of his opponents, who, utterly indifferent to the sacrifice of life, refused to be drawn into engagements to support an advance or to extricate a rearguard, and steadily withdrew from every position when the French gained touch with them.
Thus the manœuvre against Vitebsk again miscarried, and Napoleon found himself in a far worse position, numerically and materially, than at the outset of the campaign. Then he had stood with 420,000 men on a front of 160 m., now he had only 229,000 men on a front of 135; he had missed three great opportunities of destroying his enemy in detail, and in five weeks, during which time he had only traversed 200 m., he had seen his troops reduced numerically at least one-third, and, worse still, his army was now far from being the fighting machine it had been at the outset.
36. Smolensk.—Meanwhile the Russians had not lost a single gun and the moral of their men had been improved by the result of the many minor encounters with the enemy; further, the junction of Bagration and Barclay was now assured in the vicinity of Smolensk. Towards this place the French advance was now resumed, and the Russian generals at the head of a united force of 130,000 men marched forward to meet them. Here, however, the inefficiency of the Russian staff actually saved them from the disaster which must certainly have overtaken them had they realized their intention of fighting the French. The Russians marched in two columns, which lost touch of one another, and as it was quite impossible for either to engage the French single-handed, they both retired again towards Smolensk, where with an advanced guard in the town itself—which possessed an old-fashioned brick enceinte not to be breached by field artillery alone—the two columns reunited and deployed for action behind the unfordable Dnieper.
Murat and Ney as “general advanced guard” attacked the town in the morning of the 16th of August, and whilst they fought the main body was swung round to attack the Russian left and rear. The whole of the 17th was required to complete the movement, and as soon as its purpose was sufficiently revealed to the Russians the latter determined to retreat under cover of night. Their manœuvre was carried out with complete success, and then began a series of rearguard actions and nocturnal retreats which completely accomplished their purpose of wearing down the French army. The Russian government, however, failed to see the matter in its true light, and Marshal Kutusov was sent to the front to assume the chief command. His intention was to occupy a strong position and fight one general action for the possession of Moscow, and to this end he selected the line of the Kalatscha where the stream intersects the great Moscow road.
37. Borodino.—Here he was overtaken by Murat and Ney, but the French columns had straggled so badly that four whole days elapsed before the emperor was able to concentrate his army for battle and then could only oppose 128,000 men to the Russians' 110,000. About 6 a.m. the battle began, but Napoleon was suffering from one of those attacks of illness and depression which henceforth became such an important factor in his fate. Till about midday he followed the course of the action with his usual alertness; then he appears to have been overcome by a kind of stupor and allowed his marshals to fight by themselves, There was no final decisive effort as at Wagram and the Guard was not even called on to move. Ultimately the sun went down on an undecided field on which 25,000 French and 38,000 Russians had fallen, but the moral reaction on the former was far greater than on the latter.
38. Moscow.—Kutusov continued his retreat, and Murat with his now exhausted horsemen followed as best he might; Sebastiani, commanding the advanced guard, overtook the Russians in the act of evacuating Moscow, and agreed with the latter to observe a seven hours' armistice to allow the Russians to clear the town, for experience had shown the French that street fighting in wooden Russian townships always meant fire and the consequent destruction of much-needed shelter and provisions. Towards nightfall Napoleon reached the scene, and the Russians being now clear the troops began to enter, but already fires were observed in the farther part of the city. Napoleon passed the night in a house in the western suburb and next morning rode to the Kremlin, the troops moving to the quarters assigned to them, but in the afternoon a great fire began and, continuing for two days, drove the French out into the country again
