Book: History of the Expedition to Russia

C >> Count Philip de Segur >> History of the Expedition to Russia




Next day, when the emperor reviewed that regiment, he inquired where
was its third battalion? "In the redoubt," was the reply of the colonel.
But the affair did not stop there; a neighbouring wood still swarmed
with Russian light troops, who sallied every moment from this retreat to
renew their attacks, which were supported by three divisions: at length
the attack of Schewardino by Morand, and of the woods of Elnia by
Poniatowski, completely disheartened the troops of Bagration, and
Murat's cavalry cleared the plain. It was chiefly the firmness of a
Spanish regiment that foiled the enemy; they at last gave way, and that
redoubt, which had been their advanced post, became ours.

At the same time the emperor assigned its place to each corps; the rest
of the army formed in line, and a general discharge of musketry,
accompanied at intervals with that of a few cannon, ensued. It continued
till each party had fixed its limit, and darkness had rendered their
fire uncertain.

One of Davoust's regiments then sought to take its rank in the first
line. Owing to the darkness, it passed beyond it, and got into the midst
of the Russian cuirassiers, who attacked it, threw it into disorder,
took from it three pieces of cannon, and killed or took three hundred
men. The rest immediately fell into platoons, forming a shapeless mass,
but making so formidable a resistance, that the enemy could not again
break it; and this regiment, with diminished numbers, finally regained
its place in the line of battle.




CHAPTER VI.


The emperor encamped behind the army of Italy, on the left of the
high-road; the old guard formed in square around his tents. As soon as
the fire of small arms had ceased, the fires were kindled. Those of the
Russians burned brightly, in an immense semicircle; ours gave a pale,
unequal, and irregular light,--the troops arriving late and in haste, on
an unknown ground, where nothing was prepared for them, and where there
was a want of wood, especially in the centre and on the left.

The emperor slept little. On General Caulaincourt's return from the
conquered redoubt, as no prisoners had fallen into our hands, Napoleon
surprised, kept asking him repeatedly, "Had not his cavalry then charged
apropos? Were the Russians determined to conquer or die?"--The answer
was, that "being fanaticised by their leaders, and accustomed to fight
with the Turks, who gave no quarter, they would be killed sooner than
surrender." The emperor then fell into a deep meditation; and judging
that a battle of artillery would be the most certain, he multiplied his
orders to bring up, with all speed, the parks which had not yet joined
him.

That very same night, a cold mizzling rain began to fall, and the autumn
set in with a violent wind. This was an additional enemy, which it was
necessary to take into account; for this period of the year
corresponded with the age on which Napoleon was entering, and every one
knows the influence of the seasons of the year on the like seasons of
life.

During that night how many different agitations! The soldiers and the
officers had to prepare their arms, to repair their clothing, and to
combat cold and hunger; for their life was a continual combat. The
generals, and the emperor himself, were uneasy, lest their defeat of the
preceding day should have disheartened the Russians, and they should
escape us in the dark. Murat had anticipated this; we imagined several
times that we saw their fires burn more faintly, and that we heard the
noise of their departure; but day alone eclipsed the light of the
enemy's bivouacs.

This time there was no need to go far in quest of them. The sun of the
6th found the two armies again, and displayed them to each other, on the
same ground where it had left them the evening before. There was a
general feeling of exultation.

The emperor took advantage of the first rays of dawn, to advance between
the two lines, and to go from height to height along the whole front of
the hostile army. He saw the Russians crowning all the eminences, in a
vast semicircle, two leagues in extent, from the Moskwa to the old
Moscow road. Their right bordered the Kologha, from its influx into the
Moskwa to Borodino; their centre, from Gorcka to Semenowska, was the
saliant part of their line. Their right and left receded. The Kologha
rendered their right inaccessible.

The emperor perceived this immediately, and as, from its distance, this
wing was not more threatening than vulnerable, he took no account of it.
For him then the Russian army commenced at Gorcka, a village situated on
the high-road, and at the point of an elevated plain which overlooks
Borodino and the Kologha. This sharp projection is surrounded by the
Kologha, and by a deep and marshy ravine; its lofty crest, to which the
high-road ascends on leaving Borodino, was strongly entrenched, and
formed a separate work on the right of the Russian centre, of which it
was the extremity.

