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On October fifth Lauriston was despatched to Kutusoff's camp, nominally to secure an exchange of prisoners. The latter said that the affair must be referred to St. Petersburg; but the French general learned that the Russians had extended their line south toward Kaluga to secure the fertile base behind, and further threaten the long, weak French flank.
They advanced the few hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway.
Barrels of powder had been placed in all the halls of the palaces of the Czars, and one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on this volcano, which a single Russian shell might have exploded. Here he covered the march of the army upon Kaluga, and the retreat of our different convoys towards Mojaisk.
At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very position he had already occupied near Kaluga.
From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais' corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and transport.
The new road to Kaluga was protected by Broussier's division, and had not been cut up by the passage of troops; if it were possible to deceive Kutuzoff by a sudden detour to the right, and to gain the new road, Kaluga would be reached without a battle, and the positions for winter secured.
The attempt on Kaluga had cost ten days, and exhausted the greater part of the provisions brought from Moscow, and it was now necessary to submit to a retreat pure and simple. Marshal Davout proposed to effect this by a new road, which should still supply some resources for the troops; but his advice was not listened to.
In the first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on the Kaluga road.
The eyes of all in the room turned to him with curiosity and surprise, and there was a silence. The man was a Kaluga landowner of small means who had lately come to Petersburg. He had once served in the Hussars, had lost money at cards, had resigned his commission and had settled in the country.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road. They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun began to set.
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