Napoleon: a life

38 Nemesis

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, 15 September, Napoleon rode into Moscow and took up residence in the Kremlin. ‘We were surprised not to see anyone, not even one lady, come to listen to our band, which was playing La Victoire est à Nous!’ a disappointed Sergeant, Bourgogne noted as they marched in. Some two-thirds of the city’s inhabitants had left, and the remainder, including many foreign tradesmen, servants, and artisans, cowered in their homes. Even members of the several-hundred-strong French colony kept out of the way. The shops were closed, and what little traffic there was in the streets was mainly Russian stragglers.^[1]

The surrender of a city was normally negotiated so that the authorities assigned the occupying troops billets and made arrangements for feeding them, but in this case there was a free-for-all to obtain the necessities of life. Generals and groups of officers selected aristocrats’ palaces and noblemen’s townhouses, while their men settled in as best they could in the surrounding houses, stables, and gardens. Napoleon had appointed Marshal Mortier governor, with orders to prevent looting, and the occupation began in a relatively civilised manner. But as the shops were closed and most of the houses abandoned, the men helped themselves to whatever they needed, and chaos ensued, aggravated by the action of the Russian governor of the city, Count Rostopchin, who had ordered it to be put to the torch and removed the fire pumps before leaving. By nightfall large parts of it were on fire, and as a significant proportion of the houses were made of wood, it proved impossible to bring under control. By the following morning the flames came dangerously close to the Kremlin, and Napoleon thought it prudent to leave the city with his Guard and move to the nearby palace of Petrovskoe. The city turned into an inferno in which French looters were joined by local criminals, Russian deserters, and others eager to save something for themselves from the flames. A drunken bacchanalia accompanied the pillage, rape, and murder, shattering the bonds of military discipline.

Once the fire had abated, on 18 September Napoleon rode back into Moscow, but the smouldering remains of the city no longer represented much of a prize, and he began to make plans to leave. The question was where to go. A withdrawal to Vilna would mean losing face and admitting that all the exertions since crossing the Niemen and the deaths of Borodino had been in vain. He considered leaving the main body of his army in Moscow and marching on St Petersburg with Eugène’s corps and a few other units, which might persuade Alexander to treat. Eugène was apparently keen on the plan, but others raised objections, and according to Fain, ‘they managed for the first time to make him doubt the superiority of his own judgement’. Some wanted to fall back and take winter quarters in Smolensk, others suggested a march south on the industrial cities of Tula and Kaluga, followed by a foray through the Ukraine. But that would mean abandoning his bases at Minsk and Vilna.^[2]

Napoleon tried to make contact with Alexander, in the hope that the fall of Moscow might have made him more amenable. In his letter, sent through a Russian gentleman who had remained in the city, he castigated Rostopchin’s burning of Moscow as an act of barbarism; in Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, and every other city he had occupied the civil administration had been left in place, which had safeguarded life and property. ‘I have made war on Your Majesty without animosity,’ he assured him, saying that a single note from him would put an end to hostilities. He sent another letter through a minor civil servant, and on 3 October suggested sending Caulaincourt to St Petersburg. Caulaincourt excused himself, on the grounds that Alexander would not receive him. Napoleon then decided to send Lauriston. ‘I want peace, I need peace, I must have peace!’ Napoleon told him as he set off two days later. ‘Just save my honour!’^[3]

According to Caulaincourt, Napoleon realised his repeated messages would, by showing up the difficulty of his position, only confirm Alexander in his purpose. ‘Yet he kept sending him new ones! For a man who was so politic, such a good calculator, this reveals an extraordinary blind faith in his own star, and one might almost say in the blindness or the weakness of his adversaries! How, with his eagle’s eye and his superior judgement could he delude himself to such a degree?’^[4]

He may have been trying to pressure Alexander by giving the impression that he was prepared to sit it out in Moscow and spend the winter there if necessary; he talked of bringing the actors of the Comédie-Française to entertain him and his men through the winter months. But lingering in Moscow only undermined his own position; although enough had survived in cellars and buildings that had escaped the flames to feed and clothe his army for some months, and there were large quantities of arms, shot, and powder left in the city’s arsenal, there was no fodder for the horses, and without horses he would be able neither to keep his lines of communication open nor to launch a fresh campaign in the spring. The whole area in his rear had been ravaged in the advance and was awash with deserters, many settled in bands along the way. The behaviour of these, and of foraging parties sent out from Moscow, was beginning to turn an originally indifferent population against the invaders; isolated French soldiers and even small units were being attacked.

