The War of Wars (110 page)

Napoleon from his comfortable and far-off vantage point could be well satisfied. But the Russians now staged a superb cavalry attack, outflanking the French left, which for a time diverted them into easing the pressure on the Great Redoubt. Ney, Davout and Murat sent an urgent emissary to Napoleon, who could not see the battle, demanding that he send in the Imperial Guard. But Napoleon refused to give the order. The emissary found him seated, his features sunken and dull-looking, giving orders weakly ‘in the midst of these dreadful warlike noises, to which he seemed a complete stranger!’ At this account, which was communicated to Ney, the latter – furious and carried away by his passionate and impetuous nature – exclaimed,

What business has the Emperor in the rear of the army? There, he is only within reach of reverses and not of victory. Since he will no longer make war himself, since he is no longer the general, as he wishes to be Emperor everywhere, let him return to the Tuileries and leave us to be generals for him!

Murat was more calm. He recalled having seen the Emperor the day before, as he was riding along observing part of the enemy’s line, halt several times, dismount and with his head resting upon a cannon, remain there some time in an attitude of suffering. He knew what a restless night he had passed and that a violent and incessant cough cut short his breathing. Murat guessed that fatigue had shaken his weakened frame and that at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a sense chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of fatigue, fever and a malady which, probably more than any other, drains the moral and physical strength of its victims.

Napoleon remarked lamely. ‘And if there should be another battle tomorrow, with what is my army to fight?’ This was a changed man from the bold risk-taker of the past.

It was not until 3 p.m. that de Beauharnais sent Caulaincourt in with his cuirassiers in a final attempt to carry the Great Redoubt and its eighty murderous cannon ‘bristling with iron and flames’. Caulaincourt rode in declaring: ‘You shall see me there presently alive or dead.’ He was as good as his word. His charge was successful and at last spiked the guns, but he was killed by a musket bullet.

After a further cavalry and infantry attack to retake the redoubt, the Russian line was broken at last. But to the astonishment of the French the Russians simply withdrew to another line of hills overlooking the former position and their guns renewed their ceaseless barrage against the French, who were forced to take shelter in the Russian defences they had captured. Napoleon at last deigned to come forward and inspect the battlefield, and to tell Ney and Murat, both impatient to renew the attack, that it was too late to continue the battle. He remained, according to Ségur, in a state of ‘great mental anguish added to his previous physical dejection’.

During the night, Kutuzov’s army stole away from its new positions,
unhindered by the exhausted French. The following day Napoleon rode over the field of battle. Ségur described what met his gaze:

Never did one present so horrible an appearance. Everything concurred to make it so: a gloomy sky, a cold rain, a violent wind; houses burnt to ashes, a plain turned topsy-turvy, covered with ruins and rubbish, and in the distance the sad, sombre trees of the north; soldiers roaming about in all directions, hunting for provisions, even in the haversacks of their dead comrades; horrible wounds (for the Russian musket balls are larger than ours), silent bivouacs, no singing or storytelling. Around the eagles were seen the remaining officers, subalterns and a few soldiers: scarcely enough to protect the colours. Their clothes had been torn in the fury of the combat, blackened with powder and spotted with blood; and yet, in the midst of their rags, their misery and disasters, they had a proud look; and at the sight of the Emperor uttered some shouts of triumph: but they were rare and forced. For in this army, capable at once of reason and enthusiasm, everyone was sensible of the position of all.

As he passed, some suffering men begged to be put to death, but Napoleon’s entourage did not answer their pleas. A man with just his torso and a single arm remaining was rescued, such was his state of animation, hope and even gaiety, although complaining of feeling pain in limbs no longer possessed.

The battle had been the bloodiest so far in all the sanguinary history of Napoleon’s wars – some 60,000 killed on the Russian side, some 40,000 on the French. The French had fired some 2 million cartridges and 90,000 artillery rounds. It was slaughter on a mass scale never before experienced in military history, a presage of the terrible fighting of the First World War just over a century later. Kutuzov declared he had won a victory. Napoleon, ailing and anguished, did likewise. Yet, although he had been driven from the field, Kutuzov was the real victor: Napoleon had been denied the decisive victory he sought because the Russians had been prepared to die in their thousands for their homeland, although they were inferior fighters to the French.

