1812, page 14
His theory is that southerners have a more vigorous circulation and are therefore of a darker complexion and by the same token have greater moral resources. ‘Thus we’d see Dutchmen of the 3rd Grenadiers of the Guard, 1,787 men strong, both officers and rankers, perish almost to a man. Only 41 got back to France.’9 Surgeon Roos, for his part, is convinced from experience that those who seem to be surviving best tend to be those who’re
‘best at muddling through, and those most used to privations, no matter what nation they belonged to. Young men, on the other hand, inexperienced, feeble or lazy, or simply spoiled children used to being waited on, who from the outset had been unable to stand the summer heats and most of whom had remained in the rear, were the first to succumb.’
Sometimes there are unburnt houses along the way. Woe betide anyone who sits too long in an overheated room! Soon he finds his limbs swelling, due – Larrey supposes – to
‘an expansion of the capillary blood vessels of the interior members, to which the latent heat and life seemed to retreat. The meninges becoming similarly inflated results in heavy headaches, lesion of the mental faculties and an alteration in those of the sense organs. The individual was stricken with general weakness and an extremely painful anxiety. He started a cough, which grew quickly worse. More or less violent, it was accompanied by mucous, sometimes bloody expectorations. Often a diarrhoeic flux occurred at the same time: a desire to vomit, with colic pains. The pulse became feverish, the skin dry. The sick man felt a painful swelling in his members, cramps, fits and starts, and a prickly heat in the soles of his feet. Sleep was laboured and accompanied by sinister dreams. The vessels of the conjunctive injected themselves. Fever developed, with aggravations in the evening. The beatings of the carotids and of the temples became noticeable to the naked eye. Delirium or lethargic drowsiness set in, and danger was imminent. Such were the main symptoms that accompanied his affliction, which could be called catarrhal ataxia from congealment. Its course was more or less swift, according to the subject’s constitution, his age and his degree of vigour.’
Nor is it only the landscape that’s changed its aspect. The army itself has become a grotesque masquerade. Everyone, from generals down to privates, has donned whatever costly silks and furs he’s brought from Moscow. ‘Each soldier was wearing whatever he’d found in the pillage,’ Louise Fusil, soubrette of the former French theatre in Moscow, notes with expert eye, as her carriage (property of Caulaincourt’s nephew) rolls slowly onwards through the blizzard under its owner’s protection:
‘Some are covered with a moujik’s caftan or some plump kitchen wench’s short fur-lined dress. Others a rich merchant’s coat and – almost all – in the fur-lined pink, blue, lilac or white satin mantles of the kind all the common people here make into articles of luxury (respectable Russian women wear black ones).’
Nothing would have been funnier, the intrepid actress goes on,
‘if the circumstances hadn’t been so sad, than to see an old grenadier, with his moustaches and bearskin, covered in a pink satin fur. The poor fellows protected themselves as best they could against the cold; but even they laughed at this bizarre spectacle.’
The staff of 5th Division, I Corps, have christened General Compans, its commander, ‘the Tartar’ because of his ‘cap of crimson velvet edged with sable’ given to him at Hamburg by his new wife. Now he’s wearing it over
‘a dress coat without embroidery or epaulettes, blue breeches, top boots, and an ample greatcoat lined with very good fox fur and trimmed with sable tails. Its collar covers my ears and, reaching down to my ankles, lets nothing be seen except my cap and my booted feet. Over this I’m wearing my sword, hanging from a gold-embroidered crimson velvet belt. Only the triple stars on the sword-knot indicate my rank. Such is the full-length portrait, my dearest, of Compans the Tartar,’
he’ll shortly be writing to his bride.10 As for the rank and file, some are making themselves boots out of old hats:
‘Very few had any furs, mantles or greatcoats, so as soon as they took the least rest they were overcome with stupor. The young men, being the most inclined to sleep, succumbed in great numbers. Most of our men would be mutilated by gangrene due to coming too close to the fires.’
The only cure for frost-bite – a remedy Larrey repeatedly applies to himself – is to rub the white numb skin areas with snow,
‘or, if these means didn’t suffice – the way Russians defreeze fish – to plunge the affected part into cold water, soaking it until air bubbles are seen rising from the frozen part.’
