The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

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This was not heartening, and one can imagine the anxiety of
Napoleon when he learned of the danger which had threatened his
family and his government.

Chap. 14.

In Moscow, Napoleon's position grew worse daily. The cold was
already bitter and only the French-born soldiers maintained their
morale, but they composed no more than half the force which
Napoleon had led into Russia. The remainder was made up of
Germans, Swiss, Croats, Lombards, Romanians, Piedmontais,
Spaniards, and Portuguese. All these foreigners, who stayed
loyal as long as the army was successful, now began to complain
and, led astray by the leaflets in various languages which the
Russians spread widely through our camps, they deserted in droves
to the enemy, who promised to repatriate them.

Added to this, the two wings of the Grande Armee, which consisted
entirely of Austrians and Prussians, were now no longer in line
with the centre as they had been at the beginning of the
campaign, but were in our rear, ready to bar our way on the first
command of their sovereigns, ancient and irreconcilable enemies
of France. The position was critical, and although it would
greatly hurt Napoleon's pride to display to the whole world that
he had failed in his objective of imposing a peace on Alexander,
the word "retreat" was at last uttered. But neither the Emperor
nor the marshals nor anyone else thought of abandoning Russia and
recrossing the Nieman; the idea was to go into winter quarters in
the least unpleasant of the Polish provinces.

The evacuation of Moscow was agreed on in principle, but before
taking this step, Napoleon, in a last endeavour to obtain a
settlement, sent an emissary to Marshal Koutousoff, who did not
make any response.

During these delays our army was melting away, day by day, and in
blind overconfidence our outposts remained at risk in the
province of Kalouga in untactical positions, when suddenly a
wholly unforeseen event occurred which opened the eyes of the
most incredulous and destroyed any illusions which the Emperor
still had of achieving peace.

General Sebastiani, whom we saw allowing himself to be surprised
at Drouia, had replaced General Montbrun as commander of the 2nd
Cavalry Corps and, although close to the enemy, he spent his days
in his slippers, reading Italian poetry and carrying out no
reconnaissance. Taking advantage of this negligence, Koutousoff
attacked Sebastiani on the 18th of October, surrounded him and
overwhelmed him by numbers, forcing him to abandon part of his
artillery. Sebastiani's three divisions of cavalry, separated
from the rest of Murat's troops, were able to rejoin them only
after fighting their way through several enemy battalions who
stood in their way. In the course of this savage combat,
Sebastiani displayed his valour, for he was a brave man, if a
noticeably mediocre general, something which will be demonstrated
anew when we come to the campaign of 1813.

At the same time as he surprised Sebastiani, Koutousoff ordered
an attack on Murat's lines, in which the Prince was slightly
wounded. Having learned of this unsatisfactory affair, and on
the same day been told of the arrival in the enemy camp of a
reinforcement of ten thousand cavalry from the Russian army in
Wallachia (The Russian border with the Turks, in southern
Romania. Ed.) which the Austrians, our allies, had allowed to
pass, the Emperor gave the order for the departure to begin on
the following day.

In the morning of the 19th of October, the Emperor left Moscow,
which he had entered on the 15th of September. His Majesty, the
old guard and the bulk of the army took the road to Kalouga;
Marshal Mortier and two divisions of the Young Guard remained
behind for twenty-four hours to complete the destruction of the
city and blow up the Kremlin, after which they brought up the
rear of the march.

The army trailed behind it more than forty thousand carriages,
which caused an obstruction whenever the road narrowed. When this
was remarked on to the Emperor, he replied that each of these
coaches could carry two wounded men and food for several, and
that their number would gradually diminish. The employment of
this philanthropic system could, I think, be objected to, on the
grounds that the need to speed the march of a retreating army
seems to me to outweigh all other considerations.

During the French occupation of Moscow, Murat and the cavalry
corps had been stationed in part of the fertile province of
Kalouga, but without seizing the town of that name. The Emperor
wished to avoid passing through the area of the battle of Moscow
(Borodino) and down the road to Mojaisk, which had been stripped
of resources by the army on its approach to Moscow; and for this
reason he took the road to Kalouga, from where he counted on
getting to Smolensk through fertile and, as it were, unspoiled
country. But at the end of several day's march, the army, which
after joining with Murat's force amounted, still, to more than
100,000 men, found itself confronting the Russian army which
occupied the little town of Malo-Iaroslawetz. The enemy was in
an exceedingly strong position; nevertheless the Emperor sent
into the attack Prince Eugene, at the head of the Italian Corps
and the French divisions of Morand and Gerard. Nothing could
stand in the way of these men and they took the town after a long
and murderous fight which cost us 4000 killed or wounded. Among
the dead was General Delzons, a very fine officer.

