by Philip Dwyer
Shortly afterwards the first wave of real cold hit (this was around 26 October), so that wherever wood could be found it was burnt, including the barns and houses used by commanding officers for shelter, while men stood around, looking like ghosts, not moving all night in front of those immense fires.150 ‘It is difficult to describe the effect of the first cold snaps on the army,’ wrote Lieutenant Ducque.151 With the onset of winter, the army quickly started to fall apart, and the officers lost control over their men. The cold played a part, combined with the same difficulties they had faced on the way to Moscow, but one should not exaggerate its impact at this stage of the retreat.152 The Emperor was still with the army; his presence was enough to reassure those present and to prevent a complete breakdown of discipline. Some, however, began to doubt. They were no longer marching as conquerors, but with ‘reserve and hesitation’, surrounded by Cossacks and hostile peasants, and they lacked everything.153 Conditions were grim. Most marched from six in the morning till about seven in the evening, some of that in the dark because of the time of the year.154 The hardest thing seems to have been the lack of sleep for those who had equipment or carriages to prepare. If the troops marched till six or seven, they would try to warm themselves and eat; they might get to sleep around ten, and would then have to wake up at two or three in the morning to get ready to leave. One officer complained that since leaving Moscow he had averaged about four hours’ sleep a night.155 To make matters worse, Cossacks would come skulking round the stragglers like crows.156
By 28 October, the road was ‘cluttered with a multitude of footsoldiers, some armed, others without arms, the wounded in large numbers, servants, women, and an unprecedented congestion of horses and wagons. There were also among that number fugitives, French families who were fleeing Moscow after having lived there for many years before our arrival.’157 The wounded were loaded on to carts, but the attempt to help them soon turned sour. ‘They fell into the hands of coarse drivers, insolent servants, brutal sutlers, women enriched and arrogant, brothers-in-arms without pity, and all the sequel [a colloquial term of contempt] of wagon drivers. All these people had only one idea: get rid of their wounded.’158 It was not uncommon for wagon drivers deliberately to drive their horses at speed over rough ground so that a jolt would free them of their charges. When the wounded fell, if they were unable to get up they were driven over by the carriages following whose drivers would fear stopping and thus losing their place in line.159
To make matters worse, Russian prisoners marched with the retreating army, guarded by a regiment made up of French, Spanish and Portuguese troops. As they fell by the wayside through sickness or lack of food they were killed by a blow to the head with the butt of a musket, or a shot to the back of the neck.160 The same order was given to a regiment of grenadiers from Baden, to shoot any prisoners who fell by the wayside too weak to continue.161 The order supposedly came from Napoleon himself, although it is impossible to verify and may very well be part of the black legend. We know of several massacres of prisoners, including one in which 1,200 Russians were shot in the head by their Portuguese guards.162 One account has 3,000 Russian prisoners taken out of Moscow and ‘parked like sheep’ whenever the army stopped. They slept on the ice and snow and were not given any food, as a result of which they resorted to cannibalism.163
What did Napoleon think of all this? Did he understand how decimated the army was by the cold and hunger? We know that at one stage he is said to have told Rapp, ‘Those poor soldiers make my heart bleed, but there is nothing I can do about it.’164 But this kind of statement, written many years after the event, was an attempt to portray Napoleon as someone who cared for his men. Some scepticism is called for, especially since there are no contemporary accounts of how he felt. One can argue that as emperor and military leader, he could not give way to ‘outpourings of grief or remorse’,165 but the lack of public posturing should not have prevented him from expressing his feelings in private. As far as one can tell, despite the fact that he had the opportunity to take in the full extent of the army’s suffering,166 he does not appear to have cared terribly much, or it did not register.
Napoleon reached Mikhailovska, three days out from Smolensk, on the afternoon of 6 November where he found a courier from Paris informing him of the Malet affair.
In Paris, during the night of 22–23 October, at four o’clock in the morning, an officer calling himself General Lamotte, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, appeared before the door of the Popincourt barracks in east Paris, declaring that the Emperor had died under the walls of Moscow. The Senate, the general declared, had abolished the imperial regime and formed a new, provisional government. The officer in question was General Malet, who had just escaped from prison where he had been incarcerated for plotting to overthrow the regime in 1808.167 For another twenty-four hours, the conspirators, disorganized though they were, were able to hold Paris by taking charge of the main ministries. The state structures that controlled and directed the Empire remained inert. It was only the cool-headedness of the commander of Paris, General Pierre-Augustin Hulin, that saved the day, but the Council of State remained inactive, as did the Senate. Nor were there any demonstrations in favour of the Empire among the people. The plot was never a serious threat to the regime, but what it demonstrated was that people’s loyalties remained with Napoleon, not with the Empire – that is, it had apparently not occurred to anyone that Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome, was waiting to take his place.168
By the time Napoleon received news of the affair, on 6 November, Malet and his accomplices had been stood against a wall and shot. They were the only generals to be executed during the Consulate and the Empire.169 Napoleon could not tell from the reports that he was sent whether this was the work of one man or whether it was a widespread conspiracy. The minister of war, Clarke, was saying the latter while his minister of police, Savary, was saying the former.170 The doubt floating around Paris would soon bring Napoleon to make a decision about his presence with the army.
