United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
State of Napoleon's Mind Destruction Imminent The Affair at Wiazma Kutusoff's Timidity Napoleon's Despair Arrival at Smolensk The Army Reorganized Napoleon's Daring at Krasnoi Ney's Great Feat Sufferings of the Army The Russian Plan Tchitchagoff's Capture of Borrissoff. For nine days the retreat went steadily on. Mortier came in on October twenty-seventh; Davout was assigned to keep the rear.
When it reached the ruins of Smolensk, only forty thousand were left of more than a hundred thousand that had left Moscow. The army continued to dwindle. At Smorgoni, Napoleon left Murat in command, and hastened in disguise to Paris. The expedition cost the lives of not less than three hundred thousand men.
I will not make a list of the places with barbarous names through which we passed after leaving Smolensk.
Nobody is too insignificant for him to know. De Casimir tells me that the Emperor is pleased with me. De Casimir is the best friend I have; I am sure of that. It is said that under the walls of Moscow the Emperor will dictate his terms to Alexander. Every one wonders that Alexander of Russia did not make proposals of peace when Vilna and Smolensk fell. In a week we may be at Moscow.
He had, no doubt, failed in suffering himself to be surprised at Wilna, and for not considering the marshy course of the Berezina as the proper frontier of Lithuania; but it was remarked that, subsequently, at Witepsk and Smolensk, he had forestalled Napoleon; that on the Loutcheza, on the Dnieper, and at Valoutina, his resistance had been proportionate to time and place; that this petty warfare, and the losses occasioned by it, had been but too much in his favour; every retrograde step of his drawing us to a greater distance from our reinforcements, and carrying him nearer to his: in short, all that he had done, he had done judiciously, whether he had hazarded, defended, or abandoned.
It is the procedure followed since Smolensk, and it has reduced 600,000 families to beggary. The fire-engines of Moscow were broken or carried off, and some arms from the arsenal given to ruffians, who could not be driven from the Kremlin without using cannon.
From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the Smolensk highroad, passing through a village with a white church some five hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was Borodino.
These nauseating tumults over, the Emperor seemed to regain much of his bodily vigor, and with it returned his skill and ingenuity: stragglers were reincorporated into regiments; supply-wagons were destroyed in large numbers and the horses assigned to the artillery, many of the guns being abandoned so that the service of the remainder might be more efficient; the army was rearrayed in four divisions, under the Emperor, Eugène, Davout, and Ney respectively; and the French made ready to leave Smolensk with a bold front.
Bessières wished to take possession of them; but the emperor instantly ordered them to be forwarded to the Prince of Moskwa, saying that "those who were fighting must eat before the rest." At the same time, he sent word to Ney "to defend himself long enough to allow him some stay at Smolensk, where the army should eat, rest, and be reorganized."
In this place two steep hills contract the channel of the Boristhenes; on these hills Smolensk is built. That city has the appearance of two towns, separated by the river and connected by two bridges. That on the right bank, the most modern, is wholly occupied by traders; it is open, but overlooks the other, of which it is nevertheless but a dependency.
Word Of The Day