B009YBU18W EBOK (72 page)

Sheer determination was a strong driving force. Captain François, who was wounded in the leg at Borodino, walked all the way with the help of a crutch, while Captain Brechtel got home on a wooden leg. Louis Lejeune came across a gunner who had just been wounded in the arm, and, spotting two medical orderlies, asked them to see to the wound. They declared that they would need to amputate, but as they had no table to operate on, asked Lejeune to hold the gunner. ‘The orderlies opened their bag; the gunner proffered not a word or a sigh; I could only hear the quiet sound of the saw and, a few minutes later, the orderlies telling me: “It’s done! We regret that we don’t have any wine to give him to brace him.” I still possessed a half-flask of Malaga, which I was making last by leaving long intervals between taking a drop. I handed it to the amputee, who was pale and silent. His eyes came to life instantly, and, downing it in one, he returned the flask completely empty. “I’ve still got a long walk to Carcassonne,” he said, before setting off at a pace that I would have found it hard to keep up with.’
¹⁵

Another powerful motive was the shared sense of solidarity within a unit, and men from the same regiment often saved each other from the brink. ‘In the midst of these horrible calamities, it was the destruction of my regiment which was causing me the keenest pain,’ wrote
Colonel de Fezensac of the 4th Infantry of the Line. ‘That was my real, or rather my only, suffering, as I do not consider hunger, cold and fatigue to be such. As long as health holds out against physical hardships, courage soon learns to scorn them, particularly when it is supported by the idea of God and the promise of another life; but I admit that courage would leave me when I saw succumbing under my very eyes friends and companions in arms, who are, rightly, termed the colonel’s family … Nothing binds people together like a community of suffering, and indeed I always found in them the same attachment and the same concern as they inspired in me. Never did an officer or a soldier have a piece of bread without coming to share it with me.’ According to him, this was so throughout the 3rd Corps, the remains of which were still marching in orderly fashion to the sound of the drum. There were plenty of instances of commanders remaining with their men: both Prince Wilhelm of Baden and Prince Emil of Hesse were exemplary in this respect.
¹⁶

Artillerymen struggled to conserve their guns, which meant making excruciating efforts at every dip or rise in the road; they only spiked them when the last horses gave up the ghost. ‘It would be difficult to express my heartbreak when I found myself obliged to abandon my last piece,’ wrote Lieutenant Lyautey.
¹⁷

The anonymous soldiers of the train continued to haul the heavy gold-laden wagons of the
Trésor
, and even those bearing that part of Napoleon’s Moscow booty which had made it through Krasny and the Berezina crossing. The man in charge of the convoy, Baron Guillaume Peyrusse, a busybody who saw the whole campaign as an irrelevance next to the punctilious execution of his duty, had a way of seizing the worst moments to lobby various influential people with requests that they put in a word with the Emperor in the matter of his promotion to a higher post. He was certainly the right man for the job, and he managed to get the whole convoy, which included a couple of dozen
fourgons
loaded with gold coins as well as Napoleon’s jewels, as far as Vilna without loss.

A more noble object of devotion to duty was Colonel Kobylinski,
one of Davout’s aides-de-camp, who had his leg shattered by a shell while he was reconnoitring the field on the day following Maloyaro-slavets. Fearing that the Colonel would perish in the crowd of wounded trundling along behind the army, Davout entrusted him to a company of grenadiers, with strict orders not to abandon him under any circumstances. The grenadiers took their mission seriously, and carried him all the way. ‘The Colonel lay on a stretcher constructed like a bier, wrapped in blankets, borne by six soldiers who took it in turns to carry him,’ wrote another Polish officer. ‘I often encountered this caravan on the march, and marvelled at their heroic devotion, particularly as its object was not a Frenchman, but one of our countrymen.’ At one stage, the Colonel begged them to leave him and save themselves, but they would not disobey their orders. The last remaining man of the company dragged the stretcher into Davout’s headquarters at Vilna.
¹⁸