20
Destiny Forsaken
‘A Starving Multitude’
To some, the sight of the walls of Smolensk, given that the snow hid the disastrous consequences of the fire, caused as much pleasure as if it were home.1 The lead columns reached the city on 9 November; it had taken twenty days of uninterrupted marching to get this far. The accounts of the retreat up to that point vary enormously, depending on who is writing them. People lived through different experiences and in different conditions. Some wrote that they arrived ‘exhausted with fatigue’, and that in twenty years of service they had never been through such a tough campaign.2 Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, agreed; on reaching Smolensk he wrote to his wife to say that he had never suffered as much, and he had campaigned in Egypt and Spain.3 Others wrote that they had not ‘suffered too much’ before arriving at Smolensk, and that if bread was lacking, there was horsemeat, and even cats in abundance.4 A sapper by the name of Laurencin (who was to die at Frankfurt-am-Oder in February 1813) had enough money to buy bread, and had with him seven or eight pounds of rice which he would cook in a bit of fat or in water with sugar, so that he was able to continue on his way without too much trouble. Others again were more tongue in cheek, proving that, for some, their sense of humour had survived. Stendhal, ironized, for example, ‘that he had just been on a charming trip; three or four times a day I would go from extreme boredom to extreme pleasure’, the pleasure triggered by such events as finding a few potatoes.5 Another quipped about the lovely weather and the lovely camp fires, and about how much he prayed to God for it to start all over again.6
Smolensk should have been the end of their suffering. Instead, those organizing the supplies there could not cope with the unruly hordes pressing to get something into their bellies. There was such confusion that just getting into the town through the main gates took hours.7 Once inside, there were enormous difficulties finding shelter and food.8 Stores were apparently lower than expected, but there was certainly enoug
h to supply the men for about two weeks. No arrangements were made, however, either to guard or to distribute the provisions. The end result was that they were looted within days. Those who arrived in Smolensk a little later went without. The town, nevertheless, gave the men a few days’ rest, as well as food, and even oats for their horses, and the opportunity to prepare for the march ahead.9 Most naively thought that the worst was behind them and even looked forward to the march to Vilnius.10 Those who had survived the leg from Moscow now knew what to expect, so they clothed and outfitted themselves more or less appropriately, replaced old boots with new, and abandoned anything that was not of use to them, including much of the precious booty they had dragged from Moscow.11 Some, however, could continue no longer. One officer, who had made it to Smolensk with one leg, took a pistol and attempted to shoot himself in the head. His first attempt failed. He dragged himself along the ground until he could find another cartouche. He succeeded the second time around.12 This had happened often enough during the retreat; men preferred to shoot themselves rather than prolong the suffering.
Napoleon himself arrived at Smolensk on 9 November and began setting up headquarters. The full extent of the disaster had not yet sunk in. He believed Smolensk was the pinnacle of the army’s suffering and that he would be able to start reorganizing what remained of it. Indeed, he began dictating a stream of orders to non-existent regiments.13 It did not take long though for the reality to take root. For most of the march towards Smolensk he had been at the head of his army. Now, at Smolensk, he could see his emaciated army marching into the city, and there was not much of it left. Estimates vary, but at this stage of the retreat there were probably still about 40,000–50,000 men under colours, as well as, remarkably, 220 cannon and as many as 20,000 camp followers. That means that something like 60,000 men had been lost (died, wandered off, killed) in less than three weeks.14 But this does not take into account the number of men that had been picked up along the way at various outposts and towns, such as at Viazma. Junot had been stationed at Borodino with several thousand men. Joachim-Joseph Delmarche, who had been wounded early in the campaign, joined the retreating army with a friend, both of them walking with makeshift crutches, without any food and without any hope of finding any, except for the horse carcasses littering the way.15
At the beginning of November the weather started to get colder – temperatures varied from minus 5 degrees Celsius to minus 12. Lots of snow fell during the night of 2–3 November. In an army that was well prepared and well supplied, these temperatures should not have been a problem. But the retreat from Moscow was so badly organized that the weather had a disastrous impact on the army.16 By the first week of November, not only were the men suffering from a lack of food and warm clothing, but so much snow had fallen that walking had become difficult.17 What made matters worse was the lack of preparations for a winter campaign; no gloves, no stockings, no woollen vests or bonnets. The cold of course affected both sides, to the point where the Russians too had to break contact with the fleeing enemy in order to deal with the conditions. Horses died in their droves from this point, unable to cope with the lack of fodder and the fatigue.18
