb during the night, was awakened by the twofold light of day and of the burning city. His first feeling was that of irritation, and he would have stayed the devouring element by the breath of his command; but he soon paused, and yielded to impossibility. Surprised that when he had struck at the heart of an empire he should find there any other sentiment than that of abject submission, he felt himself vanquished, and surpassed in heroic determination.

This conquest, for which he had sacrificed everything, was like a phantom which he had eagerly pursued, and, at the moment when he imagined he had grasped it, he saw it vanish from him in a mingled mass of smoke and flame. He was then seized with extreme agitation: he seemed, as it were, consumed by the fires which were around him. He rose every moment from his seat, paced to and fro, and again sat abruptly down. He traversed his apartments with hurried steps: his sudden and vehement gestures betrayed a painful uneasiness; he quitted, resumed, and again as suddenly abandoned an urgent occupation, to hasten to the windows and watch the progress of the flames. Short and incoherent exclamations burst from his laboring bosom! "What a tremendous spectacle! It is their own work! So many palaces! What extraordinary resolution! What men! These are indeed Scythians!"[148]

Between the fire and his quarters there was an extensive vacant space, then the Moskwa and its two quays; and yet the panes of the windows against which he leaned felt already burning to the touch, and the constant exertions of sweepers, placed on the iron roofs of the palace, were not sufficient to keep them clear of the numerous flakes of fire which were continually lighting upon them.

At this moment a rumor was spread that the Kremlin had been mined; and the fact, it was said, was confirmed later by the declarations of the Russians, and by written documents. Some of his attendants were beside themselves with fear, while the military awaited unmoved what the orders of the emperor and fate should decree; but he replied to their alarm only with a smile of incredulity.

Still, he continued to walk about in the utmost agitation: he stopped at every window, to gaze on the terrible, the victorious element that was furiously consuming his brilliant conquest; seizing on all the bridges, on all the avenues to his fortress, enclosing, and, as it were, besieging him in it; spreading every moment wider and wider; constantly reducing him within narrower limits, and confining him at length to the site of the Kremlin alone.

We breathed already nothing but smoke and ashes: night approached, and was about to add darkness to our other dangers; while the equinoctial gales, as if in alliance with the Russians, increased in violence. Then Murat and Prince Eugene hastened to the emperor's quarters: in company with the Prince of NeufchÂtel they made their way to him, and urged him by their entreaties, and on their knees, to remove from this scene of desolation. All was in vain.

Master, after so many sacrifices, of the palace of the Czars, he was bent on not yielding that conquest even to the conflagration, when all at once the shout of "the Kremlin is on fire!" passed from mouth to mouth, and roused us from the contemplative stupor into which we had been plunged. The emperor went out to ascertain the danger. Twice had the fire communicated to the building in which he was and twice had it been extinguished; but the tower of the arsenal was still burning. A soldier of the police had been found in it. He was brought in, and Napoleon caused him to be interrogated in his presence. This man was the incendiary; he had executed his commission at the signal given by his chief. It was now evident that everything was devoted to destruction, the ancient and sacred Kremlin not excepted.

The gestures of the emperor bespoke disdain and vexation: the wretch was hurried into the first court, and there the enraged soldiers despatched him with their bayonets.

§ 6. The fire compels Napoleon to leave the city.

This occurrence decided Napoleon. He hastily descended the northern staircase, famous for the massacre of the Strelitzes,[149] and requested to be conducted out of the city, to the distance of a league on the road to St. Petersburg, towards the imperial palace of Petrowski.

But we were besieged by an ocean of fire, which blocked up all the gates of the citadel, and frustrated our first attempts to escape. After some search, we discovered a postern-gate[150] leading between the rocks to the Moskwa. It was by this narrow pass that Napoleon, his officers and guard, made their way from the Kremlin. But what had they gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the fire, and could neither retreat nor remain where they were; and how were they to advance? how force a passage through the billows of this sea of flame? Those who had traversed the city, stunned by the tempest and blinded by the ashes, could no longer find their way, since the streets themselves were not distinguishable amid smoke and ruins.

There was no time to be lost. The roaring of the flames around us became every moment more terrific. A single narrow winding street, completely enveloped in fire on either side, appeared rather the entrance than the outlet of this hell. The emperor, however, on foot, and without hesitation, rushed into this frightful passage. He advanced amid the crackling of the flames, the crash of floors, and the fall of burning timbers, and of fragments of red-hot iron roofs which tumbled around him. These ruins impeded his progress. The flames, while with impetuous roar they consumed the edifices between which we were proceeding, spreading beyond the walls, were blown out by the wind, and formed an arch over our heads. We walked on a ground of fire, beneath a fiery canopy and between two walls of fire. The intense heat burned our eyes, which we were nevertheless obliged to keep open and fixed on the danger. A consuming atmosphere parched our throats, and rendered our respiration short and difficult; and we were already almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned, either in endeavoring to protect our faces from the insupportable heat, or in brushing off the sparks which every moment fell upon our garments. In this inexpressible distress, and when a rapid advance seemed to be our only means of safety, our guide stopped in uncertainty and agitation. Here probably would have terminated our adventurous career, had not some pillagers of the first corps recognized the emperor amid the whirling flames: they ran up and guided him towards the smoking ruins of a quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the morning.

It was there that we met the Prince of EckmÜhl. This marshal, who had been wounded at the Moskwa, had desired to be carried back among the flames to rescue Napoleon, or to perish with him. He threw himself into his arms with transport; the emperor received him kindly, but with that composure which in danger he never lost for a moment.

To escape from this vast region of desolation, it was farther necessary to pass a long convoy of powder which was defiling amid the fire. This was not the least of his dangers, but it was the last, and by nightfall he arrived at Petrowski.

The next morning, the 17th of September, Napoleon cast his first look towards Moscow, hoping to see that the conflagration had subsided. But he beheld it again raging with the utmost violence: the city appeared like one vast column of fire, rising in whirling eddies to the sky, which it deeply colored. Absorbed by this melancholy contemplation, he maintained a long and gloomy silence, which he broke only by the exclamation, "This forebodes to us great misfortunes!"

The effort which he had made to reach Moscow had expended all his means of warfare. Moscow had been the limit of his projects, the aim of all his hopes, and Moscow was no more! What was now to be done? Here this decisive genius was forced to hesitate. He who in 1805 had ordered the sudden and total abandonment of the expedition prepared at an immense expense, for the invasion of England; and determined at Boulogne on the surprise and annihilation of the Austrian army, in short, on all the operations of the campaign between Ulm and Munich exactly as they were executed; this same man, who in the following year dictated at Paris with like infallibility all the movements of his army as far as Berlin, the day of his entrance into that capital, and the appointment of the governor whom he destined for it; he it was who, astonished in his turn, was now in perplexity what course to pursue. Never had he communicated his most daring projects to the most confidential of his ministers but in order for their execution; he was now, however, constrained to consult and put to the proof those who were around him.

But, in doing this, he still preserved the same show of confidence and of determination. He declared that he would march for St. Petersburg. This conquest was already marked out on his maps, hitherto so prophetic: orders were even issued to the different corps to hold themselves in readiness. But this was all only a feint: it was but a better face that he strove to assume, or an expedient for diverting his grief at the loss of Moscow; so that Berthier, and more especially BessiÈres, soon convinced him that he had neither time, provisions, roads, nor a single requisite for so distant an expedition.

At this moment he was apprised that Kutusoff, after having fled towards the east, had suddenly turned to the south, and thrown himself between Moscow and Kaluga. This was an additional circumstance against the expedition to St. Petersburg. There was a threefold reason for marching upon the beaten army, and endeavoring to extinguish it: to secure his right flank and his line of operation; to possess himself of Kaluga and of Tula, the one the granary, the other the arsenal of Russia; and, lastly, to open safe, short, new, and untouched retreat to Smolensk and Lithuania.[151]

Some one proposed to return upon Wittgenstein and Witepsk.[152] Napoleon, however, remained undecided between these different plans. That for the conquest of St. Petersburg alone flattered him: the others appeared but as ways of retreat, as acknowledgments of error; and whether from pride, or policy which would not admit itself to be in the wrong, he rejected them.

Besides, where was he to halt in case of a retreat? He had so fully calculated on concluding a peace at Moscow, that he had no winter-quarters provided in Lithuania. Kaluga had no temptations for him. Wherefore lay waste fresh provinces? It would be wiser only to threaten them, and thus leave the Russians something to lose, in order to induce them to conclude a peace by which they might be preserved. Would it be possible to march to another battle, to fresh conquests, without exposing a line of operation covered with sick, stragglers, wounded, and convoys of all sorts? Moscow was the general rallying point: how could it be changed? What other name would have any attraction?

Lastly, and above all, how could he relinquish a hope to which he had made so many sacrifices, when he knew that his letter to Alexander had just passed the Russian advanced posts; when eight days would be sufficient for receiving an answer, so ardently desired; when he required that time to rally and reorganize his army, to collect the relics of Moscow, the conflagration of which had but too strongly sanctioned pillage, and to draw his soldiers away from that vast infirmary.

Meanwhile, scarcely a third of that army and of that capital now existed. But himself and the Kremlin were still standing: his renown was still entire, and he persuaded himself that those two great names, Napoleon and Moscow, combined, would be sufficient to accomplish everything. He determined, therefore, to return to the Kremlin, which a battalion of his guard had unfortunately preserved.

§ 7. Napoleon returns to the Kremlin; plunder of the city.

The camps which he traversed on his way thither presented an extraordinary sight. In the fields, in the midst of the mud, were large fires, kept up with mahogany furniture, windows and gilded doors. Around these fires, on litters of damp straw, imperfectly sheltered by a few boards, were seen the soldiers and their officers, splashed all over with mud, and blackened with smoke, seated in arm-chairs or reclining on silken couches. At their feet were spread, or heaped together, Cashmere shawls, the rarest furs of Siberia, the gold stuffs of Persia, and silver dishes, off which they had nothing to eat but black dough baked in the ashes, and half broiled and bloody horseflesh. Strange combination of abundance and want, of riches and filth, of luxury and wretchedness!

Between the camp and the city were met troops of soldiers dragging along their booty, or driving before them, like beasts of burden, Muscovites bending under the weight of the pillage of their capital: for the fire brought to light nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, previously concealed in that immense city. Some of these, of both sexes, were well dressed: they were tradespeople. They came with the wreck of their property, to seek refuge at our fires. They lived pell-mell with our soldiers, protected by some, and tolerated, or, rather, scarcely remarked by others.

About ten thousand of the enemy's troops were in the same predicament. For several days they wandered about among us, free, and some of them even still armed. Our soldiers met these vanquished Russians without the slightest animosity, and without thinking of making them prisoners; either that they considered the war at an end, or from thoughtlessness or pity, or because, when not in battle, the French delight in having no enemies. They suffered them to share their fires; nay, more, they allowed them to pillage in their company. But when some degree of order was restored, or, rather, when the officers had organized this marauding as a regular system of forage, the great number of these Russian stragglers attracted notice, and orders were given to secure them; but seven or eight thousand had already escaped. It was not long before we had to fight them.

On entering the city the emperor was struck by a sight still more extraordinary: a few houses scattered here and there among the ruins were all that was left of the mighty Moscow. The smell issuing from this vast city, overthrown, burned, and calcined, was horrible. Heaps of ashes, and, at intervals, fragments of walls or half-demolished pillars, were now the only vestiges that marked the sites of streets.In the suburbs were found a few Russians of both sexes, covered with garments scorched and blackened by the fire. They flitted like spectres among the ruins; some of them were scratching up the earth in gardens in quest of vegetables, while others were disputing with the crows for the relics of the dead animals which their army had left behind. Farther on, others again were seen plunging into the Moskwa to bring out some of the grain which had been thrown into it by command of Rostopchin, and which they devoured without preparation, soured and spoiled as it was.

Meanwhile the sight of the booty in the camps, where everything was yet wanting, inflamed the soldiers, whom a sense of duty or stricter officers had hitherto kept with their colors. They murmured. "Why were they to be kept back? Why were they to perish by famine and want, when everything was within their reach? Was it right to allow the enemy's fires to destroy what might be saved? Why was such respect to be paid to the conflagration?" They added, that "as the inhabitants of Moscow had not only abandoned, but even endeavored utterly to destroy it, all that they could save would be fairly gained; that the remains of that city, like the arms of the conquered, belonged by right to the victors, as the Muscovites had turned their capital into a vast machine of war for the purpose of annihilating us."

The best principled, and the best disciplined were those who argued thus, and it was impossible to reply satisfactorily to them. Exaggerated scruples, however, at first preventing the issuing of orders for pillage, it was permitted, unrestrained by regulations. Then it was, urged by the most imperious wants, that all hurried to share the spoil, soldiers of the highest class, and even officers. Their chiefs were obliged to shut their eyes: only such guards as were absolutely indispensable remained with the colors and the piled arms.

The emperor saw his whole army dispersed over the city. His progress was obstructed by long files of marauders going in quest of booty or returning with it; by tumultuous assemblages of soldiers grouped around the entrances of cellars, or the doors of palaces, shops, and churches, which the fire had nearly reached, and which they were endeavoring to break into.

His steps were impeded by the fragments of furniture of every kind which had been thrown out of the windows to save them from the flames, or by rich pillage which had been abandoned from caprice for other booty, for such is the way with soldiers; they are incessantly beginning their fortunes afresh, taking everything indiscriminately, loading themselves beyond measure, as if they could carry all that they find; then, after they have gone a few steps, compelled by fatigue to throw away successively the greatest part of their burden.

The roads were obstructed by these accumulations; and the open places, like the camp, were turned into markets, whither every one repaired to exchange superfluities for necessaries. There the rarest articles, the value of which was not known to their possessors, were sold for the merest pittance; while others of little worth, but more showy appearance, were purchased at the most exorbitant prices. Gold, from being most portable, was bought at an immense loss with silver that the knapsacks were incapable of holding. Everywhere soldiers were seen seated on bales of merchandise, on heaps of sugar and coffee, amid wines and the most exquisite liquors, all of which they were offering in exchange for a morsel of bread. Many, in a state of intoxication aggravated by hunger, had fallen near the flames, which, reaching them, put a miserable end to their lives.

The houses and palaces which had escaped the fire served as quarters for the officers, who respected whatever was found in them. They beheld with pain this vast destruction, and the pillage which was its necessary consequence. Some of our best men were reproached with being too greedy in collecting whatever they could rescue from the flames; but their number was so small that they were all mentioned by name. In these ardent men war was a passion which presupposed the existence of many others. It was not covetousness, for they did not hoard; they spent lavishly what they had thus picked up, taking in order to give, believing that one hand washed the other, and that they paid for everything with the danger they encountered in acquiring it.

It was amid this confusion that Napoleon again entered Moscow. He had allowed the pillage, hoping that his army, scattered over the ruins, would find much that was valuable; but when he learned that the disorder increased; that the Old Guard[153] itself had yielded to the temptation; that the Russian peasants, who were at length allured thither with provisions, for which he caused them to be liberally paid, that they might induce others to come, were robbed of what they brought to us by our famished soldiers; when he was informed that the different corps, destitute of everything, were ready to fight each other for the relics of Moscow; that, finally, all our existing resources were wasted by this lawless freebooting, he then issued severe orders, and forbade his guard to leave their quarters. The churches in which our cavalry had sheltered themselves, were evacuated, and restored to their religious uses.[154] The business of plunder was ordered to be taken in turn by the different corps, like any other duty, and directions were at length given for securing the Russian stragglers.

But it was too late. These soldiers had fled; the affrighted peasants returned no more; and great quantities of provisions were wasted. The French army have sometimes fallen into these faults, but on the present occasion the fire must plead their excuse; no time was to be lost in anticipating the flames. It is, however, a remarkable fact, that at the first command of the emperor perfect order was restored.

Most of our men behaved generously, considering the small number of inhabitants who remained, and the great number of enemies they met with. But if, in the first moments of pillage, some excesses were perpetrated, ought this to appear surprising in an army exasperated by such urgent wants, such severe sufferings, and composed of so many different nations?

Misfortunes having since overwhelmed these warriors, reproaches, as in such circumstances is ever the case, have been raised against them. Who can be ignorant that similar disorders have always been the bad side of great wars, or, so to speak, the inglorious part of glory; that the renown of conquerors casts its shadow like everything else in this world? Does there exist a creature however diminutive, on every side of which the sun can shine at once? It is a law of nature, therefore, that great bodies shall cast great shadows.

§ 8. Rostopchin sets fire to his country-seat; anxiety of Napoleon at not hearing from the Czar.

Meanwhile Kutusoff, on leaving Moscow, had drawn Murat towards Kolomna, the point where the Moskwa intersects the road. Here, under favor of the night, he suddenly turned to the south, proceeding by the way of Podol, to throw himself between Moscow and Kaluga. This night march of the Russians around Moscow, the ashes and flames of which were wafted to them by the violence of the wind, was gloomy in the extreme. They were lighted on their march by the baleful conflagration which was consuming the centre of their commerce, the sanctuary of their religion, the cradle of their empire! Filled with horror and indignation, they kept a sullen silence, which was unbroken save by the dull and monotonous sound of their footsteps, the roaring of the flames, and the howling of the blast. The dismal light was frequently varied by livid and sudden flashes. The brows of these warriors might then be seen contracted by intense and unutterable grief, and the fire of their sombre and threatening looks answered to these flames, which they regarded as our work; they already betrayed the ferocious revenge which was rankling in their hearts, which spread throughout the empire, and of which so many Frenchmen were the victims.At that solemn moment, Kutusoff, in a firm and impressive tone, addressed his sovereign, and informed him of the loss of his capital. He stated that, "in order to save the fertile provinces of the south, and to keep up his communications with Tormasoff and Tchitchakoff, he had been obliged to abandon Moscow, but emptied of its inhabitants, who were its life; and," said he, "as the people are the soul of every country, so where the Russian people are, there will be Moscow and the empire of Russia."

It is said that on receiving this intelligence Alexander was thunderstruck. Napoleon, it was known, built hopes on the weakness of his rival, and the Russians themselves dreaded the effects of that weakness. But the Czar disappointed as well these hopes as fears. In his addresses to his subjects he exhibited himself no less great than his misfortune: "No pusillanimous dejection!" he exclaimed; "let us vow redoubled courage and perseverance! The enemy is in deserted Moscow as in a tomb, without means of domination or even of existence. He entered Russia with three hundred thousand men of all countries, without union or any national or religious bond: he has already lost half of them by the sword, by famine, and by desertion: he has but the wreck of this army in Moscow: he is in the heart of Russia, and not a single Russian is at his feet.

"Meanwhile our forces are increasing and closing around him. He is in the midst of a mighty population, encompassed by armies which are waiting his movements and keeping him in check. To escape from famine, he will soon be obliged to direct his flight through the ranks of our brave soldiers. Shall we then recede, when all Europe is looking on and encouraging us? Let us, on the contrary, set it an example, and kiss the hand which has thus led us forth to be the first among the nations to vindicate the cause of independence and virtue." He concluded with an invocation to the Almighty.

This circuitous march of Kutusoff, whether made from indecision or as a stratagem, was much in his favor. Murat lost all traces of him for three days. The Russian general employed all this interval in studying the ground and in intrenching himself. His advanced guard had nearly reached Woronowo, one of the finest domains belonging to Count Rostopchin, when that nobleman proceeded on before it. The Russians supposed that he had gone to take a last look at this splendid mansion, when all at once it was wrapped from their sight by clouds of smoke.

