Through Russian Snows (29 page)

The Russians, perceiving the magnitude of the movement, despatched large
reinforcements to the defenders, and at the same time, to effect a
diversion, sent the greater portion of their cavalry round to menace
the French rear at Borodino. Three hundred Russian guns opposed the four
hundred of the French, and amidst the tremendous roar of the guns, the
great mass of French infantry hurled themselves upon the Russians. For a
time no impression could be made, so sternly and fiercely did the
Russians fight, but Bagration, their commander, with several other
generals, were badly wounded and forced to retire. Konownitsyn assumed
the command, but the loss of the general, in whom they placed implicit
confidence, told upon the spirits of his troops, and Konownitsyn was
forced to abandon the three redoubts, and to take up a new position
behind Semianotsky, where he re-established his batteries and checked
the progress of the enemy.

A portion of the French cavalry now made a desperate attempt to break
through the Russian left, but two regiments of the Imperial Guard,
throwing themselves into squares, maintained their position until five
regiments of Russian cuirassiers came up and forced their assailants
back. At this critical moment the great mass of Russian cavalry that had
been sent round to attack the Viceroy fell upon his rear, drove his
cavalry into the village with great loss, and pressed the infantry so
hard that the Viceroy himself had to take refuge in one of his squares.
Having thus succeeded in distracting the enemy's attention, arresting
his tide of battle, and giving time to the Russians to reform and plant
their batteries afresh, the Russian cavalry withdrew. The Viceroy
recrossed the stream again, and prepared to make another attack upon the
great bastion he had before captured, and the whole line again advanced.
While the Viceroy attacked the great redoubt in front, Murat sent a
division of his cavalry round to fall upon its rear, and, although swept
by artillery and infantry fire, the brave horsemen carried out their
object, although almost annihilated by the fire of the defenders of the
redoubt.

The French infantry took advantage of the attention of the defenders
being diverted by this attack, and with a rush stormed the work; the
four Russian regiments who held it fought to the last, refusing all
offers of quarter, and maintaining a hand-to-hand conflict until
annihilated. The Russian artillery, in the works round Gorki, swept the
redoubt with their fire, and under its cover the infantry made repeated
but vain attacks to recapture it, for their desperate bravery was
unavailing against the tremendous artillery fire concentrated upon them,
while the French on their part were unable to take advantage of the
position they had gained. Napoleon, indeed, would have launched his
troops against the works round Gorki, but his generals represented to
him that the losses had already been so enormous, that it was doubtful
whether he could possibly succeed, and if he did so, it could only be
with such further loss as would cripple the army altogether.

At three o'clock Napoleon, whose whole army, with the exception of the
Imperial Guard, had been engaged, felt that nothing further could be
done that day, and ordered the battle to cease. He had gained the three
redoubts on the Russians' left and the great redoubt captured by the
Viceroy, but these were really only advanced works, and the main
position of the Russians still remained entirely intact. At night the
French retired from the positions they had won, to those they had
occupied before the battle begun, retaining possession only of the
village of Borodino. The loss of the combatants during the two days'
fighting had been nearly equal, no less than 40,000 men having been
killed on each side, a number exceeding that of any other battle in
modern times. Napoleon expected that the Russians would again give
battle next morning, but Kutusow, contrary to the opinion of most of his
generals, decided on falling back. Beningsen, one of his best officers,
strongly urged him to take up a position at Kalouga, some seventy miles
to the south of Moscow. The position was a very strong one. Napoleon
could not advance against Moscow, which was in a position to offer a
long and determined resistance, until he had driven off the Russian
army. At Kalouga they could at any moment advance on to his line of
communication, cut off all his supplies, and isolate him from France.

