Napoleon
Page 63
According to Caulaincourt, Napoleon realised his repeated messages would, by showing up the difficulty of his position, only confirm Alexander in his purpose. ‘Yet he kept sending him new ones! For a man who was so politic, such a good calculator, this reveals an extraordinary blind faith in his own star, and one might almost say in the blindness or the weakness of his adversaries! How, with his eagle’s eye and his superior judgement could he delude himself to such a degree?’4
He may have been trying to pressure Alexander by giving the impression that he was prepared to sit it out in Moscow and spend the winter there if necessary; he talked of bringing the actors of the Comédie-Française to entertain him and his men through the winter months. But lingering in Moscow only undermined his own position; although enough had survived in cellars and buildings that had escaped the flames to feed and clothe his army for some months, and there were large quantities of arms, shot and powder left in the city’s arsenal, there was no fodder for the horses, and without horses he would be able neither to keep his lines of communication open nor to launch a fresh campaign in the spring. The whole area in his rear had been ravaged in the advance and was awash with deserters, many settled in bands along the way. The behaviour of these, and of foraging parties sent out from Moscow, was beginning to turn an originally indifferent population against the invaders; isolated French soldiers and even small units were being attacked.
While Kutuzov gradually rebuilt his forces in his fortified camp at Tarutino south of Moscow, Murat’s corps, camped nearby to check him, wasted away. The 3rd Cavalry Corps, consisting of eleven regiments, could only muster 700 horsemen. The 1st Regiment of Chasseurs could only field fifty-eight, and that only thanks to some reinforcements that had reached it from France. Some squadrons in the 2nd Cuirassiers, usually 130 strong, were down to eighteen men. The backs of many of the horses were so worn through that in some cases when riders dismounted and unsaddled they could see their entrails. ‘We could see that we were slowly perishing, but our faith in the genius of Napoleon, in his many years of triumph, was so unbounded that these conversations always ended with the conclusion that he must know what he is doing better than us,’ recalled Lieutenant Dembiński.5
Napoleon’s apartment in the Kremlin overlooking the river Moskva and part of the city consisted of a vast hall with great chandeliers, three spacious salons and one large bedroom, which doubled up as his study. It was here that he hung Gérard’s portrait of the King of Rome. He slept on the iron camp bed he always used on campaign, his desk had been set up in one corner and his travelling library laid out on shelves. He had two burning candles placed at his window every night, so that passing soldiers would see he was watching and working.
He had set up a skeletal administration of the city, and a semblance of normality was established. People travelled ‘as easily between Paris and Moscow as between Paris and Marseille’, according to Caulaincourt, if it took them a little longer. The post took up to forty days, but the estafette only fourteen. Its arrival was the high point of Napoleon’s day, and he would grow restless if, as happened once or twice, it was a couple of days late.6
News from Paris was welcome, particularly when it flattered Napoleon’s vanity. He read with pleasure that his birthday, which he had spent before Smolensk, had been celebrated by the laying of foundation stones for the Palais de l’Université, a new Palais des Beaux-Arts and a building to house the national archives. He was informed that ‘the enthusiasm of the Parisians, on hearing of the emperor’s entry into Moscow is tempered only by their fear of seeing him march out of it in triumph on a conquest of India’. News that Wellington had taken Madrid was less welcome.7
Napoleon attended to affairs of state as well as those of his army with a punctiliousness that may have helped him avoid facing up to the realities of his situation. He badgered Maret to put pressure on the American minister, the poet Joel Barlow, who had just arrived in Vilna, to negotiate an alliance with the United States against Britain. He gave instructions for horses to be sent from France and Germany and for rice to be purchased and shipped to Moscow. He held parades on Red Square before the Kremlin, at which he awarded crosses of the Legion of Honour and promotions earned at Borodino. He was not looking forward to a winter away from home. ‘If I cannot return to Paris this winter,’ he wrote to Marie-Louise, ‘I will have you come and see me in Poland. As you know, I am no less eager than you to see you again and to tell you of all the feelings which you arouse in me.’8
