Excerpts from Chapter 2: BORODINO REVISITED

At Napoleon's bedside - the grim field of Borodino - 'cursing warfare, he predicted the Emperor himself would be abandoned' - ruthless vivandières ditch the wounded - who shot the Russian prisoners? - Lejeune saves his sister - Davouts rearguard at Kolotskoië abbey - a windfall at Ghjat - a heroic carabinier - Griois defends his cart - a devastated countryside - Colonel Chopin's robber band - a helpful Russian

Spending the night of Wednesday, 28 October (the one Davout spends at Vereia) in the ruined château of Ouspenskoië, just beyond Mojaisk, Napoleon, at 2 a.m., sends for Caulaincourt. 'He was in bed.' Telling the Master of the Horse to make sure the door's properly closed, he says he's to sit down at his bedside. 'This wasn't habitual with him.'

A long conversation follows. He asks Caulaincourt to speak his mind frankly about the situation. Wise from his four winters as ambassador at St Petersburg, Caulaincourt predicts the effects of extreme cold, and reminds him of 'the reply Alexander was said to have given when he'd got the peace proposals from Moscow: "My campaign's just beginning."' The illusion irritates Napoleon, as does any reminder of Caulaincourt's personal knowledge of, and friendship with, the Tsar:

'"Your prophet Alexander's been wrong more than once," he retorted. But there was no lightness in his reply. His troops' superior intelligence would somehow enable them to protect themselves against the cold - they'd be able to take the same precautions as the Russians did, or even improve on them.'

And then there are the 'Polish Cossacks' that Ambassador Pradt's certainly been drumming up in Warsaw. Any day now he's expecting to run into 1,500 or 2,000 of them. They'll change the situation entirely. Flanking the army, they'll enable it to rest and find food. Caulaincourt notes Napoleon's -as it seems - incurable optimism. After talking for an hour about one thing and another, he comes suddenly to the point. As soon as he has 'established the army in some definite position' it's 'possible, even likely' that he'll leave it and go back to Paris. What does Caulaincourt think about the idea? What effect will it have on morale? Caulaincourt, who's least of all a yes-man, agrees that it's an excellent idea, the best way to re-organizing it and keeping a firm hand on Europe. He should date his orders of the day, like his decrees from the Tuileries; but be careful about choosing the right moment to leave. 'It was 5.30 when the Emperor dismissed me.'

If only they'd left Moscow a fortnight earlier, instead of hanging about waiting for peace overtures from the Tsar! That's what many people are thinking as they slowly pull out on to the main Smolensk road. Then they'd already be ensconced behind those medieval walls on which even the Grand Army's 12-pounders had made no impression, living off the well-stocked magazines and protected by Marshal Victor's IX Corps! True, the frozen Dnieper will no longer provide a line of defence. But, welcomed by its light infantrymen lining the surrounding hills, no one doubts the army's ability to hold out until the spring, far off though it be, five or six months away! And by then Marshal Augereau's XI (Reserve) Corps and Schwarzenberg's Austrians, together with many thousands of 'Polish Cossacks', will have come up and re-established the situation. And if the Tsar still doesn't make peace - why, then they'll march on Petersburg. It too is inflammable!

But from Mojaisk to Smolensk is 80 leagues, well over 200 miles.

Meanwhile where's Kutusov? Fastest melting away of all is the cavalry - Lieutenant von Kalckreuth's regiment, the 2nd Prussian Hussars, for instance, which had performed so brilliantly at Ostrovno in July, now counts only twenty troopers and officers. And without cavalry reconnaissance an army's blind and deaf. So it's impossible to know. In fact Kutusov's main body is some 30 to 40 miles away to the south, following the road to Medyn (where Wilson's diary will rejoice on 30 October, 'The Cossacks have defeated the advanced guard of Prince Poniatowski.'). By now 'the English general', as Wilson always styles himself, is beside himself with fury at Kutusov's sloth, his indifference to his opportunities to annihilate the infamous Buonaparte, once and for all; and by making 'a false movement, occasioned by his personal terror rather than by an error of judgement', having made 'a circuit of near 80 versts [50 miles]' and losing sight of the French:

'I can scarcely behave with common decency in his presence. His feebleness outrages me to such a degree that I have declared, if he remains Commander-in-Chief, that I must retire from this army.'

Probably nothing would please Kutusov more. Pestered by all and sundry, he's beswarmed with intrigues. And his army too is extremely short of rations as it struggles along the Medyn road.

