The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

O >> Oliver C. Colt >> The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47

I may mention here that M. de Segur claims that there were
instances of cannibalism. I have to say that there were so many
dead horses lying along the route that there was no need for
anyone to resort to this. What is more, it would be a great
mistake to think that the countryside was completely bare: there
was shortage in localities close to the road, which had been
stripped by the army on its march to Moscow, but the army had
passed in a torrent, without spreading out to the sides. Since
then the harvest had been gathered and the country had recovered
somewhat, so that it was only necessary to go for one or two
leagues from the road to find plenty. It is true, however, that
only a well-organised detachment could do this without being
picked off by the parties of Cossacks which prowled around us.

I arranged, with some other colonels, the formation of foraging
parties, who came back not only with bread and a few cattle, but
with sledges loaded with salted meat, flour and oatmeal taken
from villages which had not been abandoned by the peasantry. This
proves that if the Duc de Bassano and General Hogendorp, to whom
the Emperor had confided, in June, the administration of
Lithuania, had done their job properly, during the long period
which they spent at Wilna, they could have created large storage
depots, but they were interested only in supplying the town,
without bothering about the troops.

On the 6th of December, the cold increased and the temperature
fell to nearly minus thirty; so that this day was even more
deadly than its predecessors, particularly for troops who had not
been conditioned gradually to the climate. Amongst this number
was the Gratien division, consisting of 12,000 conscripts, who
left Wilna on the 4th to come in front of us. The sudden
transition from warm barracks to a bivouac in twenty-nine and a
half degrees of frost, within forty-eight hours was fatal to
nearly all of them. The rigour of the season had an even more
terrible effect on the 200 Neapolitan cavalrymen who formed King
Murat's bodyguard. They also came to join us after a long stay in
Wilna, but they all died on the first night which they spent on
the snow.

The remnants of the Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Croats and
other foreigners whom we had led into Russia, saved their lives
by means which the French found repugnant: they deserted, went to
villages adjoining the road and awaited, in the warmth of their
houses, the arrival of the enemy. This often took some time for,
surprisingly, the Russian soldiers, used to spending the winter
in draught-free houses, warmed by continuously burning stoves,
are more susceptible to the cold than the inhabitants of other
parts of Europe, and their army suffered heavy losses; which
explains the slowness of the pursuit.

We did not understand why Koutousoff and his generals did no more
than follow us with a weak advance-guard, instead of attacking
our flanks and going to the head of our column to cut off all
means of retreat. But they were unable to carry out this
manoeuvre which would have finished us because their soldiers
suffered as much from the cold as we did, many of them dying as a
result. The cold was so intense that one could see a sort of
steam coming from one's eyes and ears, which froze on contact
with the air and fell like grains of millet onto one's chest, and
one had to stop frequently to rid the horses of huge icicles
which were formed by their breath freezing on the bits of their
bridles.

There were, however, thousands of Cossacks, attracted by the hope
of plunder, who braved the seasonal bad weather and hung around
our columns, even attacking places where they saw baggage, though
a few shots would drive them off. Eventually, in order to harass
us without running any danger, for we had been forced to abandon
our artillery, they mounted light cannons on sledges, and used
them to fire on our men, until they saw an armed detachment
advancing towards them, when they took to their heels. These
sneak attacks did little real damage, but they became very
unpleasant because of their constant repetition. Many of the sick
and wounded were taken and despoiled by these raiders, some of
whom had acquired an immense amount of booty, and the greed for
enrichment attracted new enemies, who came from the ranks of our
allies: these were the Poles. Marshal de Saxe, the son of one of
their kings, said rightly that the Poles were the biggest thieves
in the world, and would rob even their own parents, so, not
surprisingly, those in our ranks showed little respect for the
property of their allies. On the march or in bivouac, they stole
anything they saw; but as no one trusted them, petty thieving
became more difficult, so they decided to operate on a grand
scale. They organised themselves into bands, and at night they
would don peasant headgear and slip out of the bivouac to meet at
an agreed spot, then they would return to the camp shouting the
Cossack war-cry of "Hourra! Hourra!" which so frightened men
whose morale had been broken, that many of them fled abandoning
their possessions and food. The false Cossacks, after stealing
all they could would return to the camp before daylight and
become once more Poles, ready to become Cossacks again on the
next night.

