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Updated: May 23, 2025
The baggage of all the corps was therefore assembled in the rear of the army: there was, from Dorogobouje, a long train of bat-horses and kibitks, harnessed with ropes; these vehicles were laden with booty, provisions, military effects, men appointed to take care of them; lastly, sick soldiers, and the arms of both, which were rusting in them.
The French advance-guard, driving the enemy before it, had already passed Dorogobouje when, on the 24th of August, the Emperor decided to leave Smolensk. The heat was stifling; we marched on loose sand; there was insufficient food for such a large body of men and horses, for the Russians left nothing behind them but burning farms and villages.
Marshal Ney had been fighting since they left Dorogobouje, sustaining all his soldiers by his indomitable courage and the steadiness of his physical and mental energy, playing in turns the part of general, captain, and soldier, seizing the musket as it fell from the hands of a dying grenadier to fire, himself, upon the enemy, and purposely slackening the march of the rear-guard in order to give time to all to reach Smolensk.
It was from Slawkowo, a few leagues beyond Dorogobouje, that Napoleon sent orders, on the 27th of August, to marshal Victor, who was then on the Niemen, to advance to Smolensk. This marshal's left was to occupy Witepsk, his right Mohilef, and his centre Smolensk.
Meanwhile Napoleon beheld Dorogobouje in ashes, like Smolensk, especially the quarter of the merchants, those who had most to lose, whom their riches might have detained or brought back amongst us, and who, from their situation, formed a kind of intermediate class, a commencement of the third estate, which liberty was likely to seduce.
He dictated orders, according to which his rear-guard, by appearing to retreat in disorder, was to draw the Russians into an ambuscade, where he should be waiting for them in person; but this vain project passed off with the pre-occupation which gave it birth. On the 5th he slept at Dorogobouje.
As far as Dorogobouje, it had been molested only by some bands of Cossacks, troublesome insects attracted by our dying and by our forsaken carriages, flying away the moment a hand was lifted, but harassing by their continual return. They were not the subject of Ney's message.
The astonished marshal, having caused this horde of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of Italy, returning completely stripped, without baggage and without cannon. Platoff had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.
Two divisions of the army of reserve, left in Germany under the orders of Marshal Augereau, were summoned to Lithuania. When the emperor learned, on arriving at Dorogobouje, that the enemy was again escaping from him, he concluded that General Barclay was ready to fight him, and was seeking for a favorable position.
Like Massena in Portugal, Davout found himself in disgrace because he was blamed with faults which he had not committed, and which he was unable to rectify. Meantime they had approached Smolensk. Alarming news awaited Napoleon at Dorogobouje. He had long reckoned on the assistance of the 9th corps, which Marshal Victor was bringing him from Germany.
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