While Kutuzov gradually rebuilt his forces in his fortified camp at Tarutino south of Moscow, Murat’s corps, camped nearby to check him, wasted away. The 3rd Cavalry Corps, consisting of eleven regiments, could only muster 700 horsemen. The 1st Regiment of Chasseurs could only field fifty-eight, and that only thanks to some reinforcements that had reached it from France. Some squadrons in the 2nd Cuirassiers, usually 130 strong, were down to eighteen men. The backs of many of the horses were so worn through that in some cases when riders dismounted and unsaddled they could see their entrails. ‘We could see that we were slowly perishing, but our faith in the genius of Napoleon, in his many years of triumph, was so unbounded that these conversations always ended with the conclusion that he must know what he is doing better than us,’ recalled Lieutenant Dembiński.^[5]

Napoleon’s apartment in the Kremlin overlooking the river Moskva and part of the city consisted of a vast hall with great chandeliers, three spacious salons, and one large bedroom, which doubled up as his study. It was here that he hung Gérard’s portrait of the King of Rome. He slept on the iron camp bed he always used on campaign; his desk had been set up in one corner and his travelling library laid out on shelves. He had two burning candles placed at his window every night, so that passing soldiers would see he was watching and working.

He had set up a skeletal administration of the city, and a semblance of normality was established. People travelled ‘as easily between Paris and Moscow as between Paris and Marseille’, according to Caulaincourt, if it took them a little longer. The post took up to forty days, but the estafette only fourteen. Its arrival was the high point of Napoleon’s day, and he would grow restless if, as happened once or twice, it was a couple of days late.^[6]

News from Paris was welcome, particularly when it flattered Napoleon’s vanity. He read with pleasure that his birthday, which he had spent before Smolensk, had been celebrated by the laying of foundation stones for the Palais de l’Université, a new Palais des Beaux-Arts, and a building to house the national archives. He was informed that ‘the enthusiasm of the Parisians, on hearing of the emperor’s entry into Moscow is tempered only by their fear of seeing him march out of it in triumph on a conquest of India’. News that Wellington had taken Madrid was less welcome.^[7]

Napoleon attended to affairs of state as well as those of his army with a punctiliousness that may have helped him avoid facing up to the realities of his situation. He badgered Maret to put pressure on the American minister, the poet Joel Barlow, who had just arrived in Vilna, to negotiate an alliance with the United States against Britain. He gave instructions for horses to be sent from France and Germany and for rice to be purchased and shipped to Moscow. He held parades on Red Square before the Kremlin, at which he awarded crosses of the Legion of Honour and promotions earned at Borodino. He was not looking forward to a winter away from home. ‘If I cannot return to Paris this winter,’ he wrote to Marie-Louise, ‘I will have you come and see me in Poland. As you know, I am no less eager than you to see you again and to tell you of all the feelings which you arouse in me.’^[8]

While he reviewed the troops stationed in Moscow, he showed little interest in those elsewhere. When Murat sent his aide-de-camp to inform him of the dire state of the cavalry, Napoleon dismissed him, saying his army was ‘finer than ever’.^[9]

Each day he spent in Moscow made it harder to leave without loss of face, and the usually decisive Napoleon seemed paralysed by the need to choose between an unappealing range of options on the one hand, and belief in his star on the other. He only really had one option, and he was reducing the chances of its success with every day he delayed. The weather was unusually fine, and he teased Caulaincourt, accusing him of telling tales about the Russian winter. ‘Caulaincourt thinks he’s frozen already,’ he quipped, dismissing suggestions that the army provide itself with gloves and warm clothing. As soon as they reached Moscow, all the Polish units had set up forges to produce horseshoes with crampons in preparation for winter. A few Dutch and German officers followed their example, but not the French. Luckily for Napoleon, Caulaincourt had the horses of his maison properly shod.^[10]

On 12 October the estafette from Moscow to Paris was captured, and the following day that coming from Paris was intercepted. General Ferrières, who had travelled all the way from Cádiz, was captured almost at the gates of Moscow. These events shook Napoleon, as did the first shower of snow, on 13 October. ‘Let us make haste,’ he said on seeing it. ‘We must be in winter quarters in twenty days’ time.’ It was not too late. Smolensk, where he had some supplies, was only ten to twelve days’ march from Moscow, his well-stocked bases at Vilna and Minsk only another fifteen to twenty from there. If he could reach these, his army would be fed and supplied, safe in friendly country, and able to draw on reinforcements from depots in Poland and Prussia.^[11]