They hurried on to extinguish the fire, but Rostopchin himself repelled their aid. They beheld him, amid the flames which he was encouraging, smiling at the demolition of this magnificent edifice, and then with a firm hand penning these words, which the French, shuddering with astonishment, afterwards read on the iron gate of a church which was left standing: "For eight years I have been embellishing this country-seat, where I have lived happily in the bosom of my family. The inhabitants of this estate, to the number of 1720, leave it on your approach, while I have set fire to my house, that it may not be polluted by your presence. Frenchmen, I have relinquished to you my two houses at Moscow, with their furniture, worth half a million of rubles. Here you will find nothing but ashes!"

It was near this place that Murat came up with Kutusoff. On the 29th of September there was a smart engagement of cavalry and another on the 4th of October. Murat fought till nightfall, and repulsed the Russian force.

Meanwhile, the conflagration at Moscow, which commenced in the night of the 14th of September, suspended through our exertions during the day of the 15th, revived the following night, and, raging with the utmost violence on the 16th, 17th, and 18th, abated on the 19th: it ceased altogether on the 20th, and on that day Napoleon returned to the Kremlin. To this point he attracted the looks of all Europe. There he awaited his convoys, his re-enforcements, and the stragglers of his army; certain that his soldiers would all be rallied by his victory, by the allurements of a rich booty, by the imposing sight of captive Moscow, and, above all, by his own glory, which, from the summit of this immense pile of ruins, still shone attractive like a beacon upon a rock.

Twice, however, on the 22d and 28th of September, letters from Murat had wellnigh drawn him from this fatal abode. They announced a battle; and twice the orders for departure were written, and then burned. It seemed as though the war was finished for the emperor, and that he was only waiting for an answer from St. Petersburg. He nourished his hopes with the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt.[155] Was it possible that at Moscow he should have less ascendancy over Alexander? Then, as is common with men who have long been the favorites of fortune, what he ardently wished he confidently expected.

His genius possessed, besides, the extraordinary faculty of being able to throw aside the most important occupation whenever he pleased, either for the sake of variety or for rest; for in him the power of will surpassed that of imagination. In this respect he reigned over himself no less despotically than he did over others.

Thus Paris diverted his attention from Petersburg. His accumulating affairs and the couriers, which in the first days succeeded each other without intermission, served to engage him. But the rapidity with which he transacted business soon left him again with nothing to do. His expresses,[156] which at first came from France in a fortnight, now ceased to arrive. A few military posts, placed in four towns reduced to ashes, and in wooden houses rudely palisaded, were wholly insufficient to guard a road of nearly two hundred and eighty miles; for we had been able to fix only these few steps, and at so great a distance apart, on so long a ladder. This too lengthened line of operation was consequently broken at every point where it was touched by the enemy: a few peasants, or a handful of Cossacks, were quite sufficient for the purpose.

Still no answer was received from Alexander. The uneasiness of Napoleon increased, while his means of diverting his attention from it diminished. The activity of his genius, accustomed to the government of all Europe, had nothing with which to occupy itself but the management of one hundred thousand men; and then, the organization of his army was so perfect, that this was scarcely any occupation to him. Here everything was fixed: he held all the wires in his hand: he was surrounded by ministers who could tell him immediately, at any hour of the day, the position of each man in the morning or at night, whether with his colors, in the hospital, on leave of absence, or wherever else he might be, and that, from Moscow to Paris: to such a degree of perfection had the science of a concentrated administration been then brought, so experienced and well chosen were the officers, and so much was required by their commander.

But eleven days had already elapsed: still Alexander was silent, and still did Napoleon hope to overcome his rival by obstinacy: thus losing the time which he ought to have gained, and which might have been made so serviceable against attack.

From this period all his actions indicated to the Russians, still more strongly than at Witepsk, that their mighty foe was resolved to fix himself in the heart of their empire. Moscow, though in ashes, received a governor and municipal officers: orders also were issued to provision it for the winter: and a theatre was formed amid its ruins. The first actors of Paris, it is said, were sent for. An Italian singer strove to reproduce in the Kremlin the evening entertainments of the Tuileries. By such means Napoleon expected to dupe a government which the habit of reigning over ignorance and error had rendered an adept in all these delusions.

He was himself sensible of the inadequacy of these means, and yet September was past, and October had begun. Alexander had not deigned to reply! it was an affront! he was exasperated. On the 3d of October, after a night of restlessness and irritation, he summoned his marshals. "Come in," said he, as soon as he perceived them; "hear the new plan which I have conceived: Prince Eugene, read it." They listened. "We must burn the remains of Moscow, and march by Twer to St. Petersburg, where we shall be joined by Macdonald. Murat and Davoust will form the rear guard." The emperor, all animation, fixed his sparkling eyes on his generals, whose rigid and silent countenances expressed nothing but astonishment.

Then exalting himself in order to rouse them, "What!" said he, "and are you not inflamed by this idea? Was there ever so great a military achievement? Henceforth this conquest is the only one that is worthy of us! With what glory shall we be covered, and what will the whole world say when it learns that in three months we have conquered the two great capitals of the North!"

But Davoust, as well as Daru, objected to him "the season, the want of supplies, a sterile desert, and artificial road, that from Twer to St. Petersburg runs for a hundred leagues through morasses, and which three hundred peasants might in a single day render impassable. Why keep proceeding north? Why go to meet, to provoke, and to defy the winter? it was already too near; and what was to become of the six thousand wounded still in Moscow? Were they then to be left to the mercy of Kutusoff? That general would not fail to follow close at our heels. We should have at once to attack and to defend, thus marching to a conquest as though we were in flight."

These officers have declared that they themselves then proposed various plans: a useless trouble with a prince whose genius outstripped all other imaginations, and whom their objections would not have stopped, had he been fully determined to march on St. Petersburg. But that idea was in him only a sally of anger, an inspiration of despair, on finding himself obliged in the face of Europe to give way, to relinquish his conquest and to fall back.

It was more especially a threat to frighten his officers as well as the enemy, and to bring about and to promote a negotiation which Caulaincourt was to open. That officer had made himself agreeable to Alexander; he was the only one of the grandees of Napoleon's court who had acquired any influence over his rival; but for some months past Napoleon had kept him at a distance, because he had not been able to induce him to approve of his expedition.

It was nevertheless to this very man that he was now obliged to have recourse, and to disclose his anxiety. He sent for him; but, when alone with him, he hesitated. Taking him by the arm, he walked to and fro for a long time in great agitation, his pride preventing him from breaking so painful a silence: at length he yielded, but in a threatening manner. Caulaincourt, who had formerly been minister to Russia, was to persuade the enemy to solicit peace of him, as if it were by his condescension that it was to be granted.

After a few words, which were scarcely articulate, he said that "he was about to march to St. Petersburg. He knew that the destruction of that city would give pain to General Caulaincourt. Russia would then rise against the Emperor Alexander; there would at once be a conspiracy against that monarch; he would be assassinated, which would be a most unfortunate circumstance. He esteemed that prince, and should regret him, both for his own sake and that of France. His disposition," he added, "was suited to our interests: no prince could replace him with so much advantage to us. He had thought, therefore, of sending General Caulaincourt to him, to prevent such a catastrophe."

General Caulaincourt, however, more obstinate than disposed to flattery, did not alter his tone. He maintained that "these overtures would be useless; that, unless the Russian territory was entirely evacuated, Alexander would listen to no proposals; that Russia was sensible of all her advantage at this season of the year; nay, more, that this step would be detrimental to himself, inasmuch as it would demonstrate the need which he had of peace, and betray all the embarrassment of our situation."

He added, "that the more particular he was in the selection of his negotiator, the more clearly would he show his anxiety; that, therefore, he (Caulaincourt) would be more likely to fail than any other, especially as he would go with the certainty of failing." The emperor abruptly terminated the conversation by these words: "Well, then, I will send Lauriston."

The latter asserts that he added fresh objections to the preceding, and that, being urged by the emperor, he recommended to him to begin his retreat that very day, by way of Kaluga. Napoleon, irritated at this, sharply replied, "that he liked simple plans, less circuitous routes, high roads, the road by which he had come, yet he would not retrace it but with peace." Then showing to him, as he had done to General Caulaincourt, the letter which he had written to Alexander, he ordered him to go and obtain of Kutusoff a safe conduct to St. Petersburg. The last words of the emperor to Lauriston were, "I want peace, I must have peace, I absolutely will have peace only save my honor."

The general set out, and reached the advanced posts of the Russians on the 5th of October. Hostilities were instantly suspended, and an interview granted, at which Wolkonsky, aid-de-camp to Alexander, and Beningsen were present, without Kutusoff. Wilson asserts that the Russian generals and officers, suspicious of their commander, and accusing him of weakness, had raised a cry of treason, and that the latter had not dared to leave his camp.

As Lauriston's instructions purported that he was to address himself to no one but Kutusoff, he peremptorily rejected any intermediate communication; and seizing, as he said, this occasion for breaking off a negotiation which he disapproved, he retired, in spite of all the solicitations of Wolkonsky, with the intention of returning to Moscow. Had he carried this into effect, no doubt Napoleon, exasperated, would have fallen upon Kutusoff, overthrown him and destroyed his army, as yet very incomplete, and forced him into a peace. In case of less decisive success, he would at least have been able to retire without loss upon his reinforcements.

Unfortunately, Beningsen desired an interview with Murat. Lauriston waited. The chief of the Russian staff, an abler negotiator than soldier, strove to charm this monarch of yesterday by demonstrations of respect; to seduce him by praises; to deceive him with smooth words, breathing nothing but a weariness of war and the hope of peace; and Murat, tired of battles, anxious respecting their result, and, as it is said, regretting his throne, now that he had no hope of a better, suffered himself to be charmed, seduced, and deceived.

It was soon demonstrated that the chief point in which they were all agreed was to deceive Murat and the emperor; and in this they succeeded. These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope, perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these appearances: eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an expansive joy. He therefore summoned all his generals, and triumphantly announced to them a speedy peace. "They had but to wait another fortnight. None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character. On the receipt of his letter St. Petersburg would be illuminated." But the armistice[157] proposed by Kutusoff was so unsatisfactory to him, that he ordered Murat to break it instantly; it nevertheless continued to be observed, the cause of which is not known.

This armistice was a very singular one. If either party wished to break it, three hours' notice was to be sufficient. It was confined to the fronts of the two camps, but did not extend to their flanks: such, at least, was the interpretation put upon it by the Russians. Thus, we could not bring up a convoy, or send out a foraging party, without fighting; so that the war continued everywhere excepting where it could be favorable to us.

As for the emperor, who was not so easily deceived, he had but a few moments of factitious joy. He soon complained "that an annoying warfare of partisans[158] hovered around him; that, notwithstanding all these pacific demonstrations, bodies of Cossacks were prowling on his flanks and in his rear. Had not one hundred and fifty dragoons of his Old Guard been surprised and routed by a number of these barbarians? And this two days after the armistice, on the road to Mojaisk, on his line of operation, that by which the army communicated with its magazines, its reinforcements, and he himself with Europe?"

Our soldiers, and especially our cavalry, were obliged every morning to go to a great distance in quest of provisions for the evening and for the next day; and as the environs of Moscow and Vinkowo became gradually more and more drained, they were daily compelled to extend their excursions. Both men and horses returned worn out with fatigue, that is to say, such of them as returned at all; for we had to fight for every bushel of rye and for every truss of forage. It was a series of incessant surprises and skirmishes, and of continual losses. The peasantry took part in it. They punished with death such of their number as the prospect of gain had allured to our camp with provisions. Others set fire to their own villages to drive our foragers out of them, and to give them up to the Cossacks, whom they had previously summoned, and who kept us there in a state of siege.

Thus the war was everywhere: in our front, on our flanks, and in our rear. Our army was constantly weakening, and the enemy becoming daily more enterprising. This conquest seemed destined to fare like many others, which are won in the mass, and lost piece-meal.

Murat himself at length grew uneasy. In these daily skirmishes he had seen half the remnant of his cavalry melted away. At the advanced posts, the Russian officers, on meeting with ours, either from weariness, vanity, or military frankness carried to indiscretion, exaggerated the disasters which threatened us. Showing us those wild-looking horses, scarcely at all broken in, whose long manes swept the dust of the plain, they said, "Did not this tell us that a numerous cavalry was joining them from all quarters, while ours was gradually perishing? Did not the continual discharges of firearms within their line apprise us that a multitude of recruits were then training under favor of the armistice?"And, in fact, notwithstanding the long journeys which they had to make, all these recruits joined the army. There was no occasion to defer calling them together, as in other years, till deep snows, obstructing all the roads excepting the high road, rendered their desertion impossible. Not one failed to obey the national appeal; all Russia rose: mothers, it was said, wept for joy on learning that their sons had been selected for soldiers: they hastened to acquaint them with the glorious intelligence, and even accompanied them to see them marked with the sign of the Crusaders, to hear them cry, 'Tis the will of God!

The Russian officers added "that they were particularly astonished at our security on the approach of their frightful winter, which was their natural and most formidable ally, and which they expected every moment: they pitied us and urged us to fly. In a fortnight," said they, "your nails will drop off, and your muskets will fall from your benumbed and half-dead fingers."

The language of some of the Cossack chiefs was also remarkable. They asked our officers "if they had not, in their own country, corn enough, air enough, and graves enough: in short, room enough to live and die? Why, then, did they come so far from home to throw away their lives, and to fatten a foreign soil with their blood?" They added that "this was a robbery of their native land, which while living it is our duty to cultivate, to defend, and to embellish; and to which, after our death, we owe our bodies, which we received from it, which it has fed, and which, in their turn, ought to feed it."

The emperor was not ignorant of these warnings, but he would not suffer his resolution to be shaken by them. The uneasiness which had again seized him betrayed itself in angry orders. It was then that he caused the churches of the Kremlin to be stripped of everything that could serve for a trophy to the Grand Army. These objects, devoted to destruction by the Russians themselves, belonged, he said, to the conquerors, by the double right conferred by victory and by the conflagration.

It required long efforts to remove the gigantic cross from the steeple of Ivan the Great, to the possession of which the Russians attached the salvation of their empire. The emperor determined that it should adorn the dome of the Invalides[159] at Paris. During the work it was remarked that a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed that "it seemed as if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it is well known that he was accessible to every kind of presentiment.

His nights, in particular, became irksome to him. He passed part of them with Count Daru. It was then only that he admitted the danger of his situation. "From Wilna to Moscow, what submission, what point of support, of rest, or of retreat, marked his power? It was a vast, bare, and desert field of battle, in which his diminished army was imperceptible, insulated, and, as it were, lost in the horrors of an immense void. In this country of foreign manners and religion he had not conquered a single individual: he was, in fact, master only of the ground on which he stood. That which he had just quitted and left behind him was no more his than that which he had not reached. Insufficient for these vast deserts, he was lost, as it were, in their immense space."

He then reviewed the different resolutions of which he still had the choice. "People imagined," he said, "that he had nothing to do but march, without considering that it would take a month to refit his army and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the Cossacks would daily be seen triumphing over his sick and his stragglers. He would appear to fly. All Europe would resound with the report! Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom to rally, and would imagine that it had found such a rival in Alexander."

The letter of which Lauriston was the bearer to the Czar had been despatched on the 6th of October, and the answer to it could scarcely arrive before the 20th: still, in spite of so many threatening demonstrations, the pride, the policy, and perhaps the health of Napoleon induced him to pursue the worst of all courses, that of waiting for this answer, and of trusting to time, which was destroying him. Daru, as well as his other officers, was astonished to find in him no longer that prompt decision, variable and rapid as the occurrences which called it forth: they asserted that his genius could no longer accommodate itself to circumstances; and they placed it to the account of his natural persistence, which had led to his elevation, and which seemed destined to cause his downfall.

§ 9. Napoleon determines to leave Moscow.

Napoleon, however, was completely aware of his situation. To him everything seemed lost if he receded in the face of astonished Europe, and everything saved if he could surpass Alexander in determination. He appreciated but too well the means that were left him to shake the constancy of his rival; he knew that the diminishing number of his effective troops, that his situation, the season, in short, everything, would become daily more and more unfavorable to him; but he reckoned upon that magic force which his renown gave him. Hitherto that had lent to him a real and never failing strength: he endeavored, therefore, to keep up, by specious arguments, the confidence of his army, and perhaps, also, the faint hope that was still left to himself.

Moscow, empty of inhabitants, no longer furnished him with anything to lay hold of. "It is no doubt a misfortune," he said, "but this misfortune is not without its advantage. Had it been otherwise, he would not have been able to keep order in so large a city, to overawe a population of three hundred thousand souls, and to sleep in the Kremlin but at the hazard of assassination. They have left us nothing but ruins, but at least we are quiet among them. Millions have no doubt slipped through our hands, but how many thousand millions is Russia losing! Her commerce is ruined for a century to come. The nation is thrown back fifty years, which of itself is an important result; and when the first moment of enthusiasm is passed, this reflection will fill them with consternation." The conclusion which he drew was, "that so violent a shock would convulse the throne of Alexander, and force that prince to sue for peace."

In reviewing his different corps, their reduced battalions now presented so narrow a front that he was but a moment in traversing it, and this palpable diminution of their numbers evidently vexed him; either, therefore, to deceive his enemies or his own soldiers, he declared that the practice hitherto pursued of ranging the men three deep was wrong, and that two were sufficient; and he ordered his infantry in future to be drawn up in two ranks only.

Nay, more: he even insisted that the inflexibility of the regimental returns should give way to this illusion. He disputed their results; and the obstinacy of Count Lobau could not overcome his. He was desirous, no doubt, of making his aid-de-camp[160] understand what he wished others to believe, and that nothing could shake his resolution.

Meanwhile the attitude of his army seconded his wishes. Most of the officers persevered in their confidence. The common soldiers, who saw their whole lives in the present, and expected but little from the future, were for the most part unconcerned about it, and still retained their thoughtlessness, the most valuable of their qualities. The rewards, however, which the emperor bestowed profusely upon them in the daily reviews, were received at best with a sedate joy, mingled with some degree of dejection. The vacant places about to be filled up were yet freshly dyed with blood: these favors were menacing.

On the other hand, when leaving Wilna, many of them had thrown away their winter garments, that they might load themselves with provisions. Their shoes were worn out by the length of the march, and the rest of their apparel by the successive actions in which they had been engaged; but, in spite of all, their attitude was still lofty. They carefully concealed their wretched plight from the notice of the emperor, and appeared before him with their arms bright and in the best order. In this first court of the palace of the Czars, full sixteen hundred miles from their resources, and after so many battles and bivouacs, they were anxious to appear still clean, alert, and prompt, for herein consists the pride of the soldier; and here they piqued themselves upon it the more, on account of the difficulty, in order to astonish, and because man prides himself on whatever requires extraordinary effort.

The emperor complaisantly affected to know no better, catching at everything to keep up his hopes; when all at once the first snows fell. With them fell all the illusions with which he had endeavored to surround himself. From that moment he thought of nothing but retreat, without, however, pronouncing the word, and yet no positive order for it could be obtained from him. He merely said that in twenty days the army must be in winter quarters, and he urged the departure of his wounded. On this as on other occasions, he would not consent to the voluntary relinquishment of anything, however trifling: there was a deficiency of horses for his artillery, now too numerous for an army so reduced; but it did not signify, and he flew into a passion at the proposal to leave part of it behind. "No; the enemy would make a trophy of it;" and he insisted that everything should go along with him.

