Part 50 (1/2)
CHAP. X.
In this sudden manner did our left wing fall. On our right wing, on the side of the Austrians, whom a well-cemented alliance retained, a phlegmatic people, governed despotically by an united aristocracy, there was no sudden explosion to be apprehended. This wing detached itself from us insensibly, and with the formalities required by its political position.
On the 10th of December, Schwartzenberg was at Slonim, presenting successively vanguards towards Minsk, Nowogrodeck, and Bienitza. He was still persuaded that the Russians were beaten and fleeing before Napoleon, when he was informed at the same moment of the Emperor's departure, and of the destruction of the grand army, but in so vague a manner that he was for some time without any direction.
In his embarra.s.sment he addressed himself to the French amba.s.sador at Warsaw. The answer of that minister authorized him ”not to sacrifice another man.” In consequence, he retreated on the 14th of December from Slonim towards Bialystok. The instructions which reached him from Murat in the middle of this movement were conformable to it.
About the 21st of December, an order from Alexander suspended hostilities on that point, and as the interest of the Russians agreed with that of the Austrians, there was very soon a mutual understanding.
A moveable armistice, which was approved by Murat, was immediately concluded. The Russian general and Schwartzenberg were to manoeuvre on each other, the Russian on the offensive, and the Austrian on the defensive, but without coming to blows.
Regnier's corps, now reduced to ten thousand men, was not included in the arrangement; but Schwartzenberg, while he yielded to circ.u.mstances, persevered in his loyalty. He regularly gave an account of every thing to the commander of the army; he covered the whole front of the French line with his Austrian troops, and preserved it. This prince was not at all complaisant towards the enemy; he believed him not upon his bare word; at every position he was about to yield, he would actually satisfy himself with his own eyes, that he only yielded it to a superior force, ready to combat him. In this manner he arrived upon the Bug and the Narew, from Nur to Ostrolenka, where the war terminated.
He was in this manner covering Warsaw, when, on the 22d of January, he received instructions from his government to abandon the Grand-duchy, to separate his retreat from that of Regnier, and to re-enter Gallicia. To these instructions he only yielded a tardy obedience; he resisted the pressing solicitations and threatening manoeuvres of Miloradowitch until the 25th of January; even then, he effected his retreat upon Warsaw so slowly, that the hospitals and a great part of the magazines were enabled to be evacuated. Finally, he obtained a more favourable capitulation for the Warsavians than they could venture to expect. He did more; although that city was to have been delivered up on the 5th, he only yielded it on the 8th, and thus gave Regnier the start of three days upon the Russians.
Regnier was afterwards, it is true, overtaken and surprised at Kalisch, but that was in consequence of halting too long to protect the flight of some Polish depots. In the first disorder occasioned by this unexpected attack, a Saxon brigade was separated from the French corps, retreated on Schwartzenberg, and was well received by him; Austria allowed it to pa.s.s through her territory, and restored it to the grand army, when it was a.s.sembled near Dresden.
On the 1st of January, 1813, however, at Konigsberg, where Murat then was, the desertion of the Prussians and the intrigues forming by Austria were not known, when suddenly Macdonald's despatch, and an insurrection of the people of Konigsberg, gave information of the beginning of a defection, of which it was impossible to foresee the consequences. The consternation was excessive. The seditious movement was at first only kept down by representations, which Ney very soon changed into threats.
Murat hastened his departure for Elbing. Konigsberg was enc.u.mbered with ten thousand sick and wounded, most of whom were abandoned to the generosity of their enemies. Some of them had no reason to complain of it; but prisoners who escaped declared that many of their unfortunate companions were ma.s.sacred and thrown out of the windows into the streets; that an hospital which contained several hundred sick was set fire to; and they accused the inhabitants of committing these horrid deeds.
On another side, at Wilna, more than sixteen thousand of our prisoners had already perished. The convent of St. Basil contained the greatest number; from the 10th to the 23d of December they had only received some biscuits; but not a piece of wood nor a drop of water had been given them. The snow collected in the courts, which were covered with dead bodies, quenched the burning thirst of the survivors. They threw out of the windows such of the dead bodies as could not be kept in the pa.s.sages, on the staircases, or among the heaps of corses which were collected in all the apartments. The additional prisoners that were every moment discovering were thrown into this horrible place.
