In fact, Lithuania and the other provinces which formed more than a third of the former Poland, having been in Russian hands for almost forty years, had mostly forgotten their ancient const.i.tution and had for a long time thought of themselves as Russian. The n.o.bility sent their sons to join the army of the Czar, to whom they were too much attached by long custom to permit any hope that they would join the French. The same considerations applied to other Poles who in various divisions of their country had found themselves under the rule of Austria or Prussia. They were willing to march against Russia, but it was under the flags and under the command of their new sovereigns. They had neither love nor enthusiasm for the Emperor Napoleon, and feared to see their country devastated by war. The grand duchy of Warsaw, ceded in 1807 to the King of Saxony under the Treaty of Tilsit, was the only province of the ancient Poland which retained a spark of national spirit and was somewhat attached to France, but what was the use of this little state to the Grande Armee of Napoleon?
Napoleon, however, full of confidence in his army and in his own ability, decided to cross the Nieman, and so on the 23rd of June, accompanied by General Haxo and dressed in the uniform of a Polish soldier of his guard, he rode along its bank, and that same evening at ten o"clock, set in motion the crossing of the river by the pontoon bridges, the most important of which had been laid across the river opposite the little Russian town of Kovno, which our troops occupied without encountering any resistance.
Chap. 6.
At sunrise on the 24th we witnessed a most impressive spectacle.
On the highest part of the left bank were the Emperor"s tents.
Around them, on the slopes of the hills and in the valleys, glittered the arms of a great concourse of men and horses. This ma.s.s, consisting of 250,000 soldiers split into three huge columns, streamed in perfect order towards the three bridges which had been thrown across the river, over which the different corps crossed to the right bank in a prearranged manner. On this same day the Nieman was crossed by our troops at other points, near Grodno, Pilony and Tilsit. I have seen a situation report, covered by notes written in Napoleon"s hand, which gives the official strength of the force which crossed the Nieman as 325,000 men, of whom 155,400 were French and 170,000 allies, accompanied by 940 guns.
The regiment which I commanded formed part of 2nd Corps, commanded by Marshal Oudinot, which having crossed the bridge at Kovno headed immediately for Ianovo. The heat was overpowering. This, close to nightfall, led to a tremendous storm, and torrential rain, which drenched the roads and the countryside for more than fifty leagues around. Happily the army did not see this as a bad omen, as the soldiers considered violent thunder-storms were something to be expected in summer. The Russians too, every bit as superst.i.tious as some of the French, had an unpropitious omen, for during the night of 23rd-24th of June the Emperor Alexander escaped with his life when, at a ball in Wilna, the floor of a room collapsed under the chair on which he was sitting, at the very hour when the first French boat, carrying a detachment of Napoleon"s troops, reached the right bank of the Nieman and Russian soil. Be that as it may, the storm had made the air much cooler and the horses in bivouac suffered from this and also from eating wet gra.s.s and lying on muddy ground. So that the army lost several thousand from acute colic.
Beyond Kovnow there runs a little river called the Vilia, the bridge over which had been cut by the Russians. The storm had so swollen this tributary of the Nieman that Oudinot"s scouts were held up. The Emperor arrived at the same moment as I did at the head of my regiment. He ordered the Polish lancers to see if the river was fordable, and in this process, one man was drowned; I took his name, it was Tzcinski. I mention this because the losses suffered by the Polish lancers in the crossing of the Vilia have been grossly exaggerated.
The Russians, however, retreated without waiting for the French army, which shortly occupied Wilna, the capital of Lithuania. It was near here that there took place a cavalry encounter in which Octave de Segur, who had been with me on Ma.s.sena"s staff, was captured by the Russians while leading a squadron of the 8th Hussars which he commanded, he was the elder brother of General the Comte de Segur.
On the same day that the Emperor entered Wilna, Marshal Oudinot"s troops came up against Wittgenstein"s Russians at Wilkomir, where the first serious engagement of the campaign took place. I had not previously served under Oudinot, and this debut confirmed the high opinion I had of his courage, without convincing me of his intelligence.