The next day, the 24th of October, the Emperor, surprised at the
degree of resistance he had encountered, and knowing that the
whole Russian army barred his way, halted the march and spent
three days considering what course he should follow.

On one occasion, during a reconnaissance of the enemy line, the
Emperor nearly fell into their hands. There was a very thick fog,
and suddenly shouts of "Hourra! Hourra!" were heard. It was a
group of Cossacks who were emerging from a wood bordering the
road, which they had been going through not twenty paces from the
Emperor, knocking down and spearing anyone that they came across:
but General Rapp rushed forward with the two squadrons of
Chasseurs and mounted Grenadiers which went everywhere with the
Emperor who, wielding their sabres, put the enemies to flight. It
was during this encounter that M. Le Couteulx, my former
companion on the staff of Marshal Lannes, and now an aide-de-camp
to Prince Berthier, having armed himself with the lance belonging
to a Cossack whom he had killed, was unwise enough to come back
brandishing this weapon, and, furthermore, dressed in a pelisse
and a fur hat, which concealed the French uniform. A mounted
Grenadier of the Guard mistook him for a Cossack officer, and
seeing him heading towards the Emperor, went after him and
slashed him across the body with his heavy sabre. In spite of
this serious wound, M. Le Couteulx, placed in one of the
Emperor's carriages, survived the cold and the exhaustion of the
retreat, and managed to reach France.

The reconnaissance carried out by the Emperor had convinced him
that it would be impossible to continue his march towards Kalouga
without fighting a sanguinary battle against the large force
commanded by Koutousoff. He decided, therefore, to reach Smolensk
by taking the road leading through Mojaisk. The army then left
the fertile countryside to take once more the now devastated
route along which, marking their passage with fires and dead
bodies, they had travelled in September. This movement by the
Emperor left him, after ten weary days, no more than twelve
leagues from Moscow, and caused the troops to feel increasing
anxiety about the future. The weather turned much worse; Marshal
Mortier rejoined the Emperor after having blown up the Kremlin.

The army saw once more Mojaisk and the battlefield of Borodino.
The ground, furrowed by cannon-balls, was covered with the debris
of helmets, cuirasses, wheels, weapons, fragments of uniform and
thirty thousand bodies, partly eaten by wolves. The Emperor and
the troops passed by quickly, casting a sad look at this immense
graveyard.

After they had reached Vyazma the snow began to fall and a bitter
wind to blow, which slowed their progress. Many of the vehicles
were abandoned, and some thousands of men and horses perished of
cold by the roadside. The flesh of the horses provided some
nourishment for the men and also for the officers. The command of
the rearguard passed successively from Davout to Prince Eugene
and finally to Marshal Ney, who kept this unpleasant job for the
rest of the campaign.

Smolensk was reached on the 1st of November. The Emperor had
arranged for a great quantity of food clothing and footwear to be
collected there, but those in charge of these supplies did not
realise the state of disorganisation into which the army had
fallen, and insisted on the paperwork and formalities of a normal
distribution. This delay so exasperated the men, who were dying
of cold and hunger, that they broke into the stores and took,
forcibly, whatever they could. With the result that some had too
much, some enough and some nothing.

As long as the troops had maintained a proper order of march, the
mixture of nationalities had given rise to no more than minor
inconveniences, but once fatigue and privation had broken the
ranks, discipline was lost. There was no way in which it could be
maintained in a vast body of isolated individuals, lacking every
necessity, walking on their own, without understanding why; for
in this disorderly mass there ruled a veritable babel of tongues.
A few regiments, mainly those in the Guard, held together. Almost
all the troopers of the cavalry, having lost their horses, were
formed into infantry battalions, and those of their officers who
still were mounted were made into special squadrons, commanded by
Generals Latour-Mauberg, Grouchy and Sebastiani, who acted as
ordinary captains, while brigade commanders and colonels filled
the post of sergeant and corporal. This resort alone, shows to
what extremity the army was reduced.