In this desert country he gave orders for the purchase of 20,000 horses, and he expected forage for two months to be provided on a tract where the most distant and dangerous excursions were not sufficient for the supply of the passing day. Some of his officers were astonished to hear orders which it was so impossible to execute; but we have already seen that he sometimes issued such orders to deceive his enemies, and more frequently to indicate to his own troops the extent of their necessities, and the exertions they were called on to make in order to supply them.

His distress manifested itself only in paroxysms of ill-humor, and this most frequently in the morning, at his levee. There, amid his assembled chiefs, in whose anxious looks he imagined he could read disapprobation, he seemed desirous to awe them by the severity of his manner, by his sharp tone, and his abrupt language. From the paleness of his face, however, it was evident that Truth, whose best time for obtaining a hearing is in the stillness of night, had annoyed him grievously by her presence, and oppressed him with her unwelcome light. Sometimes, on these occasions, his bursting heart would overflow, and pour forth its sorrows without any restraint. His agitation was manifested at such times by movements of extreme impatience; but, so far from lightening his griefs, he only aggravated them by those acts of injustice for which he reproached himself, and which he was afterwards anxious to repair.

It was only to Count Daru that he unbosomed himself frankly, but without any weakness. He said "he should march upon Kutusoff, crush or drive him back, and then turn suddenly towards Smolensk." Daru, who had before approved this course, replied that "it was now too late; that the Russian army was re-enforced, his own weakened, and his victory forgotten; that, the moment his troops turned their faces towards home, they would slip away from him by degrees; that each soldier, laden with booty, would try to get the start of the army, for the purpose of disposing of it in France." "What, then, is to be done?" exclaimed the emperor. "Remain here," replied Daru; "make one vast intrenched camp of Moscow, and pass the winter in it. He would answer for it that there would be no want of bread and salt: the rest foraging on a large scale would supply. Such of the horses as they could not procure food for might be salted down. As to lodgings, if there were not houses enough, the cellars might make up the deficiency. Here we might stay till the return of spring, when our re-enforcements and all Lithuania in arms would come to relieve, to join us, and to complete the conquest."

After listening to this proposal the emperor was for some time silent and thoughtful: he then replied, "This is a lion's counsel! But what would Paris say? What would they do there? What have they been doing there for the last three weeks that they have not heard from me? Who knows what would be the effect of a suspension of communication for six months? No: France would not accustom itself to my absence, and Prussia and Austria would take advantage of it."

Still Napoleon could not make up his mind either to stay or to depart. Though overcome in this struggle of pertinacity, he deferred from day to day the avowal of his defeat. Amid the threatening storm of men and elements which was gathering around him, his ministers and aids-de-camp saw him pass whole days in discussing the merits of some new verses which he had received, or the regulations for one of the French theatres at Paris, which he took three evenings to finish. As they were acquainted with his deep anxiety, they could not but admire the strength of his genius, and the facility with which he could take off the whole force of his attention from, or fix it on, whatever subject he pleased.

It was merely remarked that he prolonged his meals, which had hitherto been so simple and so short. He seemed desirous of stifling thought by repletion. He would then pass whole hours half reclined, and as if torpid, awaiting with a novel in his hand the catastrophe of his terrible history. In contemplating this obstinate and inflexible character thus struggling with impossibility, his officers would observe to each other that, having arrived at the summit of his glory, he no doubt foresaw that from his first retrograde step would date its decline; that for this reason he continued immovable, clinging to, and lingering a few moments longer on, his proud elevation.

Kutusoff, meanwhile, was gaining the time which we were losing. His letters to Alexander described "his army as being in the midst of plenty; his recruits arriving from all quarters, and being rapidly trained; his wounded recovering in the bosom of their families; the whole of the peasantry on foot, some in arms, some on the look-out from the tops of steeples or in our camp, while others were stealing into our habitations, and even into the Kremlin. Rostopchin received a daily report of what was passing at Moscow as regularly as before its capture. If they undertook to be our guides, it was for the purpose of delivering us into his hands. His partisans were every day bringing in some hundreds of prisoners. Everything concurred to destroy the enemy's army and to strengthen his own; to serve him and to betray us; in a word, the campaign, which was over for us, was but just about to begin for them."

Kutusoff neglected no advantage. He made his camp ring with the news of the victory of Salamanca. "The French," said he, "are expelled from Madrid. The hand of the Most High presses heavily upon Napoleon. Moscow will be his prison, his grave, and that of the whole of his Grand Army. We shall soon subdue France in Russia!" It was in such language that the Russian general addressed his troops and his emperor; and still he kept up appearances with Murat. At once bold and crafty, he contrived gradually to prepare a sudden and impetuous warfare, and to cover his plans for our destruction with demonstrations of kindness and honeyed words.

But at length, after so many days of illusion, the charm was all at once dispelled. A single Cossack dissolved it. This barbarian fired at Murat, at the moment when that prince came as usual to show himself at the advanced posts. Highly exasperated, the king immediately declared to Miloradovitch that an armistice which had been incessantly violated was now at an end, and that thenceforward each party must look only to itself.

At the same time he apprised the emperor that the woody country on his left might favor the enemy's attempts against his flank and rear; that his first line, being backed against a ravine, might be precipitated into it; that, in short, the position which he then occupied, in advance of a defile, was dangerous, and rendered a retrograde movement absolutely necessary. But Napoleon would not consent to this step, though he had at first pointed out Woronowo as a more secure position. In this war, still in his view rather political than military, he dreaded above all things the appearance of receding. He preferred risking everything rather than acknowledge to his enemies the slightest irresolution.

Amid these preparations, and at the moment when Napoleon was reviewing Ney's divisions in the first court of the Kremlin, a report was all at once circulated that the sound of cannon was heard towards Vinkowo. It was some time before any one dared to apprise him of the circumstance; some from incredulity or uncertainty, and dreading the first movement of his impatience; others from weakness, hesitating to provoke a terrible explosion or apprehensive of being sent to verify the assertion, and exposed to a fatiguing excursion.

Duroc at length took courage to inform him. The emperor was at first agitated; but, quickly recovering himself, he continued the review. An aid-de-camp, young BÉranger, arrived shortly after with intelligence that Murat's first line had been surprised and overthrown, his left turned by favor of the woods, his flank attacked, and his retreat cut off: that twelve pieces of cannon, twenty ammunition wagons, and thirty wagons belonging to the train were taken, two generals killed, three or four thousand men lost, as well as the baggage; and, lastly, that the king himself was wounded. He had not been able to rescue the relics of his advanced guard from the enemy but by repeatedly charging their numerous troops, which already occupied the high road in his rear, his only retreat.

Our honor, however, had been saved. The attack in front, directed by Kutusoff, was feeble; Poniatowski, at some leagues' distance on the right, made a glorious resistance; Murat and his resolute men, by almost superhuman exertions, checked Bagawout, who was ready to penetrate our left flank, and restored the fortunes of the day; while ClaparÈde and Latour-Maubourg cleared the defile of Spaskapli, two leagues in the rear of our line, which was already occupied by Platoff. Two Russian generals were killed, and others wounded: the loss of the enemy was considerable, but the advantage of the attack, our cannon, our position, the victory, in short, was theirs.

As for Murat, he had no longer an advanced guard. The armistice had destroyed half the remnant of his cavalry. This engagement had finished it; the survivors, emaciated with hunger, were so few as scarcely to furnish a charge. Thus had the war in earnest recommenced; and it was now the 18th of October.

At these tidings Napoleon recovered the fire of his youth. A thousand orders, general and particular, all differing, yet all in unison and all necessary, burst at once from his impetuous genius. Night had not yet arrived, and the whole army was already in motion. The emperor himself quitted Moscow before daylight on the 19th of October. "Let us march upon Kaluga," said he, "and woe be to those whom I meet with by the way!"

§ 10. Departure from Moscow; the first battle.

On the southern side of Moscow, near one of its gates, is an extensive suburb, divided by two high roads; both run to Kaluga: that on the right is the more ancient, the other is quite new. It was on the first that Kutusoff had just beaten Murat. By the same road Napoleon left Moscow on the 19th of October, announcing to his officers his intention to return to the frontiers of Poland. One of them, Rapp, observed that "it was late, and that winter might overtake them by the way." The emperor replied "that he had been obliged to allow time to the soldiers to recruit themselves, and to the wounded collected at Moscow, and at other places, to move off towards Smolensk." Then, pointing to a still serene sky, he asked "if in that brilliant sun they did not recognize his star." But this appeal to his fortune, and the sinister expression of his looks, belied the security which he affected.

Napoleon entered Moscow with ninety thousand fighting men, and twenty thousand sick and wounded, and quitted it with more than a hundred thousand combatants. He left there with only twelve hundred sick. His stay, therefore, notwithstanding daily losses, had served to rest his infantry, to complete his stores, to augment his force by ten thousand men, and to protect the recovery or the retreat of a great part of his wounded. But on this very first day he could perceive that his cavalry and artillery might be said rather to crawl than to march.

A melancholy spectacle added to the gloomy presentiments of our chief. The army had, ever since the preceding day, been pouring out of Moscow without intermission. In this column of one hundred and forty thousand men and about fifty thousand horses of all kinds, the hundred thousand combatants marching at its head with their knapsacks and their arms, upward of five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand artillery wagons, still exhibited a formidable appearance, worthy of soldiers who had conquered the world. But the rest, whose numbers were in an alarming proportion, resembled a horde of Tartars after a successful invasion. They formed three or four files of almost infinite length, in which there was a confused mixture of chaises, ammunition wagons, handsome carriages, and, in short, vehicles of every kind. Here trophies of Russian, Turkish, and Persian colors, and the gigantic cross of Ivan the Great; there, long-bearded Russian peasants carrying or driving along our booty, of which they constituted a part; and some dragging even wheelbarrows filled with whatever they could remove. The fools were not likely to proceed in this manner till the conclusion of the first day, and yet their senseless avidity made them think nothing of battles and a march of two hundred leagues.Among these followers of the army were particularly remarked a multitude of men of all nations, without uniform and without arms, and servants swearing in every language, and urging by dint of shouts and blows the progress of elegant carriages, drawn by pigmy horses harnessed with ropes. These were filled with provisions, or with booty saved from the flames. They carried, also, many French women with their children. Formerly these females had been happy inhabitants of Moscow; but they now fled from the hatred of the Muscovites, which the invasion had drawn upon their heads, and the army was their only asylum.

A few Russian girls, voluntary captives, also followed. It looked like a caravan, a wandering nation, or, rather, one of those armies of antiquity returning loaded with slaves and with spoils after a great devastation. It was inconceivable how the head of this column could draw and protect such a prodigious mass of equipages in so long a route.

Notwithstanding the width of the road and the shouts of his escort, Napoleon had great difficulty in obtaining a passage through this immense throng. No doubt the obstruction of a defile, a few forced marches, or a handful of Cossacks would have been sufficient to rid us all of this encumbrance; but fortune or the enemy had alone a right to lighten us in this manner. As for the emperor, he was fully sensible that he could neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor reproach them for securing it. Besides, provisions concealed the booty; and was it for him, who could not give his troops the subsistence he should have done, to forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly, in case of the failure of military conveyances, these vehicles would be the only means of preservation for the sick and wounded.

Napoleon therefore extricated himself in silence from the immense train which he drew after him, and advanced on the old road leading to Kaluga. He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that he would go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all at once, about midday, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three marches across the country gained the new road to Kaluga.

The rain, which overtook him in the midst of this manoeuvre, spoiled the cross-roads, and obliged him to halt in them. This was a most unfortunate circumstance. It was with difficulty that our cannon were drawn out of the sloughs.

At any rate, the emperor had masked his movement by Ney's corps and the remnants of Murat's cavalry, which had remained behind the Motscha and at Woronowo. Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the Grand Army on the old road, while, on the 23d of October, the whole of it had been transferred to the new one, and had but one march to make in order to pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kaluga.

On the first day of this flanking march, a letter was sent from Berthier to Kutusoff, as a last attempt at peace, or perhaps merely as a ruse. No satisfactory answer was returned to it.

On the 23d the imperial quarters were at Borowsk. That night was an agreeable one for the emperor: he was informed that, at six in the evening, Delzons with his division, who was four leagues in advance of him, had found the town of Malo-jaroslavetz and the woods which command it unoccupied: this was a strong position within reach of Kutusoff, and the only point where he could cut us off from the new road to Kaluga.

The emperor wished at first to secure that advantage by his presence: the order to march was even given, but shortly after withdrawn, we know not why. He passed the whole of that evening on horseback, not far from Borowsk, on the left of the road, the side on which he supposed Kutusoff to be. He reconnoitered the ground in the midst of a heavy rain, as if he anticipated that it might become a field of battle. Next day, the 24th, he learned that the Russians had disputed the possession of the town with Delzons. Either from confidence or uncertainty in his plans, this intelligence appeared to give him very little concern.

He quitted Borowsk, therefore, late and leisurely, when the noise of a very smart engagement reached where he was; he then became uneasy, hastened to an eminence and listened. "Had the Russians anticipated him? Was his manoeuvre thwarted? Had he not used sufficient expedition in that march, the object of which was to pass the left flank of Kutusoff?"

The emperor was still listening: the noise increased. "Is it then a battle?" he exclaimed. Every discharge agitated him, for the chief point with him was no longer to conquer, but to preserve, and he urged on with all possible speed, Davoust accompanying him; but he and that marshal did not reach the field of battle till dark, when the firing was already subsiding, and the whole was over.

The emperor saw the close of the battle, but without being able to assist the viceroy.[161] A band of Cossacks from Twer had nearly captured one of his officers, who was only a very short distance from him.

At this time an officer, sent by Prince Eugene, came to him and explained the whole affair. "The troops had," he said, "in the first place, been obliged to cross the Louja at the foot of the town, at the bottom of an elbow which the river makes in its course, and then to climb a steep hill. It is on this precipitous declivity, broken by pointed crags, that the town is built. Beyond is an elevated plain, surrounded with woods, from which run three roads, one in front coming from Kaluga, and two on the left, from Lectazowo, the seat of the intrenched camp of Kutusoff."

After crossing the Louja by a narrow bridge, the high road from Kaluga runs along the bottom of a ravine which ascends to the town, and then enters it. The enemy in mass occupied this hollow way; Delzons and his Frenchmen rushed upon them pell-mell; the Russians were broken and overthrown; they gave way, and presently our bayonets glistened on the heights.

Delzons, conceiving himself sure of the victory, announced it as won. He had nothing but a pile of buildings to storm; but his soldiers hesitated. He himself advanced, and was encouraging them by his words, actions, and example, when a ball struck him in the forehead, and extended him on the ground. His brother threw himself upon him, covered him with his body, clasped him in his arms, and was striving to bear him out of the fire and the fray, when a second ball hit him also, and both expired together.

This loss left a great void, which required to be filled. Guilleminot succeeded Delzons, and the first thing he did was to throw a hundred men into a church and the yard around it, in the walls of which they made loopholes. This church stood on the left of the high road, which it commanded, and to its possession we owed the victory. Five times during the day was this post passed by the Russian columns as they were pursuing ours, and five times did its fire, seasonably poured upon their flank and rear, harass them and retard their progress: afterward, when we resumed the offensive, this position placed them between two fires, and ensured the success of our attacks.

Scarcely had that general made this disposition when he was assailed by a host of the enemy: he was driven back towards the bridge, where the viceroy had stationed himself in order to judge how to act and to prepare his reserves. At first the re-enforcements which he sent came up but slowly one after another; and, as is almost always the case where there is this tardy movement, being singly inadequate to any great effort, each was successively destroyed without result.

At length the whole of the 14th division was engaged; and the combat was carried for the third time to the heights. But when the French had passed the houses, advanced beyond the central point from which they had set out, and reached the plain where they were exposed, and where the circle expanded, they could advance no farther; overwhelmed by the fire of a whole Russian army, they were daunted and shaken; fresh columns incessantly came up: our thinned ranks gave way and were broken; the obstacles of the ground increased their confusion; and at length they retired precipitately, and abandoned everything.Meanwhile, the shells having set fire to the wooden town behind them, in their retreat they were stopped by the conflagration: one fire drove them back upon another; the Russian recruits, wrought up to a pitch of fanatic fury, closely pursued them; our soldiers became enraged; they fought man to man; some were seen seizing each other with one hand and striking with the other, until both rolled down the precipices into the flames without quitting their hold. There the wounded expired, either suffocated by the smoke or consumed by the flames.

The 15th division was still left. The viceroy summoned it: as it advanced, it threw a brigade into the suburb on the left, and another into the town on the right. It consisted of Italians, recruits, who had never before been in action. They ascended, shouting enthusiastically, ignorant of the danger or despising it, from that singular disposition which renders life less dear in its flower than in its decline, either because while young we fear death less from the feeling of its distance, or because at that age, rich in years and lavish of everything, we are prodigal of life as the wealthy are of their fortune.

The shock was terrible: everything was reconquered for the fourth time, and speedily lost again in like manner. More eager to begin than their seniors, these young troops were sooner disheartened, and returned flying to the old battalions, which supported them, and were obliged to lead them back to danger.

The Russians, imboldened by their constantly increasing numbers and by success, descended by their right to gain possession of the bridge and to cut off our retreat. Prince Eugene had nothing left but his last reserve: he and his guard, therefore, now took part in the combat. At this sight, and in obedience to his call, the remains of the 13th, 14th, and 15th divisions resumed their courage: they made a last and desperate effort, and for the fifth time the combat was transferred to the heights.

At the same time, Colonel Peraldi and the Italian troops overthrew with their bayonets the Russians who were already approaching the left of the bridge: infuriated by the smoke and the fire through which they had passed, and encouraged by their success and the havoc which they made, they pushed forward without stopping on the elevated plain, and endeavored to make themselves masters of the enemy's cannon; but one of those deep clefts with which the soil of Russia is intersected stopped them in the midst of a destructive fire, their ranks opened, the enemy's cavalry attacked them, and they were driven back to the very gardens of the suburb. There they paused and rallied: all, both French and Italians, obstinately defended the upper avenues of the town, and the Russians, being at length repulsed, drew back and concentrated themselves on the road to Kaluga, between the woods and Malo-jaroslavetz.

In this manner did 18,000 Italians and French, crowded together at the bottom of a ravine, defeat 50,000 Russians, posted over their heads, and seconded by all the obstacles that a town built on a steep declivity is capable of presenting.

The army, however, surveyed with sorrow this field of battle, where seven generals and 4000 French and Italians had been killed or wounded. The sight of the enemy's loss afforded no consolation; it was not twice the amount of ours, and their wounded would be saved. It was moreover recollected, that in a similar situation, Peter I., in sacrificing ten Russians for one Swede, thought that he was not sustaining merely an equal loss, but that he was gaining even by so terrible a bargain. But what caused the greatest pain was the reflection that this sanguinary conflict might have been spared.[162]

§ 11. Napoleon holds a council of war and decides to retreat northward.

Do you recollect, comrades, that fatal field? Can you still figure to yourselves the blood-stained ruins of that town, those deep ravines, and the woods which surround that elevated plain, and mark it, as it were, for a field of combat? On the one side were the French, quitting the north, from which they sought to fly; on the other, at the entrance of the wood, were the Russians, guarding the south, and striving to drive us back upon their all-subduing winter. In the midst of this plain, between the two armies, was Napoleon, his steps and his eyes wandering from south to west, along the roads to Kaluga and Medyn, both which were closed against him. On that to Kaluga were Kutusoff and one hundred and twenty thousand men, ready to dispute with him sixty miles of defiles; towards Medyn he beheld a numerous cavalry: it was Platoff and those same hordes which had just penetrated the flank of the army, traversed it through and through, and burst forth, laden with booty, to form again on his right flank, where re-enforcements and artillery were waiting for them. It was on that side that the eyes of the emperor were fixed the longest; it was principally in regard to it that he listened to reports of his officers, and consulted his maps: until, oppressed with regret and gloomy forebodings, he slowly returned to his headquarters.

