Napoleon and His Generals Abandon His Army

Today’s installment concludes Napoleon’s Russian Retreat,
with a short selection from Popular History of France From the Earliest Times by Francois Guizot published in 1869.

Francois Guizot (1787-1874) was the great French historian and statesman.

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Previously in Napoleon’s Russian Retreat.

Time: 1812
Place: West of Moscow

The solitary consolation left to the army was that which the Emperor had himself presented to Europe — the presence of Napoleon; his physical and mental energy and vigor. His flight from Smorgoni deprived the soldiers of this last resource of their confidence; from that day, as soon as the report spread, despair seized upon the strongest hearts. Nothing is more enduring than the instinctive courage which resists pain and death, because it becomes a man to strive to the last. All the ties of discipline, military fraternity, and ordinary humanity were broken together. I borrow from the recollections of the Duke Fezensac, then colonel of the Fourth of the line, the following picture of the horrors which he saw, and of which he has given the story with a touching and manly simplicity:

It is useless at the present day to tell the details of every day’s march; it would merely be a repetition of the same mis fortunes. The cold, which seemed to have become milder only to make the passage of the Dnieper and the Beresina more difficult, again set in more keenly than ever. The thermometer fell, first, to 6° below zero, and then to 24° below (Fahrenheit), and the severity of the season completed the exhaustion of men who were already half dead with hunger and fatigue. I shall not undertake to depict the spectacle which we looked upon. You must imagine plains as far as the horizon covered with snow, long forests of pines, villages half-burned and deserted; and through those pitiful districts an endless column of wretches, nearly all without arms, marching in disorder, and falling at every step on the ice, near the carcasses of horses and the bodies of their companions. Their faces bore the impress of utter exhaustion or despair, their eyes were lifeless, their features convulsed, and quite black with dirt and smoke. Sheepskins and pieces of cloth served them for shoes; their heads were wrapped with rags; their shoulders covered with horse-cloths, women’s petticoats, and half-burned skins. Also, when one fell from fatigue, his comrades stripped him before he was dead, in order to clothe themselves with his rags. Each bivouac seemed next day like a battlefield, and men found dead at their side those beside whom they had gone to sleep the night before. An officer of the Russian advance-guard, who was a witness of those scenes of horror — which the rapidity of our flight prevented us from carefully observing — has given a description of them to which nothing need be added:

‘The road which we followed,’ says he, ‘was covered with prisoners who required no watching, and who underwent hard ships till then unheard of. Several still dragged themselves mechanically along the road, with their feet naked and half frozen; some had lost the power of speech, others had fallen into a kind of savage stupidity, and wished, in spite of us, to roast dead bodies in order to eat them. Those who were too weak to go to fetch wood stopped near the first fire which they found and sitting upon one another they crowded closely round the fire, the feeble heat of which still sustained them, the little life left in them going out at the same time as it did. The houses and farms which the wretches had set on fire were surrounded with dead bodies, for those who went near had not the power to escape the flames which reached them; and soon others were seen, with a convulsive laugh, rushing voluntarily into the midst of the burning, so that they were consumed also.’ ”

I hasten to avoid the spectacle of so many sufferings. Yet it is right and proper that children should know what was endured by their fathers. In proportion as the last survivors of the generations who saw and suffered so many evils disappear, we who have in our turn undergone other disasters owe it to them to recount both their glory and their misery. The time will soon come when our descendants in their turn will include in the annals of history the great epochs through which we have lived, struggled, and suffered.

Napoleon crossed Germany like an unknown fugitive, and his generals also made haste to escape. They had at last reached Vilna, alarming Lithuania by their rout, and themselves terror struck during the halt on ascertaining the actual numbers of their losses, and the state of the disorderly battalions which were being again formed in the streets of the hospitable town. For a. long time the crowd of disbanded soldiers, deserters, and those who had fallen behind were collected together at the gates of Vilna in so dense a throng that they could not enter. Scarcely had the hungry wretches begun to take some food and taste a moment’s rest, when the Russian cannon was heard, and Platov’s Cossacks appeared at the gates.

The King of Naples, heroic on the battlefield, but incapable of efficient command in a rout, took refuge in a suburb, in order to set out from it at break of day. Marshal Ney, the old Marshal Lefebvre, and General Loyson, with the remains of the division which he recently brought back from Poland, kept back the Cossacks for some time, and left the army time to resume its deplorable flight. A large number of exhausted men fell into the hands of the enemy; the fragments of our ruined regiments disappeared piecemeal. At Ponare, where the road between Vilna and Kovno rises, the baggage which they had with great difficulty dragged so far, the flags taken from the enemy, the army-chest, the trophies carried off from Moscow, all remained scattered at the foot of the icy hill. The pillagers quarreled over the gold and silver in the coffers, on the snow, in the ditches. Then the Cossacks coming upon them, some of the French fired in defense of treasures they were no longer able to carry.

When the ruins of the main army at last reached Kovno, where they found supplies of food and ammunition, they were no longer able to make use of it, or to resist the pursuit of the Russians. The generals held a council. In weariness and despair some gave vent to complaints against Napoleon, and Mu rat’s words were susceptible of a more sinister meaning.

Marshal Davout, honorable and unconquerable, though still strongly prejudiced against the King of Naples, boldly expressed his indignation against the falling off of the lieutenants whom the Emperor had made kings. All with one accord handed over to Ney the command of the rear-guard, and that defense of Kovno which was for a few minutes longer to protect the retreat. General Gerard alone remained faithful to this last despairing effort. When at last he crossed the Niemen with General Ney, on December 14, 1812, they were abandoned by all: their soldiers had fled, either scattering before the enemy or stealing away during the night from a useless resistance. When, in Koenigsberg, he overtook the remnant of the staff, Marshal Ney, with haggard looks and clad in rags, entered alone into their room. “Here comes the rear-guard of the great army!” said he bitterly.

This ends our selections on Napoleon’s Russian Retreat by two of the most important authorities of this topic:

• History of Modern Europe by Charles A. Fyffe published in 1890.
• Popular History of France From the Earliest Times by Francois Guizot published in 1869.

Charles A. Fyffe began here. Francois Guizot began here.

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