On its left, and within reach of its fire, rose a detached hill,
commanding the whole plain; it was crowned by a formidable redoubt,
provided with twenty-one pieces of cannon. In front and on its right it
was encompassed by the Kologha and by ravines; its left inclined to and
supported itself upon a long and wide plateau, the foot of which
descended to a muddy ravine, a branch of the Kologha. The crest of this
plateau, which was lined by the Russians, declined and receded as it ran
towards the left, in front of the grand army; it then kept rising as far
as the yet smoking ruins of the village of Semenowska. This saliant
point terminated Barclay's command and the centre of the enemy: it was
armed with a strong battery, covered by an entrenchment.

Here began the left wing of the Russians under Bagration. The less
elevated crest which it occupied undulated as it gradually receded to
Utitza, a village on the old Moscow road, where the field of battle
ended. Two hills, armed with redoubts, and bearing diagonally upon the
entrenchment of Semenowska, which flanked them, marked the front of
Bagration.

From Semenowska to the wood of Utitza there was an interval of about
twelve hundred paces. It was the nature of the ground which had decided
Kutusof thus to refuse this wing; for here the ravine, which was under
the plateau in the centre, just commenced. It was scarcely an obstacle;
the slopes of its banks were very gentle, and the summits suitable for
artillery were at some distance from its margin. This side was evidently
the most accessible, since the redoubt of the 61st, which that regiment
had taken the preceding day, no longer defended the approach: this was
even favoured by a wood of large pines, extending from the redoubt just
mentioned to that which appeared to terminate the line of the Russians.

But their left wing did not end there. The emperor knew that behind this
wood was the old Moscow road; that it turned round the left wing of the
Russians, and passing behind their army, ran again into the new Moscow
road in front of Mojaisk. He judged that it must be occupied; and, in
fact, Tutchkof, with his _corps d'armee_, had placed himself across it
at the entrance of a wood; he had covered himself by two heights, on
which he had planted artillery.

But this was of little consequence, because, between this detached corps
and the last Russian redoubt, there was a space of five or six hundred
fathoms and a covered ground. If we did not begin with overwhelming
Tutchkof, we might therefore occupy it, pass between him and the last of
Bagration's redoubts, and take the left wing of the enemy in flank; but
the emperor could not satisfy himself on this point, as the Russian
advanced posts and the woods forbade his farther advance, and
intercepted his view.

Having finished his reconnoissance, he formed his plan. "Eugene shall be
the pivot!" he exclaimed: "it is the right that must commence. As soon
as, under cover of the wood, it has taken the redoubt opposite to it, it
must make a movement to the left, and march on the Russian flank,
sweeping and driving back their whole army upon their right and into the
Kologha."

The general plan thus conceived, he applied himself to the details.
During the night, three batteries, of sixty guns each, must be opposed
to the Russian redoubts; two facing their left, the third before their
centre. At daybreak, Poniatowski and his army, reduced to five thousand
men, must advance on the old Smolensk road, turning the wood on which
the French right wing and the Russian left were supported. He would
flank the one and annoy the other; the army would wait for the report of
his first shots.

Instantly, the whole of the artillery should commence upon the left of
the Russians, its fire would open their ranks and redoubts, and Davoust
and Ney should rush upon them; they should be supported by Junot and his
Westphalians, by Murat and his cavalry, and lastly, by the emperor
himself, with 20,000 guards. It was against these two redoubts that the
first efforts should be made; it was by them that he would penetrate
into the hostile army, thenceforth mutilated, and whose centre and right
would then be uncovered, and almost enveloped.

Meanwhile, as the Russians showed themselves in redoubled masses on
their centre and their right, threatening the Moscow road, the only line
of operation of the grand army; as in throwing his chief force and
himself on their left, Napoleon was about to place the Kologha between
him and that road, his only retreat, he resolved to strengthen the army
of Italy which occupied it, and joined with it two of Davoust's
divisions and Grouchy's cavalry. As to his left, he judged that one
Italian division, the Bavarian cavalry, and that of Ornano, about 10,000
men, would suffice to cover it. Such were the plans of Napoleon.




CHAP. VII.