Murat, Prince Eugene, Berthier, Davoust and BessiÈres followed him. This miserable habitation of an obscure artisan contained within it an emperor, two kings, and three generals. Here they were about to decide the fate of Europe, and of the army which had conquered it. Smolensk was the goal. Should they march thither by Kaluga, Medyn, or Mojaisk? Napoleon was seated at a table, his head supported by his hands, which concealed his features, as well as the anguish which they no doubt expressed.

A silence fraught with such imminent perils was for some time respected, until Murat, whose actions were always the result of impetuous feeling, became weary of this hesitation.

"Give him but the remnant of his cavalry and that of the Guard," he said, "and he would force his way into Russian forests and the Russian battalions, overthrow all before him, and open anew to the army the road to Kaluga."

Here Napoleon, raising his head, extinguished all his fire by saying that "we had exhibited temerity enough already; that we had done but too much for glory, and it was now high time to give up thinking of anything but how to save the rest of the army."

BessiÈres, either because his pride revolted at the idea of being put under the command of the King of Naples, or from a desire to preserve uninjured the cavalry of the Guard, which he had formed, for which he was answerable to Napoleon, and which he exclusively commanded, finding himself supported, then ventured to add, that "neither the army nor even the Guard had sufficient spirit left for such efforts." The marshal concluded by giving his opinion in favor of retreat, which the emperor approved by his silence.

The Prince of EckmÜhl then immediately said that, "as a retreat seemed decided upon, he proposed that it should be by Medyn and Smolensk." But Murat here interrupted him; and, whether from enmity, or from that discouragement which usually succeeds the rejection of a rash measure, he declared himself astonished "that any one should dare propose so imprudent a step to the emperor. Had Davoust sworn the destruction of the army? Would he have so long and heavy a column trail along in utter uncertainty, without guides, and on an unknown track, within reach of Kutusoff, presenting its flank to all the attacks of the enemy? Would he, Davoust, defend it? When in our rear Borowsk and VereÏa would lead us without danger to Mojaisk, why reject that safe route? There provisions must have been already collected, there everything was known to us, and we could not be misled by any traitor."

At these words, Davoust, burning with a rage which he could scarcely repress, replied that "he proposed a retreat through a fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful, and well supplied route, where the villages were still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might not be able to cut us off, as on the route by Mojaisk to Smolensk, recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and ashes, where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where we should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons, and famine!"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the emperor alone had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his sovereign, and never should be!"

The quarrel growing warm, BessiÈres and Berthier interposed. As for the emperor, still absorbed and in the same attitude, he appeared insensible to what was passing. At length he broke up the council with the words, "Well, gentlemen, I will decide."

He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to him. So painful, indeed, was this effort, that in the inward struggle which it produced he lost the use of his senses.

It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat northward at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed at their defeat at Malo-jaroslavetz, were retiring towards the south.

From that moment Napoleon had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust, with twenty-five thousand men, remained as a rear-guard. While by advancing a few paces, without being aware of it, he was spreading consternation among the Russians, the Grand Army, in astonishment, was turning its back on them. It marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but two points where he could halt and rest, the first Smolensk, the second Minsk. He had made those towns his two great depÔts, where immense magazines were established.

Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six thousand fresh troops. That corps had been at Smolensk ever since the beginning of September. He relied also upon detachments being sent from his depÔts, on the sick and wounded who had recovered, and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease. He should therefore have time to regain that position on the Dwina and the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence, added to that of Victor, Saint-Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe Wittgenstein,[163] check Kutusoff, and threaten the Czar Alexander even in his second capital.

He accordingly announced that he was going to take post on the Dwina. But it was not in truth, upon that river and the Borysthenes that his thoughts rested: he was sensible that it was not with a harassed and reduced army that he could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses, which the ice would speedily seal.

It was therefore a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina—to Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter quarters, from which he was then forty marches distant.

§ 12. Napoleon's attempt to destroy the Kremlin: view of the battle-field of Borodino.

Napoleon had arrived quite pensive at VereÏa,[164] when Mortier presented himself before him. But I here discover, that, hurried along in the relation just as we then were in reality, by the rapid succession of violent scenes and memorable events, my attention has been diverted from occurrences worthy of notice. On the 23d of October, at half past one in the morning, the air was shaken by a tremendous explosion, which for a moment startled both armies, though amid such mighty anticipations scarcely anything then much excited their astonishment.

Mortier had obeyed his orders: the Kremlin was no more.[165] Barrels of powder had been placed in all the halls of the palaces of the Czars, and one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on this volcano, which a single Russian shell might have exploded. Here he covered the march of the army upon Kaluga, and the retreat of our different convoys towards Mojaisk.

Among these eight thousand men there were scarcely two thousand on whom Mortier could rely; the others were dismounted cavalry, men of different countries and regiments, under new officers, with dissimilar habits, with no common recollections, in short, without any bond of union, forming a rabble rather than an organized body, and who could scarcely fail in a short time to disperse.This marshal, therefore, was looked upon as a doomed man. The other chiefs, his old companions in glory, had left him with tears in their eyes, as well as the emperor himself, who said to him "that he relied on his good fortune; but still, in war, we must sometimes make part of a sacrifice." Mortier resigned himself without hesitation to his fate. His orders were to defend the Kremlin, and on retreating to blow it up, and to burn what still remained of the city. It was on the 21st of October, that Napoleon sent him his last commands. After executing them, the marshal was to march upon VereÏa, and to form the rear guard of the army.

In this letter Napoleon particularly recommended to him "to put the men still remaining in the hospitals into the carriages belonging to the young rear guard, those of the dismounted cavalry, and any others that he might find. The Romans," he added, "awarded a civic crown to him who had saved a citizen: so many soldiers as he should save, so many crowns would the Duke of Treviso deserve."

At length, after four days' resistance, the French bade a final adieu to that fatal city. They carried with them four hundred wounded, and, on retiring, deposited in a safe and secret place a firework, skilfully prepared, which was already slowly consuming: the rate of its burning had been minutely calculated, so that it was known precisely at what hour the fire would reach the immense collection of powder buried among the foundations of these devoted palaces.

Mortier hastened his flight; but as he was retiring, some greedy Cossacks and miserable-looking Muscovites, allured probably by the prospect of pillage, approached: they listened, and, imboldened by the apparent quiet which pervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate into it: they ascended; and their greedy hands were already stretched forth to lay hold on their plunder, when in an instant they were all hurled into the air with the buildings they had come to pillage, and with thirty thousand stand of arms that had been left in them; and soon their mangled limbs, mingled with fragments of walls and shattered weapons, thrown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower.

The earth shook under the feet of Mortier: at FominskoÉ, thirty miles off, the emperor heard the explosion; and in that indignant tone in which he sometimes addressed Europe, he published the following day a bulletin, at Borowsk, announcing that "the Kremlin, the arsenal, the magazines, were all destroyed; that that ancient citadel, which dated from the origin of the monarchy, and was the first palace of the Czars, no longer existed; that Moscow was now but a heap of ruins, without importance either political or military. He had abandoned it to Russian beggars and plunderers, in order to march against Kutusoff, to throw himself on the left wing of that general, to drive him back, and then to proceed quietly to the banks of the Dwina, where he should take up his winter quarters." Then, apprehensive lest he should appear to be retreating, he added that "there he should be within eighty leagues of Wilna and of St. Petersburg, a double advantage; that is to say, twenty marches nearer to his resources and his object." By this remark he hoped to give to his retreat the air of an offensive movement.

It was on this occasion he declared that "he had refused to give orders for the entire destruction of the country which he was quitting: he felt a repugnance to aggravate the miseries of its inhabitants. To punish the Russian incendiary, and a few wretches who made war like Tartars, he would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two hundred thousand serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely destitute of resources."

On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk.[166] That town was still full of wounded: some were carried away, and the rest collected together and abandoned, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians. Napoleon had proceeded but a short distance from that place when the winter began. Thus, after an obstinate combat, and ten days' marching and countermarching, the army, which had brought from Moscow only fifteen rations of flour per man, had advanced but three days' march on its retreat. It was in want of provisions, and now overtaken by the winter.

Some leagues from Mojaisk we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a large rivulet: two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks were sufficient to ensure the passage; but such was the confusion and inattention that the emperor was detained there. Several pieces of cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It seemed as if each corps was marching separately, as if there were no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing, in short, that bound them together. In fact, the elevation of the chiefs rendered them too independent of each other. The emperor himself had become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance from the details of his army; while Berthier, holding an intermediate place between him and officers, all of whom were kings, princes, or marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution. He was, besides, incompetent to his situation.The emperor, stopped by the frivolous obstacle of a broken bridge, confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and contempt, to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On this particular point he had received no orders from the emperor: he therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear, and distinct, he, so to speak, exactly repeated the emperor, reflected him, but added nothing of his own; and what Napoleon forgot was never supplied.

After passing the Kologa we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes, uttered a cry of horror. Each one instantly looked about him, and there lay stretched before us a plain trampled, bare, and devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface, and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared misshapen, and bore a striking resemblance to an extinguished volcano. The ground around us was everywhere covered with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, with broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms, and standards dyed with blood.

On this desolate spot[167] lay thirty thousand half-devoured corpses; while a pile of skeletons on the summit of one of the hills overlooked the whole. It seemed as though Death had here fixed his throne. Presently the cry was heard, "It is the field of the great battle!" forming a long and doleful murmur. The emperor passed quickly by. No one stopped. Cold, hunger, and the enemy were urging us on: we merely turned our faces as we marched along to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so many companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whose remains we were obliged to leave behind, unheeded and uninterred.

§ 13. Napoleon reaches Viazma. Battle near that place.

At length the emperor reached Viazma.[168] He here halted to wait for Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the road to Medyn and Yucknow, which at this place unites with the high road to Smolensk. It was this cross-road which might possibly bring the Russian army from Malo-jaroslavetz on his passage. But on the first of November, after waiting thirty-six hours and seeing no indications of that army, he again set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had fallen asleep, and the fear lest he might have left Viazma on his right, and proceeded two marches farther to cut off his retreat. He left Ney, however, at Viazma to collect the first and fourth corps, and to relieve, by forming the rear guard, Davoust, whom he judged to be fatigued.

He complained of the tardiness of the latter, and wrote to reproach him with being still five marches behind, when he ought to have been no more than three: the genius of that marshal he considered too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.

But this delay was accounted for by the fact that Davoust had found a marsh without a bridge, and completely encumbered with wagons. He had dragged them out of the slough in sight of the enemy, and so near them that their fires lighted his labors, and the sound of their drums mingled with that of his own voice. For the marshal and his generals could not yet resolve on abandoning to the enemy so many trophies; nor did they make up their minds to it until after fruitless exertions, and in the last extremity.

The road they were traversing was crossed at short intervals by marshy hollows. A slope, slippery as glass with the ice, hurried the carriages into them, and there they stuck fast: to draw them out it was necessary to climb on the opposite side a similar slope, where the horses, whose shoes were worn entirely smooth, could obtain no footing, and where every moment they and their drivers dropped down exhausted together. The famished soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they broiled the yet bleeding flesh, and devoured it.

Meanwhile the artillerymen, a chosen corps, and their officers, all brought up in the first military school in the world, kept off these unfortunate wretches whenever they could, and took the horses from their own carriages and wagons, which they abandoned to save the guns. To these they harnessed their horses, nay, even themselves; while the Cossacks, observing their disasters from a distance, though they dared not attack, with their light pieces mounted on sledges, threw their balls among these disorderly groups, and increased the confusion.

On the 3d of November, Prince Eugene was advancing towards Viazma, preceded by his equipages and his artillery, when the first light of day all at once discovered to him his retreat threatened by an army on his left, behind him his rear guard cut off, and on his left the plain covered with stragglers and scattered vehicles, fleeing before the lances of the enemy. At the same time, towards Viazma he heard Marshal Ney, who should have assisted him, fighting for his own preservation.

At the same time, Compans, one of Davoust's generals, joined the Italian rear guard with his division. These cleared a passage for themselves, and while, united with the viceroy, they were warmly engaged, Davoust with his column passed rapidly behind them, along the left side of the high road, then crossing it, as soon as he had got beyond them, he claimed his place in the order of battle, took the right wing, and found himself between Viazma and the Russians. Prince Eugene gave up to him the ground which he had been defending, and crossed to the other side of the road. The enemy then began to extend himself in front of them, and endeavored to outflank their wings.

Miloradovitch, the Russian general, left to himself, now tried to break the French line of battle; but he could penetrate it by his fire alone, which made dreadful havoc in our ranks. Eugene and Davoust were growing weak; and, as they heard another action in the rear of their right, they imagined that the rest of the Russian army was approaching Viazma by the Yuknof road, the outlet of which Ney was defending.

It was only, however, an advanced guard: but they were alarmed at the noise of this engagement in the rear of their own, threatening their retreat. The action had now continued ever since seven in the morning, and night was approaching: the baggage must by this time have got away, and the French generals began to retire.

This retrograde movement increased the ardor of the enemy, and but for a memorable effort of the 25th, 57th, and 85th regiments, and the protection of a ravine, Davoust's corps would have been broken, turned by its right, and destroyed. Prince Eugene, who was not so briskly attacked, was able to effect his retreat more rapidly through Viazma; but the Russians followed him thither, and had penetrated into the town at the very time when Davoust, pursued by 20,000 men, and overwhelmed by eighty pieces of cannon, in his turn attempted to pass.

Morand's division first entered the place: it was marching on with confidence, under the idea that the action was over, when the Russians, who were concealed by the windings of the streets, suddenly fell upon it. The surprise was complete, and the confusion great: Morand nevertheless rallied and encouraged his men, retrieved matters, and fought his way through.

It was Compans who put an end to the affair. He closed the march with his division. Finding himself too closely pressed by the bravest troops of Miloradovitch, he turned about, dashed in person at the most eager, overthrew them, and having thus made them fear him, he finished his retreat without farther molestation. This conflict, glorious to each, was in its result disastrous to all. It was, unhappily, without unity or order. There were troops enough to conquer had there not been too many commanders. It was not till near two o'clock that the latter met to concert their manoeuvres, and these were even then executed without harmony.

When at length the river, the town of Viazma, night, mutual fatigue, and Marshal Ney had established a barrier between them and the enemy, the danger being adjourned and the bivouacs established, the numbers were counted. Several pieces of cannon which had been broken, the baggage, and four thousand killed or wounded were found missing. Many of the soldiers, too, had dispersed. Their honor had been saved, but there were immense gaps in their ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring everything within a narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion scarcely a platoon. The soldiers remaining had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, or officers.

This sad reorganization took place by the light of the conflagration of Viazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and Miloradovitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double gloom of the night and of the forests. Several times the remnants of these brave battalions, conceiving they were attacked, crawled to their arms. The next morning, when they again fell into their ranks, they were astonished at the smallness of their numbers.

§ 14. Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November; its effects upon the troops.

The spirits of the troops were nevertheless still supported by the example of their leaders, by the hopes of finding all their wants supplied at Smolensk, and still more by the aspect of a yet brilliant sun, that universal source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed us.

But on the 6th of November the heavens changed. Their azure disappeared. The army marched enveloped in a chilling mist. This mist became thicker, and presently a blinding storm of snow descended upon it. It seemed as if the sky itself were falling, and uniting with the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects rapidly changed their appearance, becoming utterly confounded, and not to be recognized any more: we proceeded without knowing where we were, without perceiving the point to which we were bound; everything was converted into an obstacle to stop our progress. While we were struggling with the tempest of wind and snow, the latter, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated in every hollow, concealing unknown abysses, which perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the soldiers were ingulfed, and the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found their grave in these treacherous pits.

Those who followed turned aside; but the tempest, driving into their faces the snow that was descending from the sky and that which it raised from the earth, seemed resolved to arrest their farther progress. The Russian winter, in this new form, attacked them at every point: it penetrated through their light garments, and their rent and worn-out shoes. Their wet clothes froze to their bodies: an icy envelope encased them, and stiffened all their limbs. A piercing and violent wind almost prevented respiration; and, seizing their breath the moment it was exhaled, converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all about their mouths.

The miserable creatures still crawled shivering along, till the snow, gathering in balls on the soles of their shoes, or a fragment of some broken article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades, encountered in the way, caused them to stumble and fall. There their groans were unheeded; the snow soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spots where they lay: there was their only grave. The road, like a cemetery, was thickly studded with these elevations; the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected; they passed quickly on with averted looks. But before them and around them there was nothing but snow; this immense and dismal uniformity extended farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded: it seemed a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The only objects not enveloped by it were some gloomy pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure and their gigantic and motionless trunks completing the solemnity of a general mourning, and of an army dying amid nature already dead.

Everything, even to their very arms, still offensive at Malo-jaroslavetz, but since defensive only, now turned against our men. They seemed to their frozen limbs an insupportable weight. In the falls they experienced, they dropped almost unperceived from their hands, and were broken or buried in the snow. If they rose again it was without them: they had not thrown them away, but hunger and cold had wrested them from their grasp. The fingers of others were frozen to the muskets they still held, depriving them of the motion necessary to keep up some degree of warmth and of life.

We soon met with numbers of men belonging to all the different corps, sometimes singly, sometimes in troops. They had not basely deserted their colors: it was cold and exhaustion which had separated them from them. In this mortal struggle, at once general and individual, they had parted from each other, and there they were, disarmed, vanquished, defenceless, without leaders, obeying nothing but the most urgent instinct of self-preservation.

Most of them, attracted by the sight of by-paths, dispersed themselves over the country in hopes of finding bread and shelter for the coming night; but on their first passage all had been laid waste to the extent of seven or eight leagues: they met only with Cossacks and an armed population, which gathered around them, wounded and stripped them naked, and then left them, with bursts of savage laughter, to perish in the snow. These people, who had risen at the call of Alexander and Kutusoff, and who had not then learned, as they since have, to avenge nobly a country which they had been unable to defend, hovered on both flanks of the army under favor of the woods. Those whom they did not despatch with their pikes and hatchets, they drove back to the fatal and all-devouring high road.

Night then came on: a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow, which covered everything, where were they to halt, where sit, where lie down, where find even a root to satisfy their hunger, or dry wood to kindle a fire? Fatigue, darkness, and repeated orders nevertheless stopped those whom their moral and physical strength and the efforts of their officers had still kept together. They strove to establish themselves; but the tempest, not yet subsided, dispersed the first preparations for bivouacs. The pines, laden with frost, obstinately resisted ignition; while the snow, which still continued to fall from the sky, and that on the ground, which melted with the effect of the first heat, extinguished their kindling fires, and, with them, the strength and spirits of the men.

When at length the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and soldiers around them commenced preparing their wretched repast: it consisted of lean and ragged pieces of flesh torn from the horses that had given out, and at most a few spoonfuls of rye flour mixed with snow-water. The next morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked the sites of the bivouacs, and the ground about them was strewed with the bodies of several thousand horses.