While he reviewed the troops stationed in Moscow, he showed little interest in those elsewhere. When Murat sent his aide-de-camp to inform him of the dire state of the cavalry, Napoleon dismissed him, saying his army was ‘finer than ever’.9
Each day he spent in Moscow made it harder to leave without loss of face, and the usually decisive Napoleon seemed paralysed by the need to choose between an unappealing range of options on the one hand, and belief in his star on the other. He only really had one option, and he was reducing the chances of its success with every day he delayed. The weather was unusually fine, and he teased Caulaincourt, accusing him of telling tales about the Russian winter. ‘Caulaincourt thinks he’s frozen already,’ he quipped, dismissing suggestions that the army provide itself with gloves and warm clothing. As soon as they reached Moscow, all the Polish units had set up forges to produce horseshoes with crampons in preparation for winter. A few Dutch and German officers followed their example, but not the French. Luckily for Napoleon, Caulaincourt had the horses of his maison properly shod.10
On 12 October the estafette from Moscow to Paris was captured, and the following day that coming from Paris was intercepted. General Ferrières, who had travelled all the way from Cádiz, was captured almost at the gates of Moscow. These events shook Napoleon, as did the first shower of snow, on 13 October. ‘Let us make haste,’ he said on seeing it. ‘We must be in winter quarters in twenty days’ time.’ It was not too late. Smolensk, where he had some supplies, was only ten to twelve days’ march from Moscow, his well-stocked bases at Vilna and Minsk only another fifteen to twenty from there. If he could reach these, his army would be fed and supplied, safe in friendly country and able to draw on reinforcements from depots in Poland and Prussia.11
His chances of an orderly withdrawal were reduced by his hope that he might sway Alexander by appearing to occupy Moscow indefinitely; instead of sending the lightly wounded of Smolensk and Borodino back to where they could safely convalesce, he had left them where they were or had them brought to Moscow. Rather than send the thousands of horseless cavalrymen back to Poland where they could be remounted, he kept them in Russia. He did not send back unnecessary members of his maison or other civilians, and did not evacuate the trophies – banners, regalia and treasures from the Kremlin, and the great silver-gilt cross he had had wrenched from the dome of the tower of Ivan the Great. It was not until 14 October, the day after the first snowfall, that he gave orders that no more troops were to be sent forward to Moscow, and that the wounded in the city be evacuated, a pointless and fatal decision; the badly wounded, possibly as many as 12,000, should have been left where they were, as Dr Larrey intended (he had organised medical teams to care for them).12
Napoleon could go back the way he had come, which had the advantage of being familiar, guarded by French units and punctuated with supply depots, as well as being the most direct route. But that would smack of retreat. He considered marching north-westward, in a sweep back to Vilna, and defeating a Russian army on the way. This option had the merit of threatening St Petersburg, which might just cause Alexander’s nerve to snap. Or he could march southwards, strike a blow at Kutuzov, and then go back to Minsk another way. He did not make up his mind until the last moment, further delaying preparations.13
Having decided to strike at Kutuzov, he still entertained the option of returning to Moscow. He therefore left part of his maison there, and gave orders to stockpile three months’ worth of rations, to improve the defences of the Kremlin, and to tur
n all the monasteries into strongpoints. He overruled General Lariboisière, inspector-general of the artillery, who wanted to start evacuating equipment; as a result 500 caissons, 60,000 muskets and quantities of powder, not to mention a large number of cannon, were left in the city. Napoleon seemed incapable of committing to any course, as though he were waiting for some chance to present itself. He ended a letter to Maret in which he sketched out his probable plans with the words: ‘But in the end, in affairs of this kind, what takes place in the event is sometimes very different from that which is foreseen.’ He affected a confidence which had seen him through in the past. ‘Today is 19 October, and look how fine the weather is,’ he said to Rapp as he set out from Moscow. ‘Do you not recognise my star?’ Rapp felt this was no more than bravado, and noted that ‘his face bore the mark of anxiety’.14
