Chapter 32

THE HORRORS OF THE BERESINA[45]

[Footnote 45: References: Bertin, La campagne de 1812, d'apres des temoins oculaires. Du Casse, Memoires a l'histoire de la campagne de 1812 en Russie. Exner, Der Antheil der Koenigl. Saechsischen Armee am Feldzuge gegen Russland, 1812. Lafon, Histoire de la conjuration du Gen. Malet, avec des details officiels sur cette affaire. Labaume, Relation circonstanciee de la campagne de Russie. Lecointe de Laveau, Moscou avant et apres l'incendie, ou notice contenant une description de cette capitale, des moeurs de ses habitants, des evenements qui se passerent pendant l'incendie, et des malheurs qui accablerent l'armee francaise pendant la retraite de 1812. Mikhailowsky-Danilewsky, Le passage de la Beresina. von Pfuel, E., Der Ruckzug der Franzosen aus Russland. de Puibusque, Lettres sur la guerre de Russie, en 1812, sur la ville de Saint-Petersbourg, les moeurs et les usages des habitants de la Russie et de la Pologne.]

Napoleon at Bay -- The Enemy at Fault -- The Crossing of the Beresina -- The Carnage -- End of the Tragedy -- Napoleon's Departure -- The Remnants of the Army at Vilna -- The Russian Generals -- Napoleon's Journey -- Malet's Conspiracy -- The Emperor's Anxiety -- The State of France -- Affairs in Spain.

The situation of the French was desperate indeed. With a relentless foe behind, and on each side, and now in front protected by the rampart of a swollen river, which was overflowing its banks and was bordered on both sides by dense forests, the army seemed doomed. A single overmastering thought began to take possession of Napoleon's mind--that of his personal safety. He appeared to take a momentous decision--the determination to sacrifice his army bit by bit that he might save its head. This resolution once formed, he became strong and courageous, his head was clear, and his invention active. Oudinot was summoned, with his eight thousand men, to drive out Tchitchagoff; and orders were sent to Victor, commanding him to take the eleven thousand which he had, and at any hazard cut off Wittgenstein from the Beresina. Schwarzenberg had been temporarily checked by a division of Russians under Sacken, and was no longer a factor in the problem. Oudinot accomplished his task, but the Russians fired the bridge as they fled.

Napoleon was scarcely consoled by news that his cavalry had found a ford at Studjenka. Early on the twenty-third the French bridge-builders, with all available assistants and material, were on their way up the river. The remnants of the army were reorganized, and the baggage-train was reduced to the smallest possible dimensions. Unfortunately, Victor had not received his orders in time, and, ignorant of the Emperor's plans, had changed his line of march to one more southerly, thus leaving the road to Studjenka open for Wittgenstein, who abandoned the pursuit and marched direct to the spot. The latter's advance was, however, slow; Tchitchagoff was completely deceived, as many of the French believe, by a feint of Oudinot's, but, as he himself declared, both by false information concerning the movements of Schwarzenberg, and by misrepresentations concerning Napoleon's march as communicated through both Kutusoff and Wittgenstein. Be this as it may, the veterans from the Danube marched a whole day down the stream to guard against an imaginary danger. The French therefore worked at Studjenka without disturbance, and, as the frost set in once more, the swampy shores were hardened enough to make easy the approach to their works. By the twenty-sixth two bridges were completed--a light one for infantry early in the morning, and late in the afternoon another considered strong enough for artillery and wagons. At one o'clock Oudinot's foot-soldiers began to cross, and a body of cavalry successfully swam their horses over the stream, which owing to the freshet was now in places five feet deep instead of three and a half as when the ford was first discovered; a few hours later artillery followed, and the opposite shore was cleared of the enemy sufficiently to open the bridge-head entirely, and control the direct road to Vilna, which leaves Minsk to the south. This great success was due partly to unparalleled good fortune, but chiefly to the gallant fellows who worked for hours without a murmur in the freezing water, amid cakes of grinding ice.

With two short interruptions, of three and four hours respectively, due to the breaking of the heavier bridge, the crossing went forward irregularly, at times almost intermitting, until the morning of the twenty-eighth. About noon on the twenty-seventh the Emperor passed; having superintended certain repairs to the bridge, he started next morning for Zembin. The same afternoon, Victor's van reached Borrissoff somewhat in advance of Wittgenstein, who came up a few hours later, and attacking the former's rear, captured two thousand men. Tchitchagoff, having finally learned the truth, appeared that night opposite Borrissoff; communication with the opposite shore was quickly established, and after a conference the two belated Russian generals agreed to march up-stream, on the right and left banks respectively. At eight next morning Tchitchagoff attacked Oudinot and Ney--twenty-six thousand men against seventeen thousand; two hours later Wittgenstein, with twenty-five thousand, fell upon Victor, who now had about seven thousand. Yet the French kept the bridges.