His chances of an orderly withdrawal were reduced by his hope that he might sway Alexander by appearing to occupy Moscow indefinitely; instead of sending the lightly wounded of Smolensk and Borodino back to where they could safely convalesce, he had left them where they were or had them brought to Moscow. Rather than send the thousands of horseless cavalrymen back to Poland where they could be remounted, he kept them in Russia. He did not send back unnecessary members of his maison or other civilians and did not evacuate the trophies — banners, regalia and treasures from the Kremlin, and the great silver-gilt cross he had had wrenched from the dome of the tower of Ivan the Great. It was not until 14 October, the day after the first snowfall, that he gave orders that no more troops were to be sent forward to Moscow and that the wounded in the city be evacuated, a pointless and fatal decision; the badly wounded, possibly as many as 12,000, should have been left where they were, as Dr Larrey intended (he had organised medical teams to care for them).^[12]

Napoleon could go back the way he had come, which had the advantage of being familiar, guarded by French units, and punctuated with supply depots, as well as being the most direct route. But that would smack of retreat. He considered marching northwestward, in a sweep back to Vilna, and defeating a Russian army on the way. This option had the merit of threatening St Petersburg, which might just cause Alexander’s nerve to snap. Or he could march southward, strike a blow at Kutuzov, and then go back to Minsk another way. He did not make up his mind until the last moment, further delaying preparations.^[13]

Having decided to strike at Kutuzov, he still entertained the option of returning to Moscow. He therefore left part of his maison there and gave orders to stockpile three months’ worth of rations, to improve the defences of the Kremlin, and to turn all the monasteries into strongpoints. He overruled General Lariboisière, inspector-general of the artillery, who wanted to start evacuating equipment; as a result 500 caissons, 60,000 muskets, and quantities of powder, not to mention a large number of cannon, were left in the city. Napoleon seemed incapable of committing to any course, as though he were waiting for some chance to present itself. He ended a letter to Maret in which he sketched out his probable plans with the words: ‘But in the end, in affairs of this kind, what takes place in the event is sometimes very different from that which is foreseen.’ He affected a confidence which had seen him through in the past. ‘Today is 19 October, and look how fine the weather is,’ he said to Rapp as he set out from Moscow. ‘Do you not recognise my star?’ Rapp felt this was no more than bravado and noted that ‘his face bore the mark of anxiety’.^[14]

His forces numbered no more than 95,000, and probably less, but they included a nucleus of tested troops, including the Guard, which had not been blooded during the campaign. They marched out singing, but while they looked martial enough, their baggage carts were loaded down not with military supplies, but with loot. Behind them came less disciplined troops, stragglers and civilians driving carriages and carts loaded with booty, looking like a grotesque carnival. The high spirits flagged three days later when a downpour transformed the road into a morass. Vehicles had to be abandoned, cumbersome objects jettisoned from knapsacks, and the line of march lengthened as stragglers fell behind.^[15]

They marched south, but found the road blocked by Kutuzov at Maloyaroslavets. After fierce fighting in the course of which the town changed hands several times, Eugène and his Italians drove out Kutuzov. Losses were heavy, with at least 6,000 casualties, and that night, in a squalid cottage whose single room was divided in two by a dirty canvas sheet, Napoleon asked his marshals for their views on what to do next. He listened in silence, staring at the maps spread before him. At dawn he rode out to reconnoitre. He narrowly missed being captured by cossacks, and after riding through the burnt-out ruins of Maloyaroslavets, whose streets were strewn with corpses, many of them hideously mutilated by the wheels of guns or shrivelled in grotesque poses by the blaze, he was visibly shaken. He decided to retreat by the most direct route and sent orders to Mortier in Moscow to abandon the city, bringing all the wounded, and make with all speed for Smolensk. Before he left he was to blow up the Kremlin and torch the townhouses of Rostopchin and Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, as well as destroying all the stores left in the city.^[16]

