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Updated: July 15, 2025
Krasnoe was thus surrounded by a semicircle of our troops, disputing the enemy's positions step by step; but Admiral Tormazoff was now on our rear, in order to hold the Orscha road. The emperor saw that he should be speedily hemmed in, and resolved to resume his march, without waiting for Ney's regiments.
All day long he was on horseback personally to hasten the passage of detachments of the army, somewhat over 5 thousand men under arms. Toward the end of the day the first corps arrived, under Davout, who since Krasnoe had again commanded the rear guard. This was the only corps which still had some military appearance.
And this brave and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as deliberately from this field of carnage as they would have done from a field of manoeuvre. Napoleon reaches Dombrowna and Orcha; he holds a council. As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoë between him and Beningsen, he was in safety.
The Tzarevitch* who had driven over from the great camp at Krasnoe Selo, and whom I had seen in the church of the Old Palace that morning at a special mass, with the angelic imperial choir and the priests from the Winter Palace sent down from Petersburg for the occasion, was now sailing through the air high up toward the apex of the mast.
Davoust would relieve Mortier; but both of them must endeavour to hold out in Krasnoë until night, after which they must come and rejoin him." Then with his heart full of Ney's misfortune, and of despair at abandoning him, he withdrew slowly from the field of battle, traversed Krasnoë, where he again halted, and then cleared his way to Liady.
Toward evening after much disputing and many mistakes made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had been sent about with counterorders when it had become plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither his headquarters had that day been transferred.
In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond the Dnieper which was the only reasonable thing for him to do themselves turned to the right and came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard.
His column was advancing without precaution, preceded by a crowd of stragglers, all eager to reach Krasnoë, when, at two leagues from that place, a line of Cossacks, extending from the heights on our left across the great road, appeared before them.
During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army without a battle.
Other misfortunes followed: several convoys were intercepted, magazines taken, and a drove of eight hundred oxen had just been carried off from Krasnoë."
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