‘It was a Friday [6 November] and we were almost at Smolensk,’ Louise Fusil goes on:
‘The officer in the coach by which I’d left [Moscow] had ordered his coachman to get there by evening. This latter was a Pole, the slowest and clumsiest I’ve ever come across. He spent all night – as he maintained – searching for forage. In the meantime he’d let his horses freeze at their leisure, with the result that they could no longer move their legs when he wanted to get them moving again; and we lost two. Those two once dead it was impossible for us to make headway with the two others. We got stuck at the entrance of a heavily encumbered bridge until Saturday the 7th. I was wondering what to do, and made up my mind to abandon the calèche as soon as day dawned and cross the bridge on foot to go and ask the general in command at its far end for help or a seat in some other carriage. But just then the Pole returned with two horses he said he’d “found”. Of course I realised he’d stolen them; but nothing was commoner.’
Theft, particularly of horses, has become universal:
‘Everyone was robbing everyone of everything with perfect impunity. The only risk was to get caught red-handed, because then one risked a thrashing. All day long one heard “Ah, mon Dieu, someone’s stolen my portmanteau! Someone’s taken my pack! Someone’s stolen my bread, my horse!” – and this from the general officer down to the ranker. One day Napoleon, seeing one of his officers wearing a very fine fur, said to him, laughing: “Where’ve you stolen that?” – “Sire, I’ve bought it.” – “You’ve bought it from someone while he was asleep!” The witticism was repeated throughout the army.’
A joke to Napoleon perhaps, not to the lone straggler, for whom it can mean death. Only because Lariboisière, seeing her in tears, tells a gendarme to include her dormeuse among Davout’s carriages does Louise get across a congested bridge:
‘This gendarme – I don’t know why – took me for the wife of General Lauriston and lost himself in beautiful words. As we finally crossed the bridge it was lined on either side by generals, colonels and an officer who’d long been waiting there to hasten the march. The Cossacks, as I’ve heard later, weren’t far off.’
Alas, a quarter of the way across the horses go on strike:
‘Any carriage blocking the route in a difficult passage – the order was positive – was to be burnt. I saw myself worse off than I’d been the day before. On all sides the shout went up: “this carriage is preventing us from passing, it must be burnt!” The soldiers wanted nothing better – because they’d loot it. They too shouted: “Burn it! burn it!” But then some officers took pity on me and shouted: “Come on, men, put your shoulders to the wheels!” And so they did, and they themselves were so good as to hustle them into doing so.’
Once in the clear, a laughing Louise rewards the gendarme with a kiss – ‘and he was most content’.
Today the Red Lancers, still riding ahead of IHQ, are taking a pause when desperate shouts arouse them from torpor. A ‘hurrah’ of Cossacks has attacked the mob of stragglers – presumably from VIII Corps. The Dutchmen mount hastily, gallop forward, form up in line – but don’t bother to try and recover the few wagons the Cossacks are making off with. ‘Hands and feet numb with cold and hardly bellicose,’ they just sit there shivering on their horses. But the Cossacks are circumspection itself, ‘and this helped to guarantee us against their undertakings’. While ‘skirmishing’ in this lackadaisical manner, the Red Lancers are overtaken by IHQ,
‘and for a few moments its numerous escort was a powerful support to us. Instead of his usual grey overcoat the Emperor, riding his usual beautiful white horse and imperturbably preserving his calm serenity, was wearing a green velvet pelisse with a rich fur lining and enhanced with gold brandenburgs. Near him we spotted the brilliant King of Naples, wearing his Polish sky-blue tunic, also fur-lined and decorated with gold tresses, both otherwise having his neck and the lower part of his face wrapped up to the nose in a broad Indian shawl, and on his head, as always, his Polish toque surmounted by a bouquet of floating feathers. After him came the Duke of Istria [Duroc], always white-powdered and his long stock wig immaculately set, as if to appear in a drawing-room. He was simply dressed in a deep blue mantle, maintaining his strictly regulation appearance.’
