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Updated: May 1, 2025
No mortal has ever performed such deeds of indomitable moral courage; all other heroes and exploits vanish in comparison! Here, at the Niemen, the pursuit by the Russians came to an end for the time being. They, too, had suffered enormously. Not less than 18 thousand Russians were sick in Wilna; Kutusoff's army was reduced to 35 thousand men, that of Wittgenstein from 50 thousand to 15 thousand.
When, in his despair, Napoleon wrote to Francis from Dresden demanding an increase of the Austrian contingent to check Kutusoff's advance through Poland, Metternich suffered his master to give no answer, but sent a special peace embassy to London, and despatched Bubna, a favorite with Napoleon, to seek the same end at Paris.
"In that case, satisfy the claims of Ivan Ivanovitch with the fruits of your profession," said the officer: "perhaps he will consent to take pictures." "No, thank you, my good fellow, no pictures. Pictures of holy subjects, such as one could hang upon the walls, would be well enough; or some general with a star, or Prince Kutusoff's portrait.
If success is a test of merit, Kutusoff's action deserves the very highest admiration, for the French army was annihilated. He died just after he had brought the greatest of modern campaigns to a triumphant close, at the age of sixty-eight, and before he could hear the world's applause.
This was the first occasion on which Buonaparte betrayed in his demeanour that dark presentiment which had settled on his mind ever since he beheld the flames of Moscow. At daybreak he passed the Louja with a few attendants, for the purpose of reconnoitring Kutusoff's position.
Here he proposed to afford rest and provisions to this flower of his army, to ascertain, so much nearer, the direction of Kutusoff's march, and to be beforehand with him at that point. But he had not consulted the season, which seemed to avenge the slight. Winter was so near at hand, that a blast of a few minutes was sufficient to bring it on, sharp, biting, intense.
His scheme of rolling up Kutusoff's line by a double attack on left and center consequently failed, in the opinion of the greatest experts, because he did not throw in the guard on the center at the decisive moment.
The latter was engaged with Kutusoff's vanguard, which it was endeavouring to drive back; for another catastrophe, which it vainly attempted to cover, detained it at a short distance from Wilna.
Kutusoff's last public act was to issue a manifesto declaring that those German princes who were untrue to the German cause were ripe for destruction by the power of public opinion and the might of righteous arms. Such a situation was terrible for the King of Saxony.
The first general who had successfully encountered Napoleon, it would have been the strangest of history's strange facts, if the Emperor had owed the continuance of his reign to Kutusoff's influence, and that was the end to which the Russian's policy was directed; for, though he wished to confine French power within proper limits, he had no wish to strengthen either England or any of the German nations, deeming them likely to become the enemies of Russia, while he might well suppose that the French had had enough of Russian warfare to satisfy them for the rest of the century.
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