Part 22

Then exalting himself in order to rouse them, "What!" said he, "and are you not inflamed by this idea? Was there ever so great a military achievement? Henceforth this conquest is the only one that is worthy of us! With what glory shall we be covered, and what will the whole world say when it learns that in three months we have conquered the two great capitals of the North!"

But Davoust, as well as Daru, objected to him "the season, the want of supplies, a sterile desert, and artificial road, that from Twer to St. Petersburg runs for a hundred leagues through morasses, and which three hundred peasants might in a single day render impassable. Why keep proceeding north? Why go to meet, to provoke, and to defy the winter? it was already too near; and what was to become of the six thousand wounded still in Moscow? Were they then to be left to the mercy of Kutusoff? That general would not fail to follow close at our heels. We should have at once to attack and to defend, thus marching to a conquest as though we were in flight."

These officers have declared that they themselves then proposed various plans: a useless trouble with a prince whose genius outstripped all other imaginations, and whom their objections would not have stopped, had he been fully determined to march on St. Petersburg. But that idea was in him only a sally of anger, an inspiration of despair, on finding himself obliged in the face of Europe to give way, to relinquish his conquest and to fall back.

It was more especially a threat to frighten his officers as well as the enemy, and to bring about and to promote a negotiation which Caulaincourt was to open. That officer had made himself agreeable to Alexander; he was the only one of the grandees of Napoleon's court who had acquired any influence over his rival; but for some months past Napoleon had kept him at a distance, because he had not been able to induce him to approve of his expedition.

It was nevertheless to this very man that he was now obliged to have recourse, and to disclose his anxiety. He sent for him; but, when alone with him, he hesitated. Taking him by the arm, he walked to and fro for a long time in great agitation, his pride preventing him from breaking so painful a silence: at length he yielded, but in a threatening manner. Caulaincourt, who had formerly been minister to Russia, was to persuade the enemy to solicit peace of him, as if it were by his condescension that it was to be granted.

After a few words, which were scarcely articulate, he said that "he was about to march to St. Petersburg. He knew that the destruction of that city would give pain to General Caulaincourt. Russia would then rise against the Emperor Alexander; there would at once be a conspiracy against that monarch; he would be assassinated, which would be a most unfortunate circumstance. He esteemed that prince, and should regret him, both for his own sake and that of France. His disposition," he added, "was suited to our interests: no prince could replace him with so much advantage to us. He had thought, therefore, of sending General Caulaincourt to him, to prevent such a catastrophe."

General Caulaincourt, however, more obstinate than disposed to flattery, did not alter his tone. He maintained that "these overtures would be useless; that, unless the Russian territory was entirely evacuated, Alexander would listen to no proposals; that Russia was sensible of all her advantage at this season of the year; nay, more, that this step would be detrimental to himself, inasmuch as it would demonstrate the need which he had of peace, and betray all the embarrassment of our situation."

He added, "that the more particular he was in the selection of his negotiator, the more clearly would he show his anxiety; that, therefore, he (Caulaincourt) would be more likely to fail than any other, especially as he would go with the certainty of failing." The emperor abruptly terminated the conversation by these words: "Well, then, I will send Lauriston."

The latter asserts that he added fresh objections to the preceding, and that, being urged by the emperor, he recommended to him to begin his retreat that very day, by way of Kaluga. Napoleon, irritated at this, sharply replied, "that he liked simple plans, less circuitous routes, high roads, the road by which he had come, yet he would not retrace it but with peace." Then showing to him, as he had done to General Caulaincourt, the letter which he had written to Alexander, he ordered him to go and obtain of Kutusoff a safe conduct to St. Petersburg. The last words of the emperor to Lauriston were, "I want peace, I must have peace, I absolutely will have peace only save my honor."

The general set out, and reached the advanced posts of the Russians on the 5th of October. Hostilities were instantly suspended, and an interview granted, at which Wolkonsky, aid-de-camp to Alexander, and Beningsen were present, without Kutusoff. Wilson asserts that the Russian generals and officers, suspicious of their commander, and accusing him of weakness, had raised a cry of treason, and that the latter had not dared to leave his camp.

