Part 11 (1/2)
The immense army of the conqueror of the world was totally annihilated. Of those who entered Moscow scarcely twenty thousand, of the half million of men who crossed the Russian frontier but eighty thousand, returned.
[Footnote 1: Vide Bignon.]
[Footnote 2: From a letter of Count Minister in Hormayr's Sketches of Life, it appears that Russia still cherished the hope of great concessions being made by Napoleon in order to avoid war and was therefore still reserved in her relations with England and the Prussian patriots.]
[Footnote 3: French troops garrisoned German fortresses and perpetually pa.s.sed along the princ.i.p.al roads, which were for that purpose essentially improved by Napoleon. In 1810, a great part of the town of Eisenach was destroyed by the bursting of some French powder-carts that were carelessly brought through, and by which great numbers of people were killed.]
[Footnote 4: Who was far surpa.s.sed in splendor by her stepdaughter of France.]
[Footnote 5: Segur relates that he was received politely but with distant coolness by Napoleon. There is said to have been question between them concerning the marriage of the crown prince of Prussia with one of Napoleon's nieces, and of an incorporation of the still unconquered Russian provinces on the Baltic, Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia, with Prussia. All was, however, empty show. Napoleon hoped by the rapidity of his successes to constrain the emperor of Russia to conclude not only peace, but a still closer alliance with France, in which case it was as far from his intention to concede the above-mentioned provinces to Prussia as to emanc.i.p.ate the Poles.]
[Footnote 6: Napoleon said at that time to a Russian, ”Si vous perdez cinq Russes, ne perds qu un Francais et quatre cochons.”]
[Footnote 7: This general, on the opening of the war, published a proclamation to the Germans, summoning them to throw off the yoke of Napoleon.--_Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 327_. Napoleon replied with, ”Whom are you addressing? There are no Germans, there are only Austrians, Prussians, Bavarians, etc.”--_All. Zeitung, No. 228._]
[Footnote 8: Vide Clausewitz's Works.]
[Footnote 9: At each encampment the men were left in such numbers in hastily erected hospitals that, of thirty-eight thousand Bavarians, for instance, but ten thousand, of sixteen thousand Wurtembergers, but thirteen hundred, reached Smolensko.]
[Footnote 10: The Wurtembergers distinguished themselves here by storming the faubourgs and the bridges across the Dnieper.]
[Footnote 11: The Greek prince, Moruzi, who at that time conducted Turkish diplomacy, accepted a bribe, and concluded peace in the expectation of becoming Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia. Sultan Mahmud refusing to ratify this disgraceful treaty, gold was showered upon the Turkish army, which suddenly dispersed, and the deserted sultan was compelled to yield. Moruzi was deprived of his head, but the Russians had gained their object. It must, moreover, be considered that Napoleon was regarded with distrust by the Porte, against which he had fought in Egypt, which he had afterward enticed into a war with Russia, and had, by the alliance formed at Erfurt with that power, abandoned.]
[Footnote 12: Colonel Toll was insulted during the discussion by Prince Bragation for the firmness with which he upheld Scharnhorst's plan, and avoided hazarding a useless engagement. Prince Bragation was killed in the battle.]
[Footnote 13: A Russian redoubt, the key of the field of battle, was taken and again lost. A Wurtemberg regiment instantly pushed through the fugitive French, retook the redoubt and retained possession of it.
It also, on this occasion, saved the life of the king of Naples and delivered him out of the hands of the Russians, who had already taken him prisoner.--_Ten Campaigns of the Wurtembergers._]
[Footnote 14: Everything was wanting, lint, linen, even necessary food. The wounded men lay for days and weeks under the open sky and fed upon the carca.s.ses of horses.]
[Footnote 15: This combustible matter had been prepared by Schmid, the Dutchman, under pretext of preparing an enormous balloon from which fire was to be scattered upon the French army.]
[Footnote 16: As early as the 2d of November the remainder of the Wurtembergers tore off their colors and concealed them in their knapsacks.--_Roos's Memorabilia of 1812._]
[Footnote 17: On the 18th of October, the Bavarians, who were intermixed with Swiss, performed prodigies of valor, but were so reduced by sufferings of every description as to be unable to maintain Poloczk. Segur says in his History of the War that St. Cyr left Wrede's gallant conduct unmentioned in the military despatches, and that when, on St. Cyr's being disabled by his wounds, Wrede applied for the chief command, which naturally reverted to him, the army being almost entirely composed of Bavarians, Napoleon refused his request.