From that day we began to place less reliance on one another. In that vivacious army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an advanced civilization, despondency and neglect of discipline rapidly spread, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil any more than in good. Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, nay, every moment, some portion separated from the yet organized lines and fell into disorder. There were some, however, who were proof against this widespread contagion of insubordination and despair. These were officers, non-commissioned officers, and the firmest among the soldiers. They were extraordinary men; they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk, which town they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised that all their wants should be supplied.

It was thus, after this deluge of snow, and the increase of cold which it foreboded, that each one, whether officer or soldier, either preserved or lost his fortitude, according to his disposition, age, or constitution; while he who of all our leaders had hitherto been the most strict in enforcing discipline, now paid but little attention to it. Thrown out of his established ideas of regularity, order, and method, he was seized with despair at the sight of such universal confusion: and conceiving, before the rest, that all was lost, he felt himself ready to abandon all.

From this point for some distance, nothing remarkable occurred in the imperial column except that it was found necessary to throw the spoils of Moscow into the Lake of Semlewo; cannon, Gothic armor, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of Ivan the Great, were all buried in its waters. Trophies, glory, those acquisitions to which we had sacrificed everything, all now became a burden to us: our object was no longer to embellish life, but to preserve it. In this vast wreck, the army, which might be compared to a mighty ship tossed by the most tremendous of tempests, threw without hesitation into that sea of ice and snow everything that could burden or impede its progress.

The attitude of Napoleon was the same that he retained throughout the whole of this dismal retreat. It was grave, silent, and resigned: suffering much less in body than others, but far more in mind, and brooding with speechless agony over his misfortunes. At that moment General Charpentier sent him from Smolensk a convoy of provisions. BessiÈres wished to take possession of them; but the emperor instantly ordered them to be forwarded to the Prince of Moskwa, saying that "those who were fighting must eat before the rest." At the same time, he sent word to Ney "to defend himself long enough to allow him some stay at Smolensk, where the army should eat, rest, and be reorganized."

The Russians, however, advanced under favor of a wood and of our forsaken carriages, whence they kept up a fire of musketry on Ney's troops. Half of the latter, whose icy arms froze their stiffened fingers, became discouraged; they gave way, excusing themselves by their want of firmness on the preceding day, and fleeing because they had before fled, which but for this, they would have considered as impossible. But Ney, rushing in among them, seized one of their muskets, and led them back to action, which he was himself the first to renew; exposing his life like a private soldier, with a firelock in his hand, the same as though he had been neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor consideration; in short, as if he had still everything to gain, when in fact he had everything to lose. But, though he had again turned soldier, he ceased not to be general: he took advantage of the ground, supported himself against a height, and covered his approach by occupying a palisaded house. His generals and colonels, among whom he particularly remarked Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who had expected to pursue, was obliged to retreat.

By this action Ney afforded the army a respite of twenty-four hours; and it profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and every succeeding day, he displayed the same heroism. Between Viazma and Smolensk he fought ten whole days.

§ 15. Defeat and entire dissolution of Prince Eugene's corps at the passage of the Wop.

On the 13th of November Ney was approaching that city, which he was not to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to beat off the enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his left were seen covered with a multitude of fugitives. In their terror, these unfortunate wretches fell, and rolled down to where he was upon the frozen snow, which they stained with their blood. A band of Cossacks, which was soon perceived in the midst of them, sufficiently accounted for this disorder. The astonished marshal, having caused this horde of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of Italy, returning completely stripped, without baggage and without cannon.

Platoff had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.[169] Near that town Prince Eugene had quitted the high road, and, in order to proceed towards Witepsk, had taken that which, two months before, had brought him from Smolensk; but the Wop, which, when he had crossed it before, was a mere brook, and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swollen into a river. It ran over a muddy bed, and was bounded by two steep banks. It was found necessary to cut a passage in these precipitous and frozen banks, and to give orders for the demolition of the neighboring houses during the night, for the purpose of building a bridge with the materials. But those who had taken shelter in them opposed their being destroyed; and, as the viceroy was more beloved than feared, his instructions were not obeyed. The bridge-builders became disheartened, and when daylight, with the Cossacks, appeared, the bridge, after being twice broken down, was at last abandoned.

Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of disbanded men, the sick and wounded, upward of a hundred pieces of cannon, ammunition-wagons, and a multitude of vehicles of every kind, lined the bank and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford the river through the floating ice which was carried along by its current. The first guns that were attempted to be got over reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while at the same time the bed of the stream at the place of passage was continually deepened by the wheels and by the efforts of the horses. One carriage stuck fast, others did the same, and at length the stoppage became general.

Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the viceroy finally found himself compelled to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners were allowed scarcely a moment to part from their effects: while they were selecting from them such articles as they most needed, and loading their horses with them, a multitude of soldiers came rushing up: they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; these they broke in pieces and rummaged every part, avenging their poverty on the wealth, and their privations on the superfluities they here found, and snatching them from the Cossacks, who were in the meantime looking on at a distance.

But it was provisions of which most of them were in quest. They threw aside embroidered clothes, pictures, ornaments of every kind, and gilt bronzes for a few handfuls of flour. In the evening it was a strange sight to behold the mingled riches of Paris and of Moscow, the luxuries of two of the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised on the snow of the desert.

At the same time, most of the artillerymen spiked their guns in despair, and scattered their powder about. Others laid a train with it as far as some ammunition-wagons, which had been left at a considerable distance behind our baggage. They waited till the most eager of the Cossacks had come up to them, and when a great number, greedy of plunder, had collected about them, they threw a brand from a bivouac upon the train. The fire ran, and in a moment reached its destination; the wagons were blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not killed on the spot dispersed in dismay.

The army of Italy, thus completely dismantled, soaked in the waters of the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow near a village where its officers expected to find lodgings for themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on every habitation, profiting by the darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being known by them. They tore down everything, doors, windows, and even the woodwork of the roofs, feeling but little compunction in compelling others, be they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.

Their generals attempted in vain to drive them off: they took their blows without a murmur or the least opposition, but without desisting—even the men of the royal and imperial guards; for, throughout the whole army, such were the scenes that occurred every night. The unfortunate fellows kept silently but actively at work on the wooden walls, which they pulled in pieces on every side at once, and which, after vain efforts, their officers were obliged to relinquish to them, for fear they would fall upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in their design and of respect for the anger of their superiors.

Having kindled good fires, they spent the night in drying themselves, amid the shouts, imprecations, and groans of those who were still crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated into it and drowned.

§ 16. The Grand Army reaches Smolensk.

At length the army once more came in sight of Smolensk: it had reached the goal so often announced to it of all its sufferings. The soldiers exultingly pointed it out to each other. There was that land of promise where their hunger was to find abundance, their fatigue rest; where bivouacs in a cold of nineteen degrees would be forgotten in houses warmed by good fires. There they would enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel; there they would be furnished with new shoes, and clothing adapted to the climate.

At this sight, the corps of picked men, the veteran regiments, and a few other soldiers alone kept their ranks; the rest ran forward with all possible speed. Thousands of men, chiefly unarmed, covered the two steep banks of the Borysthenes: they crowded in masses around the lofty walls and gates of the city; but this disorderly multitude, with their haggard faces begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms, and the grotesque habiliments which they had substituted in place of them: in short, with their strange, hideous looks, and their impetuous ardor, excited alarm. It was believed, that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger, were not repelled, that a general pillage would be the consequence, and the gates were closed against it.

It was also hoped that by exercising this rigor these men would be forced again to rally about their standards. A horrible struggle between order and disorder now commenced in the remnant of this unfortunate army. In vain did they entreat, weep, threaten, strive to burst open the gates, and even drop down dead at the feet of their comrades placed to repel them; they found the latter inexorable, and were forced to wait the arrival of the first troops that were still officered and in order.

These were the Old and the Young Guard; and it was not till after them that the disbanded men were allowed to enter: the latter, and the other corps which arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed that their admission had been delayed merely to give more rest and more provisions to this favored guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust: they execrated it. "Were they, then, to be forever sacrificed to this privileged class; fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost but at reviews, festivals, and distributions? Was the army to put up with their leavings, always to wait till they had glutted themselves?" It was useless to tell them in reply, that to attempt to save all was the way to lose all; that it was necessary to keep at least one corps entire, and to give the preference to that which in the last extremity would be capable of making the most powerful effort.

At length these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk for which they had so long ardently wished, while the banks of the Borysthenes were strewed with their expiring companions, the weakest of whom impatience and several hours' waiting had brought to that state. Others, again, were left on the icy steep, which they had to climb to reach the upper town. The rest ran to the magazines, where many fell exhausted while they beset the doors; for here also they were repulsed. "Who were they?" it was asked. "To what corps did they belong? What had they to prove it? The persons appointed to distribute the provisions were responsible for them: they had orders to deliver them only to authorized officers bringing receipts, for which alone they could exchange the rations committed to their care." These poor famished creatures had no officers, nor could they tell where their regiments were: two-thirds of the army were in this predicament.

These miserable men then dispersed themselves through the streets, having no longer any hope but in pillage. But horses dissected to the very bones everywhere denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the houses had been all broken and torn away to feed the fires of the bivouacs; they found no shelter in them, no winter quarters prepared, no wood. The sick and wounded were left in the streets, in the carts which had brought them. It was again, it was always the same fatal high road, passing through a town which was but an empty name: it was a new bivouac among deceitful ruins, colder even than the forests they had just quitted.

Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colors: they rejoined them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread that could be baked had been distributed; and there was no biscuit, no butcher's meat. Rye flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were dealt out to them. It required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the detachments of the different corps from murdering each other at the doors of the magazines; and when, after long formalities, their wretched fare was at last delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their regiments; they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds of flour, and ran to secrete themselves till they had devoured it. The same was the case with the spirits; and the next day the houses were found full of the bodies of these miserable creatures.In short, that Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to, as the term of their sufferings, marked, as it were, only their commencement. Inexpressible hardships still awaited us: we had yet to march forty days under that yoke of iron. Some, already borne down by present miseries, sank under the frightful prospect of those which were before them. Others sternly resolved to battle with their destiny; and, finding they had nothing to rely on but themselves, they determined to live at all hazards.

Thenceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the weaker, by violence or stealth they plundered their companions of their subsistence, of their garments, and of the gold with which they had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom despair had thus made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their infamous booty, profiting by the general confusion, an obscure name, a uniform no longer distinguishable, and night: in short, by every kind of concealment favorable to cowardice and guilt. If works already published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed over in silence such terrible details; for atrocities so extreme were, after all, comparatively rare, and justice was dealt to the most criminal.

On the 9th of November the emperor arrived amid this scene of desolation. He shut himself up in one of the houses in the new square, and never quitted it till the 14th to resume his retreat. He had calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one hundred thousand men; but there was not more than half this quantity of flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were now directed against the principal individual appointed to provide these supplies; and the commissary saved his life only by prostrating himself on his knees at the feet of Napoleon, and remaining in that posture for a long time. But the reasons which he assigned for his failure did more for him than his supplications.

Many of these reasons were well founded. A chain of other magazines had been formed from Smolensk to Minsk and Wilna. These two towns were, in a still greater degree than Smolensk, centres of provisioning, of which the fortresses of the Vistula formed the first line. The total quantity of provisions, indeed, distributed over this space was incalculable; the efforts for transporting them thither had been gigantic; while the result was little better than nothing. Scattered over such a vast extent, immense as they were, they were found wholly insufficient.

Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had been surpassed: the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above time, climate, and distance, had, as it were, lost itself in space; great as was its measure, it had gone beyond it.

Napoleon had been at Smolensk for five days. It was known that Ney had received orders to arrive there as late as possible, and Eugene to halt for two days at a point near Smolensk. Then it was not the necessity of waiting for the army of Italy which detained him! To what, then, must we attribute this delay, in the midst of famine, disease, and when the winter and three hostile armies were gradually surrounding us?

The emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches for five days from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the appearance of a slow and glorious retreat. In the same spirit, no doubt, he had ordered the destruction of the towers which surrounded Smolensk, from the wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its walls! as if there were any idea of our returning to a place which we were not even sure that we should ever get out of.

The emperor, however, made an effort that was not altogether fruitless. This was to rally under one commander all that remained of the cavalry; when it was found that of this force, thirty-seven thousand strong at the passage of the Niemen, there now remained only eight hundred men on horseback. He gave the command of these to Latour-Maubourg; and, whether from the esteem felt for him, or from the general indifference, no one objected to it.

This army, which left Moscow one hundred thousand strong, in five-and-twenty days had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men, while the artillery had lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon; and yet these feeble remains continued as before to be divided into eight armies, which were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers, and a long train of cannon and baggage.

Whether it was the encumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a mistaken sense of security, which led the emperor to order a day's interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; but most probably it was the latter. Be that, however, as it may, he, Eugene, Davoust, and Ney, quitted Smolensk in succession; and Ney was not to leave it till the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery dismount the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the ammunition, to drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the towers which surrounded the city.Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues' distance, prepared to cut in pieces, one after the other, those remnants of corps thus extended and parcelled out.

§ 17. Napoleon leaves Smolensk; battle of KrasnoË.

It was on the 14th of November, about five in the morning, that the imperial column at last quitted Smolensk. Its march was still firm, but gloomy and silent as night, like the mute and sombre aspect of the country through which it was advancing.

This stillness was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied to the horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met with ravines, and when down these icy declivities, men, horses, and artillery were rolling in the darkness one over the other. The first day they advanced five leagues, and the artillery of the guard took twenty-two hours to get over that distance.

Kutusoff, at the same time, with the bulk of his army, moved forward, and took a position in the rear of these advanced corps, within reach of them all, felicitating himself on the success of his manoeuvres, which, after all, would inevitably have failed, owing to his tardiness, had it not been for our want of foresight; for this was a contest of errors, in which, ours being the greatest, we narrowly escaped total destruction. Having made these dispositions, the Russian commander must have believed that the French army was entirely in his power; but this belief saved us. Kutusoff was wanting to himself at the moment of action; his old age executed only half, and that badly, the plans which it had wisely combined.

During the time that all these masses were arranging themselves round Napoleon, he remained perfectly tranquil in a miserable hut, the only one left standing in Korythnia, apparently quite unconscious of all these movements of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, which were surrounding him in all directions; at least he sent no orders to the three corps which had halted at Smolensk, to expedite their march, and he himself waited for daylight to proceed.

His column was advancing without precaution, preceded by a crowd of stragglers, all eager to reach KrasnoË, when, at two leagues from that place, a line of Cossacks, extending from the heights on our left across the great road, appeared before them. Seized with astonishment, these stragglers instantly halted: they had looked for nothing of the kind, and with their first impressions were led to believe that relentless fate had traced upon the snow between them and Europe that long, black, and motionless line as the fatal term assigned to their hopes.

Suddenly a Russian battery began firing. Their balls crossed the road. The German corps became confused and made no attempt to meet this attack. But a wounded officer who chanced to be there assumed the command of the Germans, and the men obeyed him as if he had been their rightful leader. On seeing this advanced column of Germans march forward in such good order, the enemy confined himself to attacking it with his artillery, which it disregarded and soon left behind. When it came to the turn of the Old Guard to pass through this fire, they closed their ranks around Napoleon like a movable fortress, proud of the honor of protecting him. Their band of music expressed their satisfaction. When the danger was greatest, it played the well-known air, "Where can one be happier than in the bosom of his family?" But the emperor, whom nothing escaped, stopped them with the exclamation, "Rather play, 'Let us watch for the safety of the empire!'" words much better suited to the feelings which then occupied him, and to the general condition of affairs.

At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders to silence it, and in two hours he reached KrasnoË.

On the 17th, before daylight, Napoleon issued his orders, armed himself, and going out on foot at the head of his Old Guard, began his march. But it was not towards Poland, his ally, that he directed it, nor towards France, where he would still be received as the head of a new dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on grasping his sword on this occasion were, "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is time I should become the general." He turned back upon eighty thousand of the enemy, plunging into the thickest of them, in order to draw all their efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favor of Davoust and Ney, and to rescue them from a country, the gates of which were closed against them.

Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on the one part the Russian battalions and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right, and in our rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other Napoleon, with his six thousand guards, advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to take his place in the centre of that terrible circle. At the same time, Mortier, a few yards in front of the emperor, deployed,[170] in the face of the whole Russian army, with the five thousand men still remaining to him.Here, then, it was made evident that renown is something more than a vain shadow, that it is real strength, and doubly powerful from the inflexible pride which it imparts to its favorites, and the timid precautions it imposes on those who venture to attack it. The enemy had only to march forward without manoeuvring, or even firing; their mass alone was sufficient to crush Napoleon with all his feeble battalions; still they did not dare come to close quarters with him. They were awed at the presence of the conqueror of Egypt and of Europe. The Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, a host of victories seemed to rise between him and the astounded Russians. Might we not also fancy that, in the eyes of that passive and superstitious people, a renown so extraordinary appeared like something supernatural? that they regarded it as wholly beyond their power, or, at least, believed that they could safely assail it only from a distance? and, in short, that against that Old Guard, that living fortress, that column of granite, as it had been called by its leader, human efforts were impotent, or that cannon alone could demolish it?

But every moment strengthened the enemy and weakened Napoleon. The noise of artillery, as well as ClaparÈde, apprised him that in the rear of KrasnoË and his army Beningsen was proceeding to take possession of the road to Liady, and entirely cut off his retreat. The east, the west, and the south were flashing with the enemy's fires; one side alone remained open, that of the north and the Dnieper, towards an eminence, at the foot of which were the high road and the emperor. We fancied we saw the enemy already covering this eminence with his cannon. In that situation they would have been just over Napoleon's head, and might have crushed him at a few yards' distance. He was apprised of his danger, cast his eyes for an instant towards the height, and uttered merely these words, "Very well, let one of my battalions take possession of it." Immediately afterward, without giving farther heed to it, his whole attention was directed to the perilous situation of Mortier.

Fortunately, some troops which Davoust had rallied and the appearance of another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy's attention. Mortier availed himself of it. He gave orders to the three thousand men he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty thousand enemies. "Do you hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde, "the marshal orders ordinary time! Ordinary time, soldiers!" And this brave and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as deliberately from this field of carnage as they would have done from a field of manoeuvre.

§ 18. Napoleon reaches Dombrowna and Orcha; he holds a council.

As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing KrasnoË between him and Beningsen, he was in safety.

The next day the march was resumed, though with reluctance. The impatient stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of Napoleon: he was on foot with a stick in his hand, walking slowly and hesitatingly, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to tear himself away from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then passing, and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.In the evening he reached Dombrowna,[171] a wooden town, and inhabited as well as Liady: a novel sight for an army, which had for three months seen nothing but ruins. At last, then, we had emerged from Russia proper, and her deserts of snow and ashes, and were entering into a friendly and inhabited country, whose language we understood. The weather just then became milder, a thaw began, and we received some provisions.

Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and, with some, famine and bivouacs, all ceased at once; but it was too late. The emperor saw that his army was destroyed: every moment the name of Ney escaped from his lips, with expressions of the deepest grief. That night he was heard groaning and exclaiming "that the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to the heart, and yet that he could not succor them without establishing himself in some place: but where was it possible for him to stop without ammunition, provisions, or artillery? He was no longer strong enough to halt: he must reach Minsk as quickly as possible."

He had scarcely spoken the words, when a Polish officer arrived with the news that Minsk itself, his magazine, his retreat, his only hope, had just fallen into the hands of the Russians, Tchitchakoff having entered it on the 16th. Napoleon at first was mute, and completely overpowered by this last blow; but immediately afterward, elevating himself in proportion to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now nothing to do but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets."