Some 60,000 Russians had escaped to provide the nucleus of a new
army. Already battered in the Iberian Peninsula – where Wellington had just won the spectacular battle of Salamanca – the mystique of French invincibility was fast disappearing: and at Borodino the French had been commanded by the Emperor himself – if that is the right description for his listless issuing of orders from well behind the front line. That Russia’s infamous ‘army of barbarians’ had been able to resist an army which had scored such great victories against the formidable armies of Austria and Prussia was another humiliation.

On 13 September 1812 the battered but still formidable Russian army reached Moscow. At a desperate council of war Kutuzov took the unimaginable step – with Barclay de Tolly’s support – of ordering that Moscow be abandoned: another battle could not be fought, the city could not be defended, the army must be preserved to fight for the Russian heartland. The Russians were far from satisfied with their performance at Borodino: they considered themselves defeated, but must fight on.

After a tearful intervention, the old soldier got his way. The Tsar declared: ‘We would rather perish under the ruins than make peace with the modern Attila.’ Early the following morning the Russian troops, many openly weeping, marched out of Moscow, their banners furled, along with much of the civilian population.

The same afternoon the
Grande Armée
, which had just crossed the sandy desert wastes near Mojaisk, a further geographical obstacle which took Napoleon and his entourage by surprise so close to ‘one of the great capitals of the world’, arrived outside that capital. It was an incredible spectacle, a dream come true; it was, like arriving before one of the fabled cities of the east in some oriental epic: at long last the sufferings of the troops in that interminable summer march through rain, heat and misery across desert, mud and grass steppe seemed vindicated.

The Napoleonic army had captured one of the greatest cities of the east, with a population of 250,000, and its onion domes, turrets, minarets, fabulous palaces and medieval winding streets between
picturesque wooden houses. Ségur wrote vividly: ‘It was two o’clock. The sun caused this great city to glisten with a thousand colours. Struck with astonishment at the sight, they paused, exclaiming “Moscow! Moscow!” Everyone quickened his pace; the troops hurried on in disorder and the whole army, clapping their hands, repeated with joy, “Moscow! Moscow!” just as sailors shout “Land! Land!” at the end of a long and wearisome voyage.’ The Emperor rode down to the Dorogomilov Gate to accept the city’s surrender. But instead of a deputation of dignitaries, there was only an old man who offered to show him the sights.

Impatiently he sent Murat into the city. The latter, strong, dashing and fearless, was wearing a magnificent hat surmounted by ostrich feathers and a blue tunic with a scarlet pelisse made of velvet and fur, as well as red breeches and yellow boots. He galloped past lines of Russian Cossacks who cheered him, and struck a deal with the commander of the departing Russian troops to grant the latter safe conduct in exchange for a peaceful surrender of the city.

Napoleon, disappointed to find the city largely deserted, did not make his formal entrance until next day, when he entered the Kremlin, the great, medieval and renaissance palace of Ivan the Terrible. ‘At last I am in Moscow in the ancient palace of the Tsars, in the Kremlin.’ He issued peace proposals to the Tsar. He appointed Marshal Mortier governor of the city with the stern injunction: ‘No pillage.’ A wonderfully beautiful medieval city of wooden houses and fabulous churches had fallen into his hands. He was the conqueror, the man who could subdue the world, an almost godlike figure. Yet there was an eerie emptiness about the deserted city, a feeling that something was not quite right, that the victory was a hollow one.

There followed surely the most apocalyptically symbolic event in the whole of Napoleon’s terrible and awesome career of bloodshed, destruction, plunder and inflicted suffering, a window opened into hell itself, the sudden snatching of his great prize and its reduction to ashes before him. Not until the fall of Berlin a century later and of the bombing of Tokyo was such damage to be wrought to a great capital, such vandalism upon a thousand years of history.

