by G. A. Henty
CHAPTER X
SMOLENSK
Julian's regiment arrived at Konigsberg early in March, and found thatit was to form part of Ney's division. The whole country round had beenturned into an enormous camp, and every town was the centre round whicha great array of tents was clustered. The troops were of manynationalities--French, Poles, Bavarians, Saxons, Prussians, Austrians,and even Spanish. Never since the hordes of Attila swept over Europe hadso vast an army been gathered. The total force collected for theinvasion of Russia amounted to 651,358 men, of whom some 520,000 wereinfantry, 100,000 cavalry, and the remainder artillery and engineers.They had with them 1372 guns.
April passed without any movement. The troops became impatient, and eventhe veterans, whose confidence in Napoleon was implicit, shook theirheads.
"We ought to be across the frontier before this," an old sergeant ofJulian's company said to him, as they smoked a pipe together over twomugs of German beer.
"It isn't that I think there will be much fighting, for what can Russiado against such an army as this? They say Alexander has been busy sincethe peace of Tilsit, but at that time he could scarce place 50,000 menin the field. No one fears the Russians; but it is a big country, andthey say that in winter the cold is horrible. We shall have longdistances to march, and you know how much time is always wasted overmaking a treaty of peace. If we are to be back again before winter weought to be off now. Of course, the Emperor may mean to hold St.Petersburg and Moscow until next spring, and I daresay we could makeourselves comfortable enough in either place; but when you come towinter six hundred and fifty thousand men, and a couple of hundredthousand horses, it is a tremendous job; and I should think the Emperorwould send all this riff-raff of Spaniards, Germans, and Poles back, andkeep only the French as a garrison through the winter. Still, I wouldmuch rather that we should all be back here before the first snow falls.I don't like these long campaigns. Men are ready to fight, and to fightagain, twenty times if need be, but then they like to be done with it.In a long campaign, with marches, and halts, and delays, discipline getsslack, men begin to grumble; besides, clothes wear out, and however bigstores you take with you, they are sure to run short in time. I wish wewere off."
But it was not until the 16th of May that Napoleon arrived at Dresden,where he was met by the Emperor and Empress of Austria, the Kings ofPrussia and Saxony, and a host of archdukes and princes, and a fortnightwas spent in brilliant fetes. Napoleon himself was by no means blind tothe magnitude of the enterprise on which he had embarked, andentertained no hopes that the army would recross the frontier before thewinter. He had, indeed, before leaving Paris, predicted that threecampaigns would be necessary before lasting terms of peace could besecured. Thus an early commencement of the campaign was ofcomparatively slight importance; but, indeed, the preparations for thestruggle were all on so great a scale that they could not, with all theenergy displayed in pushing them forward, be completed before the end ofJune.
Thus, then, while Napoleon delayed in Paris and feasted at Dresden, theroads of Germany were occupied by great hosts of men and enormous trainsof baggage waggons of all descriptions, moving steadily towards theRussian frontier. On the 12th of June Napoleon arrived at Konigsberg.Ney's division had marched forward a fortnight before, and the Emperoron his route from Konigsberg to the frontier reviewed that division withthose of Davoust and Oudinot, and also two great cavalry divisions.
To oppose the threatening storm Alexander had gathered three armies. Thefirst, stationed in and round Wilna under General Barclay de Tolly,comprised 129,050 men; the second, posted at Wolkowich, and commanded byPrince Bagration, numbered 48,000; the third had its headquarters atLutsk, and was commanded by Count Tormanssow; while the reserve, whichwas widely scattered, contained 34,000 men. Thus the total forcegathered to oppose the advance of Napoleon's army of 650,000 was but211,050. It had, too, the disadvantage of being scattered, for it wasimpossible to foresee by which of the several roads open to him,Napoleon would advance, or whether he intended to make for St.Petersburg or Moscow.
