Through Russian Snows (24 page)

As the pursuit continued even Napoleon's best soldiers were surprised at
their failure to overtake the Russians. However long their marches,
however well planned the operations, the Russians always out-marched and
out-manœuvred them. It seemed to them almost that they were pursuing
a phantom army, a will-o'-the-wisp, that eluded all their efforts to
grasp it, and a fierce fight between the rear-guard of Barclay de
Tolly's army and the advance-guard of Murat's cavalry, in which the
latter suffered severely, was the only fight of importance, until the
invaders, after marching 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 treated
the people, had exasperated the peasantry almost to madness, and taking
up arms, they cut down every straggler, annihilated small parties,
attacked baggage trains, and repeated in Russia the terrible retaliation
dealt 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 advanced
against the third Russian army, under Tormanssow. A brigade of the
division under Regnier, which was by Napoleon's order marching to join
Schwarzenberg, entered Kobrin, where it was surrounded by Tormanssow,
and after a brave resistance of nine hours, in which it lost 2000 killed
and wounded, the remainder, 2300 in number, were forced to surrender.
Tormanssow then took up a strong position with his 18,000 men, and
awaited 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 four
and five thousand. Tormanssow held his position, but retired under cover
of night. On the 3rd of August the armies of Barclay and Bagration at
last succeeded in effecting a junction at Smolensk, and towards that
town the French corps moved from various quarters, until 250,000 men
were assembled near it, and on the 15th of August, Murat and Ney arrived
within nine miles of the place.

Smolensk, a town of considerable size, on the Dnieper, distant 280 miles
from Moscow, was surrounded by a brick wall thirty feet high and
eighteen feet thick at the base, with loopholed battlements. This wall
formed a semicircle of about three miles and a half, the ends resting on
the river. It was strengthened by thirty towers, and at its forts was a
deep dry ditch. The town was largely built of wood. There were no heavy
guns upon the walls, and the city, which was completely commanded by
surrounding hills, was in no way defensible, but Barclay de Tolly felt
himself obliged to fight.

The greatest indignation prevailed in Russia at the retreat of the
armies without attempting one determined stand, the abandonment of so
large a tract of country to the French, and the suffering and ruin
thereby wrought among the population of one of the richest and most
thickly-peopled districts of Russia. Barclay's own plan had been to draw
the enemy farther and farther into the country, knowing that with every
mile of advance their difficulties would increase and their armies
become weakened by fatigue, sickness, and the assaults of the peasantry.
But the continued retreats were telling upon the spirit of his own
troops also. To them the war was a holy one. They had marched to the
frontier burning to meet the invader, and that, from the moment of his
crossing the Niemen, they should have to retreat, hunted and harassed
like beaten men, goaded them to fury. The officers were no less
indignant than the men, and Barclay found that it was absolutely
necessary to make a stand.

The French were as eager as the Russians to fight, and when it became
known that the enemy seemed determined to make a stand at Smolensk they
were filled with exultation. Ney's corps was the first to appear before
the town, and took up its position on rising ground a short distance
from the suburbs lying outside the wall and next to the river. Davoust's
corps was to his right, Poniatowski's division came next, while Murat
with his cavalry division completed the semicircle.

"The Russians must be mad," was the comment of the veterans of Julian's
regiment. "The place is of no strength; the artillery will breach the
walls in no time. They have but one bridge by which to retreat across
the river, and we shall soon knock that to pieces with our guns on the
right, and shall catch all who are in the town in a trap."

The obstinate resistance, however, that had been given by the Russians
to the attacks on their rear-guard had impressed the invaders with a
respect for their foes, that was in strong contrast to the feeling
entertained when they crossed the frontier, save only among the soldiers
who had met the Russians before, and who knew with what dogged valour
they always fought, especially when on the defensive.

"It is going to be tough work, Jules, I can tell you," one of them said
to Julian, whose English birth was now almost forgotten, and who, by
the good temper he always manifested, however long the marches and
however great the fatigues, had become a general favourite. "I guess we
are only going to fight because the Russians are tired of retreating,
just as we are tired of pursuing them. They can gain nothing by fighting
here. We outnumber them tremendously. The great bulk of their army lies
on the heights on the other side of the river, and there is nothing to
prevent their retreating to some strong position, where they might give
battle with advantage. On the other hand, there is no reason why we
should fight here. We have come down thirty or forty miles out of the
direct road to Moscow, and if, instead of doing so, we had crossed the
river, and had gone straight on, the Russians must have evacuated the
town and pushed on with all speed in order to get between us and Moscow.
But this marching about without getting a battle discourages men more
even than defeat, and I hope that it will do something to restore
discipline among the Germans and Austrians, ay, and among our own troops
too. I have been through a number of campaigns, and I have never seen
such disorder, such plunder, such want of discipline as has been shown
since we entered Russia. I tell you, Jules, even a defeat would do us
good. Look at the Russians; they never leave a straggler behind them,
never a dismounted gun, while the roads behind us are choked up with our
abandoned guns and waggons, and the whole country is covered with our
marauders. I should be glad if one of the brigades was ordered to break
up into companies and to march back, spreading out across the whole
country we have traversed, and shooting every man they met between this
and the frontier, whether he was French, German, Austrian, or Pole."