After them come Berthier and various generals and orderly officers, uniformly dressed in mantles, ‘the only non-regulation feature being turned up collars and scarves around their noses’.
Surprisingly, no one, or almost no one, as far as Kergorre can see, is overtly accusing Napoleon of the disaster that’s obviously overtaking the army:
‘It’s been said that the soldiers insulted Napoleon during the retreat. I, who saw His Majesty in the most painful circumstances, think I can assure you it’s not true.’
Dumonceau, unemotional as ever, agrees:
‘A few higher-ranking pessimists in fits of bad temper might reason differently; but instances of this among the rank and file and the subalterns were rare, and our devotion remained absolute. Our confidence in him was still intact. No one among us dreamed of reproaching him for our setbacks, and in our eyes he still retained the prestige of a supreme arbiter.’
‘The rank and file, it’s true,’ Kergorre adds, ‘were no longer shouting “Vive l’Empereur!” But they said nothing.’ ‘Such was the respect the Emperor was held in and the devotion to his person that no one in his suite,’ Caulain-court affirms, ‘not even his servants were ever insulted.’ His testimony, he claims, is ‘worth something’ because ever since Vereia he’s always been marching on foot,
‘sometimes with the Emperor, sometimes ahead of him, sometimes behind; but always among groups of uniformed men, without my riding-coat and wearing my uniform hat. Unquestionably any discontent among the soldiers would have shown itself in the presence of a general in uniform. The behaviour of the unfortunate men freezing to death by the roadside, I admit, often amazed me. But I wasn’t alone in admiring it.’
Even Dedem – critical though he is and though he’s beginning to hear the rank and file swear at their officers – never hears
‘any soldier swear at the man they owed all their ills to. All I heard was men of the Old Guard saying; “Ah, Moreau11 would have led us better!”
Is this really true? Of the soldiers perhaps. Perhaps not of the Administration, etc. Cavalry surgeon Réné Bourgeois sees one such employee
‘who’d had both legs crushed by the wheels of a carriage that had knocked him down. There he lay on the road, prey to terrible pains, at the moment when Napoleon passed by at the head of his Guard. Seeing him, he raised himself up, and gathering all his strength to make his voice as loud as possible, overwhelmed him in abuse:
“There he is,” he said, “that miserable puppet who for ten years has been leading us about like automata. Comrades, he’s mad! Don’t trust him! He’s turned into a cannibal. The monster will devour you all!”’12
If there are angry feelings, they’re among the top brass. Caulaincourt’s shocked to see,
‘they were so weary of warfare, had such a craving for repose, for the sight of a less hostile country, for an end to these far-flung expeditions, that most of them let themselves be blinded as to the present fruits and future consequences of our disasters by the thought that they’d prove a useful lesson to the Emperor, and cool his ambition. This was the common view.’13
The diary of Secretary Fain, that student of human nature, confirms it:
‘Around the Emperor the courtesan’s smile has fallen from those lips most accustomed to wearing it. All faces have fallen. The strong minds, which have no mask to lose, are the only ones whose expression hasn’t changed.’
Caulaincourt’s for instance. Or Duroc’s. Dumonceau’s men having found a ford,
‘the Grand Marshal of the Imperial Court joined us to profit from it. He was riding a very fine horse, was dressed as if for a parade, in white breeches, well-waxed stable boots and all the rest of that kind of costume, only wearing over it neither mantle nor greatcoat, but only a spencer [short-tailed jacket], tight to the body, indifferent to the cold. Otherwise he seemed cheerful. Most amiable to all who approached him, he was on his way to go and prepare the Emperor’s lodging, accompanied by some officers and élite gendarmes. All had been provided with horses in good condition.’
Thanks to Caulaincourt’s foresight at Moscow, as Wilson will afterwards hear, all the 73 headquarters horses are rough-shod – an obvious precaution that’s otherwise only been taken by the Poles. As soon as Duroc’s party have crossed the ford he leaves with it ‘at a gallop’.