He was on the heights of Borodino, taking a last survey of the whole
field of battle, and confirming himself in his plan, when Davoust
hastened up. This marshal had just examined the left of the Russians
with so much the more care, as it was the ground on which he was to
act, and he mistrusted his own eyes.

He begged the emperor "to place at his disposal his five divisions,
35,000 strong, and to unite with them Poniatowski, whose force was too
weak to turn the enemy by itself. Next day he would set this force in
motion; he would cover its march with the last shades of night, and with
the wood on which the Russian left wing was supported, and beyond which
he would pass by following the old road from Smolensk to Moscow; then,
all at once, by a precipitate manoeuvre, he would deploy 40,000 French
and Poles on the flank and in the rear of that wing. There, while the
emperor would occupy the front of the Muscovites by a general attack, he
would march impetuously from redoubt to redoubt, from reserve to
reserve, driving every thing from left to right on the high-road of
Mojaisk, where they should put an end at once to the Russian army, the
battle, and the war."

The emperor listened attentively to the marshal; but after meditating in
silence for some minutes, he replied, "No! it is too great a movement;
it would remove me too far from my object, and make me lose too much
time."

The Prince of Eckmuehl, however, from conviction, persisted in his point;
he undertook to accomplish his manoeuvre before six in the morning; he
protested that in another hour the greatest part of its effect would be
produced. Napoleon, impatient of contradiction, sharply replied with
this exclamation, "Ah! you are always for turning the enemy; it is too
dangerous a manoeuvre!" The marshal, after this rebuff, said no more:
he then returned to his post, murmuring against a prudence which he
thought unseasonable, and to which he was not accustomed; and he knew
not to what cause to attribute it, unless the looks of so many allies,
who were not to be relied on, an army so reduced, a position so remote,
and age, had rendered Napoleon less enterprising than he was.

The emperor, having decided, had returned to his camp, when Murat, whom
the Russians had so often deceived, persuaded him that they were going
to run away once more without fighting. In vain did Rapp, who was sent
to observe their attitude, return and say, that he had seen them
entrenching themselves more and more; that they were numerous,
judiciously disposed, and appeared determined much rather to attack, if
they were not anticipated, than to retreat: Murat persisted in his
opinion, and the emperor, uneasy, returned to the heights of Borodino.

He there perceived long black columns of troops covering the high-road,
and spreading over the plain; then large convoys of waggons, provisions,
and ammunition, in short all the dispositions indicative of a stay and a
battle. At that very moment, though he had taken with him but few
attendants, that he might not attract the notice and the fire of the
enemy, he was recognized by the Russian batteries, and a cannon-shot
suddenly interrupted the silence of that day.

For, as it frequently happens, nothing was so calm as the day preceding
that great battle. It was like a thing mutually agreed upon! Wherefore
do each other useless injury? was not the next day to decide every
thing? Besides, each had to prepare itself; the different corps, their
arms, their force, their ammunition; they had to resume all their unity,
which on a march is always more or less deranged. The generals had to
observe their reciprocal dispositions of attack, defence, and retreat,
in order to adapt them to each other and the ground, and to leave as
little as possible to chance.

Thus these two colossal foes, on the point of commencing their terrible
contest, watched each other attentively, measured one another with their
eyes, and silently prepared for a tremendous conflict.

The emperor, who could no longer entertain doubts of a battle, returned
to his tent to dictate the order of it. There he meditated on his awful
situation. He had seen that the two armies were equal; about 120,000
men, and 600 pieces of cannon on either side. The Russians had the
advantage of ground, of speaking but one language, of one uniform, of
being a single nation, fighting for the same cause, but a great number
of irregular troops and recruits. The French had as many men, but more
soldiers; for the state of his corps had just been submitted to him: he
had before his eyes an account of the strength of his divisions, and as
it was neither a review, nor a distribution, but a battle that was in
prospect, this time the statements were not exaggerated. His army was
reduced indeed, but sound, supple, nervous,--like those manly bodies,
which, having just lost the plumpness of youth, display forms more
masculine and strongly marked.

Still, during the last few days that he had marched in the midst of it,
he had found it silent, from that silence which is imposed by great
expectation or great astonishment; like nature, the moment before a
violent tempest, or crowds at the instant of an extraordinary danger.