Napoleon then turned to his Old Guard, and, stopping in front of each battalion, "Grenadiers!"[172] said he, to them, "we are retreating without being conquered by the enemy; let us not be vanquished by ourselves! Set an example to the army. Several of you have already deserted your colors, and even thrown away your arms. I have no wish to have recourse to military laws to put a stop to this disorder, but appeal entirely to your sense of duty. Do justice to yourselves. To your own honor I commit the maintenance of your discipline!"

The other troops he addressed in a similar style. These few words were quite sufficient to the old grenadiers, who probably had no occasion for them. The others received them with acclamations; but an hour afterward, when the march was resumed, they were entirely forgotten. As to his rear guard, throwing the blame of this wild alarm mostly upon it, he sent an angry message to Davoust on the subject.

At Orcha we found rather an abundant supply of provisions, a bridge equipage of sixty boats, with all its appurtenances, which we burned, and thirty-six pieces of cannon, with their horses, which were distributed between Davoust, Eugene, and Latour-Maubourg.

Napoleon entered Orcha with six thousand guards, the remains of thirty-five thousand! Eugene, with eighteen hundred soldiers, the remains of forty-two thousand! and Davoust, with four thousand, the remains of seventy thousand!

This marshal had lost everything, was actually without linen, and emaciated with hunger. He seized upon a loaf, which was offered him by one of his comrades, and voraciously devoured it. A handkerchief was given him to wipe his face, which was white with frost. He exclaimed "that none but men with constitutions of iron could support such trials; that it was physically impossible to resist them; that there were limits to human strength, the utmost of which had been exceeded."

The emperor made fruitless efforts to check this general despondency. When alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers; but in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear inflexible. He issued a proclamation, "ordering all who had deserted their ranks to return to them: if they did not, he would strip the officers of their commissions, and the soldiers should be shot."

A threat like this produced no impression whatever upon men who had become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from danger, but from suffering, and caring as little for the death with which they were menaced as for the life that was offered them.

But Napoleon's confidence increased with his perils: in his eyes, this handful of men, in these deserts of snow and ice, was still the Grand Army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! nor was there any affectation in this firmness: we were certain of it, when in this very town, we saw him burn, with his own hands, everything belonging to him that might serve as a trophy to the enemy, in the event of his fall.

But everything was now changed: two hostile armies were opposing his retreat; and the question to be decided was, through which of them he should cut his way. As he knew nothing of the Lithuanian forests into which he was about penetrating, he summoned such of his officers as had been through them, in order to obtain information.

The emperor began by remarking that "too great familiarity with victory was often the precursor of great disasters, but that recrimination was now out of the question." He then mentioned the capture of Minsk, and, admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff's persevering manoeuvres on the right flank, he said that "it was his intention to abandon his line of operations on Minsk, unite with the Dukes of Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein's army, and regain Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina." Jomini combated this plan.

Finally Napoleon decided upon Borizoff.[173] But he said, "that it was cruel to retreat without fighting, to present the appearance of flight. Had he only a magazine, some point of support which would allow him to halt, he would prove to Europe that he still knew how to fight and how to conquer."

All these were mere illusions. At Smolensk, where he arrived first, and from which he was the first to depart, he had rather been informed of his disasters than witnessed them himself. At KrasnoË, where our miseries had been more fully unfolded before him, the peril by which we were surrounded had diverted his attention from them; but at Orcha he could contemplate, at one view and leisurely, the whole extent of his misfortunes.

At Smolensk, thirty-six thousand combatants, one hundred and fifty cannon, the army-chest, and the hope of life, and of breathing at liberty on the other side of the Berezina, still remained; here there were scarcely ten thousand soldiers, almost without clothing or shoes, entangled amid a crowd of dying men, with but a few cannon, and a plundered army-chest.

§ 19. Arrival of Marshal Ney.

Being at length, on the 20th of November, compelled to quit Orcha, he left there Eugene, Mortier, and Davoust, and halted after a march of six miles from that place, still inquiring for Marshal Ney, who was advancing by a different route, and still expecting him. The same feeling of grief pervaded the portion of the army remaining at Orcha. As soon as the most pressing wants allowed a moment's rest, the thoughts and looks of every one were directed towards the Russian bank. They listened for any warlike sounds which might announce the arrival of Ney, or, rather, his last desperate struggle with the foe; but nothing was to be seen but parties of the enemy, who were already menacing the bridges of the Borysthenes.

After exhausting all their conjectures, they had relapsed into a gloomy silence, when suddenly they heard the steps of horses, and then the joyful cry, "Marshal Ney is safe! here are some Polish cavalry come to announce his approach!" One of his officers now galloped in, and informed them that the marshal was advancing on the right bank of the Borysthenes, and had sent him to ask for assistance.

When the two corps, Eugene's and Ney's, fairly recognized each other, they could no longer be kept in their ranks. Soldiers, officers, generals, all rushed forward together. The soldiers of Eugene, eagerly grasping the hands of those of Ney, held them with a joyful mixture of astonishment and curiosity, and embraced them with the tenderest sympathy. They lavished upon them the refreshments and brandy which they had just received, and overwhelmed them with questions. Then they proceeded in company towards Orcha, all burning with impatience, Eugene's soldiers to hear, and Ney's to relate, their story.

The officers of Ney stated that on the 17th of November they had quitted Smolensk with twelve cannon, six thousand infantry, and three hundred cavalry, leaving there five thousand sick to the mercy of the enemy; and that, had it not been for the noise of Platoff's artillery and the explosion of the mines, their marshal would never have been able to draw from the ruins of that city seven thousand unarmed stragglers who had taken shelter among them. They dwelt upon the attentions which their leader had shown to the wounded, and to the women and their children, proving upon this occasion that the bravest are also the most humane.

At the gates of the city an unnatural action struck them with a horror that they still felt in all its force. A mother abandoned her little son, only five years old: in spite of his cries and tears, she drove him away from her sledge, which was too heavily laden. She exclaimed, at the same time, with a distracted air, that "he had never seen France! he would not regret it! but she knew France! she was resolved to see France once more!" Twice did Ney himself replace the unfortunate child in the arms of his mother, and twice did she cast him from her on the frozen snow.

This solitary crime, amid a thousand instances of the most devoted and sublime tenderness, they did not leave unpunished. The unnatural parent was herself abandoned to the snow from which her infant was snatched, and intrusted to another mother: this little orphan was then in their ranks; he was afterward seen at the Berezina, then at Wilna, again at Kowno, and finally escaped from all the horrors of the retreat.

Frustrated in his plans Ney instead of advancing to join Napoleon was compelled to order his men to return towards Smolensk. At these words they were struck motionless with astonishment. Even his aid-de-camp could not believe his ears: he remained silent, like one who does not comprehend what he hears, and looked at his general in amazement. But the marshal briefly repeating the same order in a still more imperative tone, they were no longer at any loss, but all recognized in it resolution taken, a resource discovered, that self-confidence which inspires others with the same feeling, and a spirit which rises superior to its situation, however perilous it may be. They instantly obeyed, and, without the slightest hesitation, turned their backs on their own army, on the emperor, and on France. Once more they returned into that fatal Russia. Their retrograde march had lasted an hour: again they came to the field of battle marked by the remains of the army of Italy; there they halted, and the marshal, who had remained with the rear guard, then joined them.

Their eyes followed all his movements. What did he intend doing? and, whatever might be his plan, where would he direct his steps, without a guide, in an unknown country? But, while they were thus perplexing themselves, he, with his warlike instinct, had halted on the edge of a ravine of such depth as to make it evident that there was a stream at the bottom of it. By clearing away the snow and breaking the ice, this fact was soon established: and then, consulting his map, he exclaimed, "This is one of the streams which flow into the Dnieper: this must be our guide, and we must follow it; it will lead us to that river, which we must cross, and on the other side we shall be safe." Accordingly, he immediately proceeded in that direction.

A lame peasant was the only inhabitant they could discover; but even this was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. He told them that they were within the distance of a league from the Dnieper, but that it was not fordable there, and could not yet be frozen over. "It must be so," the marshal remarked; but when he was reminded that a thaw had just commenced, he added, "it does not signify; we must pass, as there is no other resource."

At last at about eight o'clock, after passing through a village, they soon came to the termination of the ravine, and the Russian, who walked before, halted and pointed out to them the river.

Finally, about midnight, the passage began; but the first persons who ventured on the ice called out that it was bending under them, that it was sinking, that they were up to their knees in water; and immediately after that frail support was heard cracking and splitting, as in the breaking up of a frost. All halted in consternation.

Ney ordered them to pass only one at a time: they proceeded with caution, not knowing sometimes in the dark whether they were placing their feet on the ice or into a chasm; for there were places where they were obliged to clear large fissures, and jump from one piece to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing forever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling to them to make more haste.

When at last, after several of these dreadful panics, they reached the opposite bank and fancied themselves safe, a perpendicular steep, slippery as glass, opposed their landing, and many were again thrown back upon the ice, either bruised by it, or breaking it in their fall. It would seem, indeed, as though this Russian river and its banks had contributed with regret, by surprise, and by compulsion, as it were, to their escape.

But what they spoke of as being the most painful of all, were the trouble and distraction of the females and of the sick, when it became necessary for them to abandon, along with the baggage, the remains of their fortune, their provisions, and, in short, all their resources both for the present and the future. They were seen stripping themselves, selecting, throwing away, taking up again, and falling at length through exhaustion and grief upon the frozen bank of the river. The narrators appeared to shudder again at the recollection of the horrible sight of so many men scattered over that abyss, of the continual noise of persons falling, of the cries of such as sank in, and, above all, of the wailing and despair of the wounded, who, from their carts, which could not be trusted to this weak support, stretched out their hands to their companions, and entreated them not to leave them behind.

Their leader at length determined to attempt the passage of several wagons, loaded with these poor creatures; but in the middle of the stream the ice sank down and separated. Then were heard proceeding from the gulf, first cries of anguish long and piercing, then stifled and feeble groans, quickly succeeded by an awful silence. All had disappeared!

But at length Ney had succeeded in reaching Orcha; from this time forward he was the hero of the retreat.When Napoleon, who was two leagues farther on, heard that Ney had again made his appearance, he leaped and shouted for joy, exclaiming, "Then I have saved my honor! I would have given three hundred millions from my exchequer sooner than have lost such a man."

§ 20. Capture of Minsk by the Russians.

The army had thus for the third and last time repassed the Dnieper, a river half Russian and half Polish, but having its source in Russia. It runs from east to west as far as Orcha, where it appears as if it would penetrate into Poland; but there the high lands of Lithuania oppose its farther progress, and compel it to turn abruptly towards the south, and to become the frontier of the two countries.

Kutusoff and his eighty thousand Russians halted before this feeble obstacle. Hitherto they had been rather the spectators than the authors of our calamities; but from this time we saw them no more, and were at last delivered from the punishment of their joy.

On the 22d of November the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to Borizoff, on a wide road skirted by a double row of large birch-trees, the snow having melted, and the mud being very deep. The weakest here found their graves; and those of our wounded who, in expectation of a continuance of the frost, had exchanged their wagons for sleighs, were left behind, and fell into the hands of the Cossacks.

It was during the early part of the march to Borizoff that the news of the fall of Minsk[174] became generally known in the army. The leaders themselves now began to look around them with consternation; and, after witnessing such a succession of frightful spectacles their imagination depicted a still more fatal futurity. In their private conversation they did not hesitate to say that, "like Charles XII. in Russia, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow only to destroy it."

Deploring, then, the rash obstinacy of the stay at Moscow, and the fatal hesitation at Malo-jaroslavetz, they proceeded to reckon up their losses. Since their departure from Moscow they had lost all their baggage, five hundred cannon, thirty-one standards, twenty-seven generals, forty thousand prisoners, and sixty thousand dead: all that remained were forty thousand unarmed stragglers and eight thousand effective soldiers.

With respect to the loss of Minsk the governor of that place had been negligently chosen. He was, it was said, one of those men who undertake everything, who promise everything, and who do nothing. On the 16th of November he lost that capital, and with it four thousand seven hundred sick, the warlike stores, and two million rations of provisions. It was five days since the news of this loss had reached Dombrowna, and the news of a still greater calamity came on the heels of it.

This same governor had retreated towards Borizoff. There he neglected to inform Oudinot, who was only at the distance of two marches, to come to his assistance; and failed to support Dombrowski, who made a hasty march thither: the result was that the latter was overpowered by the fire of the Russian artillery, which took him in flank, and, attacked by a force more than double his own, he was driven across the river, and out of the town as far as the Moscow road.This disaster was wholly unexpected by Napoleon. Finally, when the emperor learned at Dombrowna the loss of Minsk, he had no suspicion that Borizoff was in such imminent danger, as when he passed the next day through Orcha he had the whole of his bridge-equipage burned.

It was on the day immediately subsequent to that fatal catastrophe, at the distance of three marches from Borizoff, and upon the high road, that an officer arrived and announced to Napoleon this fresh disaster. The emperor, striking the ground with his stick, and casting a furious look to heaven, pronounced these words: "Is it, then, written above that we shall now commit nothing but faults?"

Meanwhile Marshal Oudinot, who was already marching towards Minsk, totally ignorant of what had happened, halted on the 21st. In the middle of the night General Brownkowski arrived to announce to him his own defeat, as well as that of General Dombrowski;[175] that Borizoff was taken, and that the Russians were following close at his heels.

In fact, every disaster which Napoleon could anticipate had occurred; the melancholy conformity, therefore, of his situation with that of the Swedish conqueror, threw his mind into such a state of agitation that his health became still more seriously affected than it had been at Malo-jaroslavetz. Among the expressions he made use of, loud enough to be overheard, was this: "See what happens when we heap faults on faults!"

His orders, however, displayed decision. Oudinot had just sent to inform him of his determination to overthrow Lambert: this he approved of, and he also urged him to make himself master of a passage across the Berezina, either above or below Borizoff. He was desirous that by the 24th the place for this passage should be fixed on and the preparations begun, and that he should be apprised of it, in order to make his march correspond. Far from thinking of making his escape through the midst of these three hostile armies, his only idea now was to beat Tchitchakoff and retake Minsk.

It is true that, eight hours afterward, in a second letter to the Duke of Reggio, he resigned himself to crossing the Berezina near Veselowo, and by retreating directly upon Wilna, by Vileika, to avoid the Russian admiral.

But on the 24th he learned that the passage could only be attempted near Studzianka; that at that spot the river was only fifty-four fathoms wide, and six feet deep; and that they would land on the opposite side in a marsh, under the fire of a commanding position strongly occupied by the enemy.

§ 21. March through the forest of Minsk; passage of the Berezina.

All hope of passing between the Russian armies was thus lost: driven by the armies of Kutusoff and Wittgenstein upon the Berezina, there was no alternative but to cross that river in the teeth of the army of Tchitchakoff, which lined its banks.

After having made his preparations, Napoleon plunged into the gloomy and immense forest of Minsk, in which there was only here and there an open spot surrounding some wretched hamlet or single habitation. The noise of Wittgenstein's artillery filled it with its echoes. The Russian general came rushing from the north upon the right flank of our expiring column, and he brought back with him the winter which had quitted us at the same time with Kutusoff. The news of his threatening march accelerated our steps, and our motley array of from forty to fifty thousand men, women, and children hurried through the forest as rapidly as their weakness and the slipperiness of the ground, from the frost again setting in, would allow.

These forced marches, commenced before daylight, and not terminating until after its close, dispersed all who had previously been together. They lost themselves in the double darkness of the forest and of the night. They halted in the evening, and resumed their march in the morning, in obscurity, at random, and without hearing the signal: the dissolution of the remains of the corps was now completed; all were mixed and confounded together.

In this last stage of helplessness and confusion, as we were approaching Borizoff, we heard loud cries before us. Some rushed forward, fancying it was an attack. It was Victor's army, which had been feebly driven back by Wittgenstein to the right side of our road, where it remained waiting for us. Still, quite complete and full of animation, it received the emperor, as soon as he made his appearance, with the customary but now long-forgotten acclamations.

Of our disasters it had heard nothing: they had been carefully concealed even from its leaders. When, therefore, instead of that grand column which had conquered Moscow, its soldiers perceived behind Napoleon only a train of spectres covered with tattered vestments of every kind, women's pelisses, pieces of carpet, or dirty cloaks, half burned and riddled by the fires, and with nothing but rags on their feet, their consternation was extreme. They seemed terrified at the sight of those unfortunate soldiers, as they defiled before them, with emaciated frames, faces black with dirt, and hideous bristly beards, unarmed, shameless, marching confusedly, with their heads bent, and their eyes fixed on the ground and silent, like a troop of captives.

But what astonished them more than all was to see the number of generals and officers of every grade, scattered about and insulated, seemingly only occupied about themselves, and thinking of nothing but to save the wrecks of their property or their persons: they were marching pell-mell with the soldiers, who did not notice them, to whom they had no longer any commands to give, and of whom they had nothing to expect, all ties between them being dissolved, and all distinctions of rank obliterated by the common misery.

It was, indeed, merely the shadow of an army, but it was the shadow of the Grand Army. It felt conscious that nature alone had vanquished it. The presence of Napoleon animated it. To him it had long been accustomed to look, not for its means of support, but to lead it to victory. This was its first unfortunate campaign, and it had had so many fortunate ones: it only required to be able to follow him. He alone who had elevated his soldiers so high, and now sunk them so low, was yet able to save them. He was still, therefore, cherished in the heart of his army, like hope in the heart of man.

Thus, amid so many beings who might have reproached him with their misfortunes, he marched on without the least fear, speaking to one and all without affectation, certain of being respected as long as glory could command respect. Knowing perfectly that he belonged to us as much as we to him, his renown being, as it were, common national property, we should have sooner turned our arms against ourselves (which was the case with many), as being a minor suicide, than against him.

Some of the men fell and died at his feet; and, though they were in the most frightful delirium, their sufferings never gave its wanderings the turn of reproach, but of entreaty. And in fact, did not he share the common danger? Who of them all risked so much as he? Who had suffered the greatest loss in this disaster?

If any imprecations were ever uttered, it was not in his presence; for it seemed that, of all misfortunes, that of incurring his displeasure was still the greatest: so rooted was their confidence in, and their submission to, that man who had subjected the world to them; whose genius, hitherto uniformly victorious and invincible, had assumed the place of their free-will; and who, having had so long in his hands the book of pensions, of rank, and of history, had found wherewithal to satisfy not only covetous spirits, but also every generous heart.

At the close of the night of the 25th of November, Napoleon made them sink the first trestle in the muddy bed of the Berezina River. But to crown our misfortunes, the rising of the waters had made the traces of the ford entirely disappear. It required the most incredible efforts on the part of our unfortunate engineers, who were plunged in the water up to their mouths, and had to contend with the floating pieces of ice which were carried along by the stream. Many of them perished from the cold, or were drowned by the cakes of ice being violently driven against them by the current and wind.

On the 27th, Napoleon, with about five thousand guards, and Ney's corps, now reduced to six hundred men, crossed the Berezina about two o'clock in the afternoon: he posted himself in reserve to Oudinot, and secured the outlet from the bridges against the efforts of the Russians.

He had been preceded by a crowd of baggage and stragglers, and numbers of them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted.