During the next few days the divisions intended to form the advancemoved down towards the Niemen, which marked the frontier, and on the24th of June three bridges were thrown across the river near Kovno, andthe passage began. The French cavalry drove off the Cossacks who werewatching the passage, and the same evening the Emperor established hisheadquarters at Kovno, and the corps of Davoust, Oudinot, and Neycrossed the bridges, and with the cavalry under Murat, composingaltogether a force of 350,000 men, marched forward at a rapid pace onthe 26th for Wilna, seventy-five miles distant. It was not until a fewdays before Napoleon crossed the frontier that the Russians obtained anydefinite information as to the force with which he was advancing, andtheir commander-in-chief at once saw that it would be hopeless toattempt to oppose so large a body. A great mistake had been committed inoccupying a position so near the frontier, but when the necessity forretreat became evident, no time was lost in carrying it into effect, andorders were despatched to the commanders of the various armies to fallback with all speed. Thus, although the French accomplished thewonderful feat of marching seventy-eight miles in two days, which wasdone in the hope of falling upon the Russians before they had time toconcentrate, they found the town already evacuated, and the whole of theimmense magazines collected there destroyed.
Almost simultaneously with the passage of the Niemen by the three corpsunder the French marshals, those of Prince Eugene and the other generalsalso crossed, but further south, and also advanced at full speed inhopes of interposing between the three Russian armies, and of preventingtheir concentration. For the next week the French pressed hard upon therear of the retreating Russians, but failed to bring on a battle, whilethey themselves suffered from an incessant downpour of rain which madethe roads well-nigh impassable. The commissariat train broke down, and ahundred pieces of cannon and 5000 ammunition waggons had to beabandoned. The rain, and a bitterly cold wind that accompanied it,brought on an epidemic among the horses, which were forced to dependsolely upon the green rye growing in the fields. Several thousands died;the troops themselves suffered so much from thirst and hunger that noless than 30,000 stragglers fell out from the ranks and spreadthemselves over the country, burning, ravaging, plundering, andcommitting terrible depredations. Such dismay was caused by theirtreatment that the villages were all abandoned, and the whole populationretired before the advance of the French, driving their flocks and herdsbefore them, and thus adding greatly to the difficulties of theinvaders.
MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE OF NAPOLEON'S MARCH TO MOSCOW.]
The greater portion of these straggling marauders belonged not to theFrench corps, but to the allies, who possessed none of the discipline ofthe French soldiery, and whose conduct throughout the campaign waslargely responsible for the intense animosity excited by the invaders,and for the suffering that afterwards befell them.
As the pursuit continued even Napoleon's best soldiers were surprised attheir failure to overtake the Russians. However long their marches,however well planned the operations, the Russians always out-marched andout-manoeuvred them. It seemed to them almost that they were pursuing aphantom army, a will-o'-the-wisp, that eluded all their efforts to graspit, and a fierce fight between the rear-guard of Barclay de Tolly's armyand the advance-guard of Murat's cavalry, in which the latter sufferedseverely, was the only fight of importance, until the invaders, aftermarching more than half-way to Moscow, arrived at Witebsk.
Nevertheless they had suffered severely. The savage ferocity with which,in spite of repeated proclamations and orders, the invading army treatedthe people, had exasperated the peasantry almost to madness, and takingup arms, they cut down every straggler, annihilated small parties,attacked baggage trains, and repeated in Russia the terrible retaliationdealt by the Spanish guerillas upon their invaders.
On the right of the French advance there had been heavier fighting.There General Schwarzenberg with his 30,000 Austrians had advancedagainst the third Russian army, under Torm
anssow. A brigade of thedivision under Regnier, which was by Napoleon's order marching to joinSchwarzenberg, entered Kobrin, where it was surrounded by Tormanssow,and after a brave resistance of nine hours, in which it lost 2000 killedand wounded, the remainder, 2300 in number, were forced to surrender.Tormanssow then took up a strong position with his 18,000 men, andawaited the attack of the united forces of Schwarzenberg and Regnier,38,000 strong.
The battle lasted all day, the loss on either side being between fourand five thousand. Tormanssow held his position, but retired under coverof night. On the 3rd of August the armies of Barclay and Bagration atlast succeeded in effecting a junction at Smolensk, and towards thattown the French corps moved from various quarters, until 250,000 menwere assembled near it, and on the 15th of August, Murat and Ney arrivedwithin nine miles of the place.
