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Seeing that his foes could not be forced to a pitched battle, he intrusted the command to Macdonald, and rapidly withdrew with Ney and his Guard towards Görlitz; for he now saw the possible danger to Dresden if Schwarzenberg struck home.
Here, as at Smolensk, he resorted to a frontal attack, which could only yield success at a frightful cost. The day brought little glory to the generals, except to Ney, Murat, and Grouchy. For his valour in the mêlée, Ney received the title of Prince de la Moskwa. A week before this Pyrrhic triumph, Napoleon had heard of a terrible reverse to French arms in Spain.
But nothing but Death will stop that army now in its headlong flight. "At least stop and see how a Marshal of France dies on the field of honour," he calls. But the voice which led these same men to victory at Moskowa has lost its potency and its magic. The men cry "Vive Ney!" but they do not stand. The stampede has become general.
As he had ordered first Ney and then D'Erlon to march, not on Fleurus, but against the rear of the Prussian right wing, he seems to have concluded that this new force must be that of Wellington about to deal the like deadly blow against the French rear. Accordingly he checked the advance of the Guard until the riddle could be solved.
I wish that I had died for my country in battle. But here is still the field of honor. Vive la France!" The officer in command, to his credit be it said, was dumb. He seemed incapable of giving the word to fire; and Ney himself, taking off his hat, and striking his breast, cried, in a loud voice "Soldiers, do your duty fire!" Thus died, in his forty-seventh year, "The Bravest of the Brave."
It was while he was trying to decide which was the shortest route to the river that a Russian colonel from Krasnoe arrived, as an envoy, and demanded that Ney should surrender.
As soon as the most pressing wants allowed a moment's rest, the thoughts and looks of every one were directed towards the Russian bank. They listened for any warlike sounds which might announce the arrival of Ney, or, rather, his last desperate struggle with the foe; but nothing was to be seen but parties of the enemy, who were already menacing the bridges of the Borysthenes.
The Duke of Ragusa continued to offer strong resistance in the faubourg of Halle to the repeated attacks of General Blucher; while Marshal Ney calmly saw the combined forces of General Woronzow, the Prussian corps under the orders of General Billow, and the Swedish army, break themselves to pieces against his impregnable defenses.
Twice did Ney himself replace the unfortunate child in the arms of his mother, and twice did she cast him from her on the frozen snow. This solitary crime, amid a thousand instances of the most devoted and sublime tenderness, they did not leave unpunished.
But Ney, rushing in among them, seized one of their muskets, and led them back to action, which he was himself the first to renew; exposing his life like a private soldier, with a firelock in his hand, the same as though he had been neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor consideration; in short, as if he had still everything to gain, when in fact he had everything to lose.
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