As Lauriston's instructions purported that he was to address himself to no one but Kutusoff, he peremptorily rejected any intermediate communication; and seizing, as he said, this occasion for breaking off a negotiation which he disapproved, he retired, in spite of all the solicitations of Wolkonsky, with the intention of returning to Moscow. Had he carried this into effect, no doubt Napoleon, exasperated, would have fallen upon Kutusoff, overthrown him and destroyed his army, as yet very incomplete, and forced him into a peace. In case of less decisive success, he would at least have been able to retire without loss upon his reinforcements.

Unfortunately, Beningsen desired an interview with Murat. Lauriston waited. The chief of the Russian staff, an abler negotiator than soldier, strove to charm this monarch of yesterday by demonstrations of respect; to seduce him by praises; to deceive him with smooth words, breathing nothing but a weariness of war and the hope of peace; and Murat, tired of battles, anxious respecting their result, and, as it is said, regretting his throne, now that he had no hope of a better, suffered himself to be charmed, seduced, and deceived.

It was soon demonstrated that the chief point in which they were all agreed was to deceive Murat and the emperor; and in this they succeeded. These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope, perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these appearances: eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an expansive joy. He therefore summoned all his generals, and triumphantly announced to them a speedy peace. "They had but to wait another fortnight. None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character. On the receipt of his letter St. Petersburg would be illuminated." But the armistice proposed by Kutusoff was so unsatisfactory to him, that he ordered Murat to break it instantly; it nevertheless continued to be observed, the cause of which is not known.

This armistice was a very singular one. If either party wished to break it, three hours' notice was to be sufficient. It was confined to the fronts of the two camps, but did not extend to their flanks: such, at least, was the interpretation put upon it by the Russians. Thus, we could not bring up a convoy, or send out a foraging party, without fighting; so that the war continued everywhere excepting where it could be favorable to us.

As for the emperor, who was not so easily deceived, he had but a few moments of factitious joy. He soon complained "that an annoying warfare of partisans hovered around him; that, notwithstanding all these pacific demonstrations, bodies of Cossacks were prowling on his flanks and in his rear. Had not one hundred and fifty dragoons of his Old Guard been surprised and routed by a number of these barbarians? And this two days after the armistice, on the road to Mojaisk, on his line of operation, that by which the army communicated with its magazines, its reinforcements, and he himself with Europe?"

Our soldiers, and especially our cavalry, were obliged every morning to go to a great distance in quest of provisions for the evening and for the next day; and as the environs of Moscow and Vinkowo became gradually more and more drained, they were daily compelled to extend their excursions. Both men and horses returned worn out with fatigue, that is to say, such of them as returned at all; for we had to fight for every bushel of rye and for every truss of forage. It was a series of incessant surprises and skirmishes, and of continual losses. The peasantry took part in it. They punished with death such of their number as the prospect of gain had allured to our camp with provisions. Others set fire to their own villages to drive our foragers out of them, and to give them up to the Cossacks, whom they had previously summoned, and who kept us there in a state of siege.

Thus the war was everywhere: in our front, on our flanks, and in our rear. Our army was constantly weakening, and the enemy becoming daily more enterprising. This conquest seemed destined to fare like many others, which are won in the mass, and lost piece-meal.

Murat himself at length grew uneasy. In these daily skirmishes he had seen half the remnant of his cavalry melted away. At the advanced posts, the Russian officers, on meeting with ours, either from weariness, vanity, or military frankness carried to indiscretion, exaggerated the disasters which threatened us. Showing us those wild-looking horses, scarcely at all broken in, whose long manes swept the dust of the plain, they said, "Did not this tell us that a numerous cavalry was joining them from all quarters, while ours was gradually perishing? Did not the continual discharges of firearms within their line apprise us that a multitude of recruits were then training under favor of the armistice?"