Smolensk, a town of considerable size, on the Dnieper, distant 280 milesfrom Moscow, was surrounded by a brick wall thirty feet high andeighteen feet thick at the base, with loopholed battlements. This wallformed a semicircle of about three miles and a half, the ends resting onthe river. It was strengthened by thirty towers, and at its forts was adeep dry ditch. The town was largely built of wood. There were no heavyguns upon the walls, and the city, which was completely commanded bysurrounding hills, was in no way defensible, but Barclay de Tolly felthimself obliged to fight.
The greatest indignation prevailed in Russia at the retreat of thearmies without attempting one determined stand, the abandonment of solarge a tract of country to the French, and the suffering and ruinthereby wrought among the population of one of the richest and mostthickly-peopled districts of Russia. Barclay's own plan had been to drawthe enemy farther and farther into the country, knowing that with everymile of advance their difficulties would increase and their armiesbecome weakened by fatigue, sickness, and the assaults of the peasantry.But the continued retreats were telling upon the spirit of his owntroops also. To them the war was a holy one. They had marched to thefrontier burning to meet the invader, and that, from the moment of hiscrossing the Niemen, they should have to retreat, hunted and harassedlike beaten men, goaded them to fury. The officers were no lessindignant than the men, and Barclay found that it was absolutelynecessary to make a stand.
The French were as eager as the Russians to fight, and when it becameknown that the enemy seemed determined to make a stand at Smolensk theywere filled with exultation. Ney's corps was the first to appear beforethe town, and took up its position on rising ground a short distancefrom the suburbs lying outside the wall and next to the river. Davoust'scorps was to his right, Poniatowski's division came next, while Muratwith his cavalry division completed the semicircle.
"The Russians must be mad," was the comment of the veterans of Julian'sregiment. "The place is of no strength; the artillery will breach thewalls in no time. They have but one bridge by which to retreat acrossthe river, and we shall soon knock that to pieces with our guns on theright, and shall catch all who are in the town in a trap."
The obstinate resistance, however, that had been given by the Russiansto the attacks on their rear-guard had impressed the invaders with arespect for their foes, that was in strong contrast to the feelingentertained when they crossed the frontier, save only among the soldierswho had met the Russians before, and who knew with what dogged valourthey always fought, especially when on the defensive.
"It is going to be tough work, Jules, I can tell you," one of them saidto Julian, whose English birth was now almost forgotten, and who, bythe good temper he always manifested, however long the marches andhowever great the fatigues, had become a general favourite. "I guess weare only going to fight because the Russians are tired of retreating,just as we are tired of pursuing them. They can gain nothing by fightinghere. We outnumber them tremendously. The great bulk of their army lieson the heights on the other side of the river, and there is nothing toprevent their retreating to some strong position, where they might givebattle with advantage. On the other hand, there is no reason why weshould fight here. We have come down thirty or forty miles out of thedirect road to Moscow, and if, instead of doing so, we had crossed theriver, and had gone straight on, the Russians must have evacuated thetown and pushed on with all speed in order to get between us and Moscow.But this marching about without getting a battle discourages men moreeven than defeat, and I hope that it will do something to restorediscipline among the Germans and Austrians, ay, and among our own troopstoo. I have been through a number of campaigns, and I have never seensuch disorder, such plunder, such want of discipline as has been shownsince we entered Russia. I tell you, Jules, even a defeat would do usgood. Look at the Russians; they never leave a straggler behind them,never a dismounted gun, while the roads behind us are choked up with ourabandoned guns and waggons, and the whole country is covered with ourmarauders. I should be glad if one of the brigades was ordered to breakup into companies and to march back, spreading out across the wholecountry we have traversed, and shooting every man they met between thisand the frontier, whether he was French, German, Austrian, or Pole."
"It has been terrible," Julian agreed, "but at least we have thesatisfaction of knowing that Ney's corps d'armee has furnished a smallershare of stragglers than most of the others."
