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Updated: October 3, 2025
I tell them, after Napoleon's first battles, prestige did half his work for him. It saved him at Essling from a plunge into the Danube; it saved him at Moskowa; it would have marched him half over England at his first jump on our shingle beach.
On leaving Moscow Napoleon consigned the wrecks of his army to the care of his most distinguished generals to Murat who had so ably commanded the cavalry, but who abandoned the army to return to Naples; and to Ney, the hero, rather than the Prince of the Moskowa, whose name will be immortal in the annals of glory, as his death will be eternal in the annals of party revenge.
The most interesting are Ney's and Labédoyère's, the former, a solid tomb of marble, simply tells that Marshal Ney, Prince of La Moskowa, is below. Both were rather profusely decorated with wreaths of flowers, it being the custom for the friends of the deceased to strew from time to time the graves with flowers, or decorate them with garlands.
The following calculation has been made, and the following proportion established: Loss of men: at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent; Russians, thirty per cent; Austrians, forty-four per cent. At Wagram, French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At the Moskowa, French, thirty-seven per cent; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen.
The Grand Hotel, where the food was the best and cheapest we found in the Balkans, was filled to the doors with officers, politicians, members of parliament for the Skupshtina was in session relief workers, commercial travelers and concession seekers, and the huge Hotel Moskowa, built, I believe, with Russian capital, was about to reopen.
I thought, too, that, if we had peace, so many men would not be needed, and that I could marry Catharine. Any one can imagine the wishes I formed for the Emperor's glory. It was on the 15th of September, 1812, that the news came of the great victory of the Moskowa. Every one was full of joy, and all cried, "Now we will have peace! now the war is ended!"
As it was, they drew off in good order, under cover of night, and Kutusof even had the effrontery to claim a victory. For his services during this memorable day Ney received the title of Prince of the Moskowa. The result of the battle of Borodino was to leave Moscow at the mercy of the invaders, and a barren prize indeed it proved to them.
But nothing but Death will stop that army now in its headlong flight. "At least stop and see how a Marshal of France dies on the field of honour," he calls. But the voice which led these same men to victory at Moskowa has lost its potency and its magic. The men cry "Vive Ney!" but they do not stand. The stampede has become general.
The Communists caught red-handed in the streets of Paris in 1870 died with hardly less formality than was observed at the death-scene of the Prince of the Moskowa and Duke of Elchingen, and the truth then became plain. The Bourbons could not, dared not, attempt to carry out the sentence of the law with the forms of the law.
Nominations, promotions, and lists arrive all made out from the Place Saint Georges. They have to be accepted, signed and endorsed. Yesterday Louis Bonaparte complained about it to the Prince de la Moskowa, remarking wittily: "They want to make of me a Prince Albert of the Republic." Odilon Barrot appeared mournful and discouraged. To-day he left the council with a crushed air.
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