In this critical position, the Emperor had counted on a strong
division of troops of all arms, which General Baraguey d'Hilliers
was supposed to bring to Smolensk; but, as we neared the town, we
heard the General had laid down his arms before a Russian column,
with the provision that he alone would not be made prisoner and
would be allowed to rejoin the French army in order to explain
his actions. The Emperor, however, refused to see Baraguey
d'Hilliers and ordered him to return to France and to consider
himself under arrest until he was brought before a court-martial.
Baraguey d'Hilliers avoided court-martial by dying in Berlin, it
was said, of despair.

This General was another of Napoleon's mistakes. He had been
impressed by him at the time of the encampments at Boulogne when
he had promised that he could train dragoons to serve either as
cavalry or infantry. However, when this system was tried out in
1805, during the Austrian campaign, the Dragoons, now on foot and
commanded by Baraguey d'Hilliers in person, were defeated at
Wertingen before the eyes of the Emperor, and when placed once
more on horseback, they once more suffered the same fate. It was
several years before the unit recovered from the effects of this
experiment. The originator of the system, having fallen from
favour and hoping to re-establish himself by asking to come to
Russia, had completed his downfall by capitulating without a
struggle, and violating a decree stating that a commander forced
to surrender should accompany his men into captivity, and
forbidding him from negotiating terms favourable only to himself.

After spending several days at Smolensk to allow stragglers to
catch up with him, the Emperor went to Krasnoe, from where he
despatched an officer to 2nd Corps, which was still by the Dvina
and was now his only hope of safety.

The regiments of this corps, although they had not suffered the
hardship and privation of those who had gone to Moscow, had
however been more often in action against the enemy. Napoleon,
wishing to reward them by appointments to vacant positions, had
brought to him for his approval a number of proposals for
promotions, several of which related to me. One of these
recommended me for the rank only of lieutenant-colonel and it was
this that was put before the Emperor for his signature. I have it
from General Grundler who, having been detailed to carry the
despatch, found himself in the Emperor's office during the
signing, that the Emperor scratched out with his own hand the
words Lieutenant-colonel and wrote in the word Colonel, saying "I
am paying off an old debt." So, on the 15th of November, I at
last became Colonel of the 23rd Chasseurs, although I did not
know it until some time later.

The painful retreat was resumed. The enemy, whose strength
increased continually, cut off from the rest of the army the
Corps of Prince Eugene, Davout and Ney. The first two managed to
fight their way through to join the Emperor, who was very
distressed at the absence of Ney, of whom he had had no news for
several days.

On the 19th of November Napoleon reached Orscha. It was now a
month since he had left Moscow and there was still a hundred and
twenty leagues to cover before reaching the Nieman. The cold was
intense.

While the Emperor worried unhappily about the fate of his
rear-guard and the gallant Marshal Ney, the latter was engaged in
one of the finest feats of arms recorded in history. Leaving
Smolensk on the morning of the 17th, after blowing up the
ramparts, the Marshal had hardly begun his march when he was
assailed by a myriad of the enemy, who attacked both flanks and
the front and rear of his column.

Driving them off continually, Ney marched, surrounded by them for
three days, to halt eventually before the dangerous pass of the
Krasnoe ravine, beyond which could be seen a great mass of
Russian troops and an array of guns which opened a lively and
sustained fire.

Without being cast down by this unforeseen obstacle the Marshal
took the bold decision to force a passage, and ordered the 48th
of line, commanded by Colonel Pelet, to attack with the bayonet.
At Ney's command, the French soldiers, although tired, hungry and
numb with cold, rushed the Russian batteries and captured them.
They were regained by the enemy and captured once more by our men
but in the end they had to yield to the superiority in numbers.
The 48th, shattered by grape-shot, was largely destroyed. Of the
six hundred and fifty men who entered the ravine only about a
hundred emerged. Colonel Pelet, gravely wounded was among them.

Night fell, and for the rearguard, all hope of rejoining the
Emperor and the rest of the army seemed to be lost; but Ney had
confidence in his men, and above all in himself. He ordered lines
of fires to be lit, in order to keep the enemy in their camp, in
the expectation of a renewed attack the next day, but he had
decided to put the Dnieper between himself and the Russians and
to entrust his fate and that of his troops to the strength of the
ice covering the river. It was while he was trying to decide
which was the shortest route to the river that a Russian colonel
from Krasnoe arrived as an envoy, and demanded that Ney should
surrender. Ney was indignant, and as the officer was carrying no
written instructions, he replied that he did not regard him as an
envoy but as a spy who would be executed if he did not guide them
to the nearest spot on the bank of the Dnieper. The Russian
Colonel was forced to obey.

