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Updated: July 15, 2025
The halt at Smolensk also gave time for Kutusoff to come up parallel with the main force, and had he pressed on with ordinary speed and showed a tithe of his wonted pugnacity, he might have captured the Grand Army and its leader. As it was, his feeble attack on the rearguard at Krasnoe only gave Ney an opportunity of showing his dauntless courage.
My brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of the neighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made the acquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decent cottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name was Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.
At the same time Mortier, a few yards in front of his Emperor, displayed in the face of the whole Russian army, the five thousand men which still remained to him. Their object was to defend the right flank of the great road from Krasnoë to the great ravine in the direction of Stachowa.
They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
Driving them off continually, Ney marched, surrounded by them for three days, to halt eventually before the dangerous pass of the Krasnoe ravine, beyond which could be seen a great mass of Russian troops and an array of guns which opened a lively and sustained fire.
The halt at Smolensk also gave time for Kutusoff to come up parallel with the main force, and had he pressed on with ordinary speed and showed a tithe of his wonted pugnacity, he might have captured the Grand Army and its leader. As it was, his feeble attack on the rearguard at Krasnoe only gave Ney an opportunity of showing his dauntless courage.
But after a four days' halt the mob, with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old the worst road, through Krasnoe and Orsha. Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours.
On the plateau of Krasnoe, in the skirmishes against the Cossacks of Platow, and by the sides of the ice-covered roads, Ney had everywhere left dead bodies, wounded and dying men, besides men overpowered by the hardships and incapable of any effort. Even at Orscha the disorder was so great that it threatened to infect the regiments of the old guard. The emperor harangued them energetically.
Nevertheless, this first column arrived, without any great loss of men, at Korythinia, which Junot had passed with his Westphalian corps, now reduced to seven hundred men. A vanguard had pushed on as far as Krasnoë. The wounded and disbanded men were on the point of reaching Liady. Korythinia is five leagues from Smolensk; Krasnoë five leagues from Korythinia; Liady four leagues from Krasnoë.
Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three days. Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition.
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