B009YBU18W EBOK (73 page)

He instructed Maret to trumpet the news of a great victory over the Russians at the Berezina, and ordered Anatole de Montesquiou, one of Berthier’s aides-de-camp, to travel to Paris bearing a full report of the six thousand prisoners and twelve guns taken, and carrying with him the eight captured Russian colours. He was to stop in Kovno, Königsberg, Berlin and other cities long enough for the tidings to
be disseminated along the way. Ironically, the day after Napoleon dictated these instructions, a service of thanksgiving was held in St Petersburg for the Russian victory at Studzienka.
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Napoleon’s attempt to manage news could only work if he could hold Vilna and prevent the Russians from moving into Prussia and Poland, and this was looking increasingly doubtful. The relatively fresh corps of Victor and Oudinot on which he had counted quickly became infected by the remnants of the army of Moscow, and within a day or two came to resemble it in terms of condition and discipline.

Yet a skeleton of the army of Moscow, probably fewer than 10,000 men, nevertheless remained operational. And depleted as they were, some units maintained a remarkable degree of spirit. Captain Józef Załuski of the Polish Chevau-Légers recorded an improvement in conditions as they re-entered former Polish lands, and he and his comrades thought nothing of the cold: ‘We sang our marching songs as usual, particularly during the afternoon march or if it was very cold, when, in order to spare the horses or warm up the riders and prevent them from falling asleep, we would dismount and lead them.’ He added that many French veterans also bore the conditions remarkably well. ‘I often marched alongside friends from the Chasseurs who were dressed no more warmly than they would be in France, who were truly astonishing in their endurance and suffered only from the sight of the degradation of the army.’
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At Molodechno, which they reached on 3 December, they found welcome stores of food. They also encountered a number of
estafettes
and mail from Paris, which meant letters from home, a source of great comfort for these worn-out men, many of whom despaired of ever getting back. The following day, at Markovo, they encountered another convoy of food which included bread, butter, cheese and wine. But none of this could prevent the continuing disintegration of the army, as it could not pause to eat and digest the food properly, let alone tidy up its ranks. The Russians, whom Napoleon thought he had shaken off at the Berezina, kept up the pursuit.

The mess they had made of that operation provoked a surge of
self-justificatory recrimination throughout the Russian army. Even Lieutenant Aleksandr Chicherin noted in his diary on 1 December that ‘the spirit of intrigue has entered everywhere’. Kutuzov had been quick to blame everyone concerned for allowing Napoleon to get away. He found it ‘unbelievable’ and ‘unforgivable’ that Chichagov should have allowed himself to be duped. He argued, quite rightly, that even though it had been reasonable for him to send troops south along the Berezina, he should have made Borisov his headquarters and stayed there. Czaplic was ‘a cow and a fool’ who should have fallen back on Ziembin and blocked Napoleon’s line of retreat there. Kutuzov had specifically instructed Chichagov to hold the Ziembin causeway, but his order, dated 25 November, only reached the Admiral after Napoleon had slipped through. His worst criticism Kutuzov reserved for Wittgenstein, who had disobeyed specific orders to cross the Berezina and join up with Chichagov on the western bank.
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Now that Napoleon was beyond his reach, Kutuzov felt even less inclined to force the pace of the pursuit than before. His army was in terrible condition, most units having lost at least two-thirds of their effectives. His main force, which had marched out of Tarutino 97,112 strong with 622 guns, reached Vilna with no more than 27,464 men and two hundred guns, according to his own figures. The Astrakhan grenadiers were down to 120 men, while the Semyonovsky Life Guards could muster only fifty men per company. ‘There were no more than twenty or thirty men in a condition to fight in any squadron of our cavalry regiments,’ noted Woldemar von Löwenstern. ‘Our horses were in very bad state and almost all suffering from saddle sores, so much so that the stench was appalling and one could smell a cavalry regiment a long way off.’ The artillery, according to Lieutenant Radozhitsky, was in no condition to go into action. ‘We are completely disorganised, and we need to be allowed to rest and make up our losses as soon as possible,’ General Dokhturov wrote to his wife on 4 December. ‘Our infantry declined into a state of marked disorder,’ noted Löwenstern. ‘The cold sapped the soldiers’ courage, and once
they had managed to find a warm shelter or some heated cottage, it was impossible to get them to leave it. They would snuggle up to the stoves to the point of roasting themselves.’
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The situation was no better in the other Russian armies. ‘Our regiments marched pell-mell, our officers were often separated from their troops and could not keep an eye on them,’ wrote General Langeron, adding that out of a force of 25,000 men who set out under Chichagov after the battle of the Berezina, only about 10,000 reached the Niemen. Wittgenstein’s army was hardly in better shape, and could not have put up much of a fight at this stage. And they were still wary of taking on any organised French unit.
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But the very fact that the Russians were on their tail, constantly threatening, made it difficult for the French to retreat in good order. And it raised severe doubts as to their ability to rally at Vilna.