The Guard Horse Chasseurs, too, still have 600 men mounted. And when 300 fresh horses are ‘sent forward by a Polish nobleman “to help the Emperor during his retreat”’ they’re sent to the senior cavalry regiment as remounts. IHQ’s spirits also rise during its last day’s march before Smolensk when a convoy of provisions intended for Ney’s rearguard is seen coming toward it.
‘Recalling other times and other ideas, it raised the morale even of the most despondent. Everyone believed in abundance and thus in reaching his goal. The Emperor flattered himself on it more than anyone, and said so several times.’
But when the Red Lancers rejoin the column shortly thereafter they have to come to the rescue of the
‘infantry escort who’re being attacked and their convoy pillaged by the mob of disbanded men. There was a lot of vociferation on our account but most of the convoy was saved and able to go on its way.’
Did any of its contents ever reach Sergeant Bertrand and his men, executing their chequerboard retreat for four days on end?14 These two blizzard-stricken days (6–7 November) have destroyed one-third of the Moscow army. ‘From this day onwards,’ Labaume will write in his history of the campaign,15
‘it lost its strength and military bearing. The ranker no longer obeyed his officers, the officer abandoned his general. Disbanded regiments walked along any old how. Struggling to keep alive, they spread out in the plains, burning and sacking everything they came across.’
Yet all the time Lejeune sees men like Captain François who ‘though riddled with wounds remained full of energy’ never lose their morale. And if there’s one thing Thirion’s noticing it’s that
‘any man who thought it impossible for us to make the remaining 100 or 150 leagues [3–500 miles] to get out of Russia was a man lost. Two or three days later he’d disappeared.’
CHAPTER 6
DISASTER AT THE WOP
Griois buries two guns – ‘winter had fallen on us in all its severity’ – IV Corps marches for Witebsk – a new command – Del Fante plunges in – the guns are lost – a day’s rest
On 7 November, while still at Doroghobouï, IV Corps has been ordered to leave the main column and march for Witebsk. Witebsk, ‘an infinitely important strategic point on the Vilna-Petersburg road at a distance of 24 leagues [75 miles] from Polotsk and 30 from Smolensk’ where Napoleon had left a weak garrison in August, but where large stores have been accumulated, is known to be under threat. Crossing the Dnieper by the pontoon bridge at 6 a.m., Eugène’s men1 have peeled off to the right along the Witebsk road. Along this less devastated route, they hope, there’ll at least be more to eat.
Grouchy’s 3rd Cavalry Corps no longer exists – the ‘inept, almost dazed’ Lahoussaye2 is just riding along in his carriage, indifferent to everything’ and Grouchy himself seems to have ‘disappeared’, and for several days now Griois’ horse artillery has been marching on its own. Having friends among Eugène’s artillery staff3 he decides to follow on after IV Corps. That night, after crossing the Dnieper, he bivouacs
‘under a mere roof on four posts, a sort of barn, open to every wind, but a fine lodging, even so, compared with the ones I’d so long been occupying’.
After his gunners have made up a big fire in the middle of it he lies down to sleep, surrounded by his horses. Waking up at daybreak he finds he’s
‘covered in thick snow, likewise the whole landscape. It wasn’t falling any longer; but the cold sky was icy. Everything was frozen. The mud had frozen hard during the night. Winter had fallen on us in all its severity.’
It’s almost impossible to get his guns and ammunition wagons moving:
‘In vain our poor exhausted horses tried to drag them out. Only after doubling the teams, using levers to prise the wheels loose, and by joining their efforts to those of the horses, did our gunners and the men of the Train succeed in getting part of the artillery on the move.’
Griois has to triple his teams. And to do this – each caisson now only having four horses to drag it – two guns and two wagons have to be abandoned. All the woodwork is stacked up in a hangar and burnt, and the
‘guns entombed in the ashes. It was the first time I’d left behind loaded wagons and guns. So it was with sadness in my soul I got going again on 8 November, to catch up with IV Corps.’