Throughout the day a bloody fight went on; it was rendered uncertain and disorderly by the thousands of stragglers present, and by the intensity of the steadily increasing cold. Behind the two heroic combats scenes were occurring which beggar description. Incredible numbers of stragglers cumbered the roadways and approaches; the vast mob of camp-followers held stubbornly to their possessions, and, with loud imprecations, lashed their tired horses while they put their own shoulders to the wagon wheels. Hundreds were trampled under foot; families were torn asunder amid wails and shrieks that filled the air; the weak were pushed from the bridges into the dark flood now thickening under the fierce cold. Toward midday a cutting wind began to blow, and by three it was a hurricane. At that instant the heavier bridge gave way, and all upon it were engulfed. An onlooker declared that above storm and battle a yell of mortal agony rose which rang in his ears for weeks.

The mob on the river-bank was momentarily sobered, and for a time there was order in crossing the remaining bridge; but as dusk fell both wind and battle raged more fiercely, and groups began to surge out on right and left to pass those in front. Many dashed headlong into the angry river; others, finding no opening, seated themselves in dumb despair to wait the event. At nine the remnant of Victor's ranks began to cross, and the Russians commenced cannonading the bridge. Soon the beams were covered with corpses, laid like the transverse logs on a corduroy road; but the frightful transit went on until all the soldiers had passed. The heavy bridge was temporarily repaired, but at last neither was safe; little knots gathered from the rabble at intervals and rushed recklessly over the toppling structures, until at eight next morning the French, not daring to wait longer, set fire to both, leaving seven thousand of their followers in Studjenka. They burned also the wooden track they had constructed through the swamps. The Russian accounts of what was seen in the morning light portray scenes unparalleled in history: a thousand or more charred corpses were frozen fast on the surface of the river, many of the ghastly heads being those of women and children; the huts of the town were packed with the dead. Twenty-four thousand bodies were burned in one holocaust, and it is solemnly stated that in the spring thaws twelve thousand more were brought to light. Ten years afterward there were still islets in the shallows of the stream covered with forget-me-nots which decked the moldering bones of those who had perished during that awful night of November twenty-eighth, 1812.

Next day the Emperor wrote to Maret confessing the truth. "The army is numerous, but shockingly disorganized," he declared. "A fortnight would be necessary to bring it once more under the standards; and how can we find a fortnight? Cold and privation have disorganized it. We may reach Vilna--can we maintain ourselves there? If we only could, even for the first eight days! But suppose we were attacked within that time, it is doubtful if we should be able to remain. Food! food! food!--without that there are no atrocities which this unruly throng would not commit against the town. In this situation I may regard my presence in Paris as essential for France, for the Empire--yes, even for the army." He also composed on the same day a bulletin, since famous, which was dated December third. It speciously declared that until November sixth the Emperor had been everywhere successful; thereafter the elements had done their fell work. The only complete truth it contained was the closing sentence: "The health of his Majesty was never better." As the sorry remnants of the grand army moved toward Vilna, they grew scantier and scantier. Many were delirious from hunger and cold, many were in the agonies of typhus fever. On December third there were still nine thousand in the ranks; on the fifth the marshals were assembled to hear Napoleon explain his determination to leave at once for Paris, and immediately afterward he took his departure.

It was not a very "grand army" which was left behind under Murat's command, with orders to form behind the Niemen. On the eighth the thermometer marked twenty-five degrees below zero, and a few unarmed wretches, perhaps five hundred in all, trailed after their leader into Vilna. Their ears and throats, their legs and feet, were swathed in rags; their bodies were wrapped in the threadbare garments of their dead comrades, or in such cast-off woman's apparel as they had been able to secure by the way. They were followed by Ney with four hundred, Wrede with two thousand, and finally by two or three thousand stragglers. After a few half-hearted and ineffectual efforts to organize this mob into the semblance of an army, Murat abandoned the attempt and posted away to his kingdom of Naples--a course severely censured by the Emperor. This was the closing scene of Napoleon's great drama of invasion. His men and horses had succumbed to summer heats as rapidly and extensively as to winter frosts; he had brought ruin to his enterprise by miscalculating the proportions of inanimate nature and human strategy, and by fatal indecision at critical moments when the statesman's delay was the soldier's ruin. Russia, like Spain, had the strength of low organisms; her vigor was not centralized in one member, the destruction of which would be the destruction of the whole; Moscow was not the Russian empire, as Berlin was the Prussian kingdom.

