Bad news then came in from the eastern front. Admiral Tormasov had inflicted a severe defeat on General Regnier's corps, and three French regiments had been cut to pieces. Schwarzenberg had apparently been unable to come to his assistance and his Austrians were now the main bulwark against the army being outflanked from the right. Napoleon had intended to bring Schwarzenberg's thirty thousand men into his main striking force, but decided that he must now leave them far out on the wing.
By this time the sufferings of the army had caused it to become almost completely out of hand. The great herds of cattle collected in Prussia and Poland and supplies of flour and fodder were still many days' march behind. In desperation the troops took to indiscriminate looting. Both in Vitebsk and ranging far over the countryside around, they tortured the unfortunate citizens and peasants, in the hope of inducing them to reveal hidden stores of food. Thousands of Russian men, women and children were murdered and their dwellings set on fire. Desertion continued at an alarming rate and, as the French troops were given priority in every way, there were furious quarrels between them and their allies. In one case, far behind the front, a French troop of horse was amazed to find itself being fired on by a body of infantry a hundred and thirty strong. It transpired that the attackers were Spaniards.
The argument at headquarters, whether to remain in Vitebsk or to advance, continued to rage fiercely. Not for years had the Marshals and the Emperor's entourage dared express their opinions to him so frankly. Murat and other firebrands were all for continuing the campaign, but the majority were against it, including Berthier, Bessieres, Duroc and the outspoken Rapp who, having on one occasion been asked, 'How far is it back to Paris?' bluntly replied, 'Too far.'
Most impressive of all in advising against a further advance, was Count Daru, the Intendant General of the Army. Being responsible for supplies, he knew the position better than anyone else and chilled his hearers with the statement that, in the advance from Vilna to Vitebsk alone, out of the twenty two thousand horses that had crossed the Niemen, eight thousand were dead. Never the less in the end, no offer to negotiate having come from the Czar, on August 12th Napoleon decided to march on Smolensk.
The Russian 27th Division, under General Neverovsky, had been detached from their main forces to act as a rearguard. It behaved magnificently, turning again and again to attack the far superior numbers of the French. It was only with great difficulty that Ney fought his way into Krasnoye and opened the way to Smolensk, in front of which Napoleon arrived on the 16th.
Early that morning the bombardment of the city began, and was shortly followed by the first assault. Again the Russian defence was heroic, and the French were beaten back. On the 17th the battle was resumed and for thirteen hours without a single pause the Emperor's cannon hurled their shells into the city and its suburbs. By evening a score of big fires were blazing, and later their red glow lit up the country for miles round. In the middle of the night, the Russian guns suddenly ceased to reply, but a series of tremendous explosions were heard. Barclay had ordered the evacuation of the city, and was blowing up his magazines.
Davout entered Smolensk at four o'clock in the morning. The chaos was indescribable. The Russian dead lay everywhere, often in piles. Groans and cries came from the wounded; blinded and legless men begged to be put out of their agony by a bullet. A few thousand civilians had fled with the army, but thousands remained. Driven from their houses by the flames, they ran about the streets, seeking relatives and friends, or wandered aimlessly, imploring God and the Holy Virgin to succor them.
In earlier actions the Russians had sent all their wounded to Smolensk. Thousands of them had been concentrated in a group of warehouses in the oldest quarter of the city. There the few doctors available had done what they could for them, but the great majority had been unable to rise from the boards on which they lay. When the troops had evacuated the city, it had been impossible to take the wounded with them, and a fire had already been raging for hours in the old wooden buildings. Only a few score, scorched and blistered had managed to stagger out alive. The roaring flames devoured all the rest.
The stench from these many hundred charred bodies was abominable. That, and the pools of blood and excrement from the dead on the streets, together with the sight of grotesquely-twisted bodies and faces distorted by agony, made many of the French sick. But it did not prevent them, with the Germans, Italians, Poles and Dutch, from beginning to loot the still unburned houses, from garret to cellar. In this it was recognised that the Prussians were the worst offenders; for, in addition to robbing their victims, they delighted in inflicting every form of brutality upon them.
With the fall of Smolensk, Napoleon had again expected to be able to launch his legions against Barclay in the open-field. On the previous day he had dispatched flying columns to encircle the Russians, and had joyfully exclaimed, 'At last I have them in my hands!' But again he suffered bitter disappointment. Barclay succeeded in getting his army away. A week earlier he had been joined by Bagration and the whole force retreated toward Vyazma.
Meanwhile, on the left Wittgenstein had attacked the corps of Oudinot and St. Cyr with sixty thousand men, handled them very roughly and driven them, back, Oudinot being a Marshal was in command of both corps. Leading his famous Grenadiers into battle, after the death of Lannes, he had no equal as an infantry General; but he was no strategist, so things were going very badly for the French. While the Marshal was riding out on a reconnaissance, a sniper put a bullet through his arm it was the thirty-fourth wound he had received and he was forced to leave the field.
Gouvion St. Gyr, moody, taciturn, secretive, loathed by all his colleagues, but a man of high intelligence, took over the command. Swiftly he altered all the dispositions, heavily defeated Wittgenstein and took Polotsk. The Emperor sent him his Marshal's baton.
A change was now to take place in the Russian High Command. For weeks past, Barclay and Bagration had been engaged in a most acrimonious dispute. The latter, supported by most of the Russian nobility, was unshakably convinced that they ought to stand and fight and, as far as he was able, without risking the loss of his entire army, he was doing so. But it was much the smaller of the two and, even with the aid of Wittgenstein; he could not repel the overwhelming hordes of French, Prussians, Rhinelander’s and Italians. Barclay, on the other hand, although he dared not say so openly, was equally determined not to give battle. Bagration sent complaint after complaint to the Czar about Barclay doing no more than fight rearguard actions. At length Alexander appointed as Supreme Commander over both of them Mikhil Illarionavich Golenisch-Kutuzov.
The Czar was very far from liking Kutuzov because before Austerlitz he had done his utmost, as the senior Russian General present, to dissuade him from risking a pitched battle with Napoleon. The headstrong young autocrat had flatly refused to accept this advice. In consequence, he suffered a crushing defeat and had been ignominiously chased from the field.
But Kutuzov, having skillfully fooled the Turks into signing a peace, had returned from the Danube with a reputation second to none in the Russian Army. He and Bagration had been the principal lieutenants of the redoubtable Suvoroff now almost a legendary figure as Catherine the Great's most brilliant General and, of the two, Kutuzov was accounted the greater. He was now sixty seven, so corpulent that he had to be driven about battlefields in a one man carriage, and he had had one of his eyes shot out by a Turk; but he was clever, courageous and so wily that he was known as 'the old fox of the north'. His men adored him, and the great Russian nobles had such faith in him that they continued to exert so much pressure on the Czar that, autocrat though he was, he felt himself compelled to give Kutuzov the Supreme Command.