B009YBU18W EBOK (67 page)

Much of this carnivalesque frippery was quite useless, and those who survived best were often those who were most sensibly dressed. ‘I had no fur over my uniform, only a blue wool cloak with a very worn collar,’ wrote Planat de la Faye. ‘My boots, which I did not take off after Smolensk, had holes in their soles; and to protect my ears I had tied around my head a cambric kerchief, which had become as black as the shako which I kept over it. It is in this attire that I made the whole retreat, and yet I did not suffer any frostbite.’
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It goes without saying that these clothes were in most cases in shreds and covered in dirt, as were the men, although some made heroic efforts to shave and keep clean. Their faces were filthy, blackened with smoke and smeared with the blood of the animals they ate, with long beards covered in hoar frost which hid the remains of food and saliva. ‘The most ragged beggars inspire pity, but we could have inspired only horror,’ wrote Colonel Boulart.
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They were also crawling with lice. ‘As long as we were out in the cold and walking,’ wrote Carl von Suckow, ‘nothing stirred, but in
the evening, when we huddled round the campfires life would return to these insects, which would then inflict intolerable tortures on us.’ Colonel Griois also remembered the unpleasant duty that had to be got through every evening. ‘While our tasteless pottage was on the fire, we would take advantage of this first moment of rest to hunt down the vermin with which we were covered,’ he wrote. ‘This kind of affliction, which one has to have experienced in order to have an idea of it, had become a veritable torture which was made all the more powerful by the disgust which it inspired. In spite of all the precautions of cleanliness available on campaign, it is almost impossible, when one has to remain for several days and often entire weeks on end without leaving one’s clothes, to preserve oneself entirely from these inconvenient guests. So from our very entry into Russia few of us had escaped this disagreeable inconvenience. But from the beginning of the retreat it had become a calamity; and how could it have been otherwise as we were obliged, in order to escape the deathly cold of the nights, not only not to take off any of our clothes, but also to cover ourselves with any rag that chance laid within our reach, since we took advantage of any free space by a bivouac which had been vacated by another, or in the miserable hovels in which we were able to find shelter? These vermin had therefore multiplied in the most fearful manner. Shirts, waistcoats, coats, everything was infested with them. Horrible itching would keep us awake half of the night and drive us mad. It had become so intolerable that as a result of scratching myself I had torn the skin of a part of my back, and the burning pain of this horrible and disgusting wound seemed soothing by comparison. All my comrades were in the same condition, and we showed no shame in our dirty searches and could perform them in front of each other without blushing.’
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Such delicacy marks him out – it should not be forgotten that the overwhelming majority of the men marching down that road had been plucked from the most primitive backgrounds. Whatever feelings of shame they might have entertained vanished as quickly under the strain as their strength of character.