Yet justice requires the consideration of certain undoubted facts. Making all due allowance, it is true that the elements were Napoleon's worst foe when once his retreat was fairly under way, and it was not the least of Napoleon's magnificent achievements that after the crossing of the Beresina there was still the framework of an army which within a few months was again that marvelous instrument with which the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were fought. This miracle was due to the shortsightedness and timidity of the Russian generals. Tchitchagoff is inexcusable both for the indifference he displayed regarding the various points at which the Beresina might be crossed, and for the ignorance which made him the easy dupe of feints and misleading reports. As to Wittgenstein, the caution which he exercised because operating alone was near in its character to cowardice; his snail-like movements prevented any efficient cooeperation in the general plan, and he failed in grasping a situation of affairs which left open but a single line of retreat for Napoleon. Neither of these two had any adequate conception of the losses suffered by the French, and they permitted the last opportunity for annihilating the invaders to escape. As to Kutusoff, who was fully informed concerning the utter disintegration of the "grand army," his conduct in holding back the main Russian force at the crucial moment is utterly indefensible; he saved thousands of his troops, perhaps, but he has passed into history as the man who is indirectly responsible for the rivers of blood which were still to drench the continent of Europe. Both he and Wittgenstein unloaded all the blame on Admiral Tchitchagoff, and contemporary opinion sustained them. "Had it not been for the admiral," said the commander-in-chief, replying to a toast proposed to the conqueror of Napoleon, "the plain gentleman of Pskoff (namely, himself) could have said: Europe breathes free again." This opinion is one which history must reject as utterly false.

When the soldiers heard that their Emperor had departed there was an almost universal outburst of frenzied wrath. "He flies," they shrieked, "as in Egypt! He abandons us after he has sacrificed us!" As has been remarked, this despair was natural, but the accusation was unjust. Napoleon's abandonment of the grand army at Smorgoni was not a desertion like the secret flight from Egypt; for now he was chief and not subordinate, his own judgment was the court of final appeal. Moreover, it was necessary for the very existence of the army that its general should once more be emperor, the head of the state. Traveling incognito, he passed through Vilna, Warsaw, and Dresden. Maret was left in charge of matters in Lithuania, de Pradt was carefully instructed how to treat the Poles, and on December fourteenth, at Dresden, despatches were written to both Francis and Frederick William in order to assure their continued adhesion. The King of Saxony was firmly bound in the fetters of a personal fascination never entirely dispelled. Twice on the long, swift journey efforts were made by disenchanted German officers to assassinate Napoleon, but he escaped by the secrecy of his flight. Such conspiracies were the presage of what was soon to happen in Germany. They were trivial, however, when compared with the state of public opinion in Paris as displayed by the Malet conspiracy. In spite of all that he had done to establish a settled society, France was not yet cured of its revolutionary habits; it was only too clear that the constitution, codes, and admirable administrative system were operative, not from political habit, but by personal impulsion. This was the real sore; the conspiracy itself was a grotesque affair, the work of a brain-sick enthusiast, lightly formed and easily crushed.

Malet was a fiery nobleman who, having run the gamut between royalist and radical, had turned conspirator, having, in 1800, plotted to seize the First Consul on his way to Marengo, and again, in 1807, having been imprisoned in the penitentiary of La Force for attempting to overthrow the Empire. Feigning madness, he succeeded in being transferred to an asylum, where he successfully reknit his conspiracies, and finally escaped. On October twenty-third, 1812, he presented himself to the commander of the Paris guard, announcing Napoleon's death on the seventh; by the use of a forged decree of the senate purporting to establish a provisional republican government, and by the display of an amazing effrontery, he secured the adhesion of both men and officers. Marching at their heads, he liberated his accomplices, Lahorie and Guidal, from La Force, seized both Savary and Pasquier, minister and prefect of police respectively, and wounded Hulin, commandant of the city, in a similar attempt. But Doucet, Hulin's assistant, seized and overpowered the daring conspirator, Savary and Pasquier were at once released, and almost before the facts were known throughout the city the accomplices of the plot were all arrested. Malet and twelve of his associates were tried and executed.

The Paris wits declared that the police had made a great "tour de force," and as far as the city was concerned the affair appeared to have ended in a laugh. But Napoleon was dismayed, for he saw deeper. "It is a massacre," he exclaimed, on hearing of the number shot.

If the Russian campaign had been successful, it would have put the capstone on imperial splendor. But already its failure was known among the French masses, and ghastly rumors were rife; the Emperor himself was far distant; the Empress was not beloved; the little heir was scarcely a personage; the imperial administration was much criticized; the "system" was raising prices, depressing industry, and increasing the privations of every household. Pius VII was now living in comfort at Fontainebleau, but he was a prisoner, and earnest Catholics were troubled; perhaps Heaven was visiting France with retribution. Worst of all, ever since the nations at both extremities of Europe had risen in arms against Napoleon's tyranny, French youth had perished under the imperial eagles in appalling numbers, and throughout the districts of France which were at heart royalist there was a rising tide of bitter vindictiveness.

What had occurred in Spain did not allay the general uneasiness. Marmont, having outmanoeuvered Wellington until July twenty-second, had on that fatal day extended his left too far at Salamanca, and had suffered overwhelming defeat; southern Spain was lost to France. Suchet, having taken and held Tarragona, concentrated to the eastward, so that by his holding Aragon and Catalonia for Napoleon, Joseph could set up a government temporarily at Valencia. Wellington, hampered by the distracted condition of English politics, had felt bound, in spite of victory, to withdraw to the Portugal frontier.