One of the greatest faults of the French at war, is to go, without reason, from the most meticulous caution to limitless confidence.
Now, since the Russians had allowed us to cross the Nieman, invade Lithuania and occupy Wilna without opposition, it had become the done thing, amongst certain officers to say that the enemy would always retreat and would never stand and fight. Oudinot"s staff and the marshal himself frequently stated this, and treated as fairy tales the information given by the peasants that there was a large body of Russian troops positioned in front of the little town of Wilkomir.
This incredulity nearly resulted in disaster, as you will see.
The light cavalry, being the eyes of the army, while on the march, is always in front and on the flanks. My regiment then was less than a league ahead of the infantry, when, having gone a little way beyond Wilkomir without seeing any sign of the enemy, we were confronted by a forest of huge pine trees, through which the mounted men could move with ease but whose branches obscured the distant view. Fearing an ambush, I sent a single squadron, commanded by a very capable captain, to investigate. In about 15 minutes he came back and reported that he had seen an enemy army. I went to the edge of the forest from where I could see, at about a cannon shot from Wilkomir, behind a stream, a hill on which drawn up in battle order were 25 to 30 thousand Russian infantry, with cavalry and artillery.
You may be surprised that these troops did not have in front of them any outposts, pickets or scouts, but that is how the Russians operate when they are determined to defend a strong position. They allow the enemy to approach without any warning of the resistance they are about to meet, and it is only when the main body of their opponents comes within range that they open a ferocious fire with musketry and cannon, which can shatter the columns of their adversaries. It is a method which has often produced good results for the Russians; so General Wittgenstein had prepared this welcome for us.
The situation seemed to me to be so serious that to keep my regiment out of sight, I ordered them to go back into the forest while I myself hurried to warn Marshal Oudinot of the danger which lay ahead.
I found him in some open country, where having dismounted and halted his troops, he was peacefully eating his lunch in the midst of his staff. I expected that my report would shake him out of this false security, but he treated it with an air of disbelief, and clapping me on the shoulder he called out "Let"s go! Marbot here has discovered thirty thousand men for us to thump." General Lorencez, the marshal"s son-in-law and his chief-of-staff was the only one to take me seriously; he had once been aide-de-camp to Augereau and he had known me for a long time. He came to my defence saying that when the commander of a unit says "I have seen" he should be believed, and that to take no notice of information brought by an officer of the light cavalry was to court disaster. These observations made by his chief-of-staff caused the marshal to think, and he had started to question me about the enemy presence, which he still seemed to doubt, when a staff-captain by the name of Duplessis arrived, all out of breath, and announced that he had searched the whole area and had even been into the forest, and had seen not a single Russian. At this the marshal and his staff began laughing at my fears, which greatly upset me. Nevertheless I kept my mouth shut, certain that before very long the truth would become apparent.
Luncheon being over, the march got under way once more and I returned to my regiment, which formed the advance-guard. I led them through the trees as I had done previously, for I could see what was going to happen the moment we emerged opposite the enemy positions.
In spite of what I had told him, the marshal decided to go down a wide, dead straight road which ran through the forest; but he had scarcely reached the edge of the trees when the enemy, seeing the large group formed by his staff, opened a running fire from their cannons which, placed opposite the road, could fire directly along it, throwing into disorder the gilded squadron, recently so full of themselves. Fortunately no one was. .h.i.t by this fire, but the marshal"s horse was killed, as was that of M. Duplessis and a number of others. I had been amply avenged, and I must confess, to my shame, that I had difficulty in hiding my satisfaction at seeing those who had scoffed at my report and treated as fantasy what I had said about the enemy presence,taking to their heels under a hail of shot and scrambling over ditches as best they could to seek shelter behind the great pine trees! The worthy General Lorencez, whom I had warned to stay in the forest, laughed heartily at this scene. In fairness to Oudinot, I must say that once remounted, he came and apologised for for his behaviour at luncheon, and asked me to brief him on the Russian positions, and point out a route through the forest which the infantry might take without being too much exposed to the enemy"s guns.