When this form of brigandage was disclosed, several generals and
colonels decided to put a stop to it. General Maison kept such a
close watch in the lines of 2nd Corps, that one fine night our
guards surprised a group of about fifty Poles at the moment when
they were about to play their role of Cossacks. Seeing that they
were surrounded these bandits had the impudence to claim that
they were just having a joke, but as this was not the time nor
place for laughter, General Maison had them all shot out of hand.
It was some time before we saw robbers of this kind again, but
they reappeared later.

On the 9th of December, we arrived at Wilna, where there were
some stores; but as the Duc de Bassano and General Hogendorp had
left for the Nieman, there was no one to give orders, so that
there, as at Smolensk, the officials demanded proper receipts for
the issue of food and clothing, which was virtually impossible
because of the disorganization of almost all the regiments. We
lost some precious time in this way. General Maison broke into
several stores and his men took some supplies, but the remainder
was taken the next day by the Russians. Soldiers from other corps
wandered round the town in the hope of being taken in by the
inhabitants, but the people who six months previously had
welcomed the French with open arms, closed their doors to us when
they saw us in distress. Only the Jews would accommodate those
who could pay for temporary shelter.

Admitted neither to the stores nor to private houses, the
majority of famished men headed for the hospitals where, although
there was not enough food for all of them, they were at least
sheltered from the piercing cold. This respite was enough to
decide 20,000 sick and wounded, among whom were two hundred
officers and eight generals, to go no further. They had reached
the end of their physical and mental resources.

Lieutenant Hernoux, one of the most vigourous and brave officers
in my regiment, was so overcome by what he had been through that
he lay down on the snow, refusing to move, until he died. Several
soldiers, of all ranks, blew their brains out, to escape from
their suffering.

During the night 9th-10th December, in thirty degrees of frost,
some Cossacks came and began shooting at the gates of Wilna. Many
people thought this was the entire army of Koutousoff, and in a
panic they fled from the town. I regret to say that King Murat
was among them. He left without giving any orders, but Marshal
Ney stayed and organised the retreat as best he could. We quitted
Wilna on the morning of the 10th, leaving behind not only a great
number of men, but also an artillery park and a part of the
army's funds.

We had scarcely left the town when the infamous Jews turned on
the men whom they had taken into their houses, stripped them of
their clothes and threw them out, naked into the snow. Some
officers of the Russian advance-guard, which was entering the
town, were so indignant at this behaviour that they killed a
number of them.

In the midst of this chaos, Marshal Ney had urged onto the road
to Kowno all those whom he could stir into movement, but he had
gone no more than a league when he came to the hill of Ponari.
This small slope which in other circumstances the army would have
hardly noticed, now became a most serious obstacle because the
ice with which it was covered made it so slippery that the
draught-horses were unable to drag up it the carts and wagons, so
that what remained of the army's money would have fallen into the
hands of the Cossacks had not Marshal Ney ordered that the wagons
should be opened and the soldiers allowed to empty the
strong-boxes. This sensible measure gave rise later to assertions
that the men had robbed the Imperial treasury.

Several days before our arrival at Wilna, the intense cold having
killed many of our horses and made the rest unfit to ride, my
troopers all went on foot. I would have very much liked to join
them but my injury prevented this, so I took to a sledge to which
was harnessed one of my horses. This new method of transport gave
me the idea that I might by this means save the sick men, of whom
I had a considerable number. There is no dwelling in Russia so
poor that it does not have a sledge, and it was not long before I
had a hundred or so, each one drawn by a troop horse, carrying
two sick men. This method of travel seemed to General Castex to
be so convenient that he authorised me to put all my men on
sledges. The commander of the 24th did the same and so the
remains of the brigade became a sledge-borne unit.

You may think that in doing this we deprived ourselves of any
means of defence, but you would be wrong, for we were much more
mobile with the sleds, which could go anywhere, and whose shafts
held up the horses, than we would have been in the saddle of
animals which fell down all the time.

