typical fashion, counterattacked with a cavalry charge. The net result was two thousand dead on each side.
Napoleon ordered the departure for 19 October. He knew that the weather would be against him and that Kutuzov would do everything in his power to cut off the retreat so that the winter and resulting privations would destroy his army.
CHAPTER 30
WHEN the Grande Armee began its retreat, the crush was indescribable. The remaining hundred thousand soldiers and those accompanying them – wives, officers’ servants, canteen-keepers and sutler women – had been joined by thousands of Muscovites of foreign extraction who feared reprisals on the part of the Russians. The streets were therefore jammed with barouches, carriages, carts, wagons, caissons, charabancs and every imaginable contraption. Several of these vehicles, weighed down with booty and passengers, had broken wheels and were blocking the way.
Napoleon still possessed a powerful army. Morale was high: they had faith in the Emperor. However, disorder was already undermining the effectiveness of the troops. In a clever manoeuvre, Kutuzov had stopped pulling back towards the east and had positioned his troops to the south of Moscow. Thus he was blocking the way to the rich provinces of the south and was threatening the French retreat towards Smolensk. While Napoleon had been reorganising his army and enjoying his conquest pending the opening of negotiations, Kutuzov had restructured his forces. He had recruited countless peasants who were convinced that the French had set fire to Moscow, were desecrating their churches (it was true that some cavalry squadrons, with a total disregard for religion, had turned churches into stables) and exterminating the people. He was also receiving a steady stream of reinforcements from all the provinces. He now had at his disposal one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers backed up by two hundred thousand militiamen.
Kutuzov, however, feared Napoleon and wanted to avoid direct confrontation. He hoped to use delaying tactics for as long as possible, allowing the winter and hunger to wreak havoc in the enemy ranks in order eventually to intercept the French army and destroy it.
As for Napoleon, he had planned to withdraw as far as Smolensk. He was intending to regroup his forces in the city and give them fresh supplies from the stocks of food he had built up there. He began by taking the Kaluga road, to the south of the road to Smolensk. Part of the Russian army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Doktorov, blocked his way. Fighting took place in Maloyaroslavets and the town was lost and retaken several times by Prince Eugene’s troops. Seventeen thousand French and Italians fought against more than fifty thousand Russians. IV Corps lost four thousand men and the Russians twice that number. But Kutuzov had had time to link up with Doktorov. Now it was the whole of the Russian army that was obstructing the road to Kaluga.
Napoleon was faced with a dilemma. Either he continued with his plan to withdraw via the road to Kaluga, to which end he would have to defeat the Russian army despite its numerical superiority. Or he took the road to Smolensk again, which was shorter but, because it had been looted on the outward journey, would offer the army only very scant resources. On the advice of almost his entire entourage, Napoleon chose the road to Smolensk. Several factors led him to prefer this option. In current conditions a battle against the Russians was particularly risky. He also believed that Kutuzov had pulled his army back a few leagues to take up a higher position than that at Maloyaroslavets. In fact, the Russian generalissimo, overcautious as ever, thinking that the French were going to take the road to Smolensk again, wanted to avoid a confrontation.
Another incident also played a part in this decision: Napoleon had almost fallen into Russian hands. While he was on reconnaissance, six hundred Cossacks had sprung out of a wood. The duty squadrons had repelled them but for a few moments the Emperor had been threatened. The enemy would certainly not have withdrawn so swiftly if they had realised that they were dealing with Napoleon himself.
No one knows what would have happened if Napoleon had tried to force his way through to take the road to Kaluga. But what is certain is that the return journey via the devastated road to Smolensk was one of the main factors in turning the retreat into a disaster.
Kutuzov’s army began a long march along the flank, keeping parallel to the French and forcing them to stick to the road to Smolensk. The Cossacks and other light cavalry troops as well as the partisans constantly harried the Grande Armee.
Margont, Lefine, Saber and Piquebois were in the process of preparing their lunchtime soup, rather a grand term for the vile liquid made from coffee and flour. They ate better in the mornings because Margont had advised Colonel Pegot to make the regiment march behind the mounted chasseurs. Thus, as soon as they got up, the soldiers of the 84th rushed to the encampment abandoned by the chasseurs and hurriedly devoured the horses that had died in the night, horses that had already been partly devoured by their riders. It was important not to wait until the carcasses froze because then it became impossible to cut them up, even with an axe.
On 27 October there had been a very heavy snowfall. This, added to the hunger and the anxious realisation that they were taking the road to Smolensk again, had begun to transform the army. The spirit of camaraderie was wearing thin. If you possessed horses or supplies of food, you had to guard them overnight to prevent them from being stolen. As for sharing, it was a concept that was rapidly disappearing. Margont was deep in thought about such matters while gazing at the snow-laden branches of the fir trees, when he heard Lefine laughing.
‘Why do you put your hood on only at night, Captain? You look such a sight! Only your eyes are visible!’
‘That’s right. Have a good laugh. In a few days’ time you won’t be able to hear the nonsense you talk because your ears will have frozen and dropped off.’
‘What? Is it going to get even colder?’
Margont was clutching his bowl of hot soup to warm his gloves.
‘This is only the start,’ he answered.
Every word he spoke produced coils of steam. He was dreaming of fig jam. As a child, he had got through whole jars of it as his mother looked on in horror, like any parent watching the excesses of its offspring. Although he gorged himself on this jam, by one of those contradictions that make human beings such strange creatures, he sobbed his heart out if anyone tried to make him eat figs in the form of fruit. By adulthood he had become more sensible: he now loved both the jam and the fruit.
‘What is there to eat this evening?’ asked Piquebois.
‘A raw egg and some sweets,’ Lefine announced.
‘Do you call that a meal?’
‘In the 8th Light they only have sweets and caviar; in the 1st Croat they have beef that they wouldn’t exchange for all the money in the world but they might exchange some for flour because, like us, they haven’t got much of it. I’d need to exchange coffee and fish with Demay’s gunners for some fodder, which I’d exchange with the 9th Chasseurs for the flour to—’
‘All right, we trust you. Organise it as best you can,’ Margont interrupted.
Morale was declining and yet the four men were among the more fortunate. Piquebois was watching over their bony, worn-out horses. He stroked them to apologise for the misfortunes they were suffering and to be forgiven for finally having taken to eating horsemeat. He swapped part of his meals for fodder and, at night, he tied the two bridles around his wrist. ‘If anyone wants to steal them, they’ll have to deal with Piquebois first!’ he’d announced. And as everyone knew that he could still wield his sabre like a true hussar … One day, one of the mounts had slipped on a patch of ice and had accidentally thrown Lefine into the snow. The sergeant had cursed loudly as he got back on his feet and the two horses had immediately sought refuge with Piquebois.
Saber was munching a snowball to quench his thirst.
‘It’s unbelievable all the same! The army’s in a bad state, I can tell you. It’s been impossible for me to get my captain’s epaulettes! I’m a captain on paper but not in uniform because of the poor organisation. What sort of impression are we going to give if, when the Russians attack, the captains look like lieutenants? This sort of laxity will be our downfall!’
‘You’re really getting up my nose!’ thundered Piquebois. ‘Go and take them from a dead body if it matters so
