For a week after entering Smolensk the Emperor's refusal to make up his mind about the future, which had caused so much delay in Vilna and Vitebsk, again bedeviled operations. Under Murat and Davout the vanguard pushed forward toward Vyazma, but Napoleon held back the bulk of the army. Once more he felt convinced that he need go no further, as Balashov would be sent to ask for terms; but the Minister of Police did not come. In desperation, Napoleon sent a captured Russian General with a letter to Alexander, pointing out the folly of continuing the war, but received no reply. Again he told his staff that he thought it best to postpone crushing the Russians till next year. They would winter in Smolensk, then take Moscow in the spring.
But Smolensk was a shambles and the greater part of it in ruins. They had found no large stores of food there, and supplies of all kinds had become scarcer than ever. Far and wide the troops ravaged the countryside, but with little reward for their exertions. They no longer burned the hovels in the miserable villages, because they found them burned already. The Russians were now applying the scorched earth policy, with the utmost rigour. They were leaving nothing behind which could be of any use to their enemies. Meanwhile, from lack of fodder, more horses were dying every day and more men from wounds they had received, lack of nourishment and dysentery. A constant stream of deserters, now become bandits, trickled back the way they had come. The supply trains and field hospitals still failed to arrive in sufficient numbers.
At last Napoleon reluctantly decided that, if he wintered in Smolensk, he would risk his army falling to pieces, and that to take Moscow was the only way to compel the Czar to sue for peace. Having summoned up Victor's reserve corps of twenty-five thousand men from Poland to hold Smolensk and guard his lines of communications, on August 25th Napoleon and his Guards marched out of Smolensk by the road to Moscow. The die was cast.
20
Advance to Desolation
The great host trudged forward; far out on the left the Prussians, far out on the right the Austrians, both in fair trim because they were advancing through unspoiled country. In the centre, Napoleon's masses swarmed across the seemingly endless plain, with its empty barns and burned out villages.
One great body of twenty thousand men, at least, never lacked for food the Imperial Guard for it was given first call on every supply column that did come up. With, bands playing and the Tricolour beneath its Eagles fluttering bravely, it marched out of Smolensk. The Emperor, riding his grey horse, wearing his plain Guides uniform, the undecorated black tricorne hat set squarely on his big head, took the road between the Old Guard and the Young Guard. Behind him rode his staff: Berthier, Duroc, Caulaincourt, his chief secretary Baron Meneval, Rapp and a score of others, with Roger among them.
Their blue and white uniforms were now dull from dust and stains of travel, but the plumes still waved from their hats, the well polished scabbards of their swords, their stirrups and the bits of their horses shone in the sunshine. The gold of their belts, epaulettes and embroidery on their coats remained untarnished, the jewels in the Orders on their breasts glittered and scintillated. Whichever way they had been heading they would have been thankful to leave behind the terrible charnel-house that had once been the fine city of Smolensk.
In the wake of the army there followed another army the great motley horde of sutlers, vivandieres, cobblers, sweet-sellers, tobacco pedlars, whores and ragamuffins of all descriptions. Their losses had been nothing compared to those of the armed forces, because they were not dependant on the Commissariat. In times of plenty the soldiers often gave them a share of their rations, but they always took their own supplies in small carts that they drove or pulled themselves.
One of the Army's most famous paladins had recently been overtaken by disaster. The Emperor had sent Murat and Ney ahead from Smolensk to endeavour to pin down the enemy, and they had very nearly succeeded. A most bloody encounter had taken place east of Valutina. The plan had been that, while Ney engaged the enemy hotly, Junot with the Eighth Corps, which he had taken over from King Jerome, should outflank them from the north; but he had failed to appear. Murat had galloped off in search of him, and found him with his men halted. Angrily, Murat urged him to attack at once, but Junot said his poor Westphalians were too exhausted. With a part of Junot's force, the tireless Murat then led an attack himself, but it was too weak and too late. The Russians fought him off and escaped from the trap.
Junot's failure to exert himself was, no doubt, due to the head wound he had received in Portugal affecting his brain; for, not long afterwards, he went mad. He had been with Napoleon at the siege of Toulon and served him faithfully for eighteen years. Why the Emperor should have passed over this old friend when first distributing Marshals' batons, no one could understand. All through the seven years that had since elapsed, Junot had been hoping to receive his. Now he had lost his last chance of becoming a Marshall.
Behind Murat's cavalry screen, many thousands strong, Ney and Davout led the van. The main body followed, reaching Vyazma on August 29th and Gjatsk on September 1st. Four days later they were confronted with a one hundred and fifty foot high hill, rising out of the level plain near Shevardino. Kutuzov had made the hill into a big redoubt that had to be stormed before the French could advance further. After severe fighting and at considerable loss, they took it; but it checked them for a day, which was of great value to Kutuzov whose army was working desperately hard to complete a great system of earthworks a few miles further on, either side of the village of Borodino.
Old Kutuzov was strongly in favour of the strategy advised by Bernadotte and adopted by Barclay, of letting his enemies advance further and further into the illimitable Russian steppe until they were exhausted; but he knew that he could not allow them to enter Moscow without fighting a battle. Had he done so he would overnight have become the most hated man in Russia, and promptly been deprived of his command.
For making a stand, the Borodino position left much to be desired, but it was the best available. He disposed his army along it in a shallow, convex curve. The right followed the line of the little Kalotcha river, near the centre rose a steep ridge and to the left the ground sloped away to the valley of Utitza. Crowning the ridge was a great redoubt, in which were massed the Russian guns. Barclay commanded the right and centre, Bagration the left, where lesser earthworks had been thrown up. Having made his dispositions, Kutuzov retired to a farm two miles behind the line, and left his subordinates to fight the battle.
The Grand Army arrayed itself opposite: Beauharnais' Italians on the extreme left, Murat's, Ney's and Davout's corps, supported by other formations, in the centre, the Guard on high ground at right centre, in reserve, and on the extreme right, Poniatowski's Poles.
For some days Napoleon had been far from well. He was suffering from his old complaint, dysuria, and could pass water only painfully, in driblets. In addition, the dust and damp bivouacs had given him a nasty dry cough, causing him loss of voice and making it difficult to dictate orders.