At least the Smolensk road is better. 'Leaving the ploughed fields which had cost us more than 10,000 vehicles', the army begins moving off down it. First, the pitiful remains of Junot's (Westphalian) VIII Corps. Then the Imperial Guard. Then III Corps. Then Eugène's IV Corps. Last - a day's march behind - Davout's once so formidable I Corps. Each in turn crosses the broken ground beyond Mojaisk - those ravines where, on 8 September, Murat's impulsiveness had thrown away the lives of so many of his troopers - and plunges into the forest beyond. Beyond that, everyone knows, lies the terrible battlefield.

There have been others where Napoleon has held commemorative parades - Austerlitz, for instance. No one thinks of holding one here.

Emerging from the forest they first see to their right 'the remains of the cabins where Kutusov had camped' and where he'd made his fateful decision to retreat and, if necessary, even abandon Moscow. But most of the mournful scene is spread out to their left: 'It was a cold day,' Lieutenant vonl Muraldt of IV Corps' 4th Bavarian Chasseurs win always remember, 'and a furiously whirling snow, whipped up by an icy wind, did nothing to dispel our gloomy thoughts.'

Dumonceau, riding on as usual ahead of the rest of the Guard and 'crossing the Borodino bridge where so many had fallen', can just make out

'he former redoubts, covered in snow. Standing out white against a murky horizon, they were no longer visible except its shapeless hillocks. This plain, once so noisy and animated, was now only a vast solitude.'

The sole sign of life he can see is 'a horseman, doubtless looking for some souvenir or memento'. Also, 'the immense flocks of carrion crows which for several days now had constituted our habitual cortège, as if following a pray they could be sure of' and whose sinister activities are marked all along the roadside 'messy reddened snow from which protruded the hideous remains of half-eaten corpses'. Mailly-Nesle and his favoured companions, looking out of their carriage, notice that many of the dead are

'as yet hardly decomposed, and had kept what one might can it physiognomy. Almost an had their eyes fixedly open. Their beards had grown out of all measures for this epoch. And it bricklike and Prussian-blue colour, marbling their cheeks, gave them an abominably filthy and messy aspect.'

Following immediately behind with IHQ another aristocratic officer, Quartermaster Anatole de Montesquiou, is horrified to see

'a Frenchman wounded at this battle who'd been left without help. He'd sat down with his back to it tree beside the road and was waiting for the Emperor to pass. As soon as he recognised him he advanced on all fours and reproached him for all he'd suffered by being so cruelly abandoned. He went on cursing war and predicting that the Emperor himself would be abandoned and forgotten. The Emperor showed only pity. Turning to his officers who were following him he said: "Have this poor fellow put in a carriage and lavish every care on him."'

Captain K. F. E. von. Suckow, who'd had to leave his dead Württembergers unburied, finds

'the famous battlefield in exactly the same state its we'd left it in on 8 or 9 September. More than 20,000 corpses of men and horses in a more or less advanced state of decomposition were lying where they'd fallen'.

The only difference, Surgeon-Major von Roos of the 3rd Württemberg Chasseurs notes, is that 'the grass had grown since that sanguinary day'. Not far from the Great Redoubt, the bloodiest spot of all, von Suckow sees an object sticking up. Curious, he rides over to take a closer look. It's

'a simple pine trunk stuck in the earth, and bearing a notice board, on which was written in ink already half effaced by the rain, these words, which I've faithfully preserved: "Here lies General Montbrun. Passer-by, of whatever nation you may be, respect these ashes! They belong to the bravest soldier in the world. This feeble monument has been raised to him at the orders of his faithful friend the Marshal Ney."'

Farther on the Italians see 'rising up like a pyramid in the midst of a desert' the famous Great Redoubt. Leaving Eugène's staff, Labaume too rides over and climbs what can only be a heaped up mass of corpses. From the summit of the so fiercely contested redoubt he sees a solitary soldier whose 'motionless figure produced in the distance the effect of a statue'. But he also hears unfortunates crying out for help:

'One of these was a French soldier who'd lost both legs and for two months been living off the stream and herbs, roots, and a few bits of bread he'd found on corpses, and at nights had been sleeping in the bellies of eviscerated horses. A general took pity on him and placed him in his carriage.'