But even then the snow, icy and hardened, frustrates the horses’ hooves:
‘We had plenty of ice-nails in reserve, but as yet hadn’t used them to shoe the horses. Yet even this wouldn’t have been enough. After a few hours march their diamond-shaped heads would have been worn down, and they’d have become utterly useless – as we soon found out.4 Calkins are a lot better, but we’d have needed more time and resources than we possessed.’
‘best at muddling through, and those most used to privations, no matter what nation they belonged to. Young men, on the other hand, inexperienced, feeble or lazy, or simply spoiled children used to being waited on, who from the outset had been unable to stand the summer heats and most of whom had remained in the rear, were the first to succumb.’
Sometimes there are unburnt houses along the way. Woe betide anyone who sits too long in an overheated room! Soon he finds his limbs swelling, due – Larrey supposes – to
‘an expansion of the capillary blood vessels of the interior members, to which the latent heat and life seemed to retreat. The meninges becoming similarly inflated results in heavy headaches, lesion of the mental faculties and an alteration in those of the sense organs. The individual was stricken with general weakness and an extremely painful anxiety. He started a cough, which grew quickly worse. More or less violent, it was accompanied by mucous, sometimes bloody expectorations. Often a diarrhoeic flux occurred at the same time: a desire to vomit, with colic pains. The pulse became feverish, the skin dry. The sick man felt a painful swelling in his members, cramps, fits and starts, and a prickly heat in the soles of his feet. Sleep was laboured and accompanied by sinister dreams. The vessels of the conjunctive injected themselves. Fever developed, with aggravations in the evening. The beatings of the carotids and of the temples became noticeable to the naked eye. Delirium or lethargic drowsiness set in, and danger was imminent. Such were the main symptoms that accompanied his affliction, which could be called catarrhal ataxia from congealment. Its course was more or less swift, according to the subject’s constitution, his age and his degree of vigour.’
Nor is it only the landscape that’s changed its aspect. The army itself has become a grotesque masquerade. Everyone, from generals down to privates, has donned whatever costly silks and furs he’s brought from Moscow. ‘Each soldier was wearing whatever he’d found in the pillage,’ Louise Fusil, soubrette of the former French theatre in Moscow, notes with expert eye, as her carriage (property of Caulaincourt’s nephew) rolls slowly onwards through the blizzard under its owner’s protection:
‘Some are covered with a moujik’s caftan or some plump kitchen wench’s short fur-lined dress. Others a rich merchant’s coat and – almost all – in the fur-lined pink, blue, lilac or white satin mantles of the kind all the common people here make into articles of luxury (respectable Russian women wear black ones).’
Nothing would have been funnier, the intrepid actress goes on,
‘if the circumstances hadn’t been so sad, than to see an old grenadier, with his moustaches and bearskin, covered in a pink satin fur. The poor fellows protected themselves as best they could against the cold; but even they laughed at this bizarre spectacle.’
The staff of 5th Division, I Corps, have christened General Compans, its commander, ‘the Tartar’ because of his ‘cap of crimson velvet edged with sable’ given to him at Hamburg by his new wife. Now he’s wearing it over
‘a dress coat without embroidery or epaulettes, blue breeches, top boots, and an ample greatcoat lined with very good fox fur and trimmed with sable tails. Its collar covers my ears and, reaching down to my ankles, lets nothing be seen except my cap and my booted feet. Over this I’m wearing my sword, hanging from a gold-embroidered crimson velvet belt. Only the triple stars on the sword-knot indicate my rank. Such is the full-length portrait, my dearest, of Compans the Tartar,’
he’ll shortly be writing to his bride.10 As for the rank and file, some are making themselves boots out of old hats:
‘Very few had any furs, mantles or greatcoats, so as soon as they took the least rest they were overcome with stupor. The young men, being the most inclined to sleep, succumbed in great numbers. Most of our men would be mutilated by gangrene due to coming too close to the fires.’
The only cure for frost-bite – a remedy Larrey repeatedly applies to himself – is to rub the white numb skin areas with snow,
‘or, if these means didn’t suffice – the way Russians defreeze fish – to plunge the affected part into cold water, soaking it until air bubbles are seen rising from the frozen part.’
