VILNA REACHED. 691 scheme, so long must he foster the French interest in his personal welfare. Are there not Court Circulars to-day in which, in times of profound peace, the simple ailments of the sovereigns are announced as matters of prime importance to the state? How much more, then, the health of the emperor in the midst of a great campaign. The campaign had ended at the Beresina, but the mob of mostly unarmed men, once the Grand Army, was followed sharply to Smorgoni, where were some small supplies. The cold again came on; few escaped frozen members, and all were dulled in body and mind. Twenty thousand men fell from exhaustion from Smorgoni to Vilna, which was reached December 8. Gallant Ney, who had successively commanded every part of the army, and now led a rearguard of some two thousand men of Wrede's and Loison's divisions, was harried by the Russian light troops every step of the way, and had Chichagov and Wittgenstein in his rear, and Kutosov back two marches. The demoralization spread to the reserve corps, which in its retreat the Grand Army had picked up. Loison had arrived at Vilna from the rear with ten thousand men, and was sent out to receive the Grand Army, but in three days two thirds of this number had fallen in their tracks. If we can credit Chambray, the number under arms had dwindled from thirty thousand at the Beresina to nine thousand men. Of these, ten thousand may have been lost in the crossing, and the cold which began on December 3 may have frozen the last resistance out of an equal number. Vilna was full of stores, accumulated from Königsberg and by levy throughout Lithuania. The famished men — no longer soldiers-pillaged at will; and what was not consumed or destroyed fed the oncoming Russians. Devouring food with the voracity of animals and, over-drinking brandy threw the bulk of them into every house, sick with dysentery; many died; every church and public building became a hospital. Nearly twenty thousand men who entered Vilna were unable to leave it. Five miles west of Vilna is the steep Ponary hill, and this, covered by ice, arrested everything on wheels. Here were abandoned nearly all the guns that were left; and even the treasure chest, with six millions in coin and the Moscow spoils, stalled with four thousand other wagons, fell a prey partly to the French soldiers, partly to the Cossacks. Orders to hold Vilna for winter quarters could not be executed; those who could drag themselves away followed the army, to perish in the snow; and so Murat continued the retreat. A fortnight later Alexander arrived at the Russian headquarters in Vilna, and did everything to aid the French invalided, as well as to reorganize his own forces. There were almost as many Russian sick as French in Vilna, and no discrimination was made: the czar and Constantine were equally active in the good work. Want of care brought on gangrene, and this was followed by typhoid. The distress left room for naught but charity. Vastly to his credit, the czar issued an immediate amnesty to Poland. Kovno, seventy miles from Vilna, was reached in three days, December 12, and was also looted. Ney defended this town until some Cossacks passed the Niemen on the ice and cut him off; he then moved down the left bank on Tilsit, and eventually got to Königsberg with five hundred men. The Russians did not move into Prussia for some days: the pursuit ended at the Niemen, although this was frozen over so that artillery could cross. At the Beresina, with still a semblance of organization, this might have been a benefit; at the Niemen, where barely six thousand men had muskets, it aided the Cossacks to harry them; and the Grand Army, which THE ARMY DISSOLVED. 693 had made so proud a show here in the early summer, took refuge in every direction through the woods and along any roads from the pursuing swords. The most part fled with Murat and headquarters towards Königsberg. From Kovno, December 12, Berthier wrote Napoleon: "I must say to Your Majesty that the whole army is dissolved; even your Guard, which is barely four or five hundred strong. Generals, officers, have lost everything they had; nearly all have different parts of the body frozen. The streets are covered with corpses, and the houses filled with them. The army makes up a single column of several hours' length, which breaks up mornings, and comes in evenings without order." There was no possibility of stopping even at the Niemen, and the mass kept on towards Gumbinen. "I will not relate to Your Majesty the sorry details of plunder, disobedience, dissolution," wrote Berthier, December 16; "everything has reached its worst." On December 19 Murat got to Königsberg with four hundred men of the Old Guard and six hundred of the Guard cavalry, followed by a few thousand stragglers. The Russian generals had striven to conserve their own force rather than inflict further defeat on the French. But they themselves had not come off without losses. On December 4, says Buturlin, there were, out of eighty-eight thousand aggregate, only forty thousand men in line. Wittgenstein marched on Tilsit, hoping to cut off Macdonald, who had gone into winter quarters before Riga. Napoleon might have made the latter more useful, but his men would have dwindled fast like the rest. Macdonald and Yorck, who commanded the Prussian contingent in his corps, were on bad terms, yet Yorck had done his work well. On December 18 Macdonald received orders to withdraw to Tilsit, which with the bulk of his corps he reached in about ten days, before Wittgenstein got so far along. Yorck, who was in the rear of his column, in the course of the manœuvre got ONE IN SEVENTEEN. 673 brovski with four thousand men had joined the garrisons of Minsk and Borisov, some fifteen hundred men, at the latter place; but Chichagov's van drove him out on the 21st after a noble defense, and he retired with but fifteen hundred effective on Bobr, where he met Oudinot with eight thousand men and the Mohilev garrison of twelve hundred. There had been a little French garrison in Minsk under Bronikovski, and a small Russian force at Bobruisk, together with a larger one at Mozyr under Ertel, but the latter took no part in the Beresina manoeuvre. Victor with eleven thousand men stood at Chereia. The Grand Army had thus dwindled to less than thirty thousand men all told. Opposite this handful of desperate soldiers stood Kutusov at Lanizi with sixty-five thousand men; Wittgenstein with thirty thousand men at Chasniki; Chichagov at Borisov with thirty-four thousand, a total of one hundred and thirty thousand men fit for duty. Thus Napoleon had so managed as, out of half a million, to have left for his desperate struggle only thirty thousand armed men one in seventeen; while out of a quarter of a million men the Russians could put in line over one half. - Let us see how Chichagov had come into the present problem. When Schwartzenberg crossed the Bug and marched on Volkovisk, October 30, he left Reynier opposite Sacken. Sacken attacked November 14, but was beaten; and Reynier followed on to Volkovisk, while Schwartzenberg was at Slonim. A second attack had no better result, and Reynier then followed Sacken back to Brest Litovsk, which he captured November 26. Still, though defeated, Sacken had actually contained both Reynier and Schwartzenberg. The latter has been charged with acting treacherously. He was halfhearted, but his task was to protect the Warsaw country; and that he did not know the grievous case of the Grand Army was Napoleon's fault, for Schwartzenberg got his warped VOL. III. |