"That is true enough, but bad is the best, lad. Some of our battalionsare nearly all young soldiers, and I can't say much for their conduct,while the seven battalions of Spaniards, Wurtemburgers, and men from theDuchy of Baden have behaved shamefully, and I don't think that the foursquadrons of Polish cavalry have been any better. We have all been bad;there is no denying it; and never should we have conquered Germany,crushed Prussia, and forced Austria to submit, had our armies behaved inthe way they have done of late. Napoleon would soon have put a stop toit then. He would have had one or two of the worst regiments drawn up,and would have decimated them as a lesson to the rest. Now his ordersseem to go for nothing. He has far too much on his mind to attend tosuch things, and the generals have been thinking so much of pressing onafter the enemy that they have done nothing to see the orders carriedinto effect. It was the same sort of thing that drove the Spaniards intotaking to the mountains, and causing us infinite trouble and great lossof life. Fortunately, here we are so strong that we need fear noreverse, but if a disaster occurred I tell you, Jules, we should havegood cause to curse the marauders who have converted these lazy peasantsinto desperate foes."
"I should think we ought not to lose many men in taking that town,sergeant. There seem to be no guns on the walls. We have the suburbs tocover our advance, and attacking them on all sides, as we shall do, weought to force our way in without much trouble."
"It would seem so, lad; yes, it would seem so. But you know in Spain itonce cost us five days' fighting after we got inside a town. I allow itwas not like this. The streets were narrow, the houses were of stone,and each house a fortress, while, as you can see from here, the streetsare wide and at right angles to each other, and the houses of brick,and, I fancy, many of them of wood. Still, knowing what the Russiansare, I would wager we shall not capture Smolensk with a loss of lessthan ten thousand men, that is if they really defend it until the last."
The following day, the 16th of August, a cannonade was kept up againstthe walls by the French artillery, the Russians replying but seldom. Thenext morning it was discovered that Prince Bagration had marched withhis army from the hills on the other side of the river to take post onthe main Moscow road so as to prevent the position being turned by theadvance of a portion of the French army by that route. During the nightBarclay had thrown two pontoon bridges across the river in addition tothe permanent bridge. At daybreak a dropping fire broke out, for bothDavoust and Ney had sent bodies of troops into the suburbs, which theyhad entered without opposition, and these now opened an irritating fireon the Russians upon the wall. At eight o'clock the firing suddenlyswelled into a roar. Doctorow, the Russian general in command of thetroops in the town, made a sortie, and cleared the suburbs at the pointof the bayonet. Napoleon, believing
that the Russian army was coming outto attack him, drew up Ney and Davoust's troops in order of battle, with70,000 infantry in the first line, supported by Murat's 30,000 cavalry.
Partial attacks were continued against the suburbs, but the Russiansobstinately maintained themselves there. Finding that they showed nosigns of advancing to attack him, Napoleon at two o'clock gave ordersfor a general assault, and the whole of the French troops advancedagainst the suburbs. The attack of Ney's corps was directed against theKrasnoi suburb, which faced them, and against an advanced work known asthe citadel. For two hours a terrible struggle went on. The Russiansdefended all the suburbs with desperate tenacity, every house and gardenwas the scene of a fierce encounter, men fought with bayonet and clubbedmuskets, the cannon thundered on the heights, and Poniatowskiestablished sixty guns on a hill on the French right, but a shortdistance from the river, and with these opened fire upon the bridges. Itseemed that these must soon be destroyed, and the retreat of the Russiantroops in Smolensk entirely cut off. In a short time, however, theRussians on the other side of the river planted a number of guns on arise of equal height to that occupied by Poniatowski's artillery, and astheir guns took his battery in flank, he was ere long forced to withdrawit from the hill.
PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF SMOLENSK.]