As usual, Napoleon blamed all his own mistakes and lack of foresight on others. He blamed Victor for ‘shameful lack of activity’, he blamed Schwarzenberg, he blamed the weather, and he blamed the Poles for not having raised large quantities of ‘Polish cossacks’ to replace the cavalry he had so carelessly squandered. But he gave up trying to hide the truth. At Molodechno on 3 December he composed the twenty-ninth Bulletin of the campaign, in which he told the story of the retreat. Although it did not tell the whole truth, it left no doubt as to the magnitude of his defeat. This Bulletin, which ended with the now famous words ‘His Majesty’s health has never been better,’ was not to be published until 16 December, by which time he hoped to be nearing Paris.
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Napoleon had made the only sensible decision in the circumstances. He had resolved to hasten back to Paris, where he would raise a new army in time to sally forth in the spring and not only reassert his control over central Europe but also defeat the Russians. He hesitated as to whom he should leave in command of the remains of the Grande Armée – his preferred choice was Prince Eugène, but he realised that if he placed him above Murat, the King of Naples would probably mutiny, so he chose the latter. Prince Eugène was not
happy with the arrangement and asked to be given leave to return to Turin, but Napoleon reminded him of his duty as a soldier. ‘I have no desire to serve under the King of Naples, who has taken command of the army,’ the Viceroy wrote to his wife the following day. ‘But in the present circumstances it would have been wrong to refuse, and we have to remain at our post, be it a good or a bad one.’ Berthier too begged to be allowed to go back to Paris with the Emperor, but Napoleon would not hear of it. ‘I know very well that you are of no use to anyone here,’ he retorted, ‘but others do not, and your name has some effect on the army.’
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On the evening of 5 December, at Smorgonie, he called together his marshals and, according to some, apologised for his mistake of having remained in Moscow for too long. He told them of his decision, and after listening to their opinions he climbed into a carriage with Caulaincourt and set off into the night. His carriage, with his Mameluke Roustam and a Polish officer on the box, was followed by a second, with Duroc and General Mouton, and a third, with his secretary Baron Fain and his valet Constant.

Reactions to Napoleon’s departure were mixed. There was widespread dismay and a sense of discouragement, but surprisingly little in the way of censure. Officers, and particularly senior officers, generally understood his motives and approved of his decision, and it was only among the lower ranks that imprecations were heard.
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This was largely because by the time the news broke, on 6 December, they had more vital things to think about.

There had been another sharp drop in temperature. At Miedniki on 6 December Dr Louis Lagneau recorded a temperature of – 37.5°C (–35.5°F). ‘It was really intolerable,’ he wrote, ‘one had to stamp one’s feet hard while walking along to stop them from freezing.’ His reading of the thermometer was confirmed, to within a degree or two, by others. François Dumonceau had marched out while it was still dark on that morning. ‘The air itself seemed to be frozen into light flakes of translucent ice which whirled about,’ he wrote. ‘Then we saw
the horizon gradually turn an ardent red, the sun rise radiant through a slight aura of vapour enflamed by its rays, and the whole snow-covered plain turn purple and glimmer as though it had been scattered with rubies. It was magnificent to see.’
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But it was hell to walk through.

