Part 16 (1/2)
At the pa.s.sage of the bridge over the Kolowdnia, which had been badly repaired, General Gudin, whose well-regulated valour loved to confront none but useful dangers, and who besides was not a bold rider, had alighted from his horse to cross the stream, when, at that moment, a cannon-ball skimming the surface of the ground, broke both his legs.
When the tidings of this misfortune reached the emperor, they put a stop to every thing--to discussion and action. Every one was thunderstruck; the victory of Valoutina seemed no longer to be a success.
Gudin was conveyed to Smolensk, and there received the unavailing attentions of the emperor; but he soon expired. His remains were interred in the citadel of the city, which they honour: a worthy tomb for a soldier, who was a good citizen, a good husband, a good father, an intrepid general, just and mild, a man both of principle and talent; a rare a.s.semblage of qualities in an age when virtuous men are too frequently devoid of abilities, and men of abilities without virtue. It was a fortunate chance that he was worthily replaced; Gerard, the oldest general of brigade of the division, took the command of it, and the enemy, who knew nothing of our loss, gained nothing by the dreadful blow he had dealt us.
The Russians, astonished at having been attacked only in front, conceived that all the military combinations of Murat were confined to following them on the high-road. They therefore styled him in derision, ”_the general of the high roads_,” characterizing him thus from the event, which tends more commonly to deceive than to enlighten.
In fact, while Ney was attacking, Murat scoured his flanks with his cavalry, without being able to bring it into action; woods on the left, and mora.s.ses on the right, obstructed his movements. But while they were fighting in front, both were antic.i.p.ating the effect of a flanking march of the Westphalians, commanded by Junot.
From the Stubna, the high-road, in order to avoid the marshes formed by the various tributary streams of the Dnieper, turned off to the left, ascended the heights, and went farther from the basin of the river, to which it afterwards returned in a more favourable situation. It had been remarked that a by-road, bolder and shorter, as they all are, ran straight across these low marshy grounds, between the Dnieper and the high-road, which it rejoined behind the plateau of Valoutina.
It was this cross-road which Junot pursued after crossing the river at Prudiszy. It soon led him into the rear of the left of the Russians, upon the flank of the columns which were returning to the a.s.sistance of their rear-guard. His attack was all that was wanted to render the victory decisive. Those who were engaged in front with Marshal Ney would have been daunted at hearing an attack in their rear; while the uncertainty and disorder into which, in the midst of an action, it would have thrown the mult.i.tude of men, horses, and carriages, crowded together in one road, would have been irreparable; but Junot, though personally brave, was irresolute as a general. His responsibility alarmed him.
Meanwhile Murat, judging that he must have come up, was astonished at not hearing his attack. The firmness of the Russians opposed to Ney led him to suspect the truth. He left his cavalry, and crossing the woods and marshes almost alone, he hastened to Junot, and upbraided him with his inaction. Junot alleged in excuse, that ”He had no orders to attack; his Wurtemberg cavalry was shy, its efforts feigned, and it would never be brought to charge the enemy's battalions.”
These words Murat answered by actions. He rushed on at the head of that cavalry, which, with a different leader, were quite different troops; he urged them on, launched them against the Russians, overthrew their tirailleurs, returned to Junot and said to him, ”Now finish the business: your glory and your marshal's staff are still before you!” He then left him to rejoin his own troops, and Junot, confounded, remained motionless. Too long about Napoleon, whose active genius directed every thing, both the plan and the details, he had learned only to obey: he wanted experience in command; besides, fatigue and wounds had made him an old man before his time.
That such a general should have been selected for so important a movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp) and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it flattered his vanity, to see men who were his pupils commanding his armies; and it was moreover natural that he should have a firmer alliance on their attachment, than on that of any others.
When, however, on the following day he inspected the places themselves, and, at the sight of the bridge where Gudin fell, made the remark, that it was not there he ought to have debouched; when afterwards gazing, with an angry look, on the position which Junot had occupied, he exclaimed: ”It was there, no doubt, that the Westphalians should have attacked! all the battle was there! what was Junot about?” his irritation became so violent, that nothing could at first allay it. He called Rapp, and told him to take the command from the Duke of Abrantes:--he would dismiss him from the army! he had lost his marshal's staff without retrieve! this blunder would probably block the road to Moscow against them; that to him, Rapp, he should intrust the Westphalians; that he would speak to them in their own language, and he would know how to make them fight. But Rapp refused the place of his old companion in arms; he appeased the emperor, whose anger always subsided quickly, as soon as it had vented itself in words.
But it was not merely on his left that the enemy had a narrow escape from being conquered; on his right he had run a still greater risk.
Morand, one of Davoust's generals, had been despatched from that side through the forests; he marched along woody heights, and was, from the commencement of the action, on the flank of the Russians. A few paces more, and he would have debouched in the rear of their right. His sudden appearance would have infallibly decided the victory, and rendered it complete; but Napoleon, unacquainted with the localities, ordered him to be recalled to the spot where Davoust and himself had stopped.