Ney immediately gave the order to quit the camp in silence,
leaving behind the guns, wagons, baggage and those wounded unable
to march with him; and helped by the darkness, he reached, after
four hours, the banks of the Dnieper. The river was frozen over,
but the ice was not everywhere thick enough to bear the weight of
a number of men, so the Marshal sent his troops across one by
one. Once over the river, the troops thought they had reached
safety, but dawn revealed an encampment of Cossacks. This was
commanded by Hetman Platov who, as was his custom, had spent the
evening drinking and was still asleep.

Discipline is so rigid in the Russian army that no one dared wake
him nor take up arms without his orders, so the remains of Ney's
Corps were able to pass within a league of the camp without being
attacked. The Cossacks did not appear until the next day.

Under constant attack, the Marshal marched for three days along
the winding bank of the Dnieper, which would lead him to Orscha,
and on the 20th he at last saw this town where he hoped to find
the Emperor and the army. He was, however, still separated from
Orscha by a large area of open ground in which were many enemy
troops, while the Cossacks were preparing to attack him from the
rear. Taking up a good defensive position, he sent of a
succession of officers to find out if the French were still in
Orscha, failing which resistance would no longer be possible. One
of these officers reached Orscha where the general headquarters
still was. The Emperor was delighted to hear of the return of
Marshal Ney, and to rescue him from his dangerous position he
sent Prince Eugene and Marshal Mortier who drove off the enemy
and brought back Ney and what remained of his unit.

The next day the Emperor continued the retreat. He was joined by
troops under the command of Marshal Victor who had recently
arrived from Germany, and he made contact with 2nd Corps, where
Saint-Cyr had just returned the command to Marshal Oudinot.

Chap. 15.

As it is important to understand the events which led to the
reunion of 2nd Corps with the army from which it had been
separated since the start of the campaign, I must describe
briefly what happened after the month of August, when, having
defeated the Russians at Polotsk, Saint-Cyr set up near there an
immense entrenched camp protected by a part of his force, the
remainder of which he spread out on both banks of the Dvina. The
light cavalry provided cover for these cantonments and so, as I
have already said, Castex's brigade, to which my regiment
belonged, was stationed at Louchonski, on a little river named
the Polota, from where we could keep an eye on the main roads
leading from Sebej and Newel.

Wittgenstein's army, after its defeat, had retired beyond those
towns, so that there was between the French and the Russians a
space of more than twenty-five leagues of no-man's-land, into
which both sides sent reconnaissance parties of cavalry, giving
rise to unimportant skirmishes. For the rest, as the area round
Polotsk was well supplied with forage and standing crops of
grain, and as it seemed plain that we were in for a long stay,
the French soldiers started to reap and thresh the corn, and
grind it in the small hand-mills which are to be found in every
peasant dwelling.

This process seemed to me to be too slow, so we repaired, with
much difficulty, two water-mills, which stood by the Polota near
Louchonski, and from that time on, a supply of bread for my
regiment was assured. As for meat, the neighbouring woods were
full of abandoned cattle; but as it was necessary to track them
down every day, I had the idea of doing what I had seen done in
Portugal, and that was to form a regimental herd. In a short time
I had rounded up 7 or 8 hundred beasts which I put in the charge
of some unmounted Chasseurs, to whom I gave local ponies, too
small for military use. This herd, which I increased by frequent
searches, lasted for several months and allowed me to make
regular distributions of meat to the regiment, which maintained
the men's health and earned me their gratitude for the care I
took of them. I extended my care to the horses, for which we made
big shelters, thatched with straw, and placed behind the men's
huts, so that our bivouac was almost as comfortable as a regular
camp in peacetime. The other unit commanders did the same sort of
thing, but none of them had a regimental herd: their men lived
from day to day.

