The garrison in Smolensk was in good shape, as they had lived well on a number of the convoys coming up from Poland, instead of letting them go on to Moscow, They also made a valuable replacement of the casualties that had fallen on the way from the capital, greatly strengthening the Grand Army’s fighting power to resist further attacks by the Russians. After a few days with ample food and liquor and the shelter of the many buildings in the big city that had not been totally burned out, the scarecrows bundled in rags who had staggered or limped into it became different men. The Headquarters Staff and the Guards were quartered in the better mansions that remained undamaged, the remainder of the polyglot horde cheerfully set about making half-ruined buildings into snow and wind-proof snuggeries, in which to spend the winter.
Then the terrible blow fell. The awful news came in that Vitebsk had been captured by the Russians. The supply route from Poland had been cut. If they remained in Smolensk for more than a few weeks, every man Jack of them would starve to death.
24
The Grim Reaper Gives No Respite
Forced to take a new decision, the Emperor told his staff that he now intended that the army should winter in the undamaged towns behind the Dvina and Dnieper, With this in view, he sent Poniatowski’s Poles and Junot’s Westphalians ahead with the trophies, on the road to Krasnoi. On November 14th, with the Guard and all that remained of the cavalry, he followed in a carriage.
On reaching Smolensk, Roger had thankfully rejoined Napoleon’s staff and, with Mary, had for a few days fed well. He had also succeeded in getting hold of enough oats for their horses to fill one pannier and, for themselves, half a side of frozen bacon. The other pannier held most of their remaining stores; the rest were distributed in their saddle-bags, pistol holsters and pockets.
Apart from unceasing harassing of outposts by the Cossacks, the Russians had for some days ceased attacking, so the three corps with the Emperor got away from Smolensk with few casualties. But Prince Eugene was less fortunate. When crossing the little river Vop, his corps had already suffered severely at the hands of Milorado-vitch and now, as they followed Napoleon toward Krasnoi, it was again ferociously attacked.
Although Eugene’s mother had been divorced by Napoleon, he had remained unshakeably loyal to his stepfather. As a boy of fifteen, the voung General Bonaparte of those days had taken him on the first victorious campaign in Italy, and he had since had many years’ experience in commanding troops. Unlike the Emperor’s troublesome, treacherous and futile brothers, who were incapable both of waging war and ruling, Eugene, as Viceroy of Italy, had shown himself to be a most capable administrator and an able General. Apart from the Imperial Guard, his Italians rivalled the Saxon corps—which had been trained by Bernadotte and had been largely responsible for the victory at Austerlitz—as the best-disciplined and most reliable troops in the Grand Army. Now in this present campaign Eugene was proving himself to be, with the exception of Davout and Ney, the equal of any of the Marshals.
By the afternoon of the day that Eugene left Smolensk, he realised that Miloradovitch’s force was only the vanguard of the main Russian army, and that he was faced with impossible odds. Nevertheless he fought his way on. By the time he was half-way to Krasnoi, he had lost eight thousand of the twelve thousand men who had left Smolensk under him. To continue the battle for another day could only mean complete annihilation. He then decided to attempt to save the remainder of his men by resorting to a stratagem, although it meant risking being caught flank-on to the enemy, which would prevent him from even making a last stand effectively.
In the night, leaving his camp fires burning, he led his troops by a circuitous route round the enemy. He was challenged by a Russian sentry. The next hour might have seen his force cut to pieces, but he was saved by the quick wits of his Polish orderly, who at once rapped out, in faultless Russian:
‘Quiet, you fool.’
The sentry then took Eugene’s corps for another body of his own countrymen moving up to the front for a night attack, and let them pass.
The Emperor had reached Krasnoi on the 15th, and waited there for the main body of his army to join him. He then learned of the Russian advance that threatened to cut the road from Smolensk and divide the Grand Army in half, which would enable Kutuzov to defeat first one part, then the other. Temporarily regaining his old initiative, he at once directed the three corps he had with him to return along the road to Smolensk, and set out to free the way for Eugene, Davout and Ney.