Mortier also brought with him two prisoners, General Wintzingerode and his aide-de-camp, who had unwisely ridden into Moscow to verify that the French had left, only to be captured. When Napoleon saw Witzingerode, a native of Württemberg in Russian service who seemed to epitomise the internationale that was forming against him, he erupted into a rage. ‘It is you and a few dozen rogues who have sold themselves to England who are whipping up Europe against me,’ he ranted. ‘I don’t know why I don’t have you shot; you were captured as a spy.’ That did not exhaust his anger, and on seeing a country house that had escaped destruction, he ordered it burnt down. ‘Since Messieurs les Barbares are so keen on burning their own towns, we must help them,’ he raged (he soon countermanded the order).^[17]

When they passed Borodino, he was annoyed to find many wounded still in the makeshift hospitals. Against the advice of Larrey and the medical teams caring for them, he insisted they be placed on every available vehicle, including gun carriages. The order killed many who might have lived; they were in no condition to survive the jolting and buffeting, and those who were not killed by it soon either fell off or were thrown off. Progress was slow due to lack of horsepower. Shortage of fodder had debilitated the horses — guns normally drawn by three pairs were now hitched to teams of twelve of more, and even these had to be helped up inclines by infantry. Powder wagons were blown up and shells jettisoned to lighten the load. Private carriages and loot-laden wagons were seized and burnt by the artillery, which commandeered the horses, but this did not solve the problem. As the nights grew colder more horses died, and the artillery took those that had been drawing wagons with wounded men.

Napoleon saw himself as carrying out a tactical withdrawal rather than a retreat, so although his generals advised abandoning some of the guns in order to free up horses with which to draw the rest and save time, he would not hear of it, fearing the Russians would claim the abandoned guns as trophies. The same went for the 3,000 or so Russian prisoners, who only encumbered the army.^[18]

The army corps were marching one behind the other, so only the leading one had a clear road; the others had to move through the mess left behind by preceding ones. Their path was churned by tens of thousands of feet, hooves, and wheels into a sea of mud if it was wet, and into a sheet of ice when it froze. Such supplies as there might have been along the way were devoured, and any available shelter was dismantled for firewood by those who had gone before. The road was littered with abandoned vehicles, dead horses, and jettisoned baggage and clogged by slow-moving stragglers and civilians — French and other foreign inhabitants of Moscow who feared the return of the Russians; Russians, particularly women and petty criminals, who had thrown their lot in with the French or been forcibly enlisted as wagoners or bearers; functionaries attached to the army; and officers’ servants. Soldiers fell behind and became separated from their units by a mass of people, horses, and vehicles. After a time, most of them threw away their weapons and joined the crowd of stragglers, demoralised and guided by herd instinct, easy prey for pursuing cossacks.

The new moon on the night of 4 November brought a drop in temperature, and by the morning hundreds of undernourished men and horses had frozen to death. The men began adapting their dress to the cold: furs, shawls, and costly textiles brought along as gifts for wives or sweethearts were put on over uniforms, giving the retreating army a carnivalesque aspect. It did not protect them from frostbite, and as the inexperienced inhabitants of warmer climes had no idea how to restore circulation, many lost fingers, toes, ears, and noses. Cavalrymen had to dismount to prevent their feet freezing, and Napoleon, who had abandoned his uniform for a Polish-style fur-lined green velvet frock-coat and cap, got out of his carriage at intervals and tramped alongside his troops, with Berthier and Caulaincourt at his elbow.

On 6 November he was met by an estafette from Paris which brought news of an attempted coup aimed at overthrowing him. It had been quickly foiled, but it brought home to him the frailty of his rule, and he began to contemplate leaving the army and racing back to Paris. When he reached Smolensk on 9 November, the blanket of snow concealing the charred ruins allowed him to entertain for a while the feeling that he had reached safety. He set about organising winter quarters for the army, but found only a fraction of the stores he expected, barely enough for the 15,000 sick and wounded left behind after the storming of the city. Bad news poured in from all sides. Vitebsk had been taken by the Russians, a division had been forced to surrender south of Smolensk, and Eugène’s Italian corps had lost almost a quarter of its effectives and fifty-eight guns while crossing a river. As his columns trudged in he could see how depleted they were; there were now no more than about 40,000 left with their colours.^[19]

He took out his frustration on his marshals. ‘There’s not one of them to whom one can entrust anything; I always have to do everything myself,’ he complained, refusing to accept responsibility for his predicament. ‘And they accuse me of ambition, as though it was my ambition that brought me here! This war is only a matter of politics. What have I got to gain from a climate like this, from coming to a wretched country like this one? The whole of it is not worth the meanest little piece of France. They, on the other hand, have a very real interest in conquest: Poland, Germany, anything goes for them. Just seeing the sun six months of the year is a new pleasure for them. It is they that should be stopped, not me.’^[20]