As the road was covered with abandoned muskets, each of our
Chasseurs took two of them and an ample provision of cartridges,
so that if any Cossacks dared to approach, they were met by a
volume of fire which quickly drove them off. Our troopers could
also fight on foot if need be. In the evening we formed a big
square with our sledges, in the middle of which we lit our fires.
Marshal Ney and General Maison often came to spend the night
here, where they were secure, since the only enemies present were
the Cossacks. This was undoubtedly the first time anyone had seen
a rear-guard mounted on sledges; but it was a success in the
prevailing conditions.

We continued to cover the retreat until, on the 13th of December,
we saw the Nieman once more, and Kowno (Kaunas), the last town in
Russia. It was at this spot that, five months earlier, we had
entered the empire of the Czars. How greatly had our
circumstances changed since then!... What appalling losses had we
suffered!

On entering Kowno with the rear-guard, Marshal Ney found that the
only garrison was a small battalion of Germans some 400 strong,
whom he joined to the troops which he still had in order to
defend the town for as long as possible, to give the sick and
wounded the opportunity to cross into Prussia. When he heard that
Ney had arrived, King Murat left for Gumbinnen.

On the 14th, Platov's Cossacks, followed by two battalions of
Russian infantry, mounted on sledges together with several guns,
appeared at Kovno which they attacked at a number of points. But
Marshal Ney, helped by General Gerard, held them off until
nightfall, when he took us across the frozen Nieman, and was the
last to leave Russian territory.

We were now in Prussia, an allied country!... Marshal Ney, worn
out and ill, and regarding the campaign as finished, left us and
went to Gumbinnen, where there was a gathering of all the
marshals. From that moment the army had no overall commander, and
each regiment made its own way into Prussia. The Russians, who
were at war with this country, would have been entitled to follow
us there, but satisfied with having re-conquered their territory,
and not sure whether they should present themselves to the
Prussians as friends or enemies, they decided to await
instructions from their government, and halted at the Nieman. We
took advantage of their hesitation to head for the towns of old
Prussia.

The Germans are usually humane; many of them had relatives or
friends in the regiments which had gone with us to Moscow. We
were received well enough, and I can promise you that having
slept for five months in the open, I was delighted to find myself
in a warm room and a comfortable bed; but this sudden transition
from a glacial bivouac to long-forgotten repose made me seriously
ill. Nearly all the army were affected in this way: a number of
them died, including Generals Eble and Lariboisiere, the
artillery commanders.

In spite of the adequate reception given to us, the Prussians
remembered their defeat at Jena, and the way in which Napoleon
had treated them in 1807 when he seized part of their kingdom.
Secretly they hated us and would have disarmed and captured us at
the first signal from their King. Already General York, who led
the numerous Prussian units which the Emperor had so unwisely
placed on the left wing of the Grande Armee, and who were
stationed between Tilsit and Riga, had made a pact with the
Russians and had sent back Marshal Macdonald, whom, from some
remnant of conscience, he did not dare to arrest.

The Prussians of all classes approved of General York's
treachery, and as the provinces through which the sick and
disarmed French soldiers were then passing were full of Prussian
troops, it is probable that the inhabitants would have sought to
take hold of them had it not been that they feared for their
King, who was in Berlin, in the midst of a French army commanded
by Marshal Augereau. This fear and the repudiation by the King
(the most honest man in his kingdom) of General York, who was
tried for treason and condemned to death, prevented a general
uprising against the French. We profited from this to reach the
Vistula and leave the country.

My regiment crossed the river near the fortress of Graudenz at
the same place at which we had crossed on our way to Russia. But
this time the crossing was much more dangerous because the thaw
had already begun some leagues upstream and the ice was covered
by about a foot of water and one could hear frightening crackings
which heralded a general break-up. Added to which, it was in the
middle of a dark night that I was given the order to cross the
river immediately, for the General had just been informed that
the King of Prussia had left Berlin and taken refuge in Silesia,
in the midst of a considerable armed force, and that the populace
was becoming restless and it was feared that they would rise
against us as soon as the thaw prevented us from crossing the
river. We had to get across at all costs, but this was a very
dangerous operation, for the Vistula is quite wide at Graudenz,
and there were many gaps in the ice which it was difficult to see
by the light of the fires lit on both banks.