The advice was excellent, but Kutusow, who was even more unfitted than
Barclay for the post of commander-in-chief, refused to adopt this
course, and fell back towards Moscow, followed by the French. The
sufferings of the latter had already become severe—the nights were
getting very cold, the scarcity of food was considerable, the greater
part of the army was already subsisting on horse-flesh, the warm
clothing, which was becoming more and more necessary, was far in the
rear, their shoes were worn out, and it was only the thought that they
would have a long period of rest and comfort in Moscow, that animated
them to press forward along the fifty miles of road between Borodino and
that city.

Julian had passed through the terrible battle unscathed. It seemed to
him, when fighting had ceased for the day, that it was almost miraculous
a single man should have survived that storm of fire. While the fight
had actually been going on, the excitement and the ardour of battle had
rendered him almost insensible to the danger. With the soldiers as with
their generals the capture of the three small redoubts became, as the
day went on, a matter on which every thought was bent, every energy
concentrated; it was no longer a battle between French and Russians, but
a struggle in which each man felt that his personal honour was
concerned. Each time that, with loud cheering, they stormed the
blood-stained works, they felt the pride of victory; each time that,
foot by foot, they were again forced backwards, there was rage in every
heart and a fierce determination to return and conquer.

In such a struggle as this, when men's passions are once involved,
death loses its terror; thickly as comrades may fall around, those who
are still erect heed not the gaps, but with eyes fixed on the enemy in
front of him, with lips set tightly together, with head bent somewhat
down as men who struggle through a storm of rain, each man presses on
until a shot strikes him, or he reaches the goal he aims at. At such a
time the fire slackens, for each man strives to decide the struggle,
with bayonet or clubbed musket. Four times did Julian's regiment climb
the side of the ravine in front of the redoubts, four times were they
hurled back again with ever-decreasing numbers, and when at last they
found themselves, as the fire slackened, masters of the position, the
men looked at each other as if waking from some terrible dream, filled
with surprise that they were still alive and breathing, and faint and
trembling, now that the exertion was over and the tremendous strain
relaxed. When they had time to look round, they saw that but one-fourth
of those who had, some hours before, advanced to the attack of the
redoubt of Chewardino remained. The ground around the little earthworks
was piled thickly with dead Frenchmen and Russians, and ploughed up by
the iron storm that had for eight hours swept across it. Dismounted
guns, ammunition boxes, muskets, and accoutrements were scattered
everywhere. Even the veterans of a hundred battles had never witnessed
such a scene, had never gone through so prolonged and terrible a
struggle. Men were differently affected, some shook a comrade's hand
with silent pressure, some stood gazing sternly and fixedly at the lines
where the enemy still stood unconquered, and tears fell down many a
bronzed and battle-worn face; some sobbed like children, exhausted by
their emotions rather than their labours.

The loss of the officers had been prodigious. Eight generals were killed
and thirty wounded, and nearly two thousand officers. The colonel and
majors of Julian's regiment had fallen, and a captain, who was but sixth
on the list when the battle began, now commanded. Between three o'clock
and dusk the men were engaged in binding up each other's wounds, eating
what food they carried in their haversacks, and searching for more in
those of the fallen. Few words were spoken, and even when the order came
to evacuate the position and retire to the ground they had left that
morning, there was not a murmur; for the time no one seemed to care what
happened, or what became of him. Once on the ground where they were to
bivouac, fresh life was infused into their veins. The chill evening air
braced up their nerves; great fires were lighted with brushwood, broken
cartridge-boxes, and the fragments of gun-carriages and waggons; and
water was brought up from the stream. Horse-flesh was soon being
roasted, and as hunger and thirst were appeased, the buzz of
conversation rose round the fires, and the minds as well as the tongues
of men seemed to thaw from their torpor.

"Well, comrade, so you too have gone through it without a scratch,"
Julian's friend, the sergeant, said to him. "Well, you will never see
such a fight again if you grow gray in the service. Where are those who
scoffed at the Russians now? They can fight, these men. It was a battle
of giants. No one could have done more than we did, and yet they did as
much; but to-morrow we shall win."

"What! do you think we shall fight again to-morrow?"

