United States or Qatar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Two hundred leagues of countryside were left to roving bands of Cossacks. The result of this was that men who had recovered from illness were unable to rejoin their units, and as there was no system of evacuation, we had to keep all the wounded from the battle for Moscow in the monastery of Kolotskoi for more than two months.
A moment afterwards he dictated another on Smolensk. Junot received orders to burn on the 21st, at Kolotskoi, all the muskets of the wounded, and to blow up the ammunition waggons. D'Hilliers was to occupy Elnia, and to form magazines at that place. It was not till the 17th, at Moscow, that Berthier thought of causing leather to be distributed for the first time among the troops.
The rest of the troops were dispersed over the field of battle to carry off the wounded, of whom there were 20,000. They were taken to the great abbey of Kolotskoi, two leagues in the rear. Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, had just taken assistants from all the regiments; the ambulances had rejoined, but all was insufficient.
Farther on, we again beheld the great abbey or hospital of Kolotskoi, a sight still more hideous than that of the field of battle. At Borodino all was death, but not without its quiet; there at least the battle was over; at Kolotskoi it was still raging.
The abbey of Kolotskoi and the neighboring villages were converted into provisional hospitals, under the direction of General Junot, commandant of the Westphalians. The emperor had advanced towards Mojaisk, and Murat followed with his decimated regiments. Napoleon refused Davout the command of the advanced guard.
The Emperor replied, "that he had been obliged to allow time to the soldiers to recruit themselves, and to the wounded collected in Moscow, Mojaisk, and Kolotskoi, to move off towards Smolensk." Then pointing to a still serene sky, he asked, "if in that brilliant sun they did not recognize his star?"
Konownitzin was vanquished and retired; on the 5th his bloody track was followed to the vast convent of Kolotskoi, fortified as habitations were of old in those too highly vaunted Gothic ages, when civil wars were so frequent; when every place, not excepting even these sacred abodes of peace, was transformed into a military post.
Konownitzin, threatened on the right and left, made no other stand either at Kolotskoi or at Golowino; but when the advanced-guard debouched from that village, it beheld the whole plain and the woods infested with cossacks, the rye crops spoiled, the villages sacked; in short, a general destruction. By these signs it recognized the field of battle, which Kutusof was preparing for the grand army.
When passing Borodino, where the battle-field was still covered with the corpses, of which savage beasts were in undisputed possession, the rear-guard were still further encumbered by the transport of the wounded, who had formerly been left at Kolotskoi. Those whose wounds did not allow them to be removed were entrusted by Dr. Larrey to the cares of the Russians, whom he had cured.
Word Of The Day