Several officers of the 23rd who, like me, had been through the woodland in the morning, were detailed to guide the infantry divisions. Nevertheless, on their emerging from the trees they were subjected to a terrible cannonade, which could have been avoided if, having been warned of the Russian presence, there had been an attempt to turn one of their flanks, instead of making a frontal approach.
As it was, we were now committed, once we emerged from the wood, to attacking the most heavily defended point and taking the bull by the horns.
However, our gallant soldiers engaged the enemy with such determination that they drove them from all their positions, and after two hours of fighting they began to retreat. This operation was not without danger, for, to carry it out, they had to go through the town and cross the bridge over a very steep-sided stream. This manoeuvre, always difficult to execute under fire, started off in an orderly fashion, but our light artillery, having taken up a position on a height which overlooked the town, by means of its gunfire soon produced disorder among the enemy columns, which broke ranks and rushed to the bridge. Once they had crossed the stream, instead of regrouping they fled helter-skelter over the open ground of the opposite bank, where the retreat soon became a rout! Only one regiment, that of Toula, stood its ground on the town side of the bridge. Marshal Oudinot very much wanted to force a pa.s.sage across the bridge to complete his victory by pursuing the fugitives on the other side of the stream; but our infantry had hardly reached the suburbs, from where it would take them at least 15 minutes to reach the bridge,and time was precious.
My regiment, which had made a successful charge at the entrance to the town, had re-formed on the promenade, a short distance from the stream. The marshal sent word to me to bring them at the gallop and we had hardly arrived before he ordered me to charge the enemy battalions which were covering the bridge, then to cross the bridge and pursue the fugitives on the open ground of the opposite side.
Experienced soldiers know how difficult it is for cavalry to overcome infantry, who are determined to defend themselves in the streets of a town. I was well aware of the dangers of the task which I had been given, but it had to be done, and without hesitation. I knew also that it is by his conduct in his first action that a commanding officer gains a good or a bad reputation amongst his men. My regiment was composed of battle-hardened troopers: I raised them to the gallop and, with me at their head, we fell on the Russian Grenadiers, who stood firm behind their bayonets. They were, however, overwhelmed by our first impetuous charge, and once their ranks had been penetrated, my terrible cha.s.seurs, using the points of their sabres inflicted a frightful slaughter. The enemy retreated to the causeway of the bridge, where we followed them so closely that, on reaching the other side, they were unable to re-form, and our men got amongst them, killing all whom they could reach. When the Russian colonel was killed, his regiment, without leadership, lost heart and, seeing that the French skirmishers had now reached the bridge, they surrendered. I lost seven men killed and some twenty wounded, but captured a flag and two thousand prisoners. After this action, we advanced onto the open ground where we took a great number of fugitives, several guns and many horses.
Marshal Oudinot had watched this action from a vantage point in the town, and he came to congratulate the regiment, for which he henceforth had a particular regard, which it well merited. I was proud to be in command of such men and when the marshal told me that he intended to recommend me for promotion to colonel, I was afraid that the Emperor would go back on his original plan, and post me to the first regiment which became vacant. How strange are the twists of fortune! The successful action at Wilkomir, where the 23rd earned such a fine reputation, nearly led on a later occasion to its destruction, because the courage which it had displayed at the time resulted in its being chosen to carry out a mission which was virtually impossible, which I shall describe shortly. Let us now return to Wilna, where the Emperor was beginning to meet with some of the difficulties which were to wreck his whole gigantic undertaking.
The first of these concerned the reorganisation of Lithuania, which we had just conquered. This had to be carried out in away which would please not only those provinces which were still occupied by Russia, but also those of the duchies of Posen and Galicia, which ancient treaties had incorporated into Prussia and Austria, Napoleon"s allies, whom, for the time being, it was important not to offend.