But Partouneaux with his division was not so fortunate. At every point where he attempted to pass, he encountered the enemy's fires, and was obliged to turn back: in this way he wandered about for several hours altogether at random, in plains covered with snow, in the midst of a violent tempest. At every step he saw his soldiers pierced through by the cold, and exhausted with hunger and fatigue, falling half dead into the hands of the Russian cavalry, who pursued him without intermission.

This unfortunate general was still struggling with the heavens, with men, and with his own despair, when he felt even the ground giving way under his feet. In fact, deceived by the snow, he was marching upon a lake, which not being frozen sufficiently hard to bear him, he had fallen in and was on the point of being drowned, and then only did he yield and give up his arms.

While this catastrophe was accomplishing, his other three brigades, being more and more hemmed in upon the road, lost all power of movement. They delayed their surrender, however, till the next morning, first by fighting, and then by parleying: at length they all fell, one after the other, and a common misfortune again united them with their general.

Of the whole division, a single battalion only escaped.

During the whole of that day, the 28th, the situation of the ninth corps under General Victor, was so much the more critical, as a weak and narrow bridge was its only means of retreat; in addition to which its avenues were obstructed by the baggage and the stragglers. By degrees, as the action became warmer, the terror of these poor wretches increased their disorder. First of all they had been alarmed by the rumors of a serious engagement; then their terror was increased by seeing the wounded returning from it; and, last of all, they were thrown into the utmost consternation by the batteries of the Russian left wing, some shot from which began to fall among them.

They had been already crowding one upon the other, and the immense multitude heaped upon the bank pell-mell with the horses and carriages, formed there a most alarming encumbrance. It was about the middle of the day that the first Russian balls fell into the midst of this chaos, and they were the signal of universal despair.

Then it was, as in all cases of extremity, that the real dispositions of men exhibited themselves without disguise, and actions were witnessed, some of them the most base, and others the most noble and even sublime. In accordance with their character, some furious and determined, with sword in hand, cleared for themselves a horrible passage. Others, still more cruel, opened a way for their wagons by driving them without mercy over the crowds of unfortunate persons who stood in their way, and crushed them to death. Their detestable avarice made them sacrifice their companions in misfortune to the preservation of their baggage. Others again, seized with a pusillanimous terror, wept, supplicated, and sank under the influence of a passion which completed the exhaustion of their strength. Some were observed (and these were principally the sick and wounded) who, renouncing life, went aside, and, resigned to their fate, sat themselves down, gazing with a fixed and motionless eye on the snow which was shortly to be their winding-sheet.

Numbers of those who started first among this crowd of desperadoes, missing the bridge, attempted to scale it by the sides, but the greater part were pushed into the river. There were seen women in the midst of the stream and among the masses of floating ice, with their children in their arms, raising them by degrees as they felt themselves sinking, and when completely submerged, their stiffened arms still holding them above the water.

In the midst of this horrible disorder, the artillery bridge gave way and broke down. The column entangled in this narrow passage in vain attempted to retrograde. The crowds which were following behind, ignorant of the calamity, and not hearing the cries of those before them, kept urging them on until they pushed them into the gulf, into which they in their turn were precipitated.

Every one then attempted to pass by the other bridge. A great number of large ammunition wagons, heavy carriages and cannon crowded to it from all parts. Pressed on by their drivers and carried rapidly along over a rough and unequalled declivity, in the midst of masses of men, they ground to pieces the poor wretches who were unfortunate enough to get between them, until at length the greater part, furiously encountering each other, were overturned, killing in their fall those who were around them. Multitudes pressed against these obstacles, and becoming entangled among them, were thrown down, and crushed to pieces by other multitudes as they successively stumbled upon them.

Thus these miserable creatures were rolling one upon the other, and nothing was heard but cries of rage and of anguish. In this frightful confusion, those who were trodden and crushed under the feet of their companions, struggling to lay hold of them with their nails and teeth, were, like so many enemies, trampled upon without mercy.

Among them were wives and mothers, calling in tones of distraction upon their husbands and their children, from whom they had been separated but a moment before, never again to be united. Stretching out their arms, they entreated to be allowed to pass in order to rejoin them: but they were hurried backward and forward with the crowd, until at length, overcome by the pressure, they sank without being so much as noticed. Amid the howling of a violent tempest, the discharge of cannon, the whistling of balls, the explosion of shells, vociferations, groans, and frightful oaths, this infuriated crowd heard not the cries of the victims it was swallowing up.

The more fortunate gained the bridge by scrambling over heaps of wounded, of women and children thrown down and half suffocated, whom they again trampled beneath their feet in their attempts to reach it. When at last they reached the narrow defile, they fancied that they were safe; but the fall of a horse, or the breaking or displacing of a plank, again arrested everything.

There was also at the outlet of the bridge, on the other side, a morass, into which many horses and carriages had sunk, a circumstance which greatly embarrassed and retarded the entrance. Then it was that, in that infuriated column, crowded together, on a single plank of safety, there arose a terrible struggle, in which the weakest least fortunately situated were plunged into the river by their more powerful or more successful comrades. The latter, without so much as turning their heads, and hurried along by the instinct of self-preservation, pushed on towards the goal with unabated fury, regardless of the imprecations of rage and despair uttered by their companions or officers whom they had thus sacrificed.

But, on the other hand, how many noble instances there were of devotion! and why are time and space denied me to relate them? Soldiers, and even officers, harnessed themselves to sledges, to snatch from that fatal bank their sick or wounded comrades. Farther off, and out of reach of the crowd, were seen soldiers, motionless and watching over their dying commanders, who had confided themselves to their care: in vain did the latter conjure them to think only of their own preservation; they refused; and sooner than abandon their expiring leaders, resolved to take their chance of slavery or death.

Above the first passage, where young Lauriston had thrown himself into the river, in order more promptly to execute the orders of Napoleon, a little boat, carrying a mother and her two children, was upset and sank under the ice: an artilleryman, who, like the others, was struggling on the bridge to open a passage for himself, observed the accident, and all at once, unmindful of his own life, he threw himself into the river, and by great exertion succeeded in saving one of the three victims. It was the youngest of the two children: the poor little thing kept calling for his mother in tones of despair, when the brave artilleryman was heard telling him "not to cry; that he had not rescued him from the water only to desert him on the bank; that he should want for nothing; and that he would be his father and his family."

The night of the 28th added to all these calamities. Its darkness was insufficient to conceal from the artillery of the Russians its miserable victims. Amid the snow, which covered everything, the course of the river, the black mass of men, horses, and carriages, and the noise proceeding from them, were enough to enable the enemy's artillerymen unerringly to direct their fire.

At about nine o'clock in the evening their desolation became complete, when Victor commencing his retreat, his divisions opened for themselves a passage through these despairing wretches, whom they had till then been protecting. A rear guard, however, having been left, the multitude, benumbed with cold, or still anxious to preserve their baggage, refused to avail themselves of the last night for crossing to the opposite shore. In vain were their wagons set fire to, in order to tear them from them; it was only the appearance of daylight which brought them again, but too late, to the entrance of the bridge, which they once more besieged. At half past eight in the morning, seeing the Russians approaching, General EblÉ set fire to it by Napoleon's orders; then those who were left on the eastern side of the river "realized that they had lost their last chance."

A multitude of wagons and of cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were thus abandoned on the hostile bank. They were seen wandering in desolate troops on the borders of the river. Some plunged into it in order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice which were floating along; and some there were who threw themselves headlong upon the timbers of the burning bridge, which, sinking under them, exposed them at the same time to the horrors of a twofold death. Shortly after, the bodies of many of these unfortunate creatures, wedged in the ice, were seen collecting against the trestles of the bridge. The rest awaited the Russians. The Russian general did not show himself upon the heights until an hour after EblÉ's departure; and without having gained a victory, he reaped all the fruits of one.

Napoleon remained till the last moment on these melancholy banks, near the ruins of Brilowa, unsheltered and at the head of his guard, one-third of which was destroyed by the storm. During the day they stood to their arms, and were drawn up in order of battle; at night they bivouacked in a square round their leader; and there the old grenadiers incessantly kept feeding their fires. They sat on their knapsacks, with their elbows planted upon their knees, and their hands supporting their heads; slumbering in this manner, doubled upon themselves, that one limb might warm the other, and that they might feel less the emptiness of their stomachs.

About these bivouacs were collected men of all classes, of all ranks, of all ages; ministers, generals, administrators. Among them was remarked an elderly nobleman of by-gone days, when light and brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of some tree, occupying himself with unruffled gayety every morning in adjusting the details of his toilet: in the midst of a hurricane he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered with the nicest care, amusing himself in this manner with all our calamities, and with the fury of the elements which assailed him.

Near him were officers of scientific corps, still finding subjects for discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age which a few discoveries have encouraged to hope for explanations of everything, these individuals, amid the acute sufferings we were enduring from the north wind, were seeking to divine the cause of its unvarying direction. The theory was advanced that, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun, by heating the southern hemisphere, had rarefied all its currents of air, elevated them, and left on the surface of that zone a vacuum, into which the currents of air of ours, which were lower on account of being more dense, were violently rushing. That thus the northern pole, loaded with these denser vapors, which had been collecting and cooling since the preceding summer, was discharging them by an impetuous and icy current, which swept over the Russian territory, and stiffened or destroyed everything it encountered in its course.

Others of these officers were remarking with curious attention the regular six-sided crystallization of each one of the flakes of snow which covered their garments.

The phenomena of the simultaneous appearance of several distinct images of the sun, reflected to the eye by means of the icy particles suspended in the atmosphere, was also a subject for observation, and several times momentarily diverted their thoughts from their sufferings.

§ 22. Napoleon abandons the Grand Army and sets out for Paris.

On the 29th the emperor quitted the banks of the Berezina, pushing on before him the crowd of disbanded soldiers, and marching with the ninth corps, which was already disorganized. The day before, the second and ninth corps and Dombrowski's division presented a total of fourteen thousand men; and now, with the exception of about six thousand, they had no longer any form of division, brigade, or regiment.

Night, hunger, cold, the fall of many of their officers, the loss of the baggage on the other side of the river, the example of such a number of runaways, and the much more revolting sight of the wounded abandoned on both sides of the river, and left weltering in despair on the snow, which was dyed with their blood: everything, in short, contributed to discourage them; and they were now confounded with the mass of disbanded men who had come from Moscow.

The whole still formed sixty thousand men, but without the least order or unity. All marched pell-mell, cavalry, infantry, artillery, French and Germans: there was no longer either wing or centre. The artillery and carriages drove on through this tumultuous crowd with no other instructions than to proceed as rapidly as possible.

On the 3d of December Napoleon arrived in the morning at Malodeczno,[176] which was the last point where the Russian general, Tchitchakoff was likely to get the start of him. Some provisions were found there, the forage was abundant, the day beautiful, the sun bright, and the cold bearable. There also the couriers, who had been so long kept back, arrived all at once. The Poles were immediately directed onward to Warsaw through Olita, and the dismounted cavalry by Merecz to the Niemen; while the rest of the army was to follow the high road, which they had again regained.

Up to that time Napoleon seemed to have entertained no idea of quitting his army. But about the middle of that day he suddenly informed Daru and Duroc of his determination to set off immediately for Paris.Daru did not see the necessity of it. He objected "that the communication with France was again opened, and the most dangerous crisis passed; and that at every retrograde step he would now be meeting the re-enforcements sent him from Paris and from Germany." The emperor's reply was, "that he no longer felt himself sufficiently strong to leave Prussia between him and France. And besides, what necessity was there for his remaining at the head of a routed army? Murat and Eugene would be sufficient to direct it, and Ney to cover its retreat.

"His return to France had become indispensable, in order to secure her tranquillity and to summon her to arms; to take measures there for keeping the Germans steady in their fidelity to him; and, finally, to return with fresh and adequate forces to the assistance of his Grand Army.

"But, in order to effect these objects, it was necessary that he should travel alone over four hundred leagues of the territories of his allies: and that he might do so without danger, his resolution should be there unforeseen, his passage unknown, and the rumor of his disastrous retreat still uncertain; that he would, in short, precede the news of it, and anticipate the effect it might produce on them, and the defections to which it might give rise. He had, therefore, no time to lose, and the moment for his departure had already arrived."

Such were the motives assigned by Napoleon; and General Caulaincourt immediately received orders secretly to prepare for his departure. The rendezvous was fixed at Smorgoni,[177] and the time the night of the 5th of December.When Napoleon reached Smorgoni all the marshals were summoned. As they successively entered, he took each one aside in private, and first of all secured their approbation of his plan, gaining some by his arguments, and others by confidential communications.

His manner was kind and flattering to them all; and afterward, having assembled them at his table, he complimented them for their brilliant actions during the campaign. As to himself, the only confession he made of his temerity was couched in these words: "If I had been born to the throne, if I had been a Bourbon, it would have been easy for me not to have committed any faults."

When their interview was over, he made Prince Eugene read to them his twenty-ninth bulletin; after which, declaring aloud what he had confided to each of them privately, he told them "that he was about to depart that very night with Duroc, Caulaincourt and Lobau, for Paris; that his presence there was indispensable for France as well as for the remains of his unfortunate army. It was there only that he could take measures for keeping the Austrians and Prussians in check. These nations would certainly pause before they declared war against him, when they saw him at the head of the French nation, and a fresh army of twelve hundred thousand men."

He added, that "he had ordered Ney to proceed to Wilna, there to reorganize the army; that Rapp would second him, and afterward go to Dantzic, Lauriston to Warsaw, and Narbonne to Berlin; that his own guard would remain with the army; but that it would be necessary to strike a blow at Wilna, and stop the enemy there. There they would find re-enforcements, provisions, and ammunition of all sorts; that afterward they would go into winter quarters on the other side of the Niemen; and that he hoped the Russians would not pass the Vistula before his return."

He said, in concluding, "I leave the King of Naples to command the army. I hope that you will yield him the same obedience that you would to myself, and that the greatest harmony will prevail among you."

As it was now ten o'clock at night, he rose, affectionately pressed their hands, embraced them all—and departed.

Napoleon passed through the crowd of his officers, who were drawn up in an avenue as he passed, bidding them adieu merely by forced and melancholy smiles: their good wishes, equally silent, and expressed only by respectful gestures, he carried with him. He and Caulaincourt shut themselves up in a carriage.

His escort at first consisted only of Poles, afterwards of the Neapolitans of the Royal Guard. This corps consisted of between six and seven hundred men when it left Wilna to meet the emperor: it perished almost entirely in that short passage, though the winter was its only adversary. That very night the Russians surprised and afterward abandoned a town through which the escort had to pass; and Napoleon was within an hour of falling into that affray.

He met the Duke of Bassano at Miedniki, a village about thirty miles west of Smorgoni. His first words to him were "that he had no longer an army; that for several days past he had been marching in the midst of a troop of disbanded men, wandering to and fro in search of subsistence; that they might still be rallied by giving them bread, shoes, clothing, and arms; but that the duke's military administration had anticipated nothing, and his orders had not been executed." But upon Murat replying, by showing him a statement of the immense stores of provisions and clothing collected at Wilna, he exclaimed "that he gave him fresh life; that he would forthwith give him an order to transmit to Murat and Berthier, to halt for eight days in that capital, there to rally the army, and infuse into it sufficient heart and strength to continue the retreat less deplorably."

The remainder of Napoleon's journey was effected without molestation. He went round Wilna by its suburbs, crossed Wilkoski, where he exchanged his carriage for a sleigh, and stopped during the 10th at Warsaw, to ask the Poles for a levy of ten thousand Cossacks, and to promise them that he would speedily return at the head of three hundred thousand men. From thence he rapidly traversed Silesia,[178] visited Dresden and its monarch, and finally reached Paris, where he suddenly made his appearance on the 19th of December, two days after the arrival of his twenty-ninth bulletin.

From Malo-jaroslavetz to Smorgoni, this master of Europe had been no more than the general of a dying and disbanded army; from Smorgoni to the Rhine he was an unknown fugitive, travelling through a hostile country; beyond the Rhine he again found himself the master and the conqueror of Europe. A brief blast of the gale of prosperity once more and for the last time swelled his sails.

Meanwhile, his generals, whom he left at Smorgoni, approved of his departure, and, far from being discouraged, placed all their hopes in it. The army had now only to flee; the road was open, and the Russian frontier at a very short distance. They were getting within reach of a re-enforcement of eighteen thousand men, all fresh troops, of a great city, and immense magazines. Murat and Berthier, abandoned to themselves, fancied they were quite competent to direct the flight. But in the midst of such frightful disorder, it required a Napoleon for a rallying-point, and he had just disappeared. In the mighty chasm which he left, Murat was scarcely perceptible.

It was then but too clearly seen that a great man is not to be replaced; either that the pride of his followers can no longer stoop to obey another, or that, having always thought of, foreseen, and ordered everything himself, he had formed good instruments, skilful lieutenants, but no commanders.

The very first night a general refused to obey. The marshal who commanded the rear guard was almost the only one who returned to the royal headquarters. Three thousand men of the Old and the Young Guard were still there. This was the whole of the Grand Army, and of that gigantic body there remained nothing but the head. But at the news of Napoleon's departure, these veterans, spoiled by the habit of being commanded only by the conqueror of Europe, being no longer supported by the honor of serving him, and scorning to act as guards to another, gave way in their turn, and voluntarily fell into disorder.

Henceforward there was no longer fraternity in arms; there was an end to all society, to all ties; the excess of misery had completely brutified them. Hunger, devouring hunger, had reduced these unfortunate men to that brutal instinct of self-preservation which constitutes the sole understanding of ferocious animals, and which is ready to sacrifice everything to itself; nature, wild and barbarous around them, seemed to have communicated to them all its savageness. The strongest despoiled the weakest; they rushed about the dying, and frequently waited not for their last breath. When a horse fell, you might have fancied you saw a famished pack of hounds: they surrounded him, they tore him to pieces, and quarrelled among themselves for his remains like ravenous dogs.

The greater number, however, preserved sufficient moral strength to provide for their own safety without injuring others; but this was the last effort of their virtue. If either leader or comrade fell by their side or under the wheels of the cannon, in vain did they call for assistance, in vain did they invoke the names of a common country, a common religion, and a common cause; they could not even obtain a passing look. The merciless cold of the climate had passed into their comrades' hearts: its rigor had contracted their feelings no less than their features. With the exception of a few of the commanders, all were absorbed by their sufferings, and terror left no room for compassion.

There were a few, however, who still stood firm, as it were, against both heaven and earth: these protected and assisted the weakest; but their number was deplorably small.

§ 23. Sufferings of the Grand Army after Napoleon's departure. Arrival at Wilna.

On the 6th of December, the very day after Napoleon's departure, the sky exhibited a more dreadful appearance. Icy particles were seen floating in the air, and the birds fell stiff and frozen to the earth. The atmosphere was motionless and silent: it seemed as if everything in nature which possessed life and movement, even the wind itself, had been seized, chained, and, as it were, congealed by a universal death. Not a word or a murmur was then heard: there was nothing but the gloomy silence of despair, and the tears which proclaimed it.

We crept along in the midst of this empire of death like doomed spirits. The dull and monotonous sound of our steps, the cracking of the frost, and the feeble groans of the dying, were the only interruptions to this doleful and universal silence. Anger and imprecations there were none, nor anything which indicated a remnant of warmth; scarcely was strength enough left to utter a prayer; and most of the men fell without even complaining, either from weakness or resignation, or because people complain only when they look for kindness, and fancy they are pitied.