His forces numbered no more than 95,000, and probably less, but they included a nucleus of tested troops, including the Guard, which had not been blooded during the campaign. They marched out singing, but while they looked martial enough, their baggage carts were loaded down not with military supplies, but with loot. Behind them came less disciplined troops, stragglers and civilians driving carriages and carts loaded with booty, looking like a grotesque carnival. The high spirits flagged three days later when a downpour transformed the road into a morass. Vehicles had to be abandoned, cumbersome objects jettisoned from knapsacks, and the line of march lengthened as stragglers fell behind.15
They marched south, but found the road blocked by Kutuzov at Maloyaroslavets. After fierce fighting in the course of which the town changed hands several times, Eugène and his Italians drove out Kutuzov. Losses were heavy, with at least 6,000 casualties, and that night, in a squalid cottage whose single room was divided in two by a dirty canvas sheet, Napoleon asked his marshals for their views on what to do next. He listened in silence, staring at the maps spread before him. At dawn he rode out to reconnoitre. He narrowly missed being captured by cossacks, and after riding through the burnt-out ruins of Maloyaroslavets, whose streets were strewn with corpses, many of them hideously mutilated by the wheels of guns or shrivelled in grotesque poses by the blaze, he was visibly shaken. He decided to retreat by the most direct route, and sent orders to Mortier in Moscow to abandon the city, bringing all the wounded, and make with all speed for Smolensk. Before he left he was to blow up the Kremlin and torch the townhouses of Rostopchin and Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, as well as destroying all the stores left in the city.16
Mortier also brought with him two prisoners, General Wintzingerode and his aide-de-camp, who had unwisely ridden into Moscow to verify that the French had left, only to be captured. When Napoleon saw Winzingerode, a native of Württemberg in Russian service who seemed to epitomise the internationale that was forming against him, he erupted into a rage. ‘It is you and a few dozen rogues who have sold themselves to England who are whipping up Europe against me,’ he ranted. ‘I don’t know why I don’t have you shot; you were captured as a spy.’ That did not exhaust his anger, and on seeing a country house that had escaped destruction, he ordered it burnt down. ‘Since Messieurs les Barbares are so keen on burning their own towns, we must help them,’ he raged (he soon countermanded the order).17
When they passed Borodino, he was annoyed to find many wounded still in the makeshift hospitals. Against the advice of Larrey and the medical teams caring for them, he insisted they be placed on every available vehicle, including gun carriages. The order killed many who might have lived; they were in no condition to survive the jolting and buffeting, and those who were not killed by it soon either fell off or were thrown off. Progress was slow due to lack of horsepower. Shortage of fodder had debilitated the horses – guns normally drawn by three pairs were now hitched to teams of twelve or more, and even these had to be helped up inclines by infantry. Powder wagons were blown up and shells jettisoned to lighten the load. Private carriages and loot-laden wagons were seized and burnt by the artillery, which commandeered the horses, but this did not solve the problem. As the nights grew colder more horses died, and the artillery took those that had been drawing wagons with wounded men.
Napoleon saw himself as carrying out a tactical withdrawal rather than a retreat, so although his generals advised abandoning some of the guns in order to free up horses with which to draw the rest and save time, he would not hear of it, fearing the Russians would claim the abandoned guns as trophies. The same went for the 3,000 or so Russian prisoners, who only encumbered the army.18
The army corps were marching one behind the other, so only the leading one had a clear road; the others had to move through the mess left behind by preceding ones. Their path was churned by tens of thousands of feet, hooves and wheels into a sea of mud if it was wet, and into a sheet of ice when it froze. Such supplies as there might have been along the way were devoured, and any available shelter was dismantled for firewood by those who had gone before. The road was littered with abandoned vehicles, dead horses and jettisoned baggage, and clogged by slow-moving stragglers and civilians – French and other foreign inhabitants of Moscow who feared the return of the Russians; Russians, particularly women and petty criminals, who had thrown in their lot with the French or been forcibly enlisted as wagoners or bearers; functionaries attached to the army; and officers’ servants. Soldiers fell behind and became separated from their units by a mass of people, horses and vehicles. After a time, most of them threw away their weapons and joined the crowd of stragglers, demoralised and guided by herd instinct, easy prey for pursuing cossacks.