Some became helpless sheep, swept along in the general flow, incapable of helping themselves. In the evenings they would stand behind those who had made themselves campfires and were sitting around them. ‘Soon they would flag under the weight of fatigue, fall to their knees, then sit and then involuntarily lie down,’ wrote Louis Lejeune. ‘This last movement would be for them the precursor of death; their dull eyes would look up to heaven; a happy grin would convulse their lips; and one might have thought that a divine consolation was attenuating their agony, which was betrayed by an epileptic salivating.’ Hardly had that man died than another would come and sit down on his body, until he too fell into a stupor and died.
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Indifference to the suffering of others became general. Jean-Baptiste Ricome, a twenty-three-year-old sergeant, recalled how at the start of the retreat he felt agonies of pity when he heard dying men calling for their mothers, and how the familiarity of such cries gradually bred indifference. The struggle for survival hardened the kindest hearts, and men trudged on as their comrades slipped and fell on the ice. ‘In the beginning, they would find help,’ wrote Colonel Boulart, ‘but as the same fate threatened everyone and the frequently repeated falls suggested the futility of assisting them, one passed by these hapless men, who lay on their bellies on the ice, making vain efforts to get up, or scratching the ground in front of them as they battled with death, and one did not stop!’
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‘This campaign became all the more frightening as it affected our very nature, giving us vices which had until then been unknown to us,’ wrote Eugène Labaume. On one occasion several hundred men crammed themselves into a large barn for the night, in the course of which the fires they had made set fire to the thatch of the roof and eventually to the whole structure. The rapidity with which the blaze spread made it impossible to save more than a couple of dozen, and the rest perished, saluted only, as Colonel Lejeune observed, by the discharges of the cartridges going off in their loaded muskets. Comrades who had rushed to their aid could only look on in horror. But within a couple of weeks they would simply come up and warm
themselves when this kind of thing happened. Such fires were sometimes started on purpose out of miserable fury by men who could find no shelter, and those who stood around warming themselves would make jokes about the quality of the fire.
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One night Davout’s headquarters found shelter in a large peasant cottage in a deserted village, only to discover that there were three babies still alive lying in the hay in the stable shed, wailing from hunger. Colonel Lejeune told Davout’s butler to give them something to eat, which he did. The babies nevertheless continued to wail, preventing them all from sleeping. Lejeune did fall asleep, and when he awoke it was time to move off. As all was quiet he did not think of the babies, but when he enquired about them of the butler later that day he was told that, being able to stand it no longer, he had taken an axe, broken the ice on the drinking trough and drowned them.
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According to Captain François, ‘Anyone who allowed himself to be affected by the deplorable scenes of which he was a witness condemned himself to death; but the one who closed his heart to every feeling of pity found strength to resist any hardship.’ It certainly took character, as well as fitness, to survive. ‘A small number of us, with exceptionally strong characters, supported by youth and a solid constitution, resisted all the elements conspiring to our destruction and came out of it well,’ wrote Louis Lagneau, a surgeon with the Young Guard. ‘I was thirty-two years old, my health was perfect, I was very used to walking long distances, and as a result I bore everything without any unfortunate results.’
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Another who bore it all remarkably well was Napoleon himself. He did have the benefit of a regular supply of food and wine, not to mention other comforts. An officer would ride ahead to select a place for the Emperor to stop for the night, which, be it a devastated country house or a peasant hovel, would be made amenable. The iron camp bed would be set up, a rug spread on the floor and the
nécéssaire
containing razors, brushes and toiletries brought in. A study would also be improvised, in the same room if no other could be found, with a table covered in green cloth, the Emperor’s travelling library in its
case and the boxes containing maps and writing instruments. A small dinner service would be unpacked so that he could eat off plate.

