B009YBU18W EBOK (54 page)

At the end of September, unable to stand the situation any longer, Barclay wrote a long and tearful letter to the Tsar in which he warned him that the army was being commanded by a nonentity and a ‘bandit’, and resigned his command. ‘My health is ruined and my moral and physical strength have run out,’ he explained. He felt hard done by: his strategy had been fully vindicated, yet he had been denied credit for it. He had saved the day at Borodino, yet this had been acknowledged by nobody. To add injury to insult, his carriage was pelted with stones by the mob as he drove through Kaluga after leaving the army.
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Barclay’s departure did nothing to ease tensions at Russian headquarters. Bennigsen, hoping to be appointed to command in Kutuzov’s place, was ringleading a cabal which accused him of idleness, dissipation and cowardice. And although the old Field Marshal still enjoyed huge respect and love from the rank and file, even junior officers were beginning to ask themselves whether Bennigsen and his supporters might not have a point. After a couple of weeks’ rest they were bored and ready for action, while the gossip swirling around the camp further unsettled them. ‘I have listened for so long to so many opinions and disturbing rumours that I no longer know whom or what to believe,’ Lieutenant Aleksandr Chicherin noted in his diary.
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News of the fall of Madrid to the British forces reached Tarutino at the beginning of October, but the wild rejoicings were followed by questions about why they were standing by while others were fighting the French. The old spectre of treason was ever-present. And it began to assume a degree of substance when a French staff officer presented himself at the Russian pickets with a letter from Berthier to Kutuzov. This informed the Field Marshal that General Lauriston had reached Murat’s camp and requested an interview. Kutuzov agreed to meet Lauriston in the no-man’s-land between the two armies at midnight, no doubt hoping that this would ensure secrecy.

But rumours were soon flying around the Russian camp, and Bennigsen, who had convinced himself that his superior was about to do some kind of deal with the French, alerted Wilson to what was going on. The English busybody needed little incitement and went straight to Kutuzov’s quarters, where he subjected the Field Marshal to a harangue about not betraying the Tsar’s wishes and the Russian cause. Whatever he may have thought of the importunate Briton, the Russian commander could not now proceed with his plan, so he sent in his place the Tsar’s aide-de-camp Prince Piotr Volkonsky, who had recently arrived from St Petersburg. Lauriston was disappointed not to find Kutuzov at the appointed meeting, and protested that he was the bearer of a letter from Napoleon to the Russian commander which he could only hand him in person. This caused further delay, and in the end Lauriston was brought into the Russian camp and into Kutuzov’s log cabin.

The purpose of Lauriston’s mission was to ask for a safe conduct so that he might go to see the Tsar in St Petersburg. Kutuzov answered that he had no authority to grant one, and could do no more than write to his sovereign passing on the French request. Lauriston and Napoleon would have to wait patiently for an answer. Lauriston asked whether a ceasefire could not be arranged while they waited. He also suggested an exchange of prisoners, and that measures be taken to curb the violence developing on both sides. Kutuzov was polite but negative, pointing out that it was not the invader’s business
to complain about the behaviour of the ravaged population. The Frenchman’s mission came to nothing. But it had set tongues wagging against the Field Marshal – so much so that he actually had an officer arrested for spreading the rumour that he was in talks with the French – and it was to earn him a stern rebuke from Alexander, who had given strict instructions not to enter into any kind of communication with the enemy.
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Alexander had been urging Kutuzov to attack exposed units of the French army, and could not understand why the Field Marshal had not moved against Murat at Voronovo and Vinkovo.
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Bennigsen, Yermolov, Platov, Baggovut and others had also been begging Kutuzov to seize the opportunity to destroy this force, numbering no more than about 25,000, camped right under their noses, and which had been lulled into dispensing with most of the precautions observed when in the face of the enemy. Considering that the Russian army now numbered more than 100,000, this should have been about as risky as a field day. Kutuzov had resisted them all, but he could no longer oppose what had become the general wish of the whole army, so he finally agreed.

