Chapter 29

THE INVASION OF RUSSIA--BORODINO[42]

[Footnote 42: References: Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier et Napoleon. Czartoryski: Memoirs. De Chambray: Oeuvres. Segur: La campagne de Russie. Labaume: Relation circonstanciee de la campagne de Russie. Wilson: A Narrative of the Campaign in Russia during the Year 1812. Du Casse: Memoires et Correspondance du Prince Eugene. Rapp: Memoires. Bausset: Memoires. Davout: Correspondance (ed. Mazade, 1885), Vol. III. Lossberg, V., Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben waehrend d. Feldzugs 1812 in Russland. Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als Feldherr. Stoltyk: Napoleon en Russie.]

Success and Failure -- The Struggle with Summer Heat -- Napoleon at Vitebsk -- The Russians Over-confident -- The Fight at Smolensk -- Technical Victory and Real Defeat -- Napoleon's Fatal Decision -- The Russians at Borodino -- The Battle Array -- Napoleon's Victory -- Russian Efforts to Burn Moscow.

When Napoleon left Dresden his force was so disposed that the Russians could not tell whether he meant to strike from north or south, and accordingly they divided theirs, Barclay de Tolly, with a hundred and twenty-seven thousand men, standing before Vilna; Bagration, with sixty-six thousand, ensconcing himself behind the swamps of the upper Pripet in Volhynia. Barclay, hoping to strike a sharp, swift blow, and open the campaign with a moral victory, was soon convinced of the danger, and called in Bagration, who was to be replaced by an auxiliary force. But before the long Russian line could be drawn together Napoleon struck the first decisive blow. Disposing his army in echelon, with beautiful precision he suddenly turned against the enemy's right, crossed the Niemen, and seized Vilna. This turned the Russian flank, and Barclay fell back to the fortified camp which had been established at Drissa in order to cover St. Petersburg. If, then, Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because Davout did not cooeperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and Eugene against Barclay, but the former had pushed on to seize Duenaburg, and was out of reach. This scheme, like the other, came to naught; Bagration, by a long, painful detour, was able to establish communication with Drissa, and seemed likely to effect a junction with Barclay on the road to Smolensk. As in these movements both the Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together. Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people grew desperate. The nation attributed its sorry plight to the bad advice of the Czar's German counselors, and such was the demoralization at the capital that Alexander was compelled to hasten thither in order to avert complete disaster. In spite of his personal unpopularity, he met with considerable success. The nobility and burghers of both St. Petersburg and Moscow caught the war fever, opened their coffers, equipped a numerous militia, and by the end of July all Russia was hopeful and eager for battle.

This, too, was the earnest desire of Napoleon. The advance from the Vistula to the Niemen and from the Niemen to the Dwina had been successfully carried forward--but at what a cost! "Since we have crossed the Niemen," wrote the artist Adam, who was at the viceroy's headquarters, "the Emperor and his entire army are occupied by a single thought, a single hope, a single wish--the thought of a great battle." Men talked of a great battle as of a great festival. If the Russian army in its own territory shriveled as it did before the summer heat by sickness and desertion, it may be imagined how that of the French dwindled. Their terrible sufferings could be ended only by a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day, and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account for the dilatoriness of Napoleon's movements in part; for the rest, his imperial plans demanded that he should organize all the territories in his rear, and he gave himself the utmost pains to do so. Besides, he had never before had a task so heroic in all its dimensions, and every detail of military and political procedure required time and care in fullest measure, the more so when preparing for a decisive, uncommon battle.

Vitebsk and Smolensk occupy analogous positions on the rivers Dwina and Dnieper, the former of which is to the westward and flows north; the latter, farther inland, flows in the opposite direction into the very heart of Russia. Barclay had planned to await Bagration at Vitebsk, and Napoleon, arriving on July twenty-seventh, hoped for a decisive battle there. But Davout's movements drove Bagration farther eastward, and Barclay, instead of waiting, hurried to Smolensk, where the junction was effected. This compulsory pursuit had, as communications then were, thrown the extreme wings of Napoleon's army virtually out of reach, the Prussians being near Riga, and the Austrians in Volhynia. The long, thin line of his center must be, therefore, drawn in for safety; and since the character of the country had improved, he determined to concentrate near Vitebsk, and recuperate his troops in the comparatively pleasant land which environs that city. Both commander and officers were at first so disheartened that they contemplated remaining for the season, Murat alone remonstrating; but Napoleon said three years were necessary for the Russian war. Such counsels did not long prevail; with new strength came the old daring, and orders were sent both to Macdonald and the Prussians on the left, and to the Austrians under Schwarzenberg on the right, which were indicative of a great project. Napoleon's prestige among the Poles had in fact shrunk along with his army. The latter he could not recruit, but the former he must repair at any hazard; this could be done only by what he designated to Jomini as a "good battle." The success of the minor engagements to right and left, incident to concentration, was encouraging for such a speedy and overwhelming triumph.