‘He bore the cold with great courage,’ recalled his valet, Constant, ‘but one could see that he was physically very affected by it.’ Even though he did have the luxury of a change of clothes, and despite the resources of the
nécéssaire
, Napoleon also had lice. And despite the comfort of his camp bed, he suffered from insomnia – no doubt caused by uncertainty as to what lay ahead and a feeling of responsibility for his army. ‘Those poor soldiers make my heart bleed, yet I can do nothing for them,’ he said to Rapp one evening.
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Their faith in him remained unshaken. Many grumbled and cursed him, but while some became insolent and insubordinate with their officers and even with generals, they would fall silent and respectful whenever he appeared. ‘Soldiers lay dying all along the road, but I never heard one complain,’ recalled Caulaincourt. ‘Although this man was, rightly, regarded as the author of all our misfortunes and the unique cause of our disaster,’ wrote Dr René Bourgeois, who held profoundly anti-Napoleonic political views, ‘his presence still elicited enthusiasm, and there was nobody who would not, if the need arose, have covered him with their body and sacrificed their lives for him.’ The degree of their devotion is well illustrated by Sergeant Bourgogne, who watched as an officer accompanied by a couple of grenadiers came up to a bivouac asking for some dry wood for Napoleon. ‘Everyone eagerly proffered the best pieces he had, and even those men who were dying raised their heads to whisper: “Take it for the Emperor!”,’ he recalled. Such devotion was not universal, it is true. On one occasion when Napoleon wanted to stop and warm himself by a fire surrounded by stragglers, Caulaincourt walked over to them but, after exchanging a few words, came back suggesting that perhaps it might not be a good idea to stop there.
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Paymaster Duverger, who not being a combatant felt nothing of the soldier’s devotion to his chief, still agreed that ‘his prestige, that kind of aura that surrounds great men, dazzled us; everyone gathered in confidence and obeyed the slightest indication of his will’. It is
true that Napoleon represented their best chance of getting out of the mess they were in. ‘His presence electrified our downcast hearts and gave us a last burst of energy,’ wrote Captain François. ‘The sight of our overall chief walking along in our midst, sharing our privations, at some moments even brought out the enthusiasm of more victorious times.’ Whatever their nationality, and whatever their political attitude to him, men and officers alike realised that only he could keep the remains of the army together, and that only he was capable of snatching some shreds of victory from the jaws of defeat.
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But there was more to it than that. A German artillery officer who might have been expected to curse the foreign tyrant who had brought him to this as he tramped past Napoleon, standing at the side of the road, expressed feelings which, surprising as they were, were not uncommon. ‘He who sees real greatness abandoned by fortune forgets his own suffering and his own cares, and as a result we filed past under his gaze in gloomy silence, partially reconciled to our harsh fate.’
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Ségur sought a metaphysical explanation of this phenomenon. They should have blamed Napoleon but did not because he belonged to them as much as they to him, he argued. His glory was their common property, and to diminish his reputation by denouncing him and turning away from him would have been to destroy the common fund of glory they had built up over the years and which was their most prized possession. This seems to be borne out by the fact that even when they were taken prisoner, the soldiers of the Grande Armée refused to say a word against Napoleon. According to General Wilson, they ‘could not be induced by any temptation, by any threats, by any privations, to cast reproach on their Emperor as the cause of their misfortunes and sufferings’.
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Spirits rose when, as they approached Borisov, the army of Moscow met up with Oudinot’s 2nd Corps and other units that had been stationed in the rear and had therefore not suffered all the rigours of the retreat. Lieutenant Józef Krasinski, retreating with the bedraggled
remnants of the Polish 5th Corps, burst into tears of joy when he saw Dabrowski’s division near Borisov, properly uniformed and marching behind its band. Reactions on the other side were correspondingly painful.

Grenadier Honoré Beulay, who had only recently marched over from France, was incredulous as he watched the retreating units tramp by. ‘We stood there with our mouths open, wondering whether we were not mistaken, whether these men who hardly resembled human beings were really Frenchmen, soldiers of the Grande Armée!’ he wrote. The appearance of the army of Moscow had an unsettling effect on Oudinot’s and Victor’s corps. ‘It had been hoped that our example would exert a salutary influence,’ noted Oudinot. ‘Alas! it was quite the opposite that prevailed.’
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What was far more unsettling, however, were the terrifying rumours that flew through the army to the effect that Borisov had fallen to the Russians and that they were now cut off.

*
Davout’s ceremonial uniform fell to a couple of officers who happened to be brothers, and they sent it home to their mother, who in turn donated it to the local church, where the gold braid was unpicked and used for a new chasuble.
²

O
n 22 November Napoleon reached Tolochin, where he took up quarters in a disused convent. He had not been there long when he heard, from a rider sent by Dabrowski, that Minsk had fallen to Chichagov six days before. ‘The Emperor, who by that one stroke lost his supplies and all the means he had been counting on since Smolensk in order to rally and reorganise his army, was momentarily struck with consternation,’ according to Caulaincourt.
¹

He had been expecting Chichagov to manoeuvre himself into a position to be able to join up with Kutuzov so they could attack him with overwhelming force, not to move into his rear and attempt to cut him off. As it happens, Chichagov was operating in the dark. He had received only scanty orders from Kutuzov, who had instructed him to move into Napoleon’s rear and to prevent the French from linking up with Schwarzenberg. Wittgenstein was supposed to cross the Berezina further north and link up with him, so that between them they covered a long stretch of the western bank of the river.
²