It was only after two hours' fighting that the Russians withdrew fromthe suburbs into the town itself, and as the bridges across the riverhad not suffered greatly from the fire of the great French battery,Barclay sent Prince Eugene of Wurtemberg across to reinforce thegarrison. As soon as the Russians retired into the town a hundred andfifty guns opened fire on the wall to effect a breach, and at five adesperate assault was made upon one of the gates, which was for a momentcaptured, but Prince Eugene charged forward with his division andrecaptured it at the point of the bayonet. The French shell and grapeswept the streets and set fire to the town in a score of places, andseveral of the wooden roofs of the towers upon the wall were also inflames. After a pause for a couple of hours the French again made aserious and desperate assault, but the Russians sternly held theirground, and at seven o'clock made a sortie from behind the citadel, anddrove the French out of the Krasnoi suburb. At nine the cannonadeceased. The French fell back to the position from which they had movedin the morning, and the Russians reoccupied the covered ways in front ofthe wall to prevent a sudden attack during the night.
"What did I tell you, Jules?" the old sergeant said mournfully, when theshattered remains of the regiment fell out and proceeded to cook theirfood. "I said that the capture of that town would cost us 10,000 men. Ithas cost Ney's corps alone half that number, and we have not taken it;and yet we fought well. Had every man been as old a soldier as myselfthey could not have done their duty better. _Peste!_ these Russians areobstinate brigands."
"It was desperate work," Julian said, "more terrible than anything Icould have imagined. How anyone escaped alive is more than I can say.Every wall, every house seemed to be fringed with fire. I heard no wordof command during the day; all there was to do was to load andfire--sometimes to rush forward when the rest did so, sometimes to fallback when the Russians poured down upon us. Shall we begin againto-morrow?"
"I suppose so," the sergeant replied. "We certainly sha'n't march awayuntil we have taken it. Perhaps the enemy may evacuate it. The wholetown is a sea of flames; there is nothing to fight for, and next time weshall no doubt breach the walls thoroughly before we try. You see, weundervalued the Russians, and we sha'n't make that mistake again. Well,lad, we have both got out of it without serious damage, for that bulletyou got through your arm will soon heal up again, but there is onething, if you remain in the army for the next twenty years you are notlikely to see harder fighting."
That night, indeed, Smolensk was evacuated by the Russians, contrary tothe wishes of both officers and men, Prince Eugene and General Doctorowdeclaring that they could hold on for ten days longer. This mightdoubtless have been done, but Barclay was afraid that Napoleon mightsweep round and cross the river somewhere to his left, and that in thatcase he must fall back, and the town would have to be evacuated in theday time when the enemy could sweep the bridges with their fire. Bythree o'clock in the morning the whole force in the city had crossed,and the bridges were burnt behind them. The flames acquainted the Frenchwith the fact that the city had been evacuated, and at daybreak theyentered the town, and soon afterwards their skirmishers opened fire onthe Russians on the other side of the river. At eight o'clock a Spanishbrigade crossed the river waist deep, and entered the suburb known asSt. Petersburg, on the right bank; but they were at once attacked; manywere killed or taken prisoners, and the rest driven across the riveragain.
General Barclay then withdrew his army to the heights, wishing to temptthe enemy to cross, intending to give them battle before all had madethe passage; but Napoleon kept his troops in hand, except that hisartillery maintained a fire to the right against the Russians. At eighto'clock in the evening some skirmishers crossed the river, and firesshortly broke out in St. Petersburg, and in an hour several hundredhouses, extending for a mile along the river, were in a blaze, whilethose in Smolensk were still burning fiercely. At night the Russiansagain fell back. The direct road lay parallel with the river, but as itwas commanded by the enemy's guns General Barclay directed the force,divided into two columns, to march by cross roads. These led over twosteep hills, and, owing to the harness breaking, these roads soon becameblocked, and the march was discontinued till daylight enabled thedrivers to get the five hundred guns and the ammunition trains up thehills.