‘It was a Friday [6 November] and we were almost at Smolensk,’ Louise Fusil goes on:
‘The officer in the coach by which I’d left [Moscow] had ordered his coachman to get there by evening. This latter was a Pole, the slowest and clumsiest I’ve ever come across. He spent all night – as he maintained – searching for forage. In the meantime he’d let his horses freeze at their leisure, with the result that they could no longer move their legs when he wanted to get them moving again; and we lost two. Those two once dead it was impossible for us to make headway with the two others. We got stuck at the entrance of a heavily encumbered bridge until Saturday the 7th. I was wondering what to do, and made up my mind to abandon the calèche as soon as day dawned and cross the bridge on foot to go and ask the general in command at its far end for help or a seat in some other carriage. But just then the Pole returned with two horses he said he’d “found”. Of course I realised he’d stolen them; but nothing was commoner.’
Theft, particularly of horses, has become universal:
‘Everyone was robbing everyone of everything with perfect impunity. The only risk was to get caught red-handed, because then one risked a thrashing. All day long one heard “Ah, mon Dieu, someone’s stolen my portmanteau! Someone’s taken my pack! Someone’s stolen my bread, my horse!” – and this from the general officer down to the ranker. One day Napoleon, seeing one of his officers wearing a very fine fur, said to him, laughing: “Where’ve you stolen that?” – “Sire, I’ve bought it.” – “You’ve bought it from someone while he was asleep!” The witticism was repeated throughout the army.’
A joke to Napoleon perhaps, not to the lone straggler, for whom it can mean death. Only because Lariboisière, seeing her in tears, tells a gendarme to include her dormeuse among Davout’s carriages does Louise get across a congested bridge:
‘This gendarme – I don’t know why – took me for the wife of General Lauriston and lost himself in beautiful words. As we finally crossed the bridge it was lined on either side by generals, colonels and an officer who’d long been waiting there to hasten the march. The Cossacks, as I’ve heard later, weren’t far off.’
Alas, a quarter of the way across the horses go on strike:
‘Any carriage blocking the route in a difficult passage – the order was positive – was to be burnt. I saw myself worse off than I’d been the day before. On all sides the shout went up: “this carriage is preventing us from passing, it must be burnt!” The soldiers wanted nothing better – because they’d loot it. They too shouted: “Burn it! burn it!” But then some officers took pity on me and shouted: “Come on, men, put your shoulders to the wheels!” And so they did, and they themselves were so good as to hustle them into doing so.’
Once in the clear, a laughing Louise rewards the gendarme with a kiss – ‘and he was most content’.
Today the Red Lancers, still riding ahead of IHQ, are taking a pause when desperate shouts arouse them from torpor. A ‘hurrah’ of Cossacks has attacked the mob of stragglers – presumably from VIII Corps. The Dutchmen mount hastily, gallop forward, form up in line – but don’t bother to try and recover the few wagons the Cossacks are making off with. ‘Hands and feet numb with cold and hardly bellicose,’ they just sit there shivering on their horses. But the Cossacks are circumspection itself, ‘and this helped to guarantee us against their undertakings’. While ‘skirmishing’ in this lackadaisical manner, the Red Lancers are overtaken by IHQ,
‘and for a few moments its numerous escort was a powerful support to us. Instead of his usual grey overcoat the Emperor, riding his usual beautiful white horse and imperturbably preserving his calm serenity, was wearing a green velvet pelisse with a rich fur lining and enhanced with gold brandenburgs. Near him we spotted the brilliant King of Naples, wearing his Polish sky-blue tunic, also fur-lined and decorated with gold tresses, both otherwise having his neck and the lower part of his face wrapped up to the nose in a broad Indian shawl, and on his head, as always, his Polish toque surmounted by a bouquet of floating feathers. After him came the Duke of Istria [Duroc], always white-powdered and his long stock wig immaculately set, as if to appear in a drawing-room. He was simply dressed in a deep blue mantle, maintaining his strictly regulation appearance.’
After them come Berthier and various generals and orderly officers, uniformly dressed in mantles, ‘the only non-regulation feature being turned up collars and scarves around their noses’.