The new moon on the night of 4 November brought a drop in temperature, and by the morning hundreds of undernourished men and horses had frozen to death. The men began adapting their dress to the cold: furs, shawls and costly textiles brought along as gifts for wives or sweethearts were put on over uniforms, giving the retreating army a carnivalesque aspect. It did not protect them from frostbite, and as the inexperienced inhabitants of warmer climes had no idea of how to restore circulation, many lost fingers, toes, ears and noses. Cavalrymen had to dismount to prevent their feet freezing, and Napoleon, who had abandoned his uniform for a Polish-style fur-lined green velvet frock-coat and cap, got out of his carriage at intervals and tramped alongside his troops, with Berthier and Caulaincourt at his elbow.
On 6 November he was met by an estafette from Paris which brought news of an attempted coup aimed at overthrowing him. It had been quickly foiled, but it brought home to him the frailty of his rule, and he began to contemplate leaving the army and racing back to Paris. When he reached Smolensk on 9 November, the blanket of snow concealing the charred ruins allowed him to entertain for a while the feeling that he had reached safety. He set about organising winter quarters for the army, but found only a fraction of the stores he expected, barely enough for the 15,000 sick and wounded left behind after the storming of the city. Bad news poured in from all sides. Vitebsk had been taken by the Russians, a division had been forced to surrender south of Smolensk, and Eugène’s Italian corps had lost almost a quarter of its effectives and fifty-eight guns while crossing a river. As his columns trudged in he could see how depleted they were; there were now no more than about 40,000 left with their colours.19
He took out his frustration on his marshals. ‘There’s not one of them to whom one can entrust anything; I always have to do everything myself,’ he complained, refusing to accept responsibility for his predicament. ‘And they accuse me of ambition, as though it was my ambition that brought me here! This war is only a matter of politics. What have I got to gain from a climate like this, from coming to a wretched country like this one? The whole of it is not worth the meanest little piece of France. They, on the other hand, have a very real interest in conquest: Poland, Germany, anything goes for them. Just seeing the sun six months of the year is a new pleasure for them. It is they that should be stopped, not me.’20
The retreat would have to go on, and fast, as two Russian pincers were converging in his rear,
and Kutuzov was overtaking him to the south. Schwarzenberg had fallen back, not on Minsk, where he would have joined forces with Napoleon, but westwards, back into Poland, leaving Napoleon’s line of retreat exposed. Desperate not to lose face and not wishing to withdraw further than he absolutely had to, he refused to accept that he would not find winter quarters in Russia, and so put off until the last minute every decision to retreat further. He only left Smolensk on 14 November. Eugène, Davout and Ney were to follow at one-day intervals.
As they set off the temperature dipped further, to as low as minus twenty degrees, and conditions deteriorated. Those who were still with their colours managed to provide themselves with food and shelter; when they could not get hold of rations they ate horses, then dogs and cats, and anything else they could lay hands on; sometimes no more than hot water with some axle-grease. But the growing number of stragglers were caught up in a desperate struggle for survival; they began to steal food and clothing from each other, callously stripping those too weak to resist. The cold was such that what food could be obtained froze so hard it could not be eaten, so horses were sliced up while still alive.
Napoleon himself had a regular supply of food and wine. An officer would ride ahead to select a place to stop for the night, sometimes a country house, sometimes a hut. The iron camp bed would be set up, a rug spread on the floor and the nécessaire containing razors, brushes and toiletries brought in. A study would be improvised, in the same room if no other could be found, with a table covered in green cloth, his travelling library in its case and the boxes containing maps and writing instruments. A small dinner service would be unpacked, so he could eat off plate. Even though he did have the luxury of a change of clothes, and despite the resources of the nécessaire, he was infested with lice like the rest of his army. And despite the comforts of his camp bed, he suffered from insomnia. The night after leaving Smolensk, he called Caulaincourt to his bedside and discussed the necessity of his going back to Paris. He had just heard that the Russians had cut the road ahead near Krasny, and he could not rule out the possibility of being taken prisoner, so he had his physician Dr Yvan prepare him a dose of poison, which he kept in a black silk sachet around his neck.21