Such of our soldiers as had hitherto been the most persevering here lost heart entirely. Sometimes the snow sank beneath their feet, but more frequently, its glassy surface refusing them support, they slipped at every step, and tottered along from one fall to another. It seemed as though this hostile soil were leagued against them; that it treacherously escaped from under their efforts; that it was constantly leading them into snares, as if to embarrass and retard their march, and to deliver them up to the Russians in pursuit of them, or to their terrible climate.

And, in truth, whenever, for a moment, they halted from exhaustion, the winter, laying his icy hand upon them, was ready to seize his victims. In vain did these unhappy creatures, feeling themselves benumbed, raise themselves up, and, already deprived of the power of speech, and plunged into a stupor, proceed a few steps like automatons: their blood froze in their veins, like water in the current of rivulets, congealing the heart, and then flying back to the head; and these dying men staggered as if they had been intoxicated. From their eyes, reddened and inflamed by the constant glare of the snow, by the want of sleep, and the smoke of the bivouacs, there flowed real tears of blood; their bosoms heaved with deep and heavy sighs; they looked towards heaven, at us, and on the earth, with an eye dismayed, fixed, and wild, as expressive of their farewell, and, it might be, of their reproaches against the barbarous nature which was tormenting them. It was not long before they fell upon their knees, and then upon their hands; their heads still slowly moved for a few minutes alternately to the right and left, and from their open mouths some sounds of agony escaped; at last, they fell flat upon the snow, burying their faces in it, and their sufferings were at an end.

Their comrades passed by them without moving a step out of their way, that they might not, by the slightest curve, prolong their journey, and without even turning their heads; for their beards and hair were so stiffened with ice that every movement was painful. Nor did they even pity them; for, in fact, what had they lost by dying? what had they left behind them? They suffered so much, they were still so far from France, so much divested of all feelings of country by the surrounding prospect and by misery, that every dear illusion was broken, and hope almost destroyed. The greater number, therefore, had from necessity, from the habit of seeing death constantly around them, and from the prevailing feeling, become careless of dying, sometimes treating it with contempt; but generally, on seeing these unfortunates stretched on the snow, and instantly stiffened, contenting themselves with the thought that they had no more wants, that they were at rest, that their sufferings were over. And, indeed, death, in a situation quiet, certain, and uniform, may be felt as a strange event, a frightful contrast, a terrible change; but in this tumult, this violent and ceaseless movement of a life of action, danger, and suffering, it appeared nothing more than a transition, a slight alteration, an additional removal, which excited little alarm.

Such were the last days of the Grand Army: its last nights were still more frightful. Those whom they surprised marching together, far from every habitation, halted on the borders of the woods: there they lighted their fires, before which they remained the whole night, erect and motionless like spectres. They seemed as if they could not possibly have enough of the heat: they kept so close to it as to burn their clothes, as well as the frozen parts of their body, which the fire decomposed. The most dreadful pain then compelled them to stretch themselves on the ground, and the next day they attempted in vain to rise.

In the meantime, such as the winter had almost wholly spared, and who still retained some portion of courage, prepared their melancholy meal. It had consisted, ever since they left Smolensk, of some slices of horseflesh broiled, and a little rye-meal made into a sort of gruel with snow-water, or kneaded into paste, which they seasoned, for want of salt, with the powder of their cartridges.

The sight of these fires was constantly attracting fresh spectres, who were driven back by the first comers. These poor wretches wandered about from one bivouac to another, until, struck by the frost and despair together, and giving themselves up for lost, they laid themselves down upon the snow behind their more fortunate comrades, and there expired. Many of them, destitute of the means and the strength necessary to cut down the lofty fir-trees, made vain attempts to set fire to them as they were standing; but death speedily surprised them, and they might be seen in every sort of attitude, stiff and lifeless about their trunks.

Under the vast sheds erected by the sides of the high road in some parts of the way, scenes of still greater horror were witnessed. Officers and soldiers all rushed precipitately into them, and crowded together in heaps. There, like so many cattle, they pressed upon each other around the fires, and as the living could not remove the dead from the circle, they laid themselves down upon them, there to expire in their turn, and serve as a bed of death to some fresh victims. In a short time additional crowds of stragglers presented themselves, and, being unable to penetrate into these asylums of suffering, they completely besieged them.

It frequently happened that they demolished their walls, which were formed of dry wood, in order to feed their fires: at other times, repulsed and disheartened, they were contented to use them as shelters to their bivouacs, the flames of which very soon communicated to the buildings, and the soldiers who were within them, already half dead with the cold, perished in the conflagration. Such of us as survived in these places of shelter found our comrades the next morning lying frozen and in heaps around their extinguished fires; while to escape from these tombs effort was required to enable us to climb over the heaps of those who were still breathing.

Yet this was the same army which had been formed from the most civilized nation of Europe: that army, formerly so brilliant, which was victorious over men to its last moment, and whose name still reigned in so many conquered capitals. Its strongest and bravest warriors, who had recently been proudly traversing so many scenes of their victories, had lost their noble bearing: covered with rags, their feet naked and torn, and supporting themselves with branches of fir, they dragged themselves painfully along; and the strength and perseverance which they had hitherto put forth in order to conquer, they now made use of only to flee.

The army was in this last state of physical and moral distress when its first fugitives reached Wilna. Wilna! their magazine, their centre of supplies, the first rich and inhabited city which they had met with since their entrance into Russia. Its name alone, and its proximity, still supported the courage of a few.

On the 9th of December, the greatest part of these poor soldiers at last arrived within sight of that capital. Instantly, some dragging themselves along, others rushing forward, they all precipitated themselves headlong into its suburbs, hurrying obstinately on, and crowding together so fast that they formed but one mass of men, horses, and chariots, motionless, and deprived of the power of motion.

The capital of Lithuania was still ignorant of our disasters, when, all at once, forty thousand famished soldiers filled it with groans and lamentations. At this unlooked-for sight, its inhabitants became alarmed and shut their doors. Deplorable then was it to see these troops of wretched wanderers in the streets, some furious and others despairing, threatening or entreating, endeavoring to break open the doors of the houses and the magazines, or dragging themselves to the hospitals. Everywhere they were repulsed: at the magazines, from most unseasonable formalities, as, from the dissolution of the corps and the mingling of the soldiers, all regular distribution had become impossible.

There had been collected there sufficient flour and bread to last for forty days, and butchers' meat for thirty-six days, for one hundred thousand men. Not a single commander ventured to step forward and give orders for giving out these provisions to all who came for them. The commissaries who had them in charge were afraid of being made responsible for them; and the others dreaded the excesses to which the famished soldiers would give themselves up when everything was at their discretion. These commissaries were, besides, ignorant of our desperate situation; and when there was scarcely time for pillage, had they been so inclined, our unfortunate comrades were left for several hours to die of hunger at the very doors of these immense magazines, filled with whatever they stood in need of, all of which fell into the enemy's hands the following day.

At last, the exertions of several of the commanders, as Eugene and Davoust, the compassion of the Lithuanians, and the avarice of the Jews, opened some places of refuge. Nothing could be more remarkable than the astonishment manifested by these unfortunate men at finding themselves once more in inhabited houses. How delicious did a loaf of leavened bread appear to them, and how inexpressible the pleasure of eating it seated! and, afterward, with what admiration were they struck at seeing a scanty battalion still under arms, in regular order, and uniformly dressed! They seemed to have returned from the very extremities of the earth, so much had the violence and persistency of their sufferings wrested and torn them from all their habits, so deep had been the abyss from which they had escaped!

But scarcely had they begun to taste these sweets, when the cannon of the Russians were heard thundering over their heads and upon the city. These menacing sounds, the shouts of the officers, the drums beating to arms, and the wailings and clamor of an additional multitude of fugitives which had just arrived, filled Wilna with fresh confusion.

Every one thought much more of disputing his life with famine and the cold than with the enemy. But when the cry of "Here are the Cossacks" was heard (which for a long time had been the only signal which the greater number obeyed), it was instantly echoed through the whole city, and the rout again began.

This city contained a large proportion of the baggage of the army, and of its treasures, its provisions, a crowd of enormous wagons, loaded with the emperor's equipage, a large quantity of artillery, and a large number of wounded men. Our retreat had come upon them like an unexpected tempest, almost like a thunderbolt. Some were terrified and thrown into confusion, while consternation kept others motionless. Bearers of orders, soldiers, horses, and carriages, were seen hurrying about in all directions, crossing and overturning each other.

In the midst of this tumult, several of the commanders pushed forward out of the city towards Kowno, with all the troops they could contrive to muster; but at the distance of a league from the latter place this heavy and frightened column encountered the height and the ravine of Ponari.During our conquering advance, this woody hillock had only appeared to our soldiers a fortunate accident of the ground, from which they could discover the whole plain of Wilna, and take a survey of their enemies. Its rough but sharp declivity had then scarcely been remarked. During a regular retreat, it would have presented an excellent position for turning round and stopping the enemy; but in a disorderly flight, where everything which, in other circumstances, might have been of service, became injurious; where, in our precipitation and disorder, everything was turned against us, this hill and its defile became an insurmountable obstacle, a wall of ice, against which all our efforts were powerless. It arrested everything, baggage, treasure, and wounded; and the evil was sufficiently great, in this long series of disasters, to form an epoch.

Here, in fact, it was that money, honor, and all remains of discipline and strength were completely lost. After fifteen hours of fruitless effort, when the drivers and the soldiers of the escort saw the King of Naples and the whole column of fugitives passing them by the sides of the hill; when they heard the noise of the enemy's cannon and musketry coming nearer and nearer every instant, and saw Ney himself retreating with three thousand men; when, at last, turning their eyes upon themselves, they beheld the hill completely covered with cannon and carriages, broken or overturned, and men and horses fallen to the ground, and expiring one upon the other—then it was that they gave up all idea of saving anything, and determined only to anticipate the enemy by becoming plunderers themselves.

One of the covered wagons of treasure, which burst of itself, served as a signal; every one now rushed to the others; they were immediately broken open, and the most valuable effects taken from them. The soldiers of the rear guard, who were passing at the time of this disorder, threw away their arms to join in the plunder; they became so eagerly engaged in it as neither to hear, in fact, the whistling of the enemy's balls, nor to pay the slightest attention to the howlings of the Cossacks, who were at their heels.

It is even said that the Cossacks got mixed among them without being observed; that for some minutes, French and Tartars were confounded in the same greediness; forgetting they were at war, and pillaging together the same treasure-wagons. Two millions of gold and silver then disappeared.

But amid all these horrors there were noble acts of devotion. Those there were who abandoned everything to save some of the unfortunate wounded by carrying them on their shoulders; while others, unable to extricate their half-frozen comrades from the throng, sacrificed their lives in defending them either against their own countrymen, or from the blows of their enemies.

On the most exposed part of the hill, an officer of the emperor, Colonel the Count de Turenne, repulsed the Cossacks, and in defiance of their cries of rage and their fire, he distributed before their eyes the private treasure of Napoleon to the guards whom he found within his reach. These brave men, fighting with one hand, and collecting the spoils of their leader with the other, succeeded in saving them. Long afterward, when they were out of all danger, each man faithfully restored what had been intrusted to him. Not a single piece of money was lost.

This catastrophe at Ponari was the more disgraceful, as it might easily have been foreseen, and no less easily prevented: for the hill could have been turned by its sides. The property we here abandoned, however, was at least of some use by arresting the pursuit of the Cossacks. While these were busy in collecting their plunder, Ney, at the head of a few hundred French and Bavarians, supported the retreat as far as ÉvÉ. As this was his last effort, we must not neglect to describe the close of that retreat which he had continued uninterruptedly, and in the most methodical manner, ever since he left Viazma on the 3d of November.

§ 24. Conclusion.

Finally Ney and his men arrived at Kowno, which was the last town of the Russian empire. On the 13th of December, after marching forty-six days under the most terrible sufferings, they once more came in sight of a friendly country. Instantly, without halting, or looking behind them, the greater part plunged into, and dispersed themselves in, the forests of Prussian Poland. Some there were, however, who, on their arrival on the friendly bank of the Niemen, turned round; and there, when they cast a last look on that land of horrors from which they were escaping, and found themselves on the same spot whence, five months before, their countless eagles[179] had taken their victorious flight, tears gushed from their eyes and they broke out into exclamations of the most poignant sorrow.

"This, then, was the bank which they had studded with their bayonets! this the allied country which had disappeared, only five months before, under the steps of their immense army, and which then seemed to them to be metamorphosed into moving hills and plains of men and horses! These were the same valleys from which, under the rays of a brilliant sun, had poured forth the three long columns of dragoons and cuirassiers, resembling three rivers of glittering iron and brass. And now, men, arms, eagles, horses, the sun itself, and even this frontier river, which they had crossed replete with ardor and hope, had all disappeared. The Niemen was now only a lengthened line of masses of ice, arrested and chained to each other by the increasing severity of the winter. Instead of the three French bridges, brought from a distance of five hundred leagues, and thrown across it with such audacious promptitude, a Russian bridge alone was standing. Finally, in place of those innumerable warriors, of their four hundred thousand comrades, who had been so often their partners in victory, and who had dashed onward with so much pride and joy into the territory of Russia, they now saw issuing from these pale and frozen deserts only a thousand infantry and horsemen still under arms, nine cannon, and twenty thousand miserable wretches covered with rags, with downcast looks, hollow eyes, cadaverous and livid complexions, and long beards matted with frost; some disputing in silence the narrow passage of the bridge, which, in spite of their small numbers, did not suffice for the eagerness of their flight; others fleeing dispersed over the rough ice of the river, toiling and dragging themselves along from one point to another: this was the whole Grand Army! and even many of these fugitives were recruits who had just joined it!"

Two kings, one prince, eight marshals, followed by a few officers, generals on foot, dispersed, and without attendants: finally, a few hundred men of the Old Guard, still armed—these were the remains of the Grand Army—these alone represented it!

Or rather, I should say, it still breathed only in Marshal Ney! Comrades! allies! enemies! here I invoke your testimony; let us pay the homage which is due to the memory of an unfortunate hero: the facts alone will suffice.

All were flying, and Murat himself, traversing Kowno as he had done Wilna, first gave, and then withdrew, an order, to rally at Tilsit, and subsequently fixed upon Gumbinnen. Ney then entered Kowno, accompanied only by his aids-de-camp, for all besides had given way or fallen around him. From the time of his leaving Viazma, this was the fourth rear guard which had been worn out and disappeared in his hands. But winter and famine, far more than the Russians, had destroyed them. For the fourth time he remained alone before the enemy, and, still undismayed, he sought for a fifth rear guard.

Several thousand soldiers covered the market-place and the neighboring streets; but they were laid out stiff before the liquor-shops which they had broken open, and where they drank the cup of death, from which they had vainly hoped they were to inhale fresh life.

Such were the only succors which Murat had left him; and Ney found himself alone in Russia, with seven hundred foreign recruits. At Kowno, as it had been after the disasters of Viazma, of Smolensk, of the Berezina, and of Wilna, it was to him that the honor of our arms and all the peril of the last steps of our retreat were again confided.

On the 14th, at daybreak, the Russians commenced their attack. One of their columns made a hasty advance from the Wilna road, while another crossed the Niemen on the ice above the town, landed on the Prussian territory, and, proud of being the first to cross its frontier, marched to the bridge of Kowno, to close that outlet upon Ney, and completely cut off his retreat.

Ney, though abandoned by all, neither gave himself up nor his post. After vain efforts to detain these fugitives, he collected their muskets, which were still loaded, became once more a common soldier, and, with only four others, kept facing thousands of the enemy. His audacity stopped them; it made some of his artillerymen, too, ashamed, and they imitated their marshal: besides it gave time to his aid-de-camp and to General GÉrard, to collect thirty soldiers, and to Generals Ledru and Marchand to collect the only battalion which remained.

But at that moment a second attack of the Russians commenced on the other side of the Niemen, and near the bridge of Kowno: it was then half past two o'clock. Ney sent Ledru, Marchand, and their four hundred men forward to retake and secure that passage. As for himself, without giving way, or disquieting himself farther as to what was passing in his rear, he kept on fighting at the head of his thirty men, and maintained himself until night at the Wilna gate. He then traversed the town and crossed the Niemen, constantly fighting, retreating, but never flying, marching after all the others, supporting to the last moment the honor of our arms, and for the hundredth time during the last forty days and forty nights, putting his life and liberty in jeopardy to save a few more Frenchmen. Finally, he was the last of the Grand Army that quitted that fatal Russia, showing to the world how courage battles with ill fortune, and proving that with heroes even the greatest disasters turn to glory.[180]General Dumas was seated in the French headquarters on the Prussian side of the Niemen when a man entered wrapped in a long cloak. His face was blackened with gunpowder, his hair singed with fire. "At last," said he, "I am here." "But who are you?" asked General Dumas in astonishment. "I am the rear guard of the Grand Army—I am Marshal Ney. I have fired the last shot on the bridge of Kowno, I have thrown my musket into the river, and I have walked here across the forest."

Napoleon had entered Russia with an army of over six hundred thousand men. Not more than eighty thousand recrossed the Niemen, and many of them did not live to reach their homes.[181]Thus ended the Russian campaign. Thus did the star of the North triumph over that of Napoleon.

Comrades, my task is done; it is now for you to bear your testimony to the truth of the picture. Its colors will no doubt appear pale to your eyes and to your hearts, which are still full of these great recollections. But who does not know that an action is always more eloquent than its description; and that, if great historians are produced by great men, the former are still more rare than the latter?

FOOTNOTES:

[130] Moscow: the ancient capital of Russia is situated on the Moskwa river (a tributary of the Oka), from which the city derives its name. It first appears in history in the middle of the twelfth century. It early became the metropolis and seat of government, and continued so until a short time after the founding of St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1703.

For centuries Moscow was both the political and religious centre of the empire. Here the Czars were crowned, here they resided, here they were buried. Here, too, the patriarch, or former head of the Russian church, had his residence, amid cathedrals, monasteries, and shrines, which have always been regarded with peculiar reverence.

To the Russian peasant the city still remains sacred. It is the heart, as it were, of his native land. He cherishes toward it the same feeling which the devout Mohammedan does for Mecca, or the devout Catholic for Rome. He calls it "Our Holy Mother Moscow"; and when he comes in sight of its gilded spires and cupolas he makes the sign of the cross, falls upon his knees, and utters a prayer.

In the centre of Moscow stands the Kremlin, or fortress—for so the Tartar name is usually translated. This famous stronghold marks the original settlement. It covers nearly a hundred acres, and is situated on an eminence on the left bank of the river. It is triangular in shape, and is surrounded by a lofty stone wall, considerably more than a mile in extent, which is pierced with five gates and surmounted by eighteen commanding towers.

The Kremlin is almost a city in itself. Besides extensive barracks and an arsenal, with other government buildings, it contains the ancient palace of the Czars, a monastery, and several noted churches, one of which is the oldest and most venerated in Russia.

Formerly the entire fortification was encompassed by a broad, deep moat. This has been filled up, and now forms a spacious boulevard, with pleasure gardens, a library, a museum, and the great bazaar or market, where all kinds of merchandise are offered for sale.

At the time of the French invasion Moscow is supposed to have had a population of at least 325,000; at the present time it has more than double that number.

Napoleon entered the city September 14, 1812. That very night it was set on fire, and the conflagration continued until the whole place, outside the Kremlin, was practically a heap of bricks and ashes.

During the fire Napoleon was obliged to leave his quarters in the fortress and establish them in a suburb of the city, but later he returned to the Kremlin.

He evacuated Moscow on October 19, not quite five weeks after he entered it. He found it a great metropolis. He left it a mass of ruins, where nothing any longer existed to support life.