He met the remnants of Eugene’s corps, which had escaped the previous night; but Davout was still a day’s march away, Ney had only just left Smolensk and both were desperately defending themselves in a pitched battle against Kutuzov’s main army, which had by then come up.
Despite his greatly inferior forces, Napoleon decided that he must gamble everything to save the two corps separated from him, and hurried forward to attack. But, fortunately for him, the old ‘fox of the north’ preferred to save his men and let the devastating cold continue to destroy his enemies; so, rather than sacrifice further troops against Davout’s fierce resistance, he let him get away.
Napoleon was now in a quandary. He had been saved from a battle that might have ended in the complete destruction of the Grand Army, and Ney was many miles distant. He could be rescued only by again challenging Kutuzov’s eighty thousand Russians and defeating them. With great reluctance the Emperor decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Leaving Ney to his fate, he retired on Krasnoi.
There he realised that his plan for wintering in the towns behind the Dwina and Dnieper was no longer feasible. It had been only another pipe-dream. If the Grand Army was to be saved, a new plan had swiftly to be formed. His choice was to cross the Dnieper at Orcha, join Schwarzenberg, by way of Minsk, and winter behind the Berezina.
During the campaign Ney had already surpassed himself, eclipsing even the brilliant feats of arms he had achieved in Austria, Prussia and during Massena’s retreat from Portugal. For having stormed the Great Redoubt at Borodino, the Emperor had recently made him Prince of Moscow. On leaving Smolensk, his corps had been reduced by having to leave behind six thousand wounded. As his men had hurried out of one side of the city, the Cossacks had come galloping in at the other, and had since never ceased to savage his rear battalions. Now, cut off from any hope of help, with exhausted troops, no cavalry and very few guns, he was called on to face the greatest challenge of his career.
He was beset by the whole Russian army, and it was rapidly closing in round him. Still fighting a heavy rearguard action, he battled his way toward Krasnoi; but, as he advanced, met with increasingly violent opposition. On his second day out of Smolensk, he launched an all-out attack, in a forlorn hope of breaking through. But it failed, and he realised that his last chance of rejoining the Emperor was gone.
The Russians were well aware that they had him in a trap, and orders were sent out that in no circumstances must he be killed, but taken prisoner, so that this most famous of all Napoleon’s fighting Marshals could grace a triumph for the Czar in St. Petersburg. Miloradovitch, who greatly admired Ney, sent an officer to him under a flag of truce, to impress upon him that his position was hopeless. The Russian General even offered a temporary armistice in which he would personally conduct Ney on a tour of the Russian front, so that he could see for himself the tremendous odds that were arrayed against him, and promised that, if he would surrender, his men should receive the honours of war. Ney’s reply was:
‘A Marshal of the Empire never surrenders.’
On Napoleon’s right, up in the north-west, there had been severe fighting along the Dwina ever since July. Wittgenstein had had the better of it, capturing Chasniki and Vitebsk and forcing Victor to fall back on Senno. To the south-east Tchitchagov now had under his command Tormasov’s army as well as the one he had brought up from the Danube. He had easily beaten off a half-hearted attack by Schwarzenberg’s Austrians, and had captured Minsk; thus frustrating Napoleon’s latest plan
of retiring on that city. The Emperor’s situation between these two forces, and with Kutuzov’s main army at no great distance from him, was, therefore, now very precarious.
Believing the bridge over the Berezina at Borisov was still guarded by the Polish General Dombrovski, he planned to cross that river instead of the Dnieper at Orcha, and ordered the pontoon bridges that had been assembled at the latter place to be destroyed. But on November 21st Tchitchagov arrived before Borisov and, faced by heavy odds, Dombrovski abandoned the town.