As there was no possibility of crossing with our sledges, we
abandoned them. We led the horses and, preceded by some men armed
with poles to indicate the crevasses, we commenced the perilous
journey. We had icy water half-way up our legs, which was not
good for the sick and injured, but the physical discomfort was
nothing compared to the anxiety produced by the cracking of the
ice, which threatened, at any moment, to sink beneath our feet.
The servant of one of my officers fell into a crevasse and did
not reappear. We eventually reached the other side where we spent
the night warming ourselves in some fishermen's huts, and the
next day we witnessed a total thaw of the Vistula, which, had we
delayed our crossing for a few hours, would have made us
prisoners.

From the spot where we had crossed the Vistula, we made our way
to the little town of Sweld, where my regiment had been in
cantonment before the war, and it was there that I greeted the
year 1813. The year which had ended was certainly the hardest of
my life.

Chap. 21.

Let us now cast an eye rapidly over the reasons for the failure
of the Russian campaign.

Undoubtedly the principal one of these was Napoleon's error in
believing that he could make war in the north of Europe, before
ending that which had been going on for a long time in Spain,
where his armies were suffering serious reverses, at a time when
he was preparing to invade Russian territory. The soldiers of
French nationality, being thus spread from north to south, were
in insufficient numbers everywhere. Napoleon thought he could
supplement them by joining to their battalions those of his
allies, but this was to dilute a good wine with muddy water. The
quality of the French divisions was lowered, the allied troops
were never better than mediocre, and it was they, who, during the
retreat, sowed disorder in the Grande Armee.

A no less fatal cause of our defeat was the inadequacy, or indeed
the total lack of organisation in the occupied countries. Instead
of doing as we had done during the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena
and Friedland, and leaving behind the advancing army small bodies
of troops which, stretching back in echelon, could keep in
regular touch with one another to ensure tranquillity in our
rear, to expedite the forwarding of munitions and individual
soldiers and the departure of convoys of wounded, we unwisely
pushed all our available forces towards Moscow, so that between
that city and the Nieman, if one excepts Wilna and Smolensk,
there was not one garrison, nor storage depot, nor hospital. Two
hundred leagues of countryside were left to roving bands of
Cossacks. The result of this was that men who had recovered from
illness were unable to rejoin their units, and as there was no
system of evacuation, we had to keep all the wounded from the
battle for Moscow in the monastery of Kolotskoi for more than two
months. They were still there at the time of the retreat and were
nearly all taken prisoner, while those who felt able to follow
the army died of exhaustion and cold on the roads. Finally, the
retreating troops had no supply of stored food in a country which
produces vast amounts of grain.

This lack of small garrisons in our rear was the reason why of
the more than 100,000 prisoners taken by the French during the
campaign, not a single one left Russia, because there was no way
in which they could be passed back from hand to hand. All these
prisoners escaped with ease and made their way back to the
Russian army, which thus recovered some of its losses, while ours
increased from day to day.

The absence of interpreters also contributed to our disasters,
more than you might think. How, for example can one obtain
information about an unknown country, if one cannot exchange a
single word with the inhabitants? When, on the bank of the
Beresina, General Partouneaux mistook the road, and instead of
taking that leading to Studianka, took the one leading to General
Wittgenstein's position, he had with him a peasant from Borisoff,
who, not knowing a word of French, tried to indicate by signs
that the encampment was Russian, but, as he was not understood,
through lack of an interpreter we lost a fine division of 7 or
8000 men.

In very similar circumstances, during October, the 3rd Lancers,
taken by surprise, in spite of the advice of their guide, whom
they did not understand, lost two hundred men. Now the Emperor
had in his army some bodies of Polish cavalry, nearly all of
whose officers and most of their N.C.O.s. spoke fluent Russian;
but they were left in their regiments whereas some should have
been taken from each unit and attached to generals and colonels,
where they would have been extremely useful. I consider the
provision of interpreters an important but often neglected
element in military operations.