He felt that it wanted rest of some kind or other, but that there was no
rest for it but in death or victory; for he had brought it into such a
necessity of conquering, that it must triumph at any rate. The temerity
of the situation into which he had urged it was evident, but he knew
that of all faults that was the one which the French most willingly
forgave; that in short they doubted neither of themselves nor of him,
nor of the general result, whatever might be their individual hardships.

He reckoned, moreover, on their habit and thirst of glory, and even on
their curiosity; no doubt they wished to see Moscow, to be able to say
that they had been there, to receive there the promised reward, perhaps
to plunder, and, above all, there to find repose. He did not observe in
them enthusiasm, but something more firm: an entire confidence in his
star, in his genius, the consciousness of their superiority, and the
proud assurance of conquerors, in the presence of the vanquished.

Full of these sentiments, he dictated a proclamation, simple, grave,
and frank, as befitted such circumstances, and men who were not just
commencing their career, and whom, after so many sufferings, it would
have been idle to pretend to exalt.

Accordingly he addressed himself solely to the reason of all, or what is
the same thing, to the real interest of each; he finished with glory,
the only passion to which he could appeal in these deserts, the last of
the noble motives by which it was possible to act upon soldiers always
victorious, enlightened by an advanced civilization and long experience;
in short, of all the generous illusions, the only one that could have
carried them so far. This harangue will some day be deemed admirable: it
was worthy of the commander and of the army; it did honour to both.

"Soldiers!" said he, "here is the battle which you have so ardently
desired. Victory will now depend upon yourselves; it is necessary for
us; it will give us abundance, good winter-quarters, and a speedy return
home! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, and at
Smolensk, and afford to remotest posterity occasion to cite your conduct
on that day: let it be said of you, 'He was in that great battle under
the walls of Moscow.'"




CHAP. VIII.


About the middle of the day, Napoleon remarked an extraordinary movement
in the enemy's camp; in fact, the whole Russian army was drawn up and
under arms, and Kutusof, surrounded with every species of religious and
military pomp, took his station in the middle of it. He had made his
popes and his archimandrites dress themselves in those splendid and
majestic insignia, which they have inherited from the Greeks. They
marched before him, carrying the venerated symbols of their religion,
and particularly that divine image, formerly the protectress of
Smolensk, which, by their account, had been miraculously saved from the
profanation of the sacrilegious French.

When the Russian saw that his soldiers were sufficiently excited by this
extraordinary spectacle, he raised his voice, and began by putting them
in mind of heaven, the only country which remains to the slave. In the
name of the religion of equality, he endeavoured to animate these serfs
to defend the property of their masters; but it was principally by
exhibiting to them that holy image which had taken refuge in their
ranks, that he appealed to their courage, and raised their indignation.

Napoleon, in his mouth, "was a universal despot! the tyrannical
disturber of the world! a poor worm! an arch-rebel, who had overturned
their altars, and polluted them with blood; who had exposed the true
ark of the Lord, represented by the holy image, to the profanation of
men, and the inclemency of the seasons." He then told them of their
cities reduced to ashes; reminded them that they were about to fight for
their wives and children; added a few words respecting the emperor, and
concluded by appealing to their piety and their patriotism. These were
the virtues of instinct with this rude and simple people, who had not
yet advanced beyond sensations, but who, for that very reason, were so
much more formidable as soldiers; less diverted from obedience by
reasoning; confined by slavery to a narrow circle, in which they are
reduced to a small number of sensations, which are the only sources of
their wants, wishes, and ideas.

As to other characteristics, proud for want of comparison, and credulous
as they are proud, from ignorance--worshippers of images, idolaters as
much as Christians can be; for they had converted that religion of the
soul, which is wholly intellectual and moral, into one entirely physical
and material, to bring it to the level of their brute and short
capacity.

This solemn spectacle, however, their general's address, the
exhortations of their officers, and the benedictions of their priests,
served to give a thorough tincture of fanaticism to their courage. All,
even to the meanest soldier, fancied themselves devoted by God himself
to the defence of Heaven and their consecrated soil.

