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Updated: May 5, 2025
The weather turned much worse; Marshal Mortier rejoined the Emperor after having blown up the Kremlin. The army saw once more Mojaisk and the battlefield of Borodino. The ground, furrowed by cannon-balls, was covered with the debris of helmets, cuirasses, wheels, weapons, fragments of uniform and thirty thousand bodies, partly eaten by wolves.
While we were making attempts to save them, fifty voltigeurs of the 33d climbed the heights, of which the enemy's cavalry and artillery still occupied the summit. The French army, which had halted under the walls of Mojaisk, was surprised at seeing this handful of men, scattered about on this uncovered declivity, teasing with their fire thousands of the enemy's cavalry.
At Mojaisk, the good face which he had kept up had enabled him to gain sufficient time to make an orderly retreat, to pick his wounded, to abandon such as were incurable, and to embarrass the enemy's army with them. Subsequently at Zelkowo, a check had stopped the impetuous advance of Murat. At length, on the 13th of September, Moscow beheld the fires of the Russian bivouacs.
The Emperor had affected to treat this young Russian nobleman with kindness, at the same time that he stormed so loudly against his general a proof that there was calculation even in his wrath. On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk. That town was still full of wounded; some were carried away and the rest collected together and left, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians.
To punish the Russian incendiary, and a few wretches who made war like Tartars, he would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two hundred thousand serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely destitute of resources." On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk.
At these words, Davoust, burning with a rage which he could scarcely repress, replied that "he proposed a retreat through a fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful, and well supplied route, where the villages were still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might not be able to cut us off, as on the route by Mojaisk to Smolensk, recommended by Murat.
And this two days after the armistice, on the road to Mojaisk, on his line of operation, that by which the army communicated with its magazines, its reinforcements, its depôts, and himself with Europe!"
At these words Davoust, burning with a rage which he had great difficulty to repress, replied, that "he proposed a retreat through a fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful and well supplied route, villages still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might not avail himself of it, to cut us off from the route from Mojaisk to Smolensk, recommended by Murat.
He will naturally leave a strong advanced guard of cavalry on the Mojaisk road. "He will be particular in remaining in Moscow till he has himself seen the Kremlin blown up; and also in setting fire to the governor's two houses and that of Rasomowsky."
At the sight of Mojaisk, Murat fancied himself already in possession of it, and sent to inform the emperor that he might sleep there. But the Russian rear-guard had taken a position outside the walls of the town, and the remains of their army were placed on a height behind it. In this way they covered the Moscow and the Kalouga roads.
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