He fixed the date of the attack for 17 October, but he did so at short notice, with his usual disregard for correct channels. Yermolov could not be traced in time to pass on orders to some of the units (possibly because it was Konovnitsin who had summoned him), with the result that when Kutuzov rode out to take command of the operation he found that half of the relevant units were going about their daily business of foraging and cooking rather than standing to for battle. He flew into a violent rage and threatened terrible retribution on Yermolov and various others, before rescheduling the attack for the next day.

But on 18 October it was Kutuzov who failed to turn up on time, and Bennigsen therefore took charge of the assault. Baggovut moved against Murat’s left flank, while Orlov-Denisov appeared on his right. The surprise was complete, and Orlov-Denisov’s cossacks swept into General Sébastiani’s camp while its occupants were mostly still asleep,
taking hundreds prisoner while the rest took to their horses and fled. Instead of driving home their advantage, the cossacks then fell to looting the camp, which allowed the French to rally and counterattack. They were nevertheless surrounded and outnumbered. But the Russians failed to take advantage of the situation. Miloradovich’s corps stood idly by while Bennigsen’s pleas to Kutuzov for reinforcements went unanswered, and the various Russian units manoeuvred without purpose while the French, having rallied under cover of a strong stand by Poniatowski’s corps, made an orderly retreat.

What should have been a walkover turned into a fiasco, and while the French lost some 2500 men, thirty-six guns and one regimental colour, the Russians lost over a thousand men, including General Baggovut. They boasted that the King of Naples had fled so fast that he had been obliged to leave behind even his wardrobe and his plate.
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Yet they had failed to destroy a single French unit. And the episode ratcheted up the conflicts within the Russian command. Kutuzov called Bennigsen an ‘imbecile’ and a ‘red-headed coward’ (the word for ‘red-head’,
ryzhy
, also means ‘clown’), and the other responded in kind.
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The disappointing outcome of the engagement did not prevent Kutuzov, who had never actually shown up on the battlefield, from trumpeting to all and sundry that he had taken on Murat’s army of 50,000 men and routed it. The French had ‘run like hares’, he wrote in one letter. The account he sent to St Petersburg was so boastful that the victory was honoured with two days of gun salutes and illuminations, and earned him a ceremonial sword with laurel leaves.
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Yet there was no follow-up. Officers cursed and soldiers wondered why they were still not being allowed to get at the French, but as it was getting colder they began to build dug-outs for themselves. Many began to think that Kutuzov really was frightened of confronting Napoleon. Nikolai Durnovo, an officer on Bennigsen’s staff,
complained that Kutuzov ‘is afraid of making the slightest move … sitting in his den like a bear who does not want to come out’ while the French were vulnerable to attack. ‘It is driving us all mad with rage.’
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As the Russian attack on Murat was unfolding at Vinkovo, Napoleon was at the Kremlin, reviewing Ney’s 3rd Corps. ‘The parade was as fine as the circumstances permitted,’ wrote Colonel Raymond de Fezensac, whose 4th of the Line was taking part. ‘The colonels surpassed themselves in order to present their regiments in the best light, and nobody seeing them could have imagined how much the soldiers had endured, and what they were still enduring.’ Shortly after midday, Murat’s aide-de-camp General Bérenger galloped onto the parade ground and informed Napoleon of what had happened at Vinkovo. ‘Without being frightened, Napoleon was nonetheless very agitated,’ according to Bausset. He hurried through the review, giving out crosses of the Légion d’Honneur and promotions, and then returned to his rooms, where he began issuing orders to begin the evacuation planned for the morrow. ‘He kept opening the door to the room where those on duty waited, calling now for one person, now for another, spoke rapidly and could not remain still for a single instant,’ wrote Bausset. ‘He had hardly sat down to lunch when he was up again, and he put so much urgency into all his ideas and plans that I believe the fatal consequences of his long sojourn in Moscow were suddenly revealed to him on that day.’ But when he actually left the Kremlin that evening, Napoleon had regained his usual calm, and seemed more awake than he had for some time.
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Fezensac’s regiment marched out that very night. On the way he noted with anger that another unit which was also moving off had set fire to a store of flour and fodder which it had no means of transporting. ‘We had space in some of our
fourgons,
’ wrote Fezensac, ‘but we had to watch as flames consumed victuals that might have saved our lives.’ Such organisation boded ill for what lay ahead.
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But many of the troops were too happy to be leaving or too preoccupied
with the preparations to think of anything else. ‘We hasten back to our quarters, we fold up our dress uniforms and with pleasure put on our marching uniforms,’ noted Cesare de Laugier in his diary. ‘Everything is in a state of commotion; one can read joy on every face at the prospect of leaving. The only thing that bothers us is to have to leave behind comrades who are incapable of walking. Some of them are making superhuman efforts to follow us. At five o’clock, with drums beating and loud music, we march through the streets of Moscow … Moscow! which we had been so desirous of reaching, but which we leave without regret. We are thinking only of our native land, of Italy, of our families, which we will soon be seeing at the end of this glorious expedition.’
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The commotion in the city as news of the impending departure spread was indescribable. Large numbers of civilians who feared being lynched by the mob once the French army was gone decided to follow it. While they were mostly from the French colony they included other foreigners, among them at least one English woman, the wife of a Polish merchant. They also included a considerable number of Russians, particularly women and petty criminals, who had thrown their lot in with the French or otherwise become attached to them. Their last-minute preparations only added to the confusion as the troops packed and loaded up. The city quickly filled with small traders anxious to buy anything the French could not carry off with them, and with peasants from the surrounding countryside eager to rifle through whatever was left behind. But the soldiers of the Grande Armée were not going to leave behind anything they did not have to.