Scrupulous observance of discipline, often self-imposed, helped some people through, but few managed to set as high a standard as General Narbonne. ‘Monsieur de Narbonne was fifty-six years old and had been used to enjoy all the luxuries of life, yet his courage and gaiety in the midst of our disasters were remarkable,’ wrote Boniface de Castellane. ‘He wore his hair in the old courtly fashion, and always had it powdered in the mornings at the bivouac, often seated on a log, in the nastiest weather, as though he had been in the most agreeable
boudoir
.’
¹⁹

For some, keeping a diary seems to have been a way of reaffirming their humanity as well as performing an act of self-discipline. This is evident from the entry in the journal of Maurice de Tascher, an officer of Chasseurs and a cousin of Empress Josephine, for 4 December, his thirty-sixth birthday, a day on which he might well have fallen below the threshold: ‘– Bitter cold. silent march. Thoughts to cherish. Anniversary of my birth. – Greetings from my mother … tears … agony … Memories of her. Covered six leagues; stopped in a village, quarter of a league in advance of the general staff. Fever and diarrhoea.’
²⁰

Sergeant Bourgogne noted that women bore the hardships with greater fortitude than men. Dr Larrey made the observation that hot-blooded southern Europeans coped better than the Germans and the Dutch, which was also remarked upon by others. But that did not Prevent General Zajaczek’s black servant, acquired during the Egyptian campaign, from freezing to death. Albert de Muralt, a Bavarian cavalryman, maintained that officers survived better than soldiers, as they had greater moral resistance and were better educated.
²¹

But rank had little to do with perhaps the most vital element in keeping people above the threshold. Devotion to another could be a life-saver. Louis Lejeune encountered a wounded artillery officer waiting by the roadside for his servant to catch up. Two hours later, when he was returning from his errand, he saw the man in the same place and tried to persuade him to go and get some nourishment, which was available nearby, warning him that he was running the risk of freezing, but the man refused, saying: ‘I agree with you, but my servant, Georges, and I shared the same wetnurse. From the moment I joined the army and particularly since I was wounded he has shown his devotion to me a hundred times. My own mother would not have been more attentive. He was unwell, and I promised I would wait for him, and I prefer to die here than to fail in my promise.’
²²

It was not just the officers who gave such proofs of loyalty. One officer of Chasseurs whose feet had been incapacitated by frostbite was dragged all the way to Vilna by a boy bugler of the regiment who had harnessed himself to a little sleigh they had found, and similar examples abound. Corporal Jean Bald of the Bavarian Chevau-Légers gave up his horse to a senior officer who had lost his in battle. ‘It is far better to save an officer for the King than a simple corporal, who in any case will probably get out on his two strong legs,’ he said.
²³

Captain Baron von Widemann had managed to get across the Vop with nothing more than what he stood in, but as he huddled by the fire trying to dry his clothes that night, his servant waded back across the river, found his carriage, packed a number of essentials into a
portmanteau and brought them back to his master. Paul de Bour- going’s servant, a young Parisian boy, tramped along bravely, carrying on his back as many of his master’s possessions as he could, and would be there every evening to attend him as he settled down for the night. One night he failed to show up, and Bourgoing waited on the road for several hours, calling out his name in vain, before lying down to sleep. He woke in the middle of the night to find the boy adjusting the fur rug which had slipped off his feet as he slept. The following evening he did not turn up at all, and was never seen again.
²⁴

A drummer of the 7th of the Line, married to the company cantinière, who had fallen ill, led the horse and cart in which she lay and, when the horse died, dragged the cart himself. When he could go no further, he lay down to die beside her. A
cantinière
in the 33rd of the Line who had given birth to a daughter on the outward march died as she struggled to wade across the Berezina, but with her last strength managed to throw the baby girl onto the bank, where she was picked up and cared for by a stranger, who brought her out of Russia. A fifteen-year-old boy whose parents had died walked along manfully, carrying his three-year-old sister and leading by the hand his eight-year-old brother.
²⁵