In the army, we could not help asking ourselves, why the emperor, in making three officers, independent of one another, combine for the same object, had not made a point of being on the spot, to give their movements the unity indispensable, and without him impossible. He, on the contrary, had returned to Smolensk, either from fatigue, or chiefly from not expecting so serious an affair; or finally, because, from the necessity of attending to every thing at once, he could not be in time, or completely any where. In fact, the business of his empire and of Europe, having been suspended by the preceding days of activity, had acc.u.mulated. It was necessary to clear out his portfolios, and to give circulation to both civil and political affairs, which began to clog; it was, besides, urgent and glorious to date from Smolensk.
When, therefore, Borelli, second in command of Murat's staff, came to inform him of the battle of Valoutina, he hesitated about receiving him; and so deeply was he engaged in the business before him, that a minister had to interfere to procure that officer admittance. The report of this officer agitated Napoleon. ”What say you?” he exclaimed: ”what! you are not enough! the enemy shows 60,000 men! Then it is a battle!” and he began storming at the disobedience and inactivity of Junot. When Borelli informed him of Gudin's mortal wound, Napoleon's grief was violent; he gave vent to it in repeated questions and expressions of regret; then with that strength of mind which was peculiar to him, he subdued his uneasiness, postponed his anger, suspended his chagrin, and giving himself up wholly to his occupation, he deferred until the morrow the charge of battles, for night had come on; but afterwards the hopes of a battle roused him, and he appeared next morning with the day on the fields of Valoutina.
CHAP. VIII.
Ney's troops, and those of Gudin's division, deprived of their general, had drawn up there on the corses of their companions and of the Russians, amidst the stumps of broken trees, on ground trampled by the feet of the combatants, furrowed with b.a.l.l.s, strewed with the fragments of weapons, tattered garments, military utensils, carriages overthrown, and scattered limbs; for such are the trophies of war, such the beauties of a field of victory!
Gudin's battalions appeared to be melted down to platoons; the more they were reduced, the prouder they seemed to be: close to them, one still breathed the smell of burnt cartridges and gunpowder, with which the ground and their apparel were impregnated, and their faces yet quite begrimed. The emperor could not pa.s.s along their front without having to avoid, to step over, or to tread upon carcases, and bayonets twisted by the violence of the shock. But over all these horrors he threw a veil of glory. His grat.i.tude transformed this field of death into a field of triumph, where, for some hours, satisfied honour and ambition held exclusive sway.
He was sensible that it was high time to encourage his soldiers by commendations and rewards. Never, therefore, were his looks more kind; and as to his language, ”this battle was the most glorious achievement in our military history; the soldiers who heard him were men with whom one might conquer the world; the slain, warriors who had died an immortal death.” He spoke thus, well aware that it is more especially amid such destruction that men think of immortality.
He was profuse in his rewards; on the 12th, 21st, 127th of the line, and the 17th light, he conferred eighty-seven decorations and promotions; these were Gudin's regiments. The 127th had, before this, marched without an eagle; for at that time it was necessary for a regiment to earn its colours in a field of battle, to prove, that in the sequel it would know how to preserve them there.
The emperor delivered the eagle to it with his own hands; he also satisfied Ney's corps. His favours were as great in themselves as they were in their form. The value of the gift was enhanced by the manner in which he bestowed it. He was successively surrounded by each regiment as by a family. There he appealed in a loud voice to the officers, subalterns, and privates, inquiring who were the bravest of all those brave men, or the most successful, and recompensing them on the spot.
The officers named, the soldiers confirmed, the emperor approved: thus, as he himself observed, the elections were made instantaneously, in a circle, in his presence, and confirmed with acclamations by the troops.
These paternal manners, which made the private soldier the military comrade of the ruler of Europe; these forms, which revived the still-regretted usages of the republic, delighted the troops. He was a monarch, but the monarch of the Revolution; and they could not but love a fortunate sovereign who led them on to fortune; in him there was every thing to excite, and nothing to reproach them.
Never did field of victory exhibit a spectacle more capable of exalting; the presentation of that eagle so richly merited, the pomp of these promotions, the shouts of joy, the glory of those warriors, recompensed on the very spot where it had just been acquired; their valour proclaimed by a voice, every accent of which rung throughout attentive Europe; by that great captain whose bulletins would carry their names over the whole world, and more especially among their countrymen, and into the bosoms of their families, which they would at once cheer and make proud: how many favours at once! they were absolutely intoxicated with them: he himself seemed at first to allow himself to share their transports.
But when he was out of sight of his troops, the att.i.tude of Ney and Murat, and the words of Poniatowski, who was as frank and judicious in council as he was intrepid in the field, tranquillized him; and when the close heat of the day began to overpower him, and he learned from the reports that his men had proceeded eight leagues without overtaking the enemy, the spell was entirely dissolved. On his return to Smolensk, the jolting of his carriage over the relics of the fight, the stoppages caused on the road by the long file of the wounded who were crawling or being carried back, and in Smolensk itself by the tumbrels of amputated limbs about to be thrown away at a distance; in a word, all that is horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed him.
Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which issued from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised on the fields of Valoutina.