While the French, Swiss, Croat, and Portuguese regiments worked
unceasingly to improve their conditions, the Bavarians alone made
no effort to escape from want and sickness. It was in vain that
General the Comte de Wrede tried to rouse them by pointing out
how the French soldiers were building huts, reaping and threshing
grain, milling it into flour, making ovens and baking bread, the
wretched Bavarians, totally demoralised since they no longer were
issued with regular rations, admired the work done by our men
without attempting to imitate them. So they were dying like flies
and there would have been none left if Marshal Saint-Cyr, shaking
off for a moment his habitual indifference, had not persuaded the
colonels of the other divisions to provide a daily supply of
bread for the Bavarians. The light cavalry, stationed out in the
country and near the woods, sent them some cattle.

However, these Germans, so feeble when it came to work, were
brave enough in action against the enemy, but the moment the
danger was over they relapsed into complete apathy. Nostalgia or
home-sickness took them; they dragged themselves to Polotsk, and
entering the hospitals established by their commanders, they
asked for somewhere to die, and laying themselves on the straw,
they never rose again. A great many died in this way and General
de Wrede had to take into his wagon the flags of a number of
regiments who had not sufficient men to defend them. And yet it
was only September, the cold weather had not begun and on the
contrary it was very mild. The other troops were in good heart
and awaited cheerfully the outcome of events.

The men of my regiment were noted everywhere for their good
health, which I attribute firstly to the quantity of bread and
meat which I was able to give them and secondly to the liquor
which I was able to obtain by an arrangement with the Jesuits of
Polotsk. These good Fathers, all of them French, had a big farm
at Louchonski, where there was a distillery for making grain
spirit, but on the approach of war all the workers had fled back
to the monastery, taking with them the stills and utensils, so
that production had stopped, thus depriving the monastery of part
of its revenue. The arrival of so many soldiers in the region had
made alcoholic drinks so scarce and expensive that the owners of
the canteens were undertaking a journey of several days to Wilna
to obtain supplies. It occurred to me that I might be able to
reach an agreement with the Jesuits whereby I would protect their
distillery and have my men reap and thresh the necessary grain,
in return for which my regiment would receive a daily share of
the resulting product. My proposition was accepted by the monks,
who benefitted greatly by being able to sell alcohol in the
camps, while I had the advantage of being able to distribute a
daily ration to my men who, since crossing the Nieman, had drunk
nothing but water.

At first glance these details may seem pointless, but I am happy
to recall them because the care I took of my men saved many of
their lives and maintained the strength of the 23rd far above
that of the other cavalry regiments in the Corps, which earned me
a token of his satisfaction from the Emperor which I shall refer
to later.

Among the measures which I took are two which protected the lives
of many of my troopers. The first of these was to insist that
from the 15th of September they should each equip themselves with
a sheepskin coat, many of which were to be found in abandoned
peasant dwellings. Soldiers are like great children, for whom one
must care sometimes against their will. Mine complained that
these heavy pelisses were useless and overburdened their horses,
but come October they were happy to put them on under their
capes, and when it grew really cold they thanked me for having
made them keep them.

The second step which I took was to send to the rear all those
troopers who were without a mount, either because of enemy fire
or because their horse had died for some other reason. A standing
order required that these men should be sent to Lepel, in
Lithuania, to await horses which were to be sent from Warsaw. I
was preparing to do this when I learned that Lepel was crammed
with dismounted troopers, who were short of all supplies and had
nothing to do because not a single remount had arrived there, so
I took it on myself to send my dismounted men directly to Warsaw
under the command of Captain Poitevin, who had been wounded. I
knew that this was in breach of the regulations, but in a huge
army, so far from its base and under such abnormal conditions, it
was not possible for the general staff to attend to all the needs
of the troops. Occasions therefore arose when a unit commander
had to use his own judgement. Thus, General Castex, who could not
give me official authorisation and having told me that he would
close his eyes to what I was doing, I continued in this manner
for as long as it was possible, so that in the end I had sent 250
men to Warsaw. After the campaign I found them once more on the
Vistula, all in new uniforms, well-equipped and well-mounted and
a welcome reinforcement for the regiment. The dismounted men from
other regiments, amounting to some 9000, who had been sent to
Lepel, caught unaware by the great retreat from Moscow, were
almost all taken prisoner or died of cold on the roads. Yet it
would have been so easy to have sent them during the summer and
autumn to the remount depot at Warsaw, where there were plenty of
horses but a shortage of riders.