The retreat would have to go on, and fast, as two Russian pincers were converging in his rear, and Kutuzov was overtaking him to the south. Schwarzenberg had fallen back, not on Minsk, where he would have joined forces with Napoleon, but westward, back into Poland, leaving Napoleon’s line of retreat exposed. Desperate not to lose face and not wishing to withdraw further than he absolutely had to, he refused to accept that he would not find winter quarters in Russia, and so put off until the last minute every decision to retreat further. He only left Smolensk on 14 November. Eugène, Davout, and Ney were to follow at one-day intervals.

As they set off the temperature dipped further, to as low as minus twenty degrees, and conditions deteriorated. Those who were still with their colours managed to provide themselves with food and shelter; when they could not get hold of rations they ate horses, then dogs and cats, and anything else they could lay hands on; sometimes no more than hot water with some axle-grease. But the growing number of stragglers were caught up in a desperate struggle for survival; they began to steal food and clothing from each other, callously stripping those too weak to resist. The cold was such that what food could be obtained froze so hard it could not be eaten, so horses were sliced up while still alive.

Napoleon himself had a regular supply of food and wine. An officer would ride ahead to select a place to stop for the night, sometimes a country house, sometimes a hut. 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 be improvised, in the same room if no other could be found, with a table covered in green cloth, his travelling library in its case, and the boxes containing maps and writing instruments. A small dinner service would be unpacked, so he could eat off plate. Even though he did have the luxury of a change of clothes, and despite the resources of the nécéssaire, he was infested with lice like the rest of his army. And despite the comforts of his camp bed, he suffered from insomnia. The night after leaving Smolensk, he called Caulaincourt to his bedside and discussed the necessity of his going back to Paris. He had just heard that the Russians had cut the road ahead near Krasny, and he could not rule out the possibility of being taken prisoner, so he had his physician Dr Yvan prepare him a dose of poison, which he kept in a black silk sachet around his neck.^[21]

He fought his way through to Krasny, where he paused to allow the other corps to catch up, keeping the Russians at bay. ‘Advancing with a firm step, as on the day of a great parade, he placed himself in the middle of the battlefield, facing the enemy’s batteries,’ in the words of Sergeant Bourgogne. Eugène’s and Davout’s corps got through, but Ney was still some way behind. Napoleon could not afford to wait any longer, as Kutuzov was by now threatening to cut his line of retreat to Orsha, and set off at the head of his grenadiers. ‘The shells which flew over were bursting all round him without his seeming to notice,’ recalled one of the few cavalrymen left in his escort. That morning he had told Roguet it was time he stopped playing the emperor and became the general once more.^[22]

On reaching Orsha on 19 November, he set about rallying the remains of his army. He ordered everything surplus to requirements to be burnt — including the portrait of the King of Rome. He forced stragglers to rejoin their regiments and distributed the supplies stored in the town. He was overjoyed when Ney, who had cleverly circumvented the Russian force blocking his path, rejoined him at Orsha. The five days of fighting around Krasny had cost him possibly as many as 10,000 of his best remaining soldiers and more than 200 guns, but he refused to give in to despair.^[23]

‘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.’ One of his aides, Anatole de Montesquiou, explains that they owed everything to Napoleon’s ability not to show his feelings. ‘In the midst of the overwhelming horrors which seemed to be pursuing or rather enveloping us with the perseverance of fatality, we recovered peace of mind and hope by turning our eyes on the Emperor,’ he wrote. ‘More unfortunate than any of us, since he was losing more, he remained impassive.’ He represented their best chance of getting out of the mess they were in, and his stoicism gave them comfort. ‘His presence electrified our downcast hearts and gave us a last burst of energy,’ wrote Captain François. Whatever their nationality and their political attitude, men and officers alike realised that only he could keep the remains of the army together and snatch some shreds of victory from the jaws of defeat.^[24]

Napoleon’s glory was their common property, and to diminish his reputation by denouncing him would have been to destroy the fund they had built up over the years, which was their most prized possession. According to the British general Wilson, who was attached to the Russian army, even when taken prisoner, 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’. These were about to increase dramatically.^[25]