And, in fact, notwithstanding the long journeys which they had to make, all these recruits joined the army. There was no occasion to defer calling them together, as in other years, till deep snows, obstructing all the roads excepting the high road, rendered their desertion impossible. Not one failed to obey the national appeal; all Russia rose: mothers, it was said, wept for joy on learning that their sons had been selected for soldiers: they hastened to acquaint them with the glorious intelligence, and even accompanied them to see them marked with the sign of the Crusaders, to hear them cry, 'Tis the will of God!

The Russian officers added "that they were particularly astonished at our security on the approach of their frightful winter, which was their natural and most formidable ally, and which they expected every moment: they pitied us and urged us to fly. In a fortnight," said they, "your nails will drop off, and your muskets will fall from your benumbed and half-dead fingers."

The language of some of the Cossack chiefs was also remarkable. They asked our officers "if they had not, in their own country, corn enough, air enough, and graves enough: in short, room enough to live and die? Why, then, did they come so far from home to throw away their lives, and to fatten a foreign soil with their blood?" They added that "this was a robbery of their native land, which while living it is our duty to cultivate, to defend, and to embellish; and to which, after our death, we owe our bodies, which we received from it, which it has fed, and which, in their turn, ought to feed it."

The emperor was not ignorant of these warnings, but he would not suffer his resolution to be shaken by them. The uneasiness which had again seized him betrayed itself in angry orders. It was then that he caused the churches of the Kremlin to be stripped of everything that could serve for a trophy to the Grand Army. These objects, devoted to destruction by the Russians themselves, belonged, he said, to the conquerors, by the double right conferred by victory and by the conflagration.

It required long efforts to remove the gigantic cross from the steeple of Ivan the Great, to the possession of which the Russians attached the salvation of their empire. The emperor determined that it should adorn the dome of the Invalides at Paris. During the work it was remarked that a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed that "it seemed as if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it is well known that he was accessible to every kind of presentiment.

His nights, in particular, became irksome to him. He passed part of them with Count Daru. It was then only that he admitted the danger of his situation. "From Wilna to Moscow, what submission, what point of support, of rest, or of retreat, marked his power? It was a vast, bare, and desert field of battle, in which his diminished army was imperceptible, insulated, and, as it were, lost in the horrors of an immense void. In this country of foreign manners and religion he had not conquered a single individual: he was, in fact, master only of the ground on which he stood. That which he had just quitted and left behind him was no more his than that which he had not reached. Insufficient for these vast deserts, he was lost, as it were, in their immense space."

He then reviewed the different resolutions of which he still had the choice. "People imagined," he said, "that he had nothing to do but march, without considering that it would take a month to refit his army and to evacuate his hospitals; that if he relinquished his wounded, the Cossacks would daily be seen triumphing over his sick and his stragglers. He would appear to fly. All Europe would resound with the report! Europe, which envied him, which was seeking a rival under whom to rally, and would imagine that it had found such a rival in Alexander."

The letter of which Lauriston was the bearer to the Czar had been despatched on the 6th of October, and the answer to it could scarcely arrive before the 20th: still, in spite of so many threatening demonstrations, the pride, the policy, and perhaps the health of Napoleon induced him to pursue the worst of all courses, that of waiting for this answer, and of trusting to time, which was destroying him. Daru, as well as his other officers, was astonished to find in him no longer that prompt decision, variable and rapid as the occurrences which called it forth: they asserted that his genius could no longer accommodate itself to circumstances; and they placed it to the account of his natural persistence, which had led to his elevation, and which seemed destined to cause his downfall.

§ 9. Napoleon determines to leave Moscow.

Napoleon, however, was completely aware of his situation. To him everything seemed lost if he receded in the face of astonished Europe, and everything saved if he could surpass Alexander in determination. He appreciated but too well the means that were left him to shake the constancy of his rival; he knew that the diminishing number of his effective troops, that his situation, the season, in short, everything, would become daily more and more unfavorable to him; but he reckoned upon that magic force which his renown gave him. Hitherto that had lent to him a real and never failing strength: he endeavored, therefore, to keep up, by specious arguments, the confidence of his army, and perhaps, also, the faint hope that was still left to himself.