The French, finding that the Russian army was going off, crossed theriver in force and furiously attacked their rear-guard, and tried topenetrate between it and the main body of the army, but Prince Eugene'sdivision was sent back to assist General Korf, who commanded there. Inthe meantime two columns of the French moved along the main road toMoscow with the evident intention of heading the Russian army atLoubino, the point where the cross road by which they were travellingcame into it. This they might have accomplished owing to the muchshorter distance they had to travel and the delays caused by thedifficulty of getting the guns over the hills, but a small Russiancorps under Touchkoff had been sent forward to cover that point. Ney hadcrossed the river early by two bridges he had thrown over it, andTouchkoff, as he saw this force pressing along the main road, took up aposition where he covered Loubino, and for some hours repulsed all theefforts of the French to pass.
At three o'clock the pressure upon Touchkoff became so severe thatseveral regiments from Barclay's column, which was passing safely alongwhile he kept the road open for them, were sent to his assistance, andthe fight continued. Napoleon believed that the whole Russian force hadtaken post at Loubino, and sent forward reinforcements to Ney. The woodswere so thick that it was some time before these reached him, the gunsof one of the columns being obliged to go a mile and a half through awood before they could turn, so dense was the growth of the trees. Neynow pressed forward with such vigour that Touchkoff was driven from hisposition in advance, upon the village itself, where he was againreinforced by four infantry battalions, two regiments of cavalry, andheavy guns. Murat with his cavalry endeavoured to turn the Russian left,but the two Russian cavalry regiments, supported by their artillery,maintained their ground. Soon after five o'clock the French had receivedsuch large reinforcements that the Russians were forced to give way, andwere in full retreat when Barclay himself arrived upon the scene, andrallied them. The battle was renewed, and the last effort of the Frenchwas repulsed by a charge with the bayonet by the Russian grenadiers.
In the charge, however, General Touchkoff, by whose valour the Russianarmy had been saved, was carried too far in advance of his men, and wastaken prisoner. It was not until midnight that the rear of Barclay'scolumn emerged from the cross road, in which it had been involved fortwenty-four hours. In this fight the French and Russians lost about6000 men each. Had Junot joined Ney in the attack on Touchkoff's forcethe greater part of the Russian army must have been
destroyed or madeprisoners.
The Russian army now pursued its march towards Moscow unmolested save bysome attacks by Murat's cavalry. Ney's corps d'armee had borne the bruntof the fighting at Loubino, and had been diminished in strength byanother 4000 men. In this battle, however, Julian's regiment, havingsuffered so heavily in the attack at Smolensk, was one of those held inreserve. Napoleon was greatly disappointed at the escape of the Russianarmy from his grasp. Only 30,000 Russians had been engaged both in theaction in their rear and in that at Loubino, while the whole of theFrench army round Smolensk, with the exception of the corps of Junot,had in vain endeavoured to break through the defence and to fall uponthe main body of the army so helplessly struggling along the road.
In the attack on Smolensk 12,000 of Napoleon's best soldiers had fallen.Loubino cost him 6000 more, and although these numbers were but small inproportion to the total strength of his army, they were exclusivelythose of French soldiers belonging to the divisions in which he placedhis main trust. It was now a question with him whether he shouldestablish himself for the winter in the country he occupied, accumulatestores, make Smolensk a great depot that would serve as a base for hisadvance in the spring, or move on at once against Moscow. On this pointhe held a council with his marshals. The opinion of these was generallyfavourable to the former course. The desperate fighting of the threeprevious days had opened their eyes to the fact that even so great aforce as that led by Napoleon could not afford to despise the Russians.The country that was at present occupied was rich. There were so manytowns that the army could go into comfortable quarters for the winter,and their communications with the frontier were open and safe. It wasunquestionably the safer and more prudent course.
With these conclusions Napoleon agreed in theory. It had originally beenhis intention to winter in the provinces that he had now overrun, and tomarch against St. Petersburg or Moscow in the spring. He had, however,other matters besides those of military expediency to consider. In thefirst place, the Poles were exasperated at his refusal to re-establishat once their ancient kingdom, a refusal necessitated by the fact thathe could not do so without taking from Austria and Prussia, his allies,the Polish districts that had fallen to their share. Then, too, thePoles felt the terrible pressure of supporting the army still in Poland,and of contributing to the vast expenses of the war, and were thecampaign to continue long their attitude might change to one of openhostility. In the next place, the conclusion of peace, brought about bythe efforts of England, between both Sweden and Turkey with Russia,would enable the latter to bring up the whole of the forces that hadbeen engaged in the south with the Turks, and in the north watching theSwedish frontier, and would give time for the new levies to be convertedinto good soldiers and placed in the field.