The Russians at Smolensk were vainglorious at having outwitted Napoleon, and longed to fight. Barclay alone was uneasy, but, in deference to the prevalent sentiment, he advanced to offer battle, and on August ninth there was a skirmish between pickets. Napoleon at once set his army in motion, but as neither general was really well informed or prepared, Barclay pushed on to the right, and the two armies lost touch. Once aroused, the French spirit brooked no further delay, and it was determined to seek the "good battle" before Smolensk, which, lying on the right, or north, bank of the Dnieper, could be reached only by crossing the stream. This manoeuver was brilliantly executed. Barclay was a day's march distant on the south bank when Ney and Murat deployed on the other side for action on August sixteenth. Bagration, nearer at hand, threw one corps across the river into the town, and then hurried his main force down-stream to oppose its passage by the French.

Smolensk, called from its site the Key of Russia, and designated, from its importance as a shrine, "The Sacred," was then a town of about thirteen thousand inhabitants. Around the inner city was a line of thick but dilapidated walls, and these were surrounded outside by densely built faubourgs. The first attempt of Ney to storm the walls failed, and a bombardment was ordered. By evening of the seventeenth the French army were all drawn up on the north bank between the city and the river; the Russians were opposite on the heights. During the night of the seventeenth the Russian army began to cross the Dnieper by the permanent bridge, which they held; a fresh garrison was thrown into Smolensk, and at four in the morning of the eighteenth the van began to retreat toward Moscow. Napoleon, foiled in his attempt to carry Smolensk by storm, had hoped that Barclay would offer battle under the walls of the town. He, therefore, waited until afternoon for the expected appearance of his foe, but in vain. Puzzled and uneasy, he then determined to force the fighting by a fresh assault. The suburbs were captured late in the evening, but the walls were impregnable. Barclay then set fire to the quarter opposite that attacked by the French, and in the resulting confusion safely drew out his garrison; the next morning saw his rear well beyond Napoleon's reach, with the bridges destroyed behind it. On the twenty-third he halted and drew up for battle behind the Uscha.

Technically Napoleon had won, since an important frontier fortress was captured; but he had not fought his great battle, nor had he cut off his enemy's retreat. Ney and Murat were despatched in pursuit, but it is charged on good authority that they acted recklessly, without concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian Smolensk with the Syrian Acre. Murat had foreseen that an affair at Smolensk would amount to nothing, and had begged Napoleon to avoid a conflict. Rapp came in after the victory, and recalled the scenes of distress which had marked every step of his long journey from the Niemen: the numerous victims of dysentery and typhus who lay dying along the roadsides, the desperate bands of marauders and deserters who were eking out a doubtful existence by ravaging the villages, the maddened hordes of peasants and tradespeople who were shooting or striking down the enfeebled stragglers from the army like bullocks in the shambles. Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded with the Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport barges had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains were without horses or oxen to draw them. The counterfeit paper money he had brought from Paris would no longer pass; where was he to find sustenance for his still numerous force of a hundred and eighty-five thousand men at least? Only by pressing on to some populous city; and on the twenty-fourth his army was in motion eastward. If Alexander could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk. The line from the Niemen to Moscow was very long, yet Schwarzenberg was on the right to prevent Tormassoff from breaking through, and Napoleon felt sure that Wittgenstein on the left was too weak to be a menace. If the great captain had halted at Smolensk and strengthened himself on the double line of the Dwina and Dnieper, as was perhaps possible in spite of all difficulties, he would have been quite as strong in a military way as before Austerlitz or Eylau. But had Russia learned nothing from these two experiences, and would she come on again a third time as on those two occasions to certain defeat? To have acted on the affirmative hypothesis would have been to expect much. The Czar would rather take time to raise the whole nation; if need be, to organize, discipline, and drill his numerous levies; to wear out the patience of the invaders and strike when the advantage was his, not theirs. Making all allowance for troops to be left in garrison, Napoleon would still have a hundred and fifty-seven thousand men, hardened veterans who, though murmuring and grumbling after the soldier's manner, were nevertheless altogether trustworthy, and would turn sulky if compelled to retreat.

If this were Napoleon's reasoning, it proved to be fallacious, because the Russians were constantly increasing their strength, while that of the French, both on the base of operations and on the line of march, was diminishing. The Austrian troops, moreover, behaved toward Russia as the Russian soldiers had behaved toward Austria in the last campaign; that is, as a friendly exploring guard, and not as hostile invaders. It is now easy to say that to lengthen the French line of operation was a military blunder. It was certainly wrong. The reasons are, however, not altogether strategic; they are chiefly moral, and were not so clearly discernible then. In the face of national feeling, before the march of national regeneration, a single man, world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he behaved like a tyro in statesmanship when he courted an overthrow at Moscow.