Sergeant Bourgogne met another sergeant of his regiment carrying the regimental dog, Mouton, on his back, since the unfortunate creature had had all four legs frozen and could not walk. Mouton was a poodle they had picked up in Spain in 1808, and had followed the regiment to Germany the following year, been in battle at Essling and Wagram, then accompanied it back to Spain in 1810. It had set off with the regiment for Russia in the spring of 1812, but got lost in Saxony. It had subsequently recognised an echelon of the regiment by the uniform, and followed it all the way to Moscow. Such devotion was not uncommon: General Wilson noted as he followed the last phase of the retreat that ‘innumerable dogs crouched on the bodies of their former masters, looking in their faces, and howling their hunger and their loss’.
²⁶

Marie-Théodore de Rumigny pampered his favourite horse,
Charles, helping him up if he stumbled and fell, always finding him something to eat and watering him properly – even when this meant stopping, lighting a fire and melting snow in a tin – and as a result he got himself and Charles out of Russia and back to France. The Polish Chevau-Légers made a point of going off in search of fodder for their horses every evening on little local
cognats
they had acquired for the purpose. They even managed to steal a couple of haycarts from some Russian cavalry who were too busy cooking dinner to notice.
²⁷

Sergeant Bourgogne tells of his friend Melet, a dragoon of the Guard. Melet was devoted to his horse, Cadet, with which he had been through several campaigns, in Spain, Austria and Prussia, and was determined to get it back to France with him. He always went in search of food for Cadet before thinking of himself, and when it became impossible to find any forage at all along the line of retreat of the Grande Armée he went in search of it among the Russians, donning the coat and helmet of a Russian dragoon he had killed in order to get past their pickets. Once inside the enemy’s encampment he would help himself to enough hay and oats for a few days and then make his escape. Sometimes he was discovered, but he always got away, and he did return to France with Cadet. A Bavarian Chevau-Léger whose darling mare Lisette fell through the ice of a bog outside Krasny and could not get out simply lay down to die beside her.
²⁸

Napoleon had originally intended to defeat Chichagov after crossing the Berezina and to make for Minsk, but by the evening of 28 November he realised that his army had given its last in the fighting of the past two days. His only hope now lay in a dash for Vilna. The threat of marauding cossacks had halted regular means of communication, and he had not received an
estafette
for nearly three weeks – a terrible deprivation, as he hated not having news of what was going on in Paris and the outside world. But he was in touch with Maret at Vilna through a number of Polish noblemen who travelled back and forth disguised as peasants, dodging parties of cossacks.

‘The army is numerous, but in a state of terrible dissolution,’ he
wrote to Maret on 29 November. ‘It will take two weeks to bring them back to their colours, but where can we find two weeks? The cold and hunger have dissolved the army. We will soon be in Vilna, but can we make a stand there? Yes, if only we can survive the first eight days, but if we are attacked during that first week, it is doubtful whether we will be able to hold on there. Victuals, victuals, victuals! Without that there is no horror that this undisciplined mob will not visit upon the city. It may be that this army will only be able to rally itself behind the Niemen. In that case, it is possible that I may believe my presence to be necessary in Paris, for the sake of France, the Empire, and the army itself.’ He instructed Maret to send away all the foreign diplomats so that they should not see the condition of his army, badgered him for news from Paris, demanding to know why no
estafette
had reached him for eighteen days, and begged for news of the Empress. In his next missive to Maret, written the following day, he returned to the subject of food, telling him to bake bread in large quantities and to send convoys of victuals out to meet the army. ‘If you cannot provide 100,000 rations of bread at Vilna, I pity that city.’
²⁹

But it was the wider political situation that was now uppermost in his mind. He knew that his control over Germany, not to mention other parts of the Continent, would be dangerously impaired if news of the disaster that had befallen him became known. Rumours were already circulating all over Europe, fed by sanguine reports of his defeat coming out of St Petersburg. But if he could rally his forces in Vilna he would still be able to claim some measure of military success, and conceal from the view of Europe the emaciated remnants of his army – which were the most damning evidence of the scale of the catastrophe.