"That is for the Russians to say, not for us. If they stand we must
fight them again. It is a matter of life and death for us to get to
Moscow. We shall win to-morrow, for Napoleon will have to bring up the
Imperial Guard, 20,000 of his best troops, and the Russians put their
last man into the line of battle to-day, and, never fear, we shall win.
But I own I have had enough of it. Never before have I hoped that the
enemy in front of us would go off without a battle, but I do so now. We
want rest and quiet. When spring comes we will fight them again as
often as they like, but until then I for one do not wish to hear a gun
fired."

"I am sure I do not, sergeant," Julian agreed; "and I only hope that we
shall get peace and quiet when we reach Moscow."

"Oh, the Russians will be sure to send in to ask for terms of peace as
soon as we get there," the sergeant said confidently.

"I hope so, but I have great doubts, sergeant. When people are ready to
burn their homes rather than that we should occupy them, to desert all
that they have and to wander away they know not where, when they will
fight as they fought to-day, I have great doubts whether they will talk
of surrender. They can bring up fresh troops long before we can. They
will have no lack of provisions. Their country is so vast that they know
that at most we can hold but a small portion of it. It seems to me that
it is not of surrender they will be thinking, but of bringing up fresh
troops from every part of their empire, of drilling and organizing and
preparing for the next campaign. I cannot help thinking of what would
happen to us if they burnt Moscow, as they have burned half a dozen
towns already."

"No people ever made such a sacrifice. What, burn the city they consider
sacred!—the old capital every Russian thinks of with pride! It never
can be, but if they should do so, all I can say is, God help us all. Few
of us would ever go back to France."

"So it seems to me, sergeant. I have been thinking of it lately, and
after the way in which the Russians came on, careless of life, under the
fire of our cannon to-day, I can believe them to be capable of
anything."

The next morning it was found that the Russian lines were deserted. So
the French army set forward again on its march, and on the morning of
the 14th arrived within sight of Moscow. Kutusow had at one time seemed
disposed to fight another battle in front of the city, and had given a
solemn promise to its governor that he should have three days' notice of
any change in his determination, and so allow time for him to carry out
his intention to evacuate the town, when the municipal authorities were,
methodically and officially, to proceed to destroy the whole city by
fire. This promise Kutusow broke without giving any notice whatever. On
the 13th, at a council of war, he overruled the objections of his
generals, and determined to retreat, his arguments being that the ground
was unsuited for defensive operations; that the defeat of the one
disciplined army would endanger the final success of the war; and that
it was for Russia, not for any one city, they were fighting.

The argument was not without reason; but, if he had resolved not to
fight again, he should have accepted the advice to take up a position on
Napoleon's flank. Had he done this, the French could have made no
advance, and Moscow would have been saved from destruction.

As the army began its passage through the capital the exodus of the
inhabitants commenced. Already the wealthier classes had removed their
effects, and the merchants the greater part of their goods. Now the
whole population poured out into the streets, and thousands of carts and
vehicles of all descriptions, packed closely with household furniture,
goods, and effects of all kinds, moved towards the gates. Out of 200,000
inhabitants 180,000 left the city, with 65,000 vehicles of every kind.
In addition to these were enormous quantities of fugitives from every
town and village west of Smolensk, who had hitherto accompanied the
army, moving through the fields and lanes, so as to leave the roads
unencumbered for the passage of the guns and trains.

Every Russian peasant possesses a roughly-made cart on two or four
wheels, and as their belongings were very scanty, these, as a rule,
sufficed to hold all their property. The greater portion of the
fugitives had passed out of the city at two o'clock in the afternoon,
and shortly afterwards Murat with his cavalry passed across the river by
a ford and entered the town. A few desperate men left behind opened
fire, but were speedily overpowered and killed, but a number of
citizens, mad with fury, rushed so furiously upon Murat and his staff,
that he was obliged to open fire upon them with a couple of light guns.