"It has been terrible," Julian agreed, "but at least we have the
satisfaction of knowing that Ney's corps d'armée has furnished a smaller
share of stragglers than most of the others."

"That is true enough, but bad is the best, lad. Some of our battalions
are nearly all young soldiers, and I can't say much for their conduct,
while the seven battalions of Spaniards, Wurtemburgers, and men from the
Duchy of Baden have behaved shamefully, and I don't think that the four
squadrons 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 in
the way they have done of late. Napoleon would soon have put a stop to
it 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 orders
seem to go for nothing. He has far too much on his mind to attend to
such things, and the generals have been thinking so much of pressing on
after the enemy that they have done nothing to see the orders carried
into effect. It was the same sort of thing that drove the Spaniards into
taking to the mountains, and causing us infinite trouble and great loss
of life. Fortunately, here we are so strong that we need fear no
reverse, but if a disaster occurred I tell you, Jules, we should have
good cause to curse the marauders who have converted these lazy peasants
into 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 to
cover our advance, and attacking them on all sides, as we shall do, we
ought to force our way in without much trouble."

"It would seem so, lad; yes, it would seem so. But you know in Spain it
once cost us five days' fighting after we got inside a town. I allow it
was 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 streets
are 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 Russians
are, I would wager we shall not capture Smolensk with a loss of less
than 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 against
the walls by the French artillery, the Russians replying but seldom. The
next morning it was discovered that Prince Bagration had marched with
his army from the hills on the other side of the river to take post on
the main Moscow road so as to prevent the position being turned by the
advance of a portion of the French army by that route. During the night
Barclay had thrown two pontoon bridges across the river in addition to
the permanent bridge. At daybreak a dropping fire broke out, for both
Davoust and Ney had sent bodies of troops into the suburbs, which they
had entered without opposition, and these now opened an irritating fire
on the Russians upon the wall. At eight o'clock the firing suddenly
swelled into a roar. Doctorow, the Russian general in command of the
troops in the town, made a sortie, and cleared the suburbs at the point
of the bayonet. Napoleon, believing that the Russian army was coming out
to attack him, drew up Ney and Davoust's troops in order of battle, with
70,000 infantry in the first line, supported by Murat's 30,000 cavalry.

Partial attacks were continued against the suburbs, but the Russians
obstinately maintained themselves there. Finding that they showed no
signs of advancing to attack him, Napoleon at two o'clock gave orders
for a general assault, and the whole of the French troops advanced
against the suburbs. The attack of Ney's corps was directed against the
Krasnoi suburb, which faced them, and against an advanced work known as
the citadel. For two hours a terrible struggle went on. The Russians
defended all the suburbs with desperate tenacity, every house and garden
was the scene of a fierce encounter, men fought with bayonet and clubbed
muskets, the cannon thundered on the heights, and Poniatowski
established sixty guns on a hill on the French right, but a short
distance from the river, and with these opened fire upon the bridges. It
seemed that these must soon be destroyed, and the retreat of the Russian
troops in Smolensk entirely cut off. In a short time, however, the
Russians on the other side of the river planted a number of guns on a
rise of equal height to that occupied by Poniatowski's artillery, and as
their guns took his battery in flank, he was ere long forced to withdraw
it from the hill.

PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF SMOLENSK.

It was only after two hours' fighting that the Russians withdrew from
the suburbs into the town itself, and as the bridges across the river
had not suffered greatly from the fire of the great French battery,
Barclay sent Prince Eugene of Wurtemberg across to reinforce the
garrison. As soon as the Russians retired into the town a hundred and
fifty guns opened fire on the wall to effect a breach, and at five a
desperate assault was made upon one of the gates, which was for a moment
captured, but Prince Eugene charged forward with his division and
recaptured it at the point of the bayonet. The French shell and grape
swept the streets and set fire to the town in a score of places, and
several of the wooden roofs of the towers upon the wall were also in
flames. After a pause for a couple of hours the French again made a
serious and desperate assault, but the Russians sternly held their
ground, and at seven o'clock made a sortie from behind the citadel, and
drove the French out of the Krasnoi suburb. At nine the cannonade
ceased. The French fell back to the position from which they had moved
in the morning, and the Russians reoccupied the covered ways in front of
the wall to prevent a sudden attack during the night.

"What did I tell you, Jules?" the old sergeant said mournfully, when the
shattered remains of the regiment fell out and proceeded to cook their
food. "I said that the capture of that town would cost us 10,000 men. It
has 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 myself
they could not have done their duty better.
Peste!
these Russians are
obstinate brigands."