One of the most damaging consequences of the fire was the large number of soldiers who had accumulated a stock of booty which they hoped would, on their return to western Europe, make their fortune. Probably as many as eight thousand had left the ranks to attend to the vehicles or pack animals on which they loaded their treasures. But they could only make the journey home under cover of the army, whose movements they would impede at every step.

Even disciplined soldiers were determined to hold on to their hard-gotten gains, as the case of Sergeant Adrien Bourgogne shows. His knapsack contained: several pounds of sugar, some rice, dry biscuit, half a bottle of liqueur, a Chinese silk dress embroidered with silver and gold thread, several small silver and gold items, his dress uniform, a lady’s riding coat, two
repoussé
silver plaques, one representing the Judgement of Paris, the other Neptune in his chariot, several medallions and a diamond-studded Russian decoration. In a large bag slung over his shoulder he had a silver medallion representing Christ, a Chinese porcelain vase, and a number of other objects. This was all in addition to his full equipment, a spare pair of shoes and sixty cartridges. ‘Add to that health, gaiety, good will and the hope of paying my respects to the ladies of Mongolia, China or India, and you will have some idea of a sergeant of Vélites in the Imperial Guard,’ he concluded. After a few miles, he stopped by the roadside and sifted through his pack to see what he could jettison in order to lighten it. He decided to throw out the breeches of his dress uniform.
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Others would jettison cartridges and musket-cleaning equipment. Artillerymen would throw out shells to make room in their gun carriages, and company wagons would be emptied of anvils, horseshoes and nails in favour of the farrier’s booty.

‘Anyone who did not see the French army leave Moscow can only have a very weak impression of what the armies of Greece and Rome must have looked like when they marched back from Troy and Carthage,’ wrote Pierre-Armand Barrau. Ségur thought it looked more like a Tatar horde returning from a successful foray. Every soldier groaned under a bulging knapsack and clanked with gold and silver items suspended from his crossbelts. The regimental baggage wagons were laden with non-regulation bundles. And the intervals between the marching units were crammed with wagons and carts of every kind, including handcarts and barrows piled with loot being pushed or pulled by Russian peasants who had themselves become part of the booty, and the most elegant carriages and landaus, often drawn by scraggy little
cognats
. These vehicles rolled along, three or
four abreast, amid a crowd of soldiers without arms or uniforms, servants and camp followers. ‘It was no longer the army of Napoleon but that of Darius returning from a far-flung expedition, more lucrative than glorious,’ in the words of Adrien de Mailly.
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