Reaching the Kolotchka stream, IV Corps crosses it at least as precipitately as it had done when moving in the opposite direction to storm the Great 'Raevsky' Redoubt, at first ineffectually, then with success:

'The slope down to the little river was so steep and the soil so slippery that men and horses instantly fell on top of each other. On all sides were only horses' carcasses and half-buried corpses, blood-stained coats, bones gnawed by dogs and birds of prey, and the debris of arms, drums, helmets and cuirasses. There we also found the shreds of standards. From the emblems on them one could judge how much the Muscovite eagle had Suffered on that sanguinary day. Crossing the theatre of their exploits our men proudly showed the places where their regiments had fought.'

'Yet', reflects von Muraldt, grimly contemplating the scene,

'the masses of blood that had flowed on this soil and the advantage gained by such convulsive efforts hadn't led to anything except a retreat, with unexampled difficulties and sufferings!'

The dead at least are at rest. A couple of miles farther on beyond these scenes of horror comes another, in its way even more ghastly. The enormous walled and turreted edifice of the Kolotskoië monastery which the Italian Guardia d'Onore's Adjutant-major Cesare de Laugier, when he'd first glimpsed it in the distance on 5 September, had taken for a whole town and which during and after the battle had been the army's hospital where Surgeon-General Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey had made so many amputations, strikes Colonel Fezensac its 'nothing but a vast cemetery'. All its monks had fled. Only some 2,000 of the 20,000 wounded collected there have survived. Though Larrey finds the dressing-stations he'd set up there,

'no one had bothered to use the fine weather to evacuate the wounded. They were squatting in it stinking infectious barn, surrounded on all sides by corpses, almost never receiving any rations and obliged to eat cabbage stalks boiled with horseflesh to escape the horrors of famine. Because of a severe shortage of linen, their wounds had seldom been dressed. The surgeons were themselves having to launder the bandages and compresses.'

The Belgian surgeon D. de Kerkhove is so horrified that his 'pen refuses to describe the sufferings the sick and wounded had been reduced to'. What's become of the supplies of medicines and food, etc., sent back front Moscow? He's sure those who'd already died are happiest. As III Corps arrives in the wake of the Imperial Guard, Napoleon immediately orders a brigade of 200 Württemberg chasseurs and light infantry to lift all the wounded on to sutlers' carts. Surgeon Roos sees his Württembergers carrying them out and their officers indicating where they're to be placed. Although the men complain of this imposed fatigue,

'the order was carried out in the most punctilious fashion, and all was finished in an hour an a half. Every carriage, whether it belonged to a marshal or a colonel, every wagon, every cantinière's cart or droschka had to take one or two.'

Even the fastidious Mailly-Nesle and his flair companions have to move over: 'One of the Emperor's footmen, Monet by name, had been detailed off to take care of them, which he did meticulously.' Dumonceau, waiting a long time outside the main gate, sees Larrey himself standing there, 'presiding over their departure and reassuring them with encouraging remarks'. Although most have to 'drag themselves along on foot, some on crutches', all strike the Belgian Captain as 'joyful and resolute to resume their journey'. Perhaps they realise instinctively that they're luckier, at least for the time being, than those placed on cart?

For these the journey's going to be short. 'However good the Emperor's intentions,' the mild and pious Surgeon Roos exclaims, horrified,

'it turned out badly for the poor wounded. They fell into the hands of crude-minded coachmen, insolent valets. brutal sutlers, enriched and arrogant women, brothers-in-arms without pity, and all the riff-raff of the Train. All these people only had one idea: how to get rid of their wounded.'

From the inept cavalry general Lahoussaye - travelling along in his carriage and apparently doing nothing to help Grouchy, his superior, at the rearguard - Murat's Neapolitan ADC, Colonel M.-J.-T Rossetti, hears that 'the vivandières, whose carts were laden with the loot of Moscow and who hadn't accepted them without murmuring at this extra weight' are deliberately falling behind and letting the column overtake them. 'Then, waiting for a moment when they were alone, they threw all these unfortunates who'd been confided to their care into the ditches. Only one survived sufficiently to be picked up by the first carriages to pass.' Never has the Master of the Horse seen, nor will ever see,

'a sight so horrible as our army's march 48 hours after Mojaisk. Every heart was closed to pity by fear of starvation, of losing the overladen vehicles, of seeing the starving exhausted horses die. I still shudder when I tell you I've seen men deliberately drive their horses at speed over rough round, so as to get rid of the unfortunates overburdening them. Though they knew the houses would mutilate them or the wheels crush them, they'd smile triumphantly, even so, when a jolt freed them from one of these poor wretches. Every man thought of himself and himself alone.'

...

1812: The Great Retreat: Table of Content

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