This was the turning point; it was the beginning of a six-week period in which the remains of the Grande Armée would be devastated. Provisions were so scarce that even generals were reduced to eating horsemeat,19 but the colder it got and the further the army advanced, the fewer horses there were and the more difficult it became to cut into the carcasses. Men were reduced to cutting bits of flesh off live horses as they walked alongside them. According to one witness, ‘the poor beasts did not show the slightest sign of pain’, probably because it was so cold – temperatures soon reached minus 28 degrees Celsius.20 Thus it was that horses walked on with pieces missing from them for a few days before succumbing. Other soldiers lucky enough to possess a small casserole would walk beside a horse, insert a knife and capture the blood that flowed, which they would then cook to make a primitive blood sausage.21 More than one officer, believing that he was leading his horse by its reins, turned to find the reins had been cut and the horse gone.22 As soon as a horse fell to the ground, it was laid upon by groups of starving men cutting away at its flesh.23 By the beginning of November, the army was no longer an army, but a hungry multitude of individuals whose only objective in life was survival.24 Most thought the idea of eating horse repugnant,25 but as the routes were paved with dead carcasses it was the easiest way of gaining some protein. This started to happen a few days into the retreat.26 At the end of a day’s march, one simply chose a carcass and cut off a piece with a knife or sabre, grilled it over a fire and ate. For want of salt, some preferred to season the meat with a little gunpowder.27 Others preferred to cut open a horse that had just fallen in the hope of getting more choice morsels – liver, heart.28
From about the middle of November, men started to fall down along the roads through inanition and fatigue. It was so cold that soldiers could no longer hold their muskets without freezing their hands, even though they had taken the precaution of wrapping them in cloth. As a consequence, many threw away their weapons, even members of the Guard, and those that did not were often too weak to be able to use them.29 Others were suffering from frostbite of the nose, ears, toes or fingers.30 Some well-disciplined units managed to keep together, largely as a result of their officers. As the retreat continued, and units broke down, soldiers tended to group according to nationality so that one would find Frenchmen, Germans, Poles or Italians huddled around camp fires or marching together. The Poles seem to have been better prepared than most, no doubt because they were used to the winters. Individuals who were young and in good health had a better chance of surviving. A surgeon named Lagneau, aged thirty-two, used to walking, unlike most who rode, was able to ‘endure everything without any untoward consequences’.31 His only fear was of being wounded and then left to die on the side of the road.
Napoleon’s Despair
With news of the Malet affair, Napoleon gave up the idea of staying in Smolensk over winter and instead hoped to fall back to Orsha, about 160 kilometres away, or possibly to hold the line along the River Berezina while setting up winter quarters in Minsk. After only four days’ rest in Smolensk, the army set out again on 12 November – Mortier and the Young Guard first, followed by the Old Guard, Prince Eugène, Davout and Ney at one-day intervals. At Korytnia, where he had stopped for the night, Napoleon called Caulaincourt to his bedside and talked about getting back to Paris as soon as possible. He was in fact so worried about being taken – the encounter with Cossacks at Maloyaroslavets had unnerved him – that he ordered his physician, Dr Yvan, to prepare a sachet of poison that between now and his fall in 1814 he kept with him at all times.32 Despair had set in, and was not really to leave him until his fall from power, even if there were fits of enthusiasm and hope.
The next day (15 November) Napoleon found the Russians blocking his path, and was obliged to fight his way through to Krasnyi, between Orsha and Smolensk (near the present-day Belorussian border), where he waited for the rest of the army to catch up. The Russians, however, under General Mikhail Miloradovich, often referred to as the Russian Murat, simply blocked the road again so that each section of the army coming up would have to fight its way through. They had to do so in temperatures of between minus 15 degrees Celsius and minus 25. The toll in lives was significant, as many as 10,000 dead and wounded, with around 200 cannon lost, and over 20,000 men taken prisoner, most of whom were so badly treated by the Russians that they would never see their homes again.33 After Eugène had fought his way through, Napoleon had to decide whether to wait for the others to catch up, in case they had trouble breaking through Miloradovich’s roadblock, or to forge on. The situation was made precarious by Kutuzov, who had turned up a few kilometres south of Krasnyi and threatened to cut the road to Orsha.
So Napoleon decided to take the field. In a gesture that either showed a death wish or was born of his irrational sense of invincibility, or perhap
s was simply a sign of the utter desperation in which the army found itself, he led his grenadiers into battle. He even gave them a rousing speech in which he drew his sword and supposedly urged his men to swear to die fighting rather than not see France again.34 They were utterly outnumbered but this did not seem to faze him, and he stood his ground calmly while Russian shells and cannon balls struck all around him. It impressed not only his own men, but the Russians as well, to the point that Miloradovich moved away from the road and left it open for Davout to get through. Even then, Kutuzov could easily have encircled Napoleon – indeed his entourage begged him to – but he stubbornly refused to go head to head with Napoleon.35 Napoleon’s orders spoke of non-existent corps, divisions and regiments, as though they were fully operational units; the missives were being captured by the Russians, giving the mistaken impression that the Grande Armée was much stronger than it actually was. Kutuzov was being very cautious, overly cautious in retrospect, but one has to keep in mind that he was still dealing with Napoleon, considered the greatest general of his day by all concerned. If Kutuzov had been a more hands-on general, or if he had trusted some of his more able subordinates, things would have been very different.