While retreating, Dombrovski ran into Oudinot’s corps, by then reduced to eight thousand men. On hearing that the all-important bridge had been given up, the Marshal was furious and, in spite of the odds against him, hurried forward to attack Tchitchagov. However, the Russian had become obsessed with the idea of the glory that would be his if only he could capture Napoleon; so he had marched off at a furious pace toward Orcha and, in his hurry, neglected to order the bridge to be destroyed.
This stroke of good fortune enabled Oudinot to save the line of retreat. In addition, Tchitchagov had set off at such a speed that his baggage train was far in his rear, so Oudinot captured it and was able to feed his hungry men and horses well for several days.
Meanwhile, the Emperor had reached Orcha and everyone at the headquarters there had accepted as inevitable that Ney’s corps must have succumbed and that the Marshal was either dead or on his way to St. Petersburg as a prisoner. Napoleon constantly reproached himself for having abandoned his old friend, and could not be consoled for his loss, exclaiming from time to time, ‘I can never replace him! He was the bravest of the brave!’
But on November 20th, to everybody’s amazement, Ney appeared out of the blizzard, leading nine hundred men—all that remained of the eight thousand who had left Smolensk with him.
In the two days of gruelling conflict that had followed his leaving the city, his already sadly-depleted corps had been reduced to three thousand five hundred men. Realising the impossibility of breaking through the eighty thousand Russians who barred his way to Krasnoi, he had assembled his senior officers at night, and said to them;
‘Messieurs. There is only one course open to us. We must do a right-about turn, strike north and find a place where we can get across the Dnieper.’
They had all protested that it could not conceivably be done. There were no roads. Such an attempt meant condemning his whole force to die in the wastes of snow.
‘Very well, Messieurs,’ he had replied, ‘if you will not accompany me, I shall set off on my own.’
Invigorated by his indomitable courage, they agreed to his apparently crazy plan. The camp fires were left burning. Everything on wheels was abandoned: wagons, cartloads of loot, even such guns as remained to them. They then marched north into the illimitable forests.
In the morning, when the Russians realised that Ney’s battered corps had made off during the night, Platoff’s Cossacks and Miloradovitch’s regular cavalry followed in hot pursuit. Day after day Ney and his men fought them off until, at last, they reached the Dnieper. The broad river was frozen over, but only lightly. Hundreds of officers and men crashed through the treacherous ice and perished in the icy water. On the far bank, when they headed left, the survivors were again harassed night and day by Russian horsemen. As often as they could they kept to the woods, but every few miles they had to cross open spaces. At such times they formed square and continued to repel their enemies while still marching.
The most determined attack of all came when they were within a few miles of Orcha. It seemed that they were fated to be completely wiped out; but a Polish officer, mounted on one of the very few horses that they had got across the river, managed to break through the Russians and reach the town.
As he rode into it, shouting that Ney was coming but needed immediate help, the weary, starving troops in the streets were suddenly galvanised into activity. That Ney had fought his way through seemed impossible to believe, but they grabbed up their weapons and ran from the town to his assistance, cheering like madmen. Eugene and a handful of horsemen were the first to reach the nine hundred haggard men who, a few months before, had been a twenty-thousand-strong Army Corps. The remnant was not the full strength of a single battalion, and there was scarcely a man among them that was not wounded; but the epic feat that these brave fellows had performed put new heart into the despairing army.
Only the day before, in his distress Napoleon had exclaimed, ‘In the Tuileries I have millions in gold. I would have given it all to save Ney.’ Now the Emperor of the French threw his arms about Marshal Ney, Duke of Elchingen, Prince of Moscow, Bravest of the Brave, and burst into tears of happiness on his strong shoulder.
On the day following Ney’s return, the Grand Army left Orcha, and headed for Borisov. For the first few days the weather improved, but a rise in temperature brought new afflictions. The ice on the roads turned to slush, water seeped into the boots of the many men whose footwear was worn out, and the driving sleet created greater distress than the snow, because it soaked into clothes and, when the temperature fell at night, they froze on the men’s bodies. But the thaw was only temporary. On the third day intense cold again made iron red-hot to the touch and inflicted frostbite on the unwary. By then the supplies they had obtained in Orcha were nearly exhausted. Famine again stalked the miles-long, slowly-moving column.