The most committed of the n.o.blemen who ruled the various parts of Poland proposed to Napoleon that they would raise all the provinces and place at his disposal more than 300,000 men on the day that he announced officially that all the part.i.tions to which the country had been subjected were annulled, and that the kingdom of Poland was reconst.i.tuted. The Emperor, although he was aware of the benefits he would gain from such an armed uprising, could not conceal from himself the fact that its first result would be to involve him in war with Austria and Prussia, which rather than see themselves deprived of these huge and flourishing provinces would join their arms to those of Russia. Above all, he doubted the constancy of the Poles, who, after dragging him into war with the three most powerful of the northern nations, might perhaps fail to deliver their promised support. The Emperor therefore replied to these propositions that he would not recognise the kingdom of Poland until the inhabitants of these huge areas had shown themselves worthy of independence by rising against their oppressors. This now created a vicious circle, Napoleon would not recognise the kingdom of Poland until the Poles took action, and the Poles would not take any action until he did.
An indication that Napoleon, in going to war with Russia, had no intention other than to enforce the continental blockade is the fact that he had not brought to the Nieman any arms or uniforms for the men which the Poles might have supplied.
Be that as it may, some influential n.o.blemen, in an attempt to force Napoleon"s hand, set up a National Diet in Warsaw, which was attended by a small number of deputies. The first act of this a.s.sembly was to proclaim the Reconst.i.tution and Independence of the Ancient Kingdom of Poland. The echo of this patriotic declaration rang throughout all the provinces, whether Russian, Prussian or Austrian, and for several days it was believed that there would be an uprising which would probably favour Napoleon, but this unthinking exaltation did not last long among the Poles, of whom only a few hundred came to join us. The cooling off was so rapid that the town of Wilna and its surroundings could provide no more than twenty men to form a guard of honour for the Emperor. If the Poles had displayed at this time, a hundredth part of the energy and enthusiasm which they displayed during the insurrection of 1830-1831, they might have recovered their independence and their liberty, but, far from coming to the aid of the French troops, they denied them all necessities, and during this campaign our soldiers often had to take by force the food and forage which the inhabitants, and above all the n.o.bles, hid from us, but handed over to the Russians, their persecutors. This partiality in favour of our enemies enraged our men and gave rise to some unpleasant scenes which M. de Segur has stigmatised as disgraceful pillage! It is however impossible to prevent the weary and wretched soldiers who have received no issue of rations from commandeering the bread and the livestock which they need for their survival.
The need to maintain order in the provinces occupied by the army led the Emperor, in spite of everything, to appoint prefects and sub-prefects who were chosen from the most enlightened Poles, but their administration was illusory and no help to the French army.
The main reason for the apathy of the Lithuanian Poles was the self-interested attachment of the n.o.bility to the Russian government, which upheld their rights over their peasantry, to whom they feared the French might award their freedom, for all those Polish n.o.blemen, who talked unceasingly about freedom, kept their peasants in the most brutish serfdom.
Although the concentration of French troops on their frontiers should have warned the Russians that hostilities were about to commence, they were nonetheless taken by surprise by the crossing of the Nieman, which they nowhere opposed. Their army began a retreat towards the Duna (Dvina) on the left bank of which they had prepared, at Drissa, an immense entrenched camp. From all parts the different French Corps followed the Russian columns. Prince Murat was in command of the cavalry of the advance-guard, and every evening he caught up with the Russian rear-guard; but after some skirmishing they made off during the night by forced marches, without it being possible to bring them to a decisive action.
Chap. 7.
During the first days of our invasion of Russia, the enemy had made the very serious mistake of allowing Napoleon to split their forces, so that the greater part of their army, led by the Emperor Alexander and Marshal Barclay, had been driven back to the Duna, while the remainder, commanded by Bagration, was on the upper Nieman around Mir, eighty leagues from the main body. Cut off in this way, Bagration tried to join the Emperor Alexander by going through Minsk; but Napoleon had entrusted the protection of Minsk to Marshal Davout, who vigourously repelled the Russians and drove them back to Bobruisk, which he knew was supposed to be guarded by Jerome Bonaparte, at the head of two corps , amounting to 60,000 men.
