B009YBU18W EBOK (40 page)

Several Russian officers were struck by the calm that descended on their camp that day, which was a Sunday, and by the almost spiritual manner in which the soldiers readied themselves for the battle. While the grenadiers of the Old Guard were taking heart from Gérard’s picture of the King of Rome, the Russians were seeking solace from a different image. Kutuzov had ordered the miraculous icon of the Virgin of Smolensk, which had followed the army on a gun carriage, to be taken around the Russian positions in procession. The procession, made up of Kutuzov and his staff and a body of monks with candles and incense, would pause at every regiment’s position, in every battery and every redoubt, and prayers would be said and hymns sung. ‘Placing myself next to the icon, I observed the soldiers who passed by piously,’ wrote one artillery officer. ‘O faith! How vital and wondrous is your force! I saw how soldiers, coming up to the picture of the Most Holy Virgin, unbuttoned their uniforms and taking from their crucifix or icon their last coin, handed it over as an offering for candles. I felt, as I looked at them, that we would not give way to the enemy on the field of battle; it seemed as though after praying for a while each of us gained new strength; the live fire in the eyes of all the men showed the conviction that with God’s help we would
vanquish the enemy; each one went away as though inspired and ready for battle, ready to die for his motherland.’
³¹

‘As for us,’ noted General Rapp as he watched from outside Napoleon’s tent while the procession wound its way round the Russian camp, ‘we had neither holy men nor preachers, nor indeed supplies; but we carried the heritage of years of glory; we were going to decide whether it would be the Tatars or us who gave laws to the world; we were at the confines of Asia, further than any European army had ever ventured. Success was not in question: that was why Napoleon watched Kutuzov’s processions with delight. “Good,” he said to me, “they are at their mummeries, they won’t escape me now.”’ He had already decided on an appropriately resonant name for the victory – ‘La Moskowa’, after the name of the river flowing nearby.
³²

‘Night fell,’ continued Rapp. ‘I was on duty, so I slept in Napoleon’s tent. The place in which he sleeps is usually separated by a canvas wall from that in which the duty aide-de-camp sleeps. This prince slept very little. I woke him several times to hand him reports that came in from the outposts, all of which confirmed that the Russians were preparing to receive an attack. At three o’clock in the morning he called for a valet and had some punch brought, which I had the honour of drinking with him.’ They chatted as they drank, and Napoleon mused that if he had been Alexander, he would have chosen Bennigsen rather than Kutuzov, who was a very passive commander. He asked Rapp what he thought of their chances for the coming day, and, when Rapp replied optimistically, went back to studying his papers. ‘Fortune is a fickle courtesan,’ Napoleon suddenly said. ‘I have always said so, and now I am beginning to experience it.’

Rapp did not like the tone of resignation in his master’s voice. ‘Your Majesty will remember that at Smolensk you did me the honour of telling me that the wine had been poured and it must be drunk. That is now the case more than ever; the moment for retreat has passed. The army is well aware of its position: it knows that it will only
find supplies in Moscow, and that there are only thirty more leagues to go.’

‘Poor army, it is much reduced,’ interjected Napoleon, ‘but what is left is good; and my Guard is intact.’
³³

N
apoleon was in the saddle by three o’clock in the morning, and rode over to the Shevardino redoubt. The troops were already moving up to their positions, cheering as they passed their Emperor. ‘It’s the enthusiasm of Austerlitz!’ Napoleon observed to Rapp. By half past five, all the units were in their designated positions, drawn up as if on parade. ‘Never has there been a finer force than the French army on that day,’ recalled Colonel Seruzier of the artillery of Montbrun’s Cavalry Corps, ‘and, despite all the privations it had suffered since Vilna, its turnout on that day was as smart as it ever was in Paris when it paraded for the Emperor at the Tuileries.’
¹
The commanding officers of every unit then read out a proclamation penned by Napoleon the night before:

Soldiers! This is the battle that you have looked forward to so much! Now victory depends on you: we need it. It will give us abundance, good winter quarters and a prompt return to our motherland! Conduct yourselves as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Vitebsk, at Smolensk, and may the most distant generations cite your conduct on this day with pride; let it be said of you: ‘He was at that great battle under the walls of Moscow!
’
²

‘This short and bold proclamation galvanised the army,’ according to Auguste Thirion. ‘In a few words it touched on all its concerns, all its passions, all its needs, it said it all.’ By alluding to the legendary battle it also reminded them who was in now command of the Russian army – the man they knew as ‘
le fuyard d’Austerlitz
’, the runner of Austerlitz. Napoleon never missed an opportunity to allude to his most famous victory, and when the sun broke through the morning mist, as it had on that glorious day, he turned to those around him and exclaimed: ‘
Voila le soleil d’Austerlitz!’
³

He had taken up position on the rise at the back of the Shevardino redoubt, from where he could see the entire battlefield. The Imperial Guard was drawn up alongside and behind him. He was brought a folding camp chair, which he turned back to front and sat astride, leaning his arms on its back. Behind him stood Berthier and Bessières, and behind them a swarm of aides-de-camp and duty officers. Before him he could see a formidable sight.

The reeds and bushes along the Kolocha were alive with Russian
jaegers
. Behind them, on the rising ground, were the Russian infantry and cavalry drawn up in massed ranks in front of the redoubts, on the parapets of which gleamed brightly polished bronze cannon. Behind the redoubts could be seen more massed bodies of men. Kutuzov had put all his cards on the table, probably in order to provoke Napoleon into concentrating on a frontal assault.