On 22 November Napoleon learned that his supply base at Minsk had fallen to the Russians. He was momentarily ‘struck with consternation’ and sat up all night talking to Duroc and Daru, admitting that he had been foolish to invade Russia. Another piece of bad news came two days later: the only bridge over the river Berezina at Borisov had been burnt, and a Russian force held the far bank. ‘Any other man would have been overwhelmed,’ wrote Caulaincourt. ‘The Emperor showed himself to be greater than his misfortune. Instead of discouraging him, these adversities brought out all the energy of this great character; he showed what a noble courage and a brave army can achieve against even the greatest adversity.’^[26]

Having learned of a ford some twelve kilometres north and upstream from Borisov, he made a feint to the south and managed to convey false intelligence to the Russians on the opposite bank that he was aiming to make a crossing there, then marched north to the ford at Studzienka. ‘Our position is impossible,’ Ney said to Rapp. ‘If Napoleon succeeds in getting out of this today he is the very Devil.’ Napoleon had regained his composure and inspired his shattered army to one last act of heroism. He stood on the bank as his sappers dismantled the wooden houses of the village, and 400 Dutch engineers began building a trestle bridge across the river. Stripping off, they worked up to their necks in the icy water, battling the current and avoiding the large blocks of ice being carried along by it. They completed one bridge, a hundred metres long and four wide, and began work on a second as units still capable of fighting crossed and took up defensive positions on the opposite bank, shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ as they marched past. He himself crossed on 27 November, along with most of the units still with their colours. The infantry and cavalry used the first bridge, while the artillery, baggage train, and carriages carrying the wounded took the second. The crush of men and horses on the frail structures resulted in many ending up in the water, and when the Russian guns on the eastern bank opened up that afternoon, confusion and panic added to the casualties. Over the whole of that day and the next, the remnants of the army, followed by the mass of stragglers and civilians, struggled across while Marshal Victor’s depleted but still battleworthy corps held off the converging Russian armies. But it could not prevent them from shelling the crush of people and vehicles on the bridges and those waiting their turn to cross, turning the scene into one of indescribable horror, with people being shot, trampled, or pushed into the icy water. The Russian forces on the western bank had also come up by now, but they were held off by units of Swiss, Dutch, Poles, Italians, Croats, and Portuguese under Oudinot and Ney. That night, Victor crossed with his corps, and in the morning the bridges were destroyed, leaving a considerable number of stragglers and civilians to their fate.^[27]

Napoleon’s bold manoeuvre had extricated him and most of the remaining army from a seemingly fatal trap. Over the three days of the crossing the French had lost up to 25,000, many of them civilians or non-combatant stragglers, and inflicted losses of at least 15,000 on the Russians, all of them soldiers. The operation was not only a magnificent feat of arms; it was an extraordinary demonstration of the resilience of the Napoleonic military machine and of his ability to inspire men of well over half a dozen different nations to fight like lions for a cause which was not theirs.

Buoyed by the miraculous escape and the feeling that they had once more triumphed over the odds, the remnants of the Grande Armée made a dash for Vilna, where they would be safe and where there were abundant victuals. But at this point the temperature sank to a new low, recorded by some as minus thirty-five and a half degrees. Many froze to death during this last march, and those who did not walked in a state described by some as akin to drunkenness, while others were struck with snow-blindness and had to be led.

Napoleon instructed Maret to send away any foreign diplomats, so they should not see the condition of his army, and badgered him for news from Paris, demanding to know why no estafette had reached him for eighteen days. Maret was to spread news of a victory at the Berezina, in which the French had taken thousands of prisoners and twelve standards. Ironically, the next day Alexander held a service of thanksgiving in St Petersburg, having been informed by Kutuzov that he had won a resounding victory on the Berezina. Napoleon could no longer hope to fool people, and on 3 December he dictated the 29th Bulletin of the campaign, in which he described the disaster, finishing off with the phrase: ‘His Majesty’s health has never been better.’ He had to stop playing the general and become emperor once more — which meant he must get to Paris as quickly as possible to reassure his subjects.^[28]

