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ON THE 28TH of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had been spending three
weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings, and even one
emperor. Before his departure, Napoleon took a gracious leave of the princes,
kings, and emperor deserving of his favour, and sternly upbraided the kings and
princes with whom he was displeased. He made a present of his own diamonds and
pearls— those, that is, that he had taken from other kings—to the Empress of
Austria. He tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise—who considered herself
his wife, though he had another wife still living in Paris— and left her, so his
historian relates, deeply distressed and hardly able to support the separation.
Although diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace, and
were zealously working with that object, although the Emperor Napoleon, with his
own hand, wrote a letter to the Emperor Alexander calling him “Monsieur mon
frère,” and assuring him with sincerity that he had no desire of war, and
would always love and honour him, he set off to join the army, and at every
station gave fresh commands, hastening the progress of his army from west to
east. He drove a travelling carriage, drawn by six horses and surrounded by
pages, adjutants, and an armed escort, along the route by Posen, Thorn, Danzig,
and Königsberg. In each of these towns he was welcomed with enthusiasm and
trepidation by thousands of people.
The army was moving from west to east, and he was driven after it by
continual relays of six horses. On the 10th of June he overtook the army and
spent the night in the Vilkovik forest, in quarters prepared for him on the
property of a Polish count.
The following day Napoleon drove on ahead of the army, reached the Niemen,
put on a Polish uniform in order to inspect the crossing of the river, and rode
out on the river bank.
When he saw the Cossacks posted on the further bank and the expanse of the
steppes—in the midst of which, far away, was the holy city, Moscow, capital of
an empire, like the Scythian empire invaded by Alexander of Macedon—Napoleon
surprised the diplomatists and contravened all rules of strategy by ordering an
immediate advance, and his troops began crossing the Niemen next day.
Early on the morning of the 12th of June he came out of his tent, which had
been pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and looked through a
field-glass at his troops pouring out of the Vilkovik forest, and dividing into
three streams at the three bridges across the river. The troops knew of the
Emperor's presence, and were on the lookout for him. When they caught sight of
his figure in his greatcoat and hat standing apart from his suite in front of
his tent on the hill opposite, they threw up their caps and shouted, “Vive
l'Empereur!” And one regiment after another, in a continuous stream, flowed
out of the immense forest that had concealed them, and split up to cross the
river by the three bridges. “We shall make some way this time. Oh, when he takes
a hand himself things begin to get warm!…Name of God!… There he is!… Hurrah for
the Emperor! So those are the Steppes of Asia! A nasty country it is, though.
Good-bye, Beauché; I'll keep the finest palace in Moscow for you. Good-bye!
good-luck!… Have you seen the Emperor? Hurrah for the Emperor! If they make me
Governor of the Indies, Gérard, I'll make you Minister of Cashmere, that's
settled. Hurrah for the Emperor! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! The rascally Cossacks,
how they are running. Hurrah for the Emperor! There he is! Do you see him? I
have seen him twice as I am seeing you. The little corporal…I saw him give the
cross to one of the veterans.…Hurrah for the emperor!” Such was the talk of old
men and young, of the most diverse characters and positions in society. All the
faces of those men wore one common expression of joy at the commencement of a
long-expected campaign, and enthusiasm and devotion to the man in the grey coat
standing on the hill opposite.
On the 13th of June Napoleon mounted a small thoroughbred Arab horse and
galloped towards one of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened all the while by
shouts of enthusiasm, which he obviously endured simply because they could not
be prevented from expressing in such shouts their love for him. But those
shouts, invariably accompanying him everywhere, wearied him and hindered his
attending to the military problems which beset him from the time he joined the
army. He rode over a swaying bridge of boats to the other side of the river,
turned sharply to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by
horse guards, who were breathless with delight and enthusiasm, as they cleared
the way before him. On reaching the broad river Niemen, he pulled up beside a
regiment of Polish Uhlans on the bank.
“Vive l'Empereur!” the Poles shouted with the same enthusiasm,
breaking their line and squeezing against each other to get a view of him.
Napoleon looked up and down the river, got off his horse, and sat down on a log
that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, they handed him the field-glass.
He propped it on the back of a page who ran up delighted. He began looking at
the other side, then, with absorbed attention, scrutinised the map that was
unfolded on the logs. Without raising his head he said something, and two of his
adjutants galloped off to the Polish Uhlans.
“What? what did he say?” was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans as an
adjutant galloped up to them. They were commanded to look for a fording-place
and to cross to the other side. The colonel of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old
man, flushing red and stammering from excitement, asked the adjutant whether he
would be permitted to swim across the river with his men instead of seeking for
a ford. In obvious dread of a refusal, like a boy asking permission to get on a
horse, he asked to be allowed to swim across the river before the Emperor's
eyes. The adjutant replied that probably the Emperor would not be displeased at
this excess of zeal.
No sooner had the adjutant said this than the old whiskered officer, with
happy face and sparkling eyes, brandished his sabre in the air shouting “Vive
l'Empereur!” and commanding his men to follow him, he set spurs to his horse
and galloped down to the river. He gave a vicious thrust to his horse, that
floundered under him, and plunged into the water, making for the most rapid part
of the current. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and
dangerous in the middle in the rapid current. The Uhlans clung to one another,
falling off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned, some, too, of the
men; the others struggled to swim across, some in the saddle, others clinging to
their horse's manes. They tried to swim straight across, and although there was
a ford half a verst away they were proud to be swimming and drowning in the
river before the eyes of that man sitting on the log and not even looking at
what they were doing. When the adjutant, on going back, chose a favourable
moment and ventured to call the Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles
to his person, the little man in the grey overcoat got up, and summoning
Berthier, he began walking up and down the bank with him, giving him
instructions, and casting now and then a glance of displeasure at the drowning
Uhlans who had interrupted his thoughts.
It was no new conviction for him that his presence in any quarter of the
earth, from Africa to the steppes of Moscow, was enough to impress men and impel
them to senseless acts of self-sacrifice. He sent for his horse and rode back to
his bivouac.
Forty Uhlans were drowned in the river in spite of the boats sent to their
assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which they had started.
The colonel, with several of his men, swam across the river and with difficulty
clambered up the other bank. But as soon as they clambered out in drenched and
streaming clothes they shouted “Vive l'Empereur!” looking ecstatically at
the place where Napoleon had stood, though he was no longer there, and at that
moment thought themselves happy.
In the evening between giving two orders—one for hastening the arrival of the
counterfeit rouble notes that had been prepared for circulation in Russia, and
the other for shooting a Saxon who had been caught with a letter containing a
report on the disposition of the French army—Napoleon gave a third order for
presenting the colonel, who had quite unnecessarily flung himself in the river,
the order of the Légion d'Honneur, of which he was himself the head. Quos
vult perdere, dementat.
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