Then, too, matters were going on badly in Spain. He could place butlittle dependence upon Austria, Prussia, or Germany. Were he absentanother year from France he might find these countries leagued againsthim. Therefore, although recognizing the justice of the arguments of hismarshals, he decided upon pushing on to Moscow, and establishing himselfthere for the winter. He did not even yet recognize the stubbornness andconstancy of the Russian character, and believed that the spectacle oftheir ancient capital in his hands would induce them at once to treatfor peace. The decision was welcome to the army. The general wish of thesoldiers was to get the matter over, and to be off home again. Theobstinacy with which the Russians fought, the rapidity with which theymarched, the intense animosity that had been excited among the peasantsby the cruel treatment to which they had been exposed, the recklessnesswith which they threw away their lives so that they could but takevengeance for their sufferings, the ferocity with which every straggleror small detachment that fell into their hands was massacred--all thesethings combined to excite a feeling of gloom and anxiety among thesoldiers.
There were no merry songs round the bivouac fires now; even the thoughtof the plunder of Moscow failed to raise their spirits. The loss of somany tried comrades was greatly felt in Ney's division. It had at firstnumbered over 40,000, and the losses in battle and from sickness hadalready reduced it by more than a fourth. Even the veterans lost theirusual impassive attitude of contentment with the existing state ofthings.
"What I don't like," growled one of the old sergeants, "is that there isnot a soul in the villages, not a solitary man in the fields. It is notnatural. One gets the same sort of feeling one has when a thunderstormis just going to burst overhead. When it has begun you don't mind it,but while you are waiting for the first flash, the first clap ofthunder, you get a sort of creepy feeling. That is just what the sightof all this deserted country makes me feel. I have campaigned all overEurope, but I never saw anything like this."
A growl of assent passed round the circle, and there was a generalrepetition of the words, "It is not natural, comrade. Even in Spain,"one said, "where they hate us like poison, the people don't leave theirvillages like this. The young men may go, but the old men and the womenand children remain, and the priest is sure to stop. Here there is notso much as a fowl to be seen in the streets. The whole population isgone--man, woman, and child."
"It makes one feel," another said gloomily, "as if we were accursed,infected with the plague, or something of that sort."
"Well, don't let us talk about it," another said with an effort atcheerfulness. "There is Jules, he is the merriest fellow in our company.Come here, Jules. We are all grumbling. What do you think of things?"
"I don't think much about them one way or the other," Julian said as hecame up. "We have not a great deal further to go to Moscow, and thesooner we get there the better. Then we shall have the satisfaction ofseeing some people."
"Yes, Jules, that is what is vexing us, that everyone runs away at ourapproach."
"And no fools either," Julian replied, "considering the villainous wayin which they have been harried. Even peasants have some feeling, andwhen they are treated like wild beasts they will turn. It seems to methat instead of ill-treating them we ought, with such a march as thisbefore us, to have done everything in our power to show them that,although we were going to fight any armies that opposed us, we had noill-feeling against the people at large. If they had found us ready topay for everything we wanted, and to treat them as well as if they hadbeen our own country people, there would have been no running away fromus. Then, as we advanced we could have purchased an abundant supply offood everywhere. We should have had no fear as to our communications,and might have wandered a hundred yards outside our sentries without therisk of having our throats cut. However, it is of no use going overthese arguments again. The thing has been done and cannot be undone, andwe have but to accept the consequences, and make the best of them. A manwho burns a wood mustn't complain a month afterwards because he has nofuel. However, I hope that in another day or two we shall be moving on.As long as we are going there is no time to feel it dull; it is thehalt, after being so long in motion, that gives us time to talk, andputs fancies into our heads. We did not expect a pleasure excursion whenwe started."
