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Updated: July 28, 2025
Count Auguste de Caulaincourt was a young man full of courage, who had left his young wife a few hours after his marriage to follow the French army, and to find a glorious death at the battle of La Moskwa. He was governor of the pages of the Emperor, and had married the sister of one of his charges.
In Culm, in West Prussia, I saw last year in the marketplace such a curious City Hall that I could not reconcile it in my mind; now I understand that it is Moscovite architecture. The Knights of the Sword of Liefland were in intimate connection with the German Knights in Prussia, and one of their architects may have repeated on the Vistula what he had seen on the Moskwa.
There are, as God created it, few countries of a sadder aspect than that which spreads between the Moskwa and the Vistula. But it has been decreed by the dim laws of Race that the ugly countries shall be blessed with the greater love of their children, while men born in a beautiful land seem readiest to emigrate from it and make the best settlers in a new home.
At last a postern opening on the Moskwa was discovered, and it was through this the Emperor with his officers and guard succeeded in escaping from the Kremlin, but only to re-enter narrow streets, where the fire, inclosed as in a furnace, was increased in intensity, and uniting above our heads the flames thus formed a burning dome, which overshadowed us, and hid from us the heavens.
In the evening, an aid-de-camp of Marmont, who had been despatched from the field of battle near Salamanca, arrived at that of the Moskwa. This was the same Fabvier, who has since made such a figure in our civil dissensions. The emperor received graciously the aid-de-camp of the vanquished general.
The battle of the Moskwa caused in our ranks 30,000 dead and wounded. Ten generals had succumbed, including Montbrun and Caulaincourt, brother of the Duke of Vicenza. Thirty-nine general officers were wounded: and ten colonels killed, and twenty-seven wounded. Three days were scarcely sufficient to attend to the dead and wounded.
And yet once more the Allies were forced to pause for a moment by a furious charge led by Ney the lion of the day. "Do you see him there!" cried the captain, his eyes flashing. And Cousin Hans saw him, the romantic hero, Duke of Elchingen, Prince of Moskwa, son of a cooper in Saarlouis, Marshal and Peer of France.
He saw him rush onward at the head of his battalions five horses had been shot under him with his sword in his hand, his uniform torn to shreds, hatless, and with the blood streaming down his face. And the battalions rallied and swept ahead; they followed their Prince of Moskwa, their savior at the Beresina, into the hopeless struggle for the Emperor and for France.
Some officers ventured within the walls of the city. Moscow was deserted! At this intelligence, which he angrily refused to credit, Napoleon ascended the Hill of Salvation, and approached the Moskwa and the Dorogomilow gate. He paused once more, but in vain, at the entrance of that barrier. Murat pressed him to permit his soldiers to occupy the city.
It will be shortly seen, when the profoundest combinations, which ought to have secured the success of the boldest, and perhaps the most useful enterprise in a European point of view, come to be developed; how, at the decisive moment, on the plains of the Moskwa, nature paralysed the genius, and the man was wanting to the hero.
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