Barclay was charged by the old Russians with being too German in feeling, with manoeuvering timidly when he ought to fight, and--sacrilege of sacrileges!--with leaving the sacred image of the Virgin at Smolensk to fall into hostile hands. Yielding to the storm of popular feeling, Alexander appointed in his stead Kutusoff, the darling of the conservative Slavonic party; but Barclay was persuaded to remain as adviser, and his policy was sustained. The Russians withdrew before the French advance, until, on September third, their van halted on the right bank of the Kalatscha, opposite Borodino, to strike the decisive blow in defense of Moscow. On the fourth Napoleon's van attacked and drove before it the Russian rear, which was just closing in. He had a hundred and twenty-eight thousand men at hand, and six thousand more within reach. That night he issued a ringing address: recalling Austerlitz, he summoned the soldiers to behave so that future generations would say of each, "He was in that great battle under the walls of Moscow." Next morning a courier arrived, bringing a portrait of the little King of Rome. The Emperor hung it before his tent, and invited his officers to admire it. But at night the sinister news of Marmont's defeat at Salamanca arrived. Napoleon said nothing, but was heard in self-communing to deplore the barbarity of war. All night he seemed restless, fearing lest the Russians should elude him as they had in other crises; but, rising at five, and discerning their lines, he called aloud: "They are ours at last! March on; let us open the gates of Moscow."

The Russians, roused by religious fervor, and elevated by a fatalistic premonition of success, had thrown up trenches and redoubts at advantageous points on their chosen battle-fields. In their first onset they advanced like devotees, with the cry, "God have mercy upon us!" and, as each forward rank went down before the relentless invaders, those behind pressed onward over the bodies of their comrades. But it was all in vain; throughout the fourth and fifth of September one outpost after another was taken, until at ten in the evening of the latter day the whole Russian force was thrown back on its main position, stretching from the bank of the Moskwa on the north, behind the Kalatscha, as far as Utizy on the south, such portions as were not naturally sheltered being protected by strong redoubts. There were a hundred and twenty thousand in all, of which about seventeen thousand were ununiformed peasantry. Opposite stood the French, Poniatowski on the right, Davout, with the guard, in the rear, then Eugene; behind Davout, to the left, Ney; and farther behind, in the same line, Junot. The orders were for an opening cannonade, Poniatowski to surround the Russian left, Eugene to cross the Kalatscha by three bridges thrown over during the night, and attack the Russian right, while Morand and Gerard, his auxiliaries, should move on the center, and storm the defenses erected there.

The battle was conducted almost to the letter of these orders, but such was Russian valor that, instead of being a brilliant manoeuver, it developed into a bloody face-to-face conflict, determined by sheer force. At six in the morning the artillery opened. Poniatowski advanced, was checked, but, supported by Ney, stood firm until Junot came in; they two then stood together, while Ney and Davout dashed at the enemy's center. Eugene having acted in perfect concert, Poniatowski then advanced alone, and his task was completed by nine. But he was so weakened by his terrific exertions that he could only hold what he had gained. At ten Ney and Davout, reinforced by Friant, seized the central redoubts; but they, too, were exhausted, and could only hold the Russian line, which bent inward and stood without breaking. Eugene then massed his whole division, and charged. The resistance was stubborn, and the fighting terrific, but by three his opponents yielded, his artillery opened, and he held his gains. About the same time Junot reached Poniatowski, and their combined efforts finally overpowered the Russian left. So superhuman had been the exertions of both armies that they rested on their arms in these relative positions all night, the Russians too exhausted to flee, the French too weary to pursue. But early on the seventh the flight of Kutusoff began, and the French started in pursuit.

Between the generals of the Russian rear and those of Napoleon's van an agreement was made that if the former were left to pass through Moscow unmolested, the latter should gain the city without a blow. The contracting parties kept their pact; but the governor of Moscow rendered the agreement void. Great crowds of the inhabitants joined the Russian columns as, six days later, they marched between the rows of inflammable wooden houses of which the suburbs were composed; and, while they tramped sullenly onward, thin pillars of ascending smoke began to appear here and there on the outer lines. But when, two hours after the last Russian soldier had disappeared, the cavalry of Murat clattered through the streets, the fires attracted little attention, nor at the moment was Napoleon's contentment diminished by them, as, from the "mount of salutation," whence pious pilgrims were wont to greet the holy city, he ordered his guard to advance and occupy the Kremlin, that fortress which enshrines all that is holiest in Russian faith. Kutusoff, boasting that he had held his ground overnight, had persuaded the inhabitants of Moscow, and even the Czar, that he had been the victor, and that he was withdrawing merely to await the arrival of the victorious and veteran legions from the Danube, when he would choose his field and annihilate the invaders.