Surprisingly, no one, or almost no one, as far as Kergorre can see, is overtly accusing Napoleon of the disaster that’s obviously overtaking the army:
‘It’s been said that the soldiers insulted Napoleon during the retreat. I, who saw His Majesty in the most painful circumstances, think I can assure you it’s not true.’
Dumonceau, unemotional as ever, agrees:
‘A few higher-ranking pessimists in fits of bad temper might reason differently; but instances of this among the rank and file and the subalterns were rare, and our devotion remained absolute. Our confidence in him was still intact. No one among us dreamed of reproaching him for our setbacks, and in our eyes he still retained the prestige of a supreme arbiter.’
‘The rank and file, it’s true,’ Kergorre adds, ‘were no longer shouting “Vive l’Empereur!” But they said nothing.’ ‘Such was the respect the Emperor was held in and the devotion to his person that no one in his suite,’ Caulain-court affirms, ‘not even his servants were ever insulted.’ His testimony, he claims, is ‘worth something’ because ever since Vereia he’s always been marching on foot,
‘sometimes with the Emperor, sometimes ahead of him, sometimes behind; but always among groups of uniformed men, without my riding-coat and wearing my uniform hat. Unquestionably any discontent among the soldiers would have shown itself in the presence of a general in uniform. The behaviour of the unfortunate men freezing to death by the roadside, I admit, often amazed me. But I wasn’t alone in admiring it.’
Even Dedem – critical though he is and though he’s beginning to hear the rank and file swear at their officers – never hears
‘any soldier swear at the man they owed all their ills to. All I heard was men of the Old Guard saying; “Ah, Moreau11 would have led us better!”
Is this really true? Of the soldiers perhaps. Perhaps not of the Administration, etc. Cavalry surgeon Réné Bourgeois sees one such employee
‘who’d had both legs crushed by the wheels of a carriage that had knocked him down. There he lay on the road, prey to terrible pains, at the moment when Napoleon passed by at the head of his Guard. Seeing him, he raised himself up, and gathering all his strength to make his voice as loud as possible, overwhelmed him in abuse:
“There he is,” he said, “that miserable puppet who for ten years has been leading us about like automata. Comrades, he’s mad! Don’t trust him! He’s turned into a cannibal. The monster will devour you all!”’12
If there are angry feelings, they’re among the top brass. Caulaincourt’s shocked to see,
‘they were so weary of warfare, had such a craving for repose, for the sight of a less hostile country, for an end to these far-flung expeditions, that most of them let themselves be blinded as to the present fruits and future consequences of our disasters by the thought that they’d prove a useful lesson to the Emperor, and cool his ambition. This was the common view.’13
The diary of Secretary Fain, that student of human nature, confirms it:
‘Around the Emperor the courtesan’s smile has fallen from those lips most accustomed to wearing it. All faces have fallen. The strong minds, which have no mask to lose, are the only ones whose expression hasn’t changed.’
Caulaincourt’s for instance. Or Duroc’s. Dumonceau’s men having found a ford,
‘the Grand Marshal of the Imperial Court joined us to profit from it. He was riding a very fine horse, was dressed as if for a parade, in white breeches, well-waxed stable boots and all the rest of that kind of costume, only wearing over it neither mantle nor greatcoat, but only a spencer [short-tailed jacket], tight to the body, indifferent to the cold. Otherwise he seemed cheerful. Most amiable to all who approached him, he was on his way to go and prepare the Emperor’s lodging, accompanied by some officers and élite gendarmes. All had been provided with horses in good condition.’
Thanks to Caulaincourt’s foresight at Moscow, as Wilson will afterwards hear, all the 73 headquarters horses are rough-shod – an obvious precaution that’s otherwise only been taken by the Poles. As soon as Duroc’s party have crossed the ford he leaves with it ‘at a gallop’.
The Guard Horse Chasseurs, too, still have 600 men mounted. And when 300 fresh horses are ‘sent forward by a Polish nobleman “to help the Emperor during his retreat”’ they’re sent to the senior cavalry regiment as remounts. IHQ’s spirits also rise during its last day’s march before Smolensk when a convoy of provisions intended for Ney’s rearguard is seen coming toward it.