I have already commented on the major mistake that was made in
forming the two wings of the army from the Prussian and Austrian
contingents. The Emperor must have greatly regretted this,
firstly on learning that the Austrians had given passage to the
Russian army of Tchitchakoff, who then cut our line of retreat on
the banks of the Beresina, and secondly when told of the
treachery of General York, the head of the Prussian Corps. His
regret must have increased further during and after the retreat,
for if he had formed the two wings from French troops and had
taken to Moscow the Austrians and Prussians, the two latter,
having suffered their share of the hardships and the casualties
would have been as much enfeebled as all the other corps, while
Napoleon would have kept intact the French troops he had left on
the two wings. I would go even further and say that to weaken
Prussia and Austria Napoleon should have required from them
contingents triple or quadruple the size of those which they
contributed. It has been said, with hindsight, that neither of
the two states would have complied with such a demand, but I
disagree; the King of Prussia who had come to Dresden to beg the
Emperor to accept his son as an aide-de-camp would not have dared
to refuse, while Austria, in the hope of recovering some of the
rich provinces which Napoleon had snatched from her, would have
done everything to satisfy him. The overconfidence which Napoleon
had, in 1812, in the fidelity of those two states was his
undoing.

It is often claimed that the fire of Moscow, for which praise is
given to the courage and resolve of the Russian government and
General Rostopschine, was the principal cause of the failure of
the 1812 campaign. This assertion seems to me to be contestable.
To begin with the destruction of Moscow was not so complete that
there did not remain enough houses, palaces, churches and
barracks to accommodate the entire army, and there is evidence of
this in a report which I have seen in the hands of my friend
General Gourgaud, who was then principal aide-de-camp to the
Emperor. It was not therefore lack of shelter which forced the
French to quit Moscow. Many people think that it was the fear of
food shortage, but this is also erroneous, for reports made to
the Emperor by M. le Comte Daru, the quartermaster-general of the
army, show that even after the fire there was in the city an
immense quantity of provisions, which would have supplied the
army for six months, so it was not the prospect of starvation
which decided the Emperor to retreat. These facts would appear to
indicate that the Russian government had failed to achieve its
aim, if this was indeed the aim it was pursuing; but in reality,
its aim was quite different.

The court wished, in fact, to deliver a mortal blow to the
ancient aristocracy of the Boyars by destroying the city which
was the centre for their continual opposition. The Russian
government, although entirely despotic, has to pay much attention
to the great nobles, whose displeasure has cost several emperors
their lives. The richest and most powerful of these noblemen made
Moscow the backdrop for their intrigues, so the government, more
and more alarmed at the growth of the city, saw in the French
invasion an opportunity for its destruction. General
Rostopschine, who was one of the authors of this plan, was
entrusted with its execution, the blame for which he later laid
on the French. But the aristocracy was not taken in: it accused
the government so loudly and manifested so much discontent at the
useless burning of its palaces that the Emperor Alexander, to
avoid a personal catastrophe, was obliged not only to permit the
rebuilding of the city, but to banish Rostopschine who, in spite
of his protestations of patriotism, died in Paris, hated by the
Russian nobility.

Whatever the motives may have been for the fire of Moscow, I
think that its preservation would have been more harmful than
useful to the French, for in order to control a city inhabited by
some 300,000 citizens always ready to revolt, it would have been
necessary to take from the army, and place as a garrison in
Moscow, 50,000 men, who, when the time came to retreat, would
have been assailed by the inhabitants, whereas the fire having
driven out almost all the populace, a few patrols were enough to
ensure tranquillity.

The only influence which Moscow had on the events of 1812 was due
to the fact that Napoleon was unable to understand that Alexander
could not sue for peace without being assassinated by his
subjects, and believed that to leave the city without a treaty
would be to admit that he was not able to hold on to it. The
French Emperor insisted, therefore, on staying as long as
possible in Moscow, where he wasted more than a month waiting in
vain for a proposal of peace. This delay was fatal for it allowed
the winter to become established before the French army could go
into cantonments in Poland. Even if Moscow had been preserved
intact it would not have made any difference; the disaster arose
because the retreat was not prepared in advance and was carried
out at the wrong time. It was not difficult to forecast that it
would be very cold in Russia during the winter!... But, I repeat,
the hope of a peace misled Napoleon and was the sole cause of his
long stay in Moscow.