Bagration was about to be forced to surrender when he was saved by the foolishness of Jerome, who had not accepted the advice which Davout had given him, and failing to recognise the superior wisdom of the experienced and successful marshal, had decided to go his own way, whereupon he manoeuvred his troops so ineptly that Bagration was able to escape from this first danger. Davout, however, followed him with his usual tenacity, and caught up with him on the road to Mohilew, where, although he had no more than 12,000 men, he attacked the 36,000 Russians and defeated them; though admittedly the Russians were surprised on an area of very broken ground which prevented them from making the best use of their superior numbers. Bagration was compelled to cross the Borysthenia much lower down at Novoi-Bychow, and being now out of reach of Davout he was able to rejoin the main Russian army at Smolensk.
During the marches and countermarches which Bagration undertook in his efforts to evade Davout, he surprised the brigade of French cavalry comannded by General Bordesoulle, and captured from him the whole of the 3rd Regiment of Cha.s.seurs, whose colonel was my friend Saint-Mars.
The elimination of Bagration"s force would have been of tremendous benefit to Napoleon, so his fury with King Jerome was unbounded. He ordered him to quit the army immediately and return to Westphalia, a rigourous but necessary measure, which had the effect of greatly damaging King Jerome"s reputation in the army. However, one has to ask if he was entirely to blame? His major mistake was to think that his dignity as a sovereign should not permit him to accept the advice of a simple marshal, but Napoleon knew perfectly well that the young prince had never in his life commanded so much as a single battalion, nor taken part in the most minor skirmish, and yet he confided to his care an army of 60,000 men, and this at a somewhat critical juncture.
General Junot, who replaced Jerome, was, before long, also guilty of a serious blunder.
It was around this time that the Russian emperor sent one of his ministers, Count Balachoff,to parley with Napoleon, who was still in Wilna. The purpose of this discussion has never been entirely clear; there were those who believed it was to arrange an armistice, but they were quickly disabused by the departure of the Count, and it appeared later that the English, who had a tremendous influence in the Russian court and the army, had taken umbrage at this mission, and fearing that Alexander might be considering coming to terms with Napoleon, they had loudly insisted that he should leave the army and return to St.Petersburg. Alexander accepted this proposal, but ensured that his brother, Constantine came with him. Left to themselves, and egged on by the Englishman Wilson, the Russian generals sought to wage war with a ferocity which might shake the French morale, so they ordered their troops to lay waste the country behind them as they withdrew, by burning all the houses and everything else which they could not carry away.
While Napoleon, from the central point of Wilna, was directing the various units of his army, the columns led by Murat, Ney, Montbrun, Nansouty and Oudinot had, on the 15th of July , reached the river Dvina. Oudinot, who had probably misunderstood the Emperor"s orders, took the unusual step of going down the left bank of the river, while Wittgenstein and his men were going up the river on the other side.
He arrived opposite Dvinaburg, an old walled town whose fortifications were in bad repair, where he hoped to capture the bridge and, having crossed to the other bank, to attack Wittgenstein from the rear. Wittgenstein, however, on leaving Dvinaburg, had left behind a strong garrison with numerous pieces of artillery. My regiment, as usual, const.i.tuted the advance-guard, which on this day was led by Marshal Oudinot himself.
The town of Dvinaburg is on the right bank of the river. We arrived on the left bank, where there is a considerable fortification which protects the bridge which links it to the town, from which it is separated by the river, which is very wide at this point. A quarter of a league from the fortifications, which Marshal Oudinot claimed were not equipped with cannon, I came on a Russian battalion, whose left flank was protected by the river and whose front was covered by the planks and hutments of an abandoned camp.
