(Introductory to the Retreat from Moscow.)

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, Corsica (then recently ceded to France), in 1769. He was of Italian descent, and up to the age of ten could speak no French. In 1779 he was sent to the military school of Brienne, in France, and there began his education for the army. As a lieutenant of artillery he did good service in behalf of the French revolutionary government at the siege of Toulon, which had revolted in 1793.

Two years later that government was threatened by the rising of the people of Paris, headed by the National Guard. General Barras gave Napoleon an opportunity of showing his military skill in defence of the authorities, and the young officer, with his well-directed volleys of grape-shot, speedily quelled the insurrection. From that time Napoleon's name became familiar to the French people.

In 1796 he married Madame Josephine Beauharnais, a West Indian lady, whose husband had been guillotined during the Revolution. About the same time Napoleon received the command of the French army of Italy, and with his successful Italian campaign against Austria his reputation as a general began.

From that date until his final abdication in 1815, he was almost constantly engaged in active war, or in preparations for it. During that period of twenty years he fought nearly the whole of Europe; and up to his fatal Russian campaign in 1812, he was victorious in every great battle which he personally directed in the open field. This constant success inspired him with the belief that he was invincible. As one of his friends said, "He appeared like a man walking in a halo of glory"; and as an eminent statesman declared, "France gave herself to him, absorbed herself in him, and seemed, at one time, no longer to think, except through him." From a simple artillery officer Napoleon had risen to be the greatest military commander in the world. His adopted country had placed him at the head of the government, and ended by making him Emperor. By his conquests he had enlarged France so that his imperial dominions extended to the Baltic on the north, and beyond Rome on the southeast.

To increase his glory and strengthen his power, he established a circle of dependent thrones and principalities, occupied by his brothers and his favorites, who were bound to obey his will and extend his sway.

Of all the nations of Europe, England alone had been able to withstand him; and in 1812 London, Moscow, and St. Petersburg were the only leading capitals whose streets his triumphant armies had not entered.

It was when he was at the apparent summit of his power that Napoleon divorced his faithful Josephine, in order that he might marry the Princess Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Austria. His object was to found a reigning family allied by blood with one of the oldest and proudest dynasties of Europe. In this, as in all other things, he seemed to accomplish his purpose, for from this union a son was born who, under the title of the "King of Rome," promised to perpetuate his father's name and power.

Having secured an heir to his crown Napoleon now determined to rigorously carry out his "continental policy" of humbling England by shutting out her trade from every port of Europe. If this could be done effectually, as he believed was possible, he might hope to starve his old enemy into submission.

The attempt to accomplish this design was the chief cause of the campaign against Russia, and of Napoleon's ultimate downfall. The Czar, contrary to the provisions of the treaty of Tilsit, made in 1807, was now opposed to continuing the blockade which excluded English commerce from the Baltic. Not only did the Russian sovereign refuse to yield on this point, but he went so far as to form an alliance with Sweden, in order to resist the French Emperor's demands more effectually.

Napoleon accordingly declared war, and in the spring of 1812 began gathering a force of over 600,000 men for the invasion of Russia. The Grand Army was chiefly French; but the Emperor compelled his allies—Austria, Prussia, Italy, and the German States—to furnish large numbers of troops; and he also received help from Poland. Besides the Imperial Guard, a body of picked men over 50,000 strong, under the command of Marshals Lefebvre, Mortier, and BessiÈres, there were 13 corps. The French were led by Marshals Davoust, Oudinot, Ney, Murat, King of Naples; the Italians by Prince Eugene; the Poles by Poniatowski; the Austrians by General Schwartzenberg; the Germans and Prussians by St. Cyr, Regnier, Vandamme, Victor, Macdonald, and Augereau.

The Poles fought for Napoleon in the belief that, if successful, he would secure their independence against the power of Russian oppression; the other nations because they dared not refuse.

This enormous force, which was double that of the Czar's, gradually collected on the banks of the Niemen, a river emptying into the Baltic, and forming part of the western boundary of Russia. The army crossed it in three divisions, at a considerable distance from each other.[125] All were to meet at Wilna, a Polish city which Russia had seized in the dismemberment of that country, and which was about fifty miles southeast of the Niemen.

Napoleon himself, at the head of one of the three divisions, with a force of over two hundred thousand, crossed the river at Kowno on the 23d of June, and began his march for Wilna.[126] The weather was intensely hot, and in the course of a few weeks many thousand men fell out of the ranks through sickness and fatigue, and great numbers of horses died. The French hoped to encounter the Russian forces in a decisive battle before advancing far into the country. But it was the policy of the Czar not to fight, but to keep falling back, destroying all supplies as fast as he retreated, and so compelling the French to depend wholly upon their own resources.

Napoleon himself confessed that the Russians had the advantage. They, he said, would be animated by love of their native land to repel invasion, and all private and public interests would unite them. The French, on the other hand, had nothing to urge them on but the love of conquest and of glory, without even the hope of plunder, for in those desolate regions there was nothing they could seize.

The first real encounter was at Smolensk, a walled city on the Dnieper, about half way between Wilna and the ancient capital of Russia. After a day of hard fighting, the Russians fired the city and abandoned it. The French entered the smoking ruins. They were victors, but such a victory was almost as disheartening as a defeat. From that place a weary seven-days march brought the Grand Army to the village of Borodino, on the banks of the Kologa, a tributary of the Moskwa.[127] Here the Russian general, Kutusoff, had determined to make a stand in defence of that holy city of Moscow, not many leagues distant, for which every peasant stood ready to lay down his life. The result of the battle was in favor of Napoleon, but it cost him the lives of thirty thousand men to gain it; and though the Russians lost double that number, they knew that the time was coming when the elements and the great barren spaces of their country would fight for them. This was the 7th of September. From that date the Russians resumed their old tactics and continued to slowly retreat, burning the villages and the crops as they fell back. At length, at noon of the 14th, the French emperor came in sight of "the city of the Czars."What followed from that time until Napoleon, baffled and beaten, reached Paris, leaving the wreck of the Grand Army behind him, may best be learned from the ensuing narrative of Count SÉgur,[128] who was one of the generals in that army, an officer of the imperial staff, and an eye-witness of what he describes.[129]

His faithful history of that terrible disaster must necessarily be painful. It is in most respects the very opposite of Xenophon's account of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, which precedes it. But the reader should reflect that the dark and sorrowful scenes of history may have lessons as salutary as the brighter ones; and that the story of a great failure, involving the ruin and death of thousands, may be as instructive and as helpful as the story of a great success. In Xenophon's case, we have the spectacle of a man of more than ordinary ability, stimulated by difficulty and peril until he rises to real greatness of achievement. In Napoleon's career we see a naturally "great mind dragged to ruin by its own faults"; but such a man could not fall alone, and it was inevitable that a multitude should suffer with him and for him.

D. H. M.

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