‘Recalling other times and other ideas, it raised the morale even of the most despondent. Everyone believed in abundance and thus in reaching his goal. The Emperor flattered himself on it more than anyone, and said so several times.’
But when the Red Lancers rejoin the column shortly thereafter they have to come to the rescue of the
‘infantry escort who’re being attacked and their convoy pillaged by the mob of disbanded men. There was a lot of vociferation on our account but most of the convoy was saved and able to go on its way.’
Did any of its contents ever reach Sergeant Bertrand and his men, executing their chequerboard retreat for four days on end?14 These two blizzard-stricken days (6–7 November) have destroyed one-third of the Moscow army. ‘From this day onwards,’ Labaume will write in his history of the campaign,15
‘it lost its strength and military bearing. The ranker no longer obeyed his officers, the officer abandoned his general. Disbanded regiments walked along any old how. Struggling to keep alive, they spread out in the plains, burning and sacking everything they came across.’
Yet all the time Lejeune sees men like Captain François who ‘though riddled with wounds remained full of energy’ never lose their morale. And if there’s one thing Thirion’s noticing it’s that
‘any man who thought it impossible for us to make the remaining 100 or 150 leagues [3–500 miles] to get out of Russia was a man lost. Two or three days later he’d disappeared.’
CHAPTER 6
DISASTER AT THE WOP
Griois buries two guns – ‘winter had fallen on us in all its severity’ – IV Corps marches for Witebsk – a new command – Del Fante plunges in – the guns are lost – a day’s rest
On 7 November, while still at Doroghobouï, IV Corps has been ordered to leave the main column and march for Witebsk. Witebsk, ‘an infinitely important strategic point on the Vilna-Petersburg road at a distance of 24 leagues [75 miles] from Polotsk and 30 from Smolensk’ where Napoleon had left a weak garrison in August, but where large stores have been accumulated, is known to be under threat. Crossing the Dnieper by the pontoon bridge at 6 a.m., Eugène’s men1 have peeled off to the right along the Witebsk road. Along this less devastated route, they hope, there’ll at least be more to eat.
Grouchy’s 3rd Cavalry Corps no longer exists – the ‘inept, almost dazed’ Lahoussaye2 is just riding along in his carriage, indifferent to everything’ and Grouchy himself seems to have ‘disappeared’, and for several days now Griois’ horse artillery has been marching on its own. Having friends among Eugène’s artillery staff3 he decides to follow on after IV Corps. That night, after crossing the Dnieper, he bivouacs
‘under a mere roof on four posts, a sort of barn, open to every wind, but a fine lodging, even so, compared with the ones I’d so long been occupying’.
After his gunners have made up a big fire in the middle of it he lies down to sleep, surrounded by his horses. Waking up at daybreak he finds he’s
‘covered in thick snow, likewise the whole landscape. It wasn’t falling any longer; but the cold sky was icy. Everything was frozen. The mud had frozen hard during the night. Winter had fallen on us in all its severity.’
It’s almost impossible to get his guns and ammunition wagons moving:
‘In vain our poor exhausted horses tried to drag them out. Only after doubling the teams, using levers to prise the wheels loose, and by joining their efforts to those of the horses, did our gunners and the men of the Train succeed in getting part of the artillery on the move.’
Griois has to triple his teams. And to do this – each caisson now only having four horses to drag it – two guns and two wagons have to be abandoned. All the woodwork is stacked up in a hangar and burnt, and the
‘guns entombed in the ashes. It was the first time I’d left behind loaded wagons and guns. So it was with sadness in my soul I got going again on 8 November, to catch up with IV Corps.’
But even then the snow, icy and hardened, frustrates the horses’ hooves:
‘We had plenty of ice-nails in reserve, but as yet hadn’t used them to shoe the horses. Yet even this wouldn’t have been enough. After a few hours march their diamond-shaped heads would have been worn down, and they’d have become utterly useless – as we soon found out.4 Calkins are a lot better, but we’d have needed more time and resources than we possessed.’