In such a position the enemy was very difficult for cavalry to attack; however the Marshal ordered me to attack them. After I had left it to individual officers to make their way through the gaps between the huts, I ordered the charge, but the regiment had hardly gone a few paces, amid a shower of bullets from the Russian infantry, when the artillery, whose existence the Marshal had denied, thundered from the battlements, to which we were so close that the canisters of grape-shot were going over our heads before they had time to burst. A stray ball from one of them went through a fisherman"s hut and broke the leg of the trumpeter who was sounding the charge by my side...I lost several men there.
Marshal Oudinot, who had made a serious mistake in attacking a position which was protected by cannon, hoped to flush out the Russian infantry by sending in a Portuguese battalion which was ahead of our infantry; but these foreigners, former prisoners of war, who had been enlisted, somewhat unwillingly, into the French army, made little headway and we remained exposed. Seeing that Oudinot bore the enemy fire with courage but without giving any orders, I thought that if this state of affairs continued for a few minutes more, my regiment was going to wiped out, so I told my men to spread out and attack the enemy infantry in open order, with the double aim of driving them out of their position and preventing the gunners from firing for fear of hitting their own men who were intermingled with ours. Cut down by my troopers the defenders of the camp fled towards the bridgehead, but the garrison of this outpost was composed of recent recruits, who, fearing that we would follow the fugitives into the fortifications, hurriedly closed the gates; which compelled them to make for the pontoon bridge in an attempt to reach the other bank and the shelter of the town of Dvinaburg itself.
The bridge had no guard-rail. The pontoons wobbled. The river was deep and wide and I could see the armed garrison on the other side trying to close the gates. It seemed to me to be folly to advance any further. Thinking that the regiment had done enough, I had halted them when the Marshal arrived, shouting "Forward the twenty-third!
Do as you did at Wilkomir! Cross the bridge! Force the gates! Seize the town!" General Lorencez tried in vain to persuade him that the difficulties were too great, and that a regiment of cavalry could not attack a fortress, however badly defended, if to get there they had to cross, two abreast, a third-rate pontoon bridge; but the Marshal persisted, "They will be able to take advantage of the disorder and fears of the enemy" he said, and repeated his order to me to attack the town. I obeyed; but I was scarcely on the first span of the bridge, at the head of the leading section of my men, when the garrison, having managed to close the gates which led to the river, mounted the ramparts, from where they opened fire on us. The slender line which we presented offered a poor target for these inadequately trained men, so that their musket and cannon fire caused us fewer casualties than I had feared, but on hearing the fortress firing on us, the defenders of the bridgehead recovered their nerve and joined in the fray. Oudinot, seeing the 23rd caught between two fires, at the start of an unstable bridge across which it was impossible to advance, conveyed to me the order to retreat. The large gap which I had left between each section allowed them to turn round without too much confusion, however, two men and their horses fell into the river and were drowned. In order to regain the left bank we had to pa.s.s once more under the ramparts of the bridgehead, when we were exposed to a rolling fire which, fortunately, was aimed by unskilled militia, for if we had been up against trained marksmen, the regiment could have been wholly destroyed.
This unsuccessful action, so imprudently undertaken, cost me thirty men killed and many wounded, and it was to be hoped that the Marshal would be content with this fruitless effort, especially in view of the fact that the Emperor had not ordered him to take Dvinaburg; but, as soon as the infantry had arrived, he made a new a.s.sault on the bridgehead, which had now been reinforced by a company of Grenadiers, who, at the sound of firing had hurried from nearby billets, so that our troops were once more repelled with much greater losses than those suffered by the 23rd. When the Emperor heard of this abortive attack he placed the blame squarely on Marshal Oudinot.