Against the advice of Maret, who said the army would fall apart without him, he decided to leave immediately. Ignoring advice to put Eugène in command, he chose Murat, fearing that his brother-in-law would not obey him and would seize the perceived insult as an excuse to march back to Naples. Napoleon set off on the evening of 5 December, with Caulaincourt, Duroc, and a couple of other officers, and Roustam, Constant, and Fain, escorted by Polish and Neapolitan cavalry. The cold was intense, shattering the wine bottles in Napoleon’s carriage as their contents froze and cutting a swathe through the escort, which lost all of its Italians along the way. At one point they narrowly missed being intercepted by marauding cossacks. Napoleon had a pair of loaded pistols with him and instructed his companions to kill him if he failed to do so himself in the event of capture.^[29]

Two days later, having recrossed the Niemen, he felt safe. He transferred to an old carriage mounted on runners and chatted to Caulaincourt as they sped along with snow blowing in through the cracks around the ill-fitting doors. He went over the events that had led up to the war, which he repeatedly insisted never having wanted. ‘People do not understand: I am not ambitious,’ he complained. ‘The lack of sleep, the effort, war itself, these are not for someone of my age. I love my bed and rest more than anyone, but I have to finish the work I have embarked on.’ His conversation kept drifting back to the subject of Britain, the one obstacle to the desired peace; he was fighting the fiendish islanders on behalf of the whole of Europe, which did not realise that it was being exploited by them.^[30]

He had talked himself into a good mood by the time they reached Warsaw on the evening of 10 December, and in order to stretch his legs he got out at the city gate and walked through the streets to the Hôtel d’Angleterre, where the sleigh had been sent on. Nobody took any notice of the small, plump man in his green velvet overcoat and fur hat, which covered most of his face. He seemed almost disappointed.

He continued to talk with animation while dinner was prepared and a servant girl struggled to light a fire in the freezing room they had taken. Caulaincourt had been sent to fetch Pradt, who was struck by the jolly mood of the emperor when he arrived. Dismissing his own failure with the phrase ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step,’ he berated Pradt for having failed to galvanise Poland, raise money, and furnish men. He said he had never seen any Polish troops during the whole campaign and accused the Poles of being ineffectual and cowardly.^[31]

His tone changed with the appearance of the Polish ministers he had summoned. He admitted to having suffered a major reversal but assured them that he had 120,000 men at Vilna, and that he would be back in the spring with a new army. In the meantime, they must raise money and a mass levy in order to defend the grand duchy. They stood around getting progressively colder as he paced up and down, warmed by his fantasy. ‘I beat the Russians every time,’ he told them. ‘They don’t dare to stand up to us. They are no longer the soldiers of Eylau and Friedland. We will hold Wilna, and I shall be back with 300,000 men. Success will make the Russians foolhardy; I will fight them two or three times on the Oder, and in six months’ time I will be back on the Niemen.… All that has happened is of no consequence; it was a misfortune, it was the effect of the climate; the enemy had nothing to do with it; I beat them every time.…’ And so it went on, with the occasional self-justificatory ‘He who hazards nothing gains nothing,’ and the frequent repetition of the phrase he had just coined, and which he appeared to relish: ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step.’^[32]

Having had dinner, Napoleon climbed back into his sleigh and set off for Paris. When he realised they were passing not far from the country house of Maria Walewska, in a sudden surge of gallantry he decided to call on her. Caulaincourt had the greatest difficulty in convincing him that not only would this delay their arrival in Paris (and increase the danger that some German patriot might get to hear of their passage and ambush them), it would be an insult to Marie-Louise, and public opinion would never forgive him for going off to indulge his lust while his army was freezing to death in Lithuania.

As they sped on, Napoleon turned over the whole political situation again and again, as though he were trying to convince himself that the Russian campaign had been only a minor setback. ‘I made a mistake, Monsieur le Grand Écuyer, not on the aim or the political opportunity of the war, but in the manner in which I waged it,’ he said, giving Caulaincourt’s ear an affectionate tug. ‘I should have stopped at Witepsk. Alexander would now be at my knees. […] I stayed two weeks too long in Moscow.’^[33]

This was true. Two weeks before Napoleon left Moscow, Kutuzov had no more than about 60,000 men and was in no condition to engage him; he could have withdrawn down any road he chose. He would have been able to evacuate his wounded and equipment and get back to Minsk and Vilna before the temperature dropped. Most Russians at the time, as well as observers such as Clausewitz, agreed that the French defeat had nothing to do with Kutuzov and everything to do with the weather. ‘One has to admit,’ wrote Schwarzenberg, who referred to the field marshal as ‘l’imbécile Kutuzov’, ‘that this is the most astonishing kick from a donkey any mortal has ever had the whim to court.’^[34]