With the French there was no solemnity, either religious or military,
no review, no means of excitation: even the address of the emperor was
not distributed till very late, and read the next morning so near the
time of action, that several corps were actually engaged before they
could hear it. The Russians, however, whom so many powerful motives
should have inflamed, added to their invocations the sword of St.
Michael, thus seeking to borrow aid from all the powers of heaven; while
the French sought for it only within themselves, persuaded that real
strength exists only in the heart, and that _there_ is to be found the
"celestial host."

Chance so ordered it, that on that very day the emperor received from
Paris the portrait of the King of Rome, that infant whose birth had been
hailed by the empire with the same transports of joy and hope as it had
been by the emperor. Every day since that happy event, the emperor, in
the interior of his palace, had given loose when near his child, to the
expression of the most tender feelings; when, therefore, in the midst of
these distant fields, and all these menacing preparations, he saw once
more that sweet countenance, how his warlike soul melted! With his own
hand he exhibited this picture outside his tent; he then called his
officers, and even some of the soldiers of his old guard, desirous of
sharing his pleasure with these veteran grenadiers, of showing his
private family to his military family, and making it shine as a symbol
of hope in the midst of imminent peril.

In the evening, an aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had been despatched from
the field of battle near Salamanca, arrived at that of the Moskwa. This
was the same Fabvier, who has since made such a figure in our civil
dissensions. The emperor received graciously the aid-de-camp of the
vanquished general. On the eve of a battle, the fate of which was so
uncertain, he felt disposed to be indulgent to a defeat; he listened to
all that was said to him respecting the scattered state of his forces in
Spain, and the number of commanders-in-chief, and admitted the justice
of it all; but he explained his reasons, which it enters not into our
province to mention here.

With the return of night also returned the apprehension, that under
cover of its shades, the Russian army might escape from the field of
battle. Napoleon's anxiety was so great as to prevent him from sleeping.
He kept calling incessantly to know the hour, inquiring if any noise was
heard, and sending persons to ascertain if the enemy was still before
him. His doubts on this subject were so strong, that he had given orders
that his proclamation should not be read to his troops until the next
morning, and then only in case of the certainty of a battle.

Tranquillized for a few moments, anxiety of an opposite description
again seized him. He became frightened at the destitute state of the
soldiers. Weak and famished as they were, how could they support a long
and terrible shock? In this danger he looked upon his guard as his sole
resource; it seemed to be his security for both armies. He sent for
Bessieres, that one of his marshals in whom he had the greatest
confidence for commanding it; he wished to know if this chosen reserve
wanted nothing;--he called him back several times, and repeated his
pressing questions. He desired that these old soldiers should have three
days' biscuit and rice distributed among them from their waggons of
reserve; finally, dreading that his orders had not been obeyed, he got
up once more, and questioned the grenadiers on guard at the entrance of
his tent, if they had received these provisions. Satisfied by their
answer, he went in, and soon fell into a doze.

Shortly after, he called once more. His aid-de-camp found him now
supporting his head with both hands; he seemed, by what was heard, to be
meditating on the vanities of glory. "What is war? A trade of
barbarians, the whole art of which consists in being the strongest on a
given point!" He then complained of the fickleness of fortune, which he
said, he began to experience. Seeming to revert to more encouraging
ideas, he recollected what had been told him of the tardiness and
carelessness of Kutusof, and expressed his surprise that Beningsen had
not been preferred to him. He thought of the critical situation into
which he had brought himself, and added, "that a great day was at hand,
that there would be a terrible battle." He asked Rapp if he thought we
should gain the victory? "No doubt;" was the reply, "but it will be
sanguinary." "I know it," resumed Napoleon, "but I have 80,000 men; I
shall lose 20,000, I shall enter Moscow with 60,000; the stragglers
will there rejoin us, and afterwards the battalions on the march, and we
shall be stronger than we were before the battle." In this estimate he
seemed to include neither his guard nor the cavalry.

Again assailed by his first anxiety, he sent once more to examine the
attitude of the Russians; he was informed that their fires burned with
equal brightness, and that by the number of these, and the moving
shadows surrounding them, it was supposed that it was not merely a
rear-guard, but a whole army that kept feeding them. The certainty of
their presence at last quieted the emperor, and he tried to take some
rest.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.