Alternately the wind howled like a hundred banshees, tugging at the wraps of the marchers and blowing little puffs of newly-fallen snow from their feet with every step they took, or the myriad of big, white flakes fell steadily in utter silence. No-one uttered an unnecessary word, or made an effort of any kind that was not essential to keeping alive and on the move. It was now mostly the younger conscripts who had joined the column from the garrisons along the route who fell out and died. But now and then one of the older soldiers, who had marched all the way from Moscow and for forty days and nights endured almost unbelievable suffering, could stand it no longer, put his musket beneath his chin, pulled the trigger and so committed suicide.
The Emperor and his staff were about half-way to Borisov when ill-fortune again struck at Roger. While on the march, he now rarely left Mary’s side, except to ride forward each afternoon to draw his miserable ration and to pick up from Rapp such news as had come in.
On this occasion the early winter darkness was already falling when he dropped back to rejoin Mary; but she was not riding as usual among the headquarters baggage wagons, so must have fallen out, for some reason. Suddenly the hush of the gently-falling snow was broken by the sound of distant shouting, followed by a shot. Spurring his horse into an amble, he rode a hundred yards in that direction then, through the drifting flakes, glimpsed a number of men fighting. By then the units had become so mixed up that a cluster of Prussians were marching not far behind the headquarters wagons. A minute later he realised that Mary was among them, and the centre of the commotion.
Thrusting forward on his mount, he took in the scene. Three days earlier they had fed their horses the last of the oats he had managed to get hold of in Smolensk. Since then they had had only a few vegetables and some frozen thistles that he had found and cut for them. From lack of fodder, Mary’s horse had become very weak. Although she led it for most of the time, it had now collapsed and lay dead in the road.
Like a flock of vultures, half a dozen Prussians had fallen upon it to get themselves a meal. Not content with that, they were pillaging the panniers of the priceless stores. Mary had evidently made a gallant attempt to stop them, and had shot one of the would-be robbers with her pistol. But another of the brutes had knocked her down.
Berserk with fury, Roger whipped out his sword, rowelled his horse and charged the group. Before they realised what was happening, his slashing blade struck one of the men from behind, slicing half through his neck, then its point pierced the breast of another. The remaining four, maddened with rage at the thought that they were about to be deprived of their feast, instantly attacked him.
Fo
rtunately for Roger, the eagerness of all of them to grab as much as they could of the spoil before their companions got it had led to their throwing down their muskets; but, flinging themselves at Roger, they strove to drag him from his horse.
During the next few minutes it was touch and go whether he would succeed in driving them off or if they would pull him to the ground and kill him. He was able to keep in his saddle only because each of his legs had been seized by men on either side of him, and neither was strong enough to tug him away from the other. In an attempt to free himself, he urged his horse forward by digging his knees into its flanks, but a third man had grabbed the animal’s bridle. Instead of responding normally to the jab of Roger’s knees, it reared, almost lifting off his feet the man who grasped its bridle.
The fourth man had picked up his musket and was raising it to shoot Roger. Swiftly he lunged over the shoulder of the man who was hauling on his left foot. The stroke took the would-be murderer in the mouth. His eyes bulged. His mouth, full of shattered teeth, gaped wide but, choked by his own blood, only a horrid gurgle came from it. Reeling back, he staggered a few steps and fell, a gush of his blood turning the snow beside his head crimson.
As Roger lunged, he yelled ‘A moi! A moi!’, praying that some French soldiers would hear his cry for help and come to his rescue. But only Prussians—notorious for their excesses and the most brutal of all the troops forming the Grand Army—were within earshot. Most of them, their heads bowed, their ears muffled and their brains numbed by cold and misery, shuffled on. The few who heard him turned to stare for a moment and, no doubt feeling too weak to risk themselves in a fight, resumed their monotonous bid for life by forcing themselves to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.
The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware Page 36