‘The air itself,’ according to Colonel Griois, ‘was thick with tiny icicles which sparkled in the sun but cut one’s face drawing blood when blown by the wind, which was mercifully quite rare.’ The phenomenon was recorded by many others. ‘One could see frozen molecules suspended in the air,’ noted Ségur. He was astonished by the stillness and silence all around. ‘We walked through this empire of death like miserable shadows! The dull and monotonous sound of our steps, the crunch of the snow and the feeble groans of the dying were the only sounds that disturbed that vast and mournful taciturnity.’
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‘We were covered in ice; the breath coming out of our mouths was thick as smoke, and it created icicles on our hair, our eyebrows, our moustaches and our beards,’ recalled Louis Lejeune. ‘These icicles grew thick enough to obstruct our vision and our breathing.’ ‘It frequently happened that the ice would seal my eyelids shut,’ remembered Planat de la Faye. ‘I would have to press the lashes between my fingers to make the ice melt in order to open my eyes again.’ The horses’ saliva formed huge icicles at the corners of their mouths, where it dribbled out onto the bit. ‘I could no longer breathe, as ice had formed in my nose and my lips were stuck together,’ wrote Sergeant Bourgogne, who felt as though he were walking through ‘an atmosphere of ice’. ‘Tired and dazzled by the snow, my eyes watered, the tears froze, and I could no longer see.’
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‘There was something sinister, something implacable about the serenity of the sky,’ records Brandt. ‘Through a translucent mist of brilliant snowdust, which had the effect of needlepoints on our eyes, the sun looked like a globe of fire, but of a fire that gave no warmth. Houses, trees, fields, all had disappeared under a layer of bright, blinding snow!’
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Many succumbed to snow blindness. ‘The white of the eye would become red and swelled up at the same time as the eyelids, bringing with it a throbbing pain and abundant tears,’ wrote Dr Geissler. ‘The sufferer could no longer bear the light and it was not long before he became quite blind.’ As the retreating column drew closer to Vilna more and more groups could be seen holding each other by the hand as they went.
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The men were having such difficulty buttoning their pants in the intense cold that, humiliating and filthy as it seemed to them, they unstitched the back of their breeches or trousers so as to be able to defecate without undressing. But they also had to take care lest their penis froze while urinating, which happened in some cases.

This was also the point at which most of those who kept diaries were forced to give up. Captain Franz Roeder’s ink froze, shattering the bottle. Boniface de Castellane’s right hand was attacked by frostbite at Miedniki on 7 December, so he had to abandon his journal, to which he could add only a few notes scribbled with his left. As he was leaving the following morning, he found a grenadier on sentry duty standing frozen in death still clutching his musket.
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‘7 December was the most terrible day of my life,’ records Prince Wilhelm of Baden. ‘The cold had reached 30° [–37.5°C (–35.5°F)]. At three o’clock in the morning the Marshal [Victor] gave the order to march out. But when it came for the signal to be given, it turned out that the last drummer boy had frozen to death. I then went among the soldiers, talking to each one, encouraging them, exhorting them to get up, to stand to arms, but all my efforts were vain: I could only assemble fifty men. The others, two or three hundred of them, lay on the ground, dead and stiff from the cold.’
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‘It is during this part of the journey that I saw for the first time numerous examples of men literally struck down by the cold as they walked along,’ wrote Heinrich Brandt. ‘They would slow down slightly, totter like drunken men, and then fall, never to rise again.’ He was not the only one to be struck by this sight of men stumbling around like drunks for a few moments. Either just before or just
after they fell, blood would pour from their nose and mouth, and sometimes their eyes and ears.
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Weeks of relentless hardship and the succession of blows dealt to their hopes and expectations – at Smolensk, Orsha, Borisov, the Berezina – inevitably also affected the men psychologically. Brandt and others speak of reaching a state of febrile agitation that prevented him and his comrades from sleeping. The fear of dying where they were kept them moving all night. ‘We were guided by the light of the fires lit in every village, on the edge of every wood, always surrounded by that horrible jumble of the living and the dead,’ he wrote. ‘Other corpses marked the road. The dazzling serenity of the sky seemed to be insulting our sufferings; the cold became more and more pervasive, and our little column kept diminishing.’
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