At this time, my regiment was brigaded with the 24th Cha.s.seurs, and General Castex, who commanded this brigade, had inst.i.tuted an admirable routine in our method of operation. Each of the two regiments took it in turn to form, for twenty-four hours, the advance-guard if we were approaching the enemy, or the rear-guard if we were retreating, and to provide all the sentries, pickets and so on, while the other regiment marched peacefully along, recovering from the fatigues of the day before and preparing for those of the morrow, which did not prevent it from going to the aid of the unit on duty, if they came in contact with the enemy. This system, which was not in the regulations, had the great advantage of never separating the men from their officers or their comrades, or placing them under the orders of unknown commanders and mingling them with troopers of another regiment. Moreover, during the night, half of the brigade slept, while the other half watched over them. However, since no system is without its shortcomings, it could so happen, by chance, that it was the same regiment which was more often on duty when a serious engagement occurred, as happened to the 23rd at Wilkomir and Dvinaburg. It was the sort of luck which we had throughout the campaign, but we never complained. We came out of all these events well and were often envied by the 24th, who had fewer occasions on which to distinguish themselves.
While Oudinot was making his a.s.sault on Dvinaburg, the corps commanded by Ney, as well as the immense body of cavalry commanded by Murat, were proceeding up the left bank of the Dvina towards Polotsk, while Wittgenstein"s Russian army followed the same route on the right bank. Being separated from the enemy by the river, our troops grew careless, and pitched their bivouacs in the French manner, much too close to its bank. Wittgenstein had noticed this and he allowed the bulk of the French force to draw ahead. The last unit in the line of march was Sebastiani"s division, which had as its rear-guard the brigade commanded by General Saint-Genies, who had served as an officer in the army of Egypt, and who, although courageous, was not very bright. When he had reached a some way beyond the little town of Drouia, General Saint-Genies, on the orders of Sebastiani, put his troops into bivouac some two hundred paces from the river, which was believed to be uncrossable without boats. Wittgenstein, however, knew of a ford, and during the night he made use of it to send across the river a division of cavalry, which fell on the French troops and captured almost the entire brigade, including General Saint-Genies.
This forced Sebastiani to hurry upstream with the rest of his division to make contact with the Corps commanded by Montbrun. After this swift raid, Wittgenstein recalled his troops and continued his march up the Dvina. The affair did Sebastiani"s reputation a great deal of harm and drew down on his head the reproaches of the Emperor.
Shortly after this regrettable incident, Oudinot having been ordered to leave Dvinaburg and go up the river to rejoin Ney and Montbrun, his army corps took the same route as they had done and pa.s.sed the town of Drouia. The Marshal intended to encamp his force some three leagues further on, but he feared that the enemy might use the ford to send across large parties of men to hara.s.s the great convoy which trailed behind him, so he decided that while he made off into the distance, with the main body of the troops, he would leave behind a regiment of General Castex"s brigade in the position which had been occupied by General Saint-Genies, to watch the ford. As my regiment was on duty, there fell to it the dangerous task of remaining behind at Drouia on their own until the following morning. I knew that the greater part of Wittgenstein"s force had gone up the river, but I could see that he had left behind, not far from the ford, two strong regiments of cavalry, a force more than sufficient to overcome me.
However much I might have wished to carry out the order to set up my bivouac on the spot used two days previously by Saint-Genies, this was impossible, for the ground was littered with more than two hundred bodies in a state of putrefaction, and to this major reason was linked another not less important. What I had seen and what I had learned about war had convinced me that the best means of defending a river against an enemy whose aim is not to establish himself on the bank which one occupies, is to keep the main body of one"s troops well back from the river edge; firstly to have timely warning of the enemy"s approach, and secondly, because, as it his intention to make a sudden raid and then retire smartly, he dare not go too far from the spot where he can cross back to the other side.
So I settled the regiment half a league from the Dvina, on some slightly undulating ground. I left only some two-man sentinels on the bank, because, when it is purely a matter of observation, two men can see as much as a large picket. Several lines of troopers were placed one after the other between these sentinels and our bivouac, where, like a spider at the bottom of its web, I could be rapidly informed by these threads about what was going on in the area which it was my duty to guard. I had forbidden all fires and even the lighting of pipes, and had ordered complete silence.
