RETREAT FROM MOSCOW, from the painting by Meissonier, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”
THURSDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
RETREAT FROM MOSCOW
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was one of the most disastrous military enterprises in the history of the world. It was not the Russians that defeated the emperor. During much of his advance he was left alone. Sometimes he was harrassed by skirmish forces. Several great battles were fought, notably that of Borodino. But for the most part he was allowed to go on his way; for his enemies knew that he had greater than human forces to face and battle with,—the vast Russian solitudes and the cruel, killing Russian winter. The terrible story is summed up in the statement that Napoleon invaded Russia with an armed force numbering more than 500,000 men, and that he returned with less than 30,000.
Bonaparte had once said, “I will never lead an army to destruction as did Charles XII on the steppes of Russia. My soldiers are my children.” However, when Czar Alexander of Russia refused to accept his terms, Napoleon assembled his grand army of Frenchmen, Italians, Austrians, and Germans and invaded Russia as far as Moscow, a distance of 2,000 miles from Paris.
He was victorious at Moscow; but the Russians burned the city, and thus destroyed it for purposes of winter quarters. The czar delayed in his negotiations for peace so long that Napoleon was compelled to order a retreat, which began on October 19, 1812. His army was then harassed from the rear, and many lives were lost in these engagements. After two weeks of marching the soldiers met the first wave of Russian winter. The roads were frozen sheets of ice, and in a week nearly all the horses perished. The cavalry could no longer ward off the attacks of Cossacks. Many of the guns had to be abandoned. The army lacked the artillery necessary to fight a big battle. Food supplies had to be abandoned, as there were no horses to draw them. Thousands stretched out by the fire at night never to awaken in the morning. Cold and starvation killed them.
At Smolensk the army presented an appalling spectacle. Napoleon headed it, clad in furs, his expression set and stern. Behind him came the captains, majors, and lieutenants, then a few harnessed wagons with the emperor’s war chest and papers; after that the straggling forces, many of them unarmed, limping, half frozen, some wandering away with wild looks, others falling by the roadside never to rise again.
At the frontier Napoleon left this pitiful fragment of an army in charge of the king of Naples, took a horse, and rode to Paris.