The arrival of the Emperor Alexander and his brother was the only thing that put a stop to these abominations. They had lasted for thirteen days, and if a few escaped out of the twenty thousand of our unfortunate comrades who were made prisoners, it was to these two princes they owed their preservation. But a most violent epidemic had already arisen from the poisonous exhalations of so many corses; it pa.s.sed from the vanquished to the victors, and fully avenged us. The Russians, however, were living in plenty; our magazines at Smorgoni and Wilna had not been destroyed, and they must have found besides immense quant.i.ties of provisions in the pursuit of our routed army.
But Wittgenstein, who had been detached to attack Macdonald, descended the Niemen; Tchitchakof and Platof had pursued Murat towards Kowno, Wilkowiski, and Insterburg; shortly after, the admiral was sent towards Thorn. Finally, on the 9th of January, Alexander and Kutusoff arrived on the Niemen at Merecz. There, as he was about to cross his own frontier, the Russian emperor addressed a proclamation to his troops, completely filled with images, comparisons, and eulogiums, which the winter had much better deserved than his army.
CHAP. XI.
It was not until the 22d of January, and the following days, that the Russians reached the Vistula. During this tardy march, from the 3d to the 11th of January, Murat had remained at Elbing. In this situation of extremity, that monarch was wavering from one plan to another, at the mercy of the elements which were fermenting around him; sometimes they raised his hopes to the highest pitch, at others they sunk him into an abyss of disquietude.
He had taken flight from Konigsberg in a complete state of discouragement, when the suspension in the march of the Russians, and the junction of Macdonald with Heudelet and Cavaignac, which doubled his forces, suddenly inflamed him with vain hopes. He, who had the day before believed that all was lost, wished to resume the offensive, and began immediately; for he was one of those dispositions who are making fresh resolutions every instant. On that day he determined to push forward, and the next to flee as far as Posen.
This last determination, however, was not taken without reason. The rallying of the army on the Vistula had been completely illusory; the old guard had not altogether more than five hundred effective men; the young guard scarcely any; the first corps, eighteen hundred; the second, one thousand; the third, sixteen hundred; the fourth, seventeen hundred; added to which, most of these soldiers, the remains of six hundred thousand men, could scarcely handle their arms.
In this state of impotence, with the two wings of the army already detached from us, Austria and Prussia failing us together, Poland became a snare which might close around us. On the other hand, Napoleon, who never consented to any cession, was anxious that Dantzic should be defended; it became necessary, therefore, to throw into it all that could keep the field.
Besides, if the truth must be told, when Murat, when at Elbing, talked of reconst.i.tuting the army, and was even dreaming of victories, he found that most of the commanders were themselves worn out and disgusted.
Misfortune, which leads to fear every thing, and to believe readily all that one fears, had penetrated into their hearts. Several of them were already uneasy about their rank and their grades, about the estates which they had acquired in the conquered countries, and the greater part only sighed to recross the Rhine.
As to the recruits who arrived, they were a mixture of men from several of the German nations. In order to join us they had pa.s.sed through the Prussian states, from whence arose the exhalation of so much hatred. As they approached, they encountered our discouragement and our long train of disorder; when they entered into line, far from being put into companies with, and supported by old soldiers, they found themselves left alone, to fight with every kind of scourge, to support a cause which was abandoned by those who were most interested in its success; the consequence was, that at the very first bivouac, most of these Germans disbanded themselves. At sight of the disasters of the army returning from Moscow, the tried soldiers of Macdonald were themselves shaken. Notwithstanding this corps d'armee, and the completely fresh division of Heudelet preserved their unity. All these remains were speedily collected into Dantzic; thirty-five thousand soldiers from seventeen different nations, were shut up in it. The remainder, in small numbers, did not begin rallying until they got to Posen and upon the Oder.
Hitherto it was hardly possible for the King of Naples to regulate our flight any better; but at the moment he pa.s.sed through Marienwerder on his way to Posen, a letter from Naples again unsettled all his resolutions. The impression which it made upon him was so violent, that by degrees as he read it, the bile mixed itself with his blood so rapidly, that he was found a few minutes after with a complete jaundice.
It appeared that an act of government which the queen had taken upon herself had wounded him in one of his strongest pa.s.sions. He was not at all jealous of that princess, notwithstanding her charms, but furiously so of his royal authority; and it was particularly of the queen, as sister of the Emperor, that he was suspicious.