The nights are extremely short in Russia in the month of July, but this one seemed very long to me, so afraid was I that I might be attacked during the hours of darkness by a force superior in strength to my own. Half of the men were in the saddle, the remainder were allowing their horses to graze but were ready to mount if given the signal. All seemed quiet on the opposite bank, when my Polish servant, who spoke Russian fluently, came to tell me that he had heard one old Jewish woman who lived in a nearby house say to another, "The lantern has been lit in the clock tower at Morki. The attack is going to begin." I had the two women brought to me, and questioned by Lorentz. They said that, as they were afraid of their village becoming a battleground for the two enemies, they had been alarmed to see the lamp lit in the bell tower of the church at Morki, which, the night before last had been the signal for the Russian troops to cross the ford and attack the French camp.
Although I was prepared for any eventuality, this was a piece of very useful information. At once the regiment was on horse, sabres in their hands. The sentinels by the river and the string of hors.e.m.e.n stretched across the plain pa.s.sed from man to man, in low voices, the orders to come back. Two of the boldest sous-officiers, Prud"homme and Graft, went with Lieutenant Bertin to see what the enemy was doing. He came back shortly to say that a large column of Russian cavalry was crossing the ford, and that already there were some squadrons on our side of the river; but seemingly taken aback at not finding us camped at the same place as Saint-Genies they had halted, fearing, no doubt to go too far from their only means of retreat; then, having decided to go on, they were now approaching at a walk, and were not far off.
I immediately set fire to a huge haystack and to several barns which stood on some high ground, and by the light of the flames I could easily distinguish the enemy column, consisting of Grodno Hussars. I had with me about a thousand brave men, and with a cry of "Vive L"Emperor!" we charged at the gallop towards the Russians who, taken by surprise by this fierce and unexpected attack, turned tail and rushed in disorder to the ford. There they came face to face with a regiment of dragoons who, being part of their brigade had followed them and were just emerging from the river. This resulted in the most fearful confusion which enabled our men to kill many of the enemy and take many horses. The Russians tried to recross the ford in a mob to escape from the fire which my men aimed at them from the bank and a number of them were drowned. Our surprise attack had so startled the enemy who had thought to find us asleep, that they put up no resistance, and I was able to return to our bivouac without having to regret the death or wounding of any of our number. The break of day disclosed the field of battle covered by some hundreds of dead or wounded Russians. I left the wounded in the care of the inhabitants of the village near which we had spent the night, and took to the road to rejoin Marshal Oudinot, with whom I caught up that same evening. The Marshal gave me a hearty welcome and complemented the regiment on their conduct.
2nd Corps continued its march up the left bank of the Dvina and in three days arrived opposite Polotsk. There we learned that the Emperor had at last left Wilna, where he had spent twenty days, and was heading for Vitepsk, a town of some size, which he intended to make his new centre of operations.
On quitting Wilna, the Emperor had left the Duc de Ba.s.sano as governor of the province of Lithuania and General Hogendorp as military commander. Neither of these two officials was suited to organising the rear echelons of an army. The Duc de Ba.s.sano, a former diplomat and private secretary, knew nothing about administration, while the Dutchman Hogendorp, who spoke little French and had no idea of our military regulations and customs, was not likely to make much impression on those French who pa.s.sed through Wilna or on the local n.o.bility. So the resources available in Lithuania were of no help to our troops.
The town of Polotsk is situated on the right bank of the Dvina.
Its houses are built of wood and it is dominated by a very large and splendid college, at that time occupied by the Jesuits, almost all of whom were French. It is surrounded by an earthwork fortification, having at one time undergone a siege during the war waged by Charles XII against Peter the Great. The corps commanded by Ney, Murat and Montbrun, in order to get from Drissa to Witepsk, had built a pontoon bridge across the Dvina, opposite Polotsk, which they left for Oudinot"s corps, which was going to take the road for St.Petersburg. It was from here that 2nd Corps took a different direction to that of the Grande Armee, which we did not see again until the following winter, at the crossing of the Beresina.