He was beset by the whole Russian army, and it was rapidly closing in round him. Still fighting a heavy rearguard action, he battled his way toward Krasnoi; but, as he advanced, met with increasingly violent opposition. On his second day out of Smolensk, he launched an all out attack, in a forlorn hope of breaking through. But it failed, and he realised that his last chance of rejoining the Emperor was gone.
The Russians were well aware that they had him in a trap, and orders were sent out that in no circumstances must he be killed, but taken prisoner, so that this most famous of all Napoleon's fighting Marshals could grace a triumph for the Czar in St. Petersburg. Miloradovitch, who greatly admired Ney, sent an officer to him under a flag of truce, to impress upon him that his position was hopeless. The Russian General even offered a temporary armistice in which he would personally conduct Ney on a tour of the Russian front, so that he could see for himself the tremendous odds that were arrayed against him, and promised that, if he would surrender, his men should receive the honour’s of war. Ney's reply was:
'A Marshal of the Empire never surrenders.'
On Napoleon's right, up in the north-west, there had been severe fighting along the Dwina ever since July. Wittgenstein had had the better of it, capturing Chasniki and Vitebsk and forcing Victor to fall back on Senno. To the south-east Tchitchagov now had under his command Tormasov's army as well as the one he had brought up from the Danube. He had easily beaten off a half-hearted attack by Schwarzenberg’s Austrians, and had captured Minsk; thus frustrating Napoleon's latest plan of retiring on that city. The Emperor's situation between these two forces, and with Kutuzov's main army at no great distance from him, was, therefore, now very precarious.
Believing the bridge over the Berezina at Borisov was still guarded by the Polish General Dombrovski, he planned to cross that river instead of the Dnieper at Orcha, and ordered the pontoon bridges that had been assembled at the latter place to be destroyed. But on November 21st Tchitchagov arrived before Borisov and, faced by heavy odds, Dombrovski abandoned the town.
While retreating, Dombrovski ran into Oudinot's corps, by then reduced to eight thousand men. On hearing that the all important bridge had been given up, the Marshal was furious and, in spite of the odds against him, hurried forward to attack Tchitchagov. However, the Russian had become obsessed with the idea of the glory that would be his if only he could capture Napoleon; so he had marched off at a furious pace toward Orcha and, in his hurry, neglected to order the bridge to be destroyed.
This stroke of good fortune enabled Oudinot to save the line of retreat. In addition, Tchitchagov had set off at such a speed that his baggage train was far in his rear, so Oudinot captured it and was able to feed his hungry men and horses well for several days.
Meanwhile, the Emperor had reached Orcha and everyone at the headquarters there had accepted as inevitable that Ney's corps must have succumbed and that the Marshal was either dead or on his way to St. Petersburg as a prisoner. Napoleon constantly reproached himself for having abandoned his old friend, and could not be consoled for his loss, exclaiming from time to time, 'I can never replace him! He was the bravest of the brave!'
But on November 20th, to everybody's amazement Ney appeared out of the blizzard, leading nine hundred men-all that remained of the eight thousand who had left Smolensk with him.
In the two days of gruelling conflict that had followed his leaving the city, his already sadly depleted corps had been reduced to three thousand five hundred men. Realising the impossibility of breaking through the eighty thousand Russians who barred his way to Krasnoi, he had assembled his senior officers at night, and said to them;
'Messieurs. There is only one course open to us. We must do a right about turn, strike north and find a place where we can get across the Dnieper.'
They had all protested that it could not conceivably be done. There were no roads. Such an attempt meant condemning his whole force to die in the wastes of snow.
'Very well, Messieurs' he had replied, 'if you will not accompany me, I shall set off on my own.'
Invigorated by his indomitable courage, they agreed to his apparently crazy plan. The camp fires were left burning. Everything on wheels was abandoned: wagons, cartloads of loot, even such guns as remained to them. They then marched north into the illimitable forests.
In the morning, when the Russians realised that Ney's battered corps had made off during the night, Platoff s Cossacks and Miloradovitch's regular cavalry followed in hot pursuit. Day after day Ney and his men fought them off until at last, they reached the Dnieper. The broad river was frozen over, but only lightly. Hundreds of officers and men crashed through the treacherous ice and perished in the icy water. On the far bank, when they headed left, the survivors were again harassed night and day by Russian horsemen. As often as they could they kept to the woods, but every few miles they had to cross open spaces. At such times they formed square and continued to repel their enemies while still marching.
The most determined attack of all came when they were within a few miles of Orcha. It seemed that they were fated to be completely wiped out; but a Polish officer, mounted on one of the very few horses that they had got across the river, managed to break through the Russians and reach the town.
As he rode into it, shouting that Ney was coming but needed immediate help, the weary, starving troops in the streets were suddenly galvanized into activity. That Ney had fought his way through seemed impossible to believe, but they grabbed up their weapons and ran from the town to his assistance, cheering like madmen. Eugene and a handful of horsemen were the first to reach the nine hundred haggard men who, a few months before, had been a twenty-thousand strong Army Corps. The remnant was not the full strength of a single battalion, and there was scarcely a man among them that was not wounded; but the epic feat that these brave fellows had performed put new heart into the despairing army.
Only the day before, in his distress Napoleon had exclaimed, 'In the Tuileries I have millions in gold. I would have given it all to save Ney.' Now the Emperor of the French threw his arms about Marshal Ney, Duke of Elchingen, Prince of Moscow, Bravest of the Brave, and burst into tears of happiness on his strong shoulder.
On the day following Ney's return, the Grand Army left Orcha, and headed for Borisov. For the first few days the weather improved, but a rise in temperature brought new afflictions. The ice on the roads turned to slush, water seeped into the boots of the many men whose footwear was worn out, and the driving sleet created greater distress than the snow, because it soaked into clothes and, when the temperature fell at night, they froze on the men's bodies. But the thaw was only temporary. On the third day intense cold again made iron red-hot to the touch and inflicted frostbite on the unwary. By then the supplies they had obtained in Orcha were nearly exhausted. Famine again stalked the miles long, slowly moving column.