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"But if the Dnieper is not frozen, what shall we do?" said some of the officers. "It will be frozen!" retorted the general, curtly; "besides, frozen or not, we shall do as we can but we shall cross." They did cross, to the profound astonishment of the Russians, who believed the general and his soldiers were at last caught, and to the unspeakable delight of the forces collected at Orscha.
The great army by this time scarcely amounted to 36,000 fighting men; and the cavalry, entirely under the orders of General Latour-Maubourg, only counted 1800 horse. Napoleon followed on the left bank the road from Smolensk to Orscha, without taking the precaution to place between him and General Kutuzoff the rapid current of the Dnieper. He was soon to pay dearly for this fault.
The first two managed to fight their way through to join the Emperor, who was very distressed at the absence of Ney, of whom he had had no news for several days. On the 19th of November Napoleon reached Orscha. It was now a month since he had left Moscow and there was still a hundred and twenty leagues to cover before reaching the Nieman. The cold was intense.
In this position Partouneaux was separated from his corps which, as we have seen, was concentrated around Studianka, by three miles of wood and swamps. As could be easily foreseen, Partouneaux was cut off by the arrival of the troops of Platow, Miloradovitch, and Yermaloff, who had followed the French on the road from Orscha to Borisow. In the evening of the 27th.
The magazines were pillaged, as they had been pillaged at Smolensk. The forty-eight hours' stay at Orscha was utilized for rest and to nourish a few men and the horses. In these days Napoleon was as indefatigable as he ever had been as young Bonaparte.
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.
Under constant attack, the Marshal marched for three days along the winding bank of the Dnieper, which would lead him to Orscha, and on the 20th he at last saw this town where he hoped to find the Emperor and the army. He was, however, still separated from Orscha by a large area of open ground in which were many enemy troops, while the Cossacks were preparing to attack him from the rear.
With this hope, Orscha was evacuated on the 20th November, under a cold rain, which penetrated the soldiers' clothes, and then froze on their bodies. The emperor ordered the greater part of the convoys to be sacrificed. The leaders of divisions alone kept carriages. The wounded and several fugitive families still followed with great difficulty on carts and wagons.
The Comte de Wrède claimed that his position as commander in chief of the Bavarian Corps entitled him to command the French divisional generals, but they refused to obey a foreigner, so Saint-Cyr, although in much pain, agreed to remain in control of the two army corps and ordered a retreat towards Oula, in order to reach Smoliany and thus protect on one side the road from Orscha to Borisoff, by which the Emperor was returning from Moscow.
So instead of putting up a determined resistance, which would have given Oudinot the time to come to his help, he abandoned the fort, crossed the bridge to the left bank with all his men, and set out for Orscha to join Oudinot's corps, which he met on the road. The Marshal gave him a very rough reception and ordered him to return with us to Borisoff.
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