He had set up his command post in front of the village of Gorki. A cossack brought him his folding chair, and Kutuzov sat down on it heavily, dressed in his usual frock-coat and flat round white cap. He could not see the battlefield from where he was, but his mere presence was enough. ‘It was as though some kind of power emanated from the venerable commander, inspiring all those around him,’ in the words of Lieutenant Nikolai Mitarevsky. The fifteen-year-old Lieutenant Dushenkevich had been thrilled when the commander had driven past the bivouac of his Simbirsk Infantry regiment. ‘Boys, today it will fall on you to defend your native land; you must serve faithfully and truly to the last drop of blood,’ he
had exhorted them. ‘I am counting on you. God will help us! Say your prayers!’
⁴

At six o’clock, the French guns opened up, the Russians answered, and as nearly a thousand cannon spewed out their charges, to those present, even those who had been in battle before, it seemed as though all hell had been let loose. The sound brought a sense of relief to many. ‘There was great joy throughout the army when we heard the sound of the cannon,’ according to Sergeant Bourgogne of the Vélites of the Guard.
⁵
He was lucky, as the Guard were out of range, and from where he stood he had a fine view of the bombardment. The battlefield was so compact that it was possible for most of the men to observe the action. The French guns pounded the Russian positions, particularly the earthworks, throwing up clouds of dust which mixed with the smoke from the defending guns to create the impression of a vast swirling sea. The Raevsky redoubt, whose eighteen guns were firing as fast as they could, looked like an erupting volcano to some of the spectators, and poetic comparisons were made with Vesuvius.

There was nothing poetic about the bombardment to those who had to endure it. Most of the troops, Russian and French, were positioned within range of the enemy’s guns, and they found themselves under fire as they waited to go into battle. There were three types of projectile raining down on them: ball, shell and canister. Ball shot was a solid iron ball weighing anything between three and twenty pounds. Shells consisted of a thick steel casing filled with explosive which was detonated by a fuse. The shell might explode after it had landed among the enemy ranks, or above their heads, in both cases scattering jagged fragments of the casing in all directions. Canister, also known as grape or case shot, was like a giant shotgun cartridge, which shot out of the cannon’s mouth in a hail of iron balls a couple of centimetres in diameter.

The old soldiers stood impassively as they watched the cannonballs fly through the air or bounce along the ground towards them. To lift their spirits, the Russians laughed at the militiamen, who tried to
dodge the projectiles – old soldiers’ wisdom had it that there was no point, as each one had somebody’s name on it anyway. Veterans also had to remind recruits not to put out their foot to try to stop what seemed to be spent cannonballs as they rolled by, for the harmless-looking objects could still tear off a leg. The tension and the fear could be terrible as they watched men standing next to them cut in two. When the order was given to move off, the sense of relief was such that many soldiers experienced an urgent need to defecate, producing a comic rush to squat beside the columns as they lumbered forward.
⁶

The Delzons division from Prince Eugène’s corps, made up of French and Croat infantry, opened the action by sweeping away the advanced Life Guard
jaegers
, who lost half of their men in the short action, and occupying the village of Borodino. Two more of Eugène’s divisions crossed the Kolocha, pushing back the Russian infantry with shouts of ‘
Viva Italia!
’ coming from the Tuscans and the Piedmontese as well as ‘
Vive l’Empereur!
’, but they got so carried away that they were caught in a counterattack and thrown back across the river. They then began to prepare a fresh attack.

Meanwhile, Davout had launched two divisions on the southernmost of Bagration’s
flèches
, which had been subjected to half an hour’s softening up by artillery bombardment. General Compans was wounded as he led his division towards the earthwork, but his men nevertheless occupied it and General Desaix led his division up in support. Further south, Poniatowski pushed back Tuchkov’s division and occupied the village of Utitsa.

A Russian counterattack soon expelled the French from the southern
flèche
. But a second French assault was mounted, with General Rapp now leading the Compans division, supported by Desaix and Junot, while General Ledru’s division from Ney’s corps attacked the next one along. Both earthworks were taken after fierce hand-to-hand fighting, in which both Rapp and Desaix fell, and in which Prince M.S. Vorontsov, commanding the Grenadier division which held them, was himself wounded. ‘Resistance could not be long,’ he explained, ‘but it only came to an end, so to speak, with the existence
of my division.’
⁷
By eight o’clock he and his division were out of action, having lost 3700 of its four thousand men and all but three of its officers in the space of two hours.

The
flèches
were in fact traps for the victors. They were no more than V-shaped earthworks, open at the back, so once the French had taken them, they found themselves having to face the next line of Russians while stuck in a funnel with a wall at their backs. And it was only after they had taken the second
flèche
that they realised there was a third. While the Russian guns poured a murderous fire into the confused ranks of the French, General Neverovsky mounted a counterattack that expelled them from the earthworks once again. Undeterred, the French rallied for a new assault.

Over the next three hours, these earthworks were to be stormed, captured and retaken no fewer than seven times as both sides poured
reinforcements into the fray. At seven o’clock Kutuzov had three Guards regiments, three cuirassier regiments, eight battalions of grenadiers and thirty-six guns moved from his reserves to support Bagration. An hour later he sent another hundred guns and, shortly afterwards, a brigade of infantry. At nine o’clock he sent in General Miloradovich with the 4th Infantry and 2nd Cavalry corps. Thus the 18,000 men originally dedicated to the defence of this sector rose to over 30,000, supported by three hundred guns. On the French side, Davout’s corps was joined by Ney’s, Junot’s and part of Murat’s, bringing some 40,000 men and over two hundred guns to bear. The fighting was so intense that the infantry had no time to reload their muskets, which had by now become fouled with powder anyway, and the bayonet became their principal weapon. But the air was thick with canister shot flying in both directions. ‘I had never seen such carnage before,’ noted Rapp.
⁸