Even as Napoleon occupied the Kremlin, fires had been discovered in a number of houses. The French authorities tried to put them out but discovered that all fire-fighting equipment had been deliberately withdrawn by the departing Russians. What they did not know was that the departing governor of Moscow, Count Feodor Rostopchin, almost certainly acting on the Tsar’s direct orders, had left instructions to Russian police officers remaining in the capital, as well as professional incendiaries, many of them recently released from gaol, systematically to start fires throughout the Russian capital.

Initially, the French feared that their own drunken soldiers might be responsible for the arson. Then there were eyewitness reports of these professional fire-raisers, of the police stirring the flames with tarred lances, of howitzer shells being used to start conflagrations. The night after Napoleon arrived in the Kremlin, a string of elegant palaces caught fire, with the north wind driving the flames and sparks towards the Kremlin, which contained a huge cache of gunpowder. As dawn broke it was over a city bathed in flames and covered in dense columns of smoke.

Napoleon, now awake, was in a state of manic agitation. He exclaimed feverishly: ‘What a tremendous spectacle! It is their own work! So many palaces! What extraordinary resolution! What men! These are indeed Scythians!’ As he watched, the fires spread and crept even closer. Thousands of French soldiers began to stream out of the city while others were trapped and perished in the flames. Murat and de Beauharnais went to the Kremlin to urge the Emperor to leave. He refused to abandon the symbol of his conquest, the bejewelled and dazzling city that had been his hard-won prize and which was now being devoured by the flames before his eyes.

Soon it was reported that the Kremlin itself was on fire: it had been set alight in the tower which contained the arsenal by a policeman who was brought before Napoleon. He was promptly hauled off to be bayoneted: the order went out to shoot all incendiaries on sight. Napoleon at last decided to leave – too late, it seemed.

Ségur took up the story of how the Emperor himself nearly suffered the terrible fate of being consumed by the flames in the doomed capital.

We were encircled by a sea of fire which blocked up all the gates of the citadel and frustrated the first attempts that were made to depart. After some searching, we discovered a postern gate leading between the rocks to the Moskva. It was by this narrow passage that Napoleon, his officers and Guard, escaped from the Kremlin. But what had they gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the fire and could neither retreat nor remain where they were; and how were they to advance? How force a passage through the waves of this ocean of flame? Those who had crossed the city, stunned by the tempest and blinded by the ashes, could not find their way, since the streets themselves were no longer distinguishable amidst smoke and ruins.

There was no time to be lost. The roaring of the flames around us became every moment more violent. A single narrow street, completely on fire, appeared to be rather the entrance than the exit to this hell. The Emperor rushed on foot without hesitation into this winding passage. He advanced amid the crackling of the flames, the crash of floors and the fall of burning timbers which tumbled around him. These ruins impeded his progress. The flames, which with a wild bellow consumed the buildings between which we were proceeding, spreading beyond the walls, were blown about by the wind and formed an arch over our heads.

We walked on a ground of fire, beneath a fiery sky and between two walls of fire. The intense heat burned our eyes, which we were nevertheless obliged to keep open and fixed on the danger. A consuming atmosphere parched our throats and rendered our breathing short and dry; and we were already almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned, either in attempting to protect our faces from the heat, or in brushing off the sparks which every moment covered and penetrated our clothes.

In this inexpressible distress and when a rapid advance seemed to be our only means of safety, our guide stopped in uncertainty and agitation. Here would probably have ended our adventurous career, had not some pillagers of I Corps recognized the Emperor amidst the whirling flames: they ran up and guided him towards the smoking ruins of a quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the morning.
Reaching safety at last, Napoleon gazed out over the Sodom destroyed not by act of God but by the deliberate act of one man – the very Russian Emperor whose capital it had been. ‘The whole city appeared like a vast spume of fire rising in whistling eddies to the sky which it deeply coloured . . . This forebodes great misfortune to us,’ he proclaimed, observing this biblical scene. He declared with a typically grandiose flourish that he would now march on St Petersburg – which was utterly impractical for his reduced, exhausted army, now denied the comforts and shelter of Moscow.