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Napoleon's generals- Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near
that region of fire and sometimes even entered it- repeatedly
led into it huge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to
what had always happened in their former battles, instead of the
news they expected of the enemy's flight, these orderly masses
returned thence as disorganized and terrified mobs. The generals
re-formed them, but their numbers constantly decreased. In the
middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand
reinforcements.
Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when
Murat's adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians
would be routed if His Majesty would let him have another division.
"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern
surprise, looking at the adjutant- a handsome lad with long black
curls arranged like Murat's own- as though he did not understand
his words.
"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How
can they need reinforcements when they already have half the army
directed against a weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"
"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that
it is not noon yet, and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly.
Go!..."
The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply
without removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where
men were being slaughtered.
Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier
began talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.
In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to
interest Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general
with a suite, who was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering
horse. It was Belliard. Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor
with rapid strides and in a loud voice began boldly demonstrating
the necessity of sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor
that the Russians were lost if the Emperor would give another
division.
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and
down without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly
to the generals of the suite around him.
"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when
he again came up to the general. "In the heat of a battle
it is easy to make a mistake. Go and have another look and then
come back to me."
Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another
part of the battlefield galloped up.
"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in