Volderndorf says in his Bavarian Campaigns that St. Cyr faithlessly abandoned the Bavarians in their utmost extremity, and when all peril was over returned to Poland in order to retake the command. During the retreat from Poloczk he had ordered the bridges to be pulled down, leaving on the other side a Bavarian park of artillery with the army chest and two-and-twenty ensigns, which for better security had been packed upon a carriage. The whole of these trophies fell, owing to St.
Cyr's negligence or ill-will, into the hands of the Russians. ”The Bavarians with difficulty concealed their antipathy toward the French.” On St. Cyr's flight, Wrede kept the remainder of the Bavarians together, covered Napoleon's retreat, and, in conjunction with the Westphalians and Hessians, stood another encounter with the Russians at Wilna. Misery and want at length scattered his forces; he, nevertheless, rea.s.sembled them in Poland and was able to place four thousand men, on St. Cyr's return, under his command. He returned home to Bavaria sick. Of these four thousand Bavarians but one thousand and fifty were led by Count Rechberg back to their native soil. A great number of Bavarians, however, remained under General Zoller to garrison Thorn, and about fifteen hundred of them returned home.--At the pa.s.sage of the Beresina, the Wurtembergers had still about eighty men under arms, and in Poland about three hundred a.s.sembled, the only ones who returned free. Some were afterward liberated from imprisonment in Russia.]
[Footnote 18: This was Austria's natural policy. In the French despatches, Schwarzenberg was charged with having allowed Tschitschakow to escape in order to pursue the inconsiderable force under Sacken.]
[Footnote 19: The following anecdote is related of the Hessians commanded by Prince Emilius of Darmstadt. The prince had fallen asleep in the snow, and four Hessian dragoons, in order to screen him from the north wind, held their cloaks as a wall around him and were found next morning in the same position--frozen to death. Dead bodies were seen frozen into the most extraordinary positions, gnawing their own hands, gnawing the torn corpses of their comrades. The dead were often covered with snow, and the number of little heaps lying around alone told that of the victims of a single night.]
[Footnote 20: Napoleon said, ”There are two hundred millions lying in the cellars of the Tuileries; how willingly would I give them to save Ney!”]
[Footnote 21: He pa.s.sed with extreme rapidity, incognito, through Germany. In Dresden he had a short interview with the king of Saxony, who, had he shut him up in Konigstein, would have saved Europe a good deal of trouble.--Napoleon no sooner reached Paris in safety than, in his twenty-ninth bulletin, he, for the first time, acquainted the astonished world, hitherto deceived by his false accounts of victory, with the disastrous termination of the campaign. This bulletin was also replete with falsehood and insolence. In his contempt of humanity he even said, ”Merely the cowards in the army were depressed in spirit and dreamed of misfortune, the brave were ever cheerful.” Thus wrote the man who had both seen and caused all this immeasurable misery! The bulletin concluded with, ”His Imperial Majesty never enjoyed better health.”]
[Footnote 22: In the French despatches, General Hunerbein was accused of not having pursued the Russians under General Lewis.]
[Footnote 23: The secret history of those days is still not sufficiently brought to light. Bagnon speaks of fresh treaties between Hardenberg and Napoleon, in which he is corroborated by Fain. These two Frenchmen, the former of whom was a diplomatist, the other one of Napoleon's private secretaries, admit that Prussia's object at that time was to take advantage of Napoleon's embarra.s.sment and to offer him aid on certain important considerations. Prussian historians are silent in this matter. In Von Rauschnik's biographical account of Blucher, the great internal schism at that time caused in Prussia by the Hardenberg party and that of the _Tugendbund_ is merely slightly hinted at; the former still managed diplomatic affairs, while York, a member of the latter, had already acted on his own responsibility.
Shortly afterward affairs took a different aspect, as if Hardenberg's diplomacy had merely been a mask, and he placed himself at the head of the movement against France. In a memorial of 1811, given by Hormayr in the Sketches from the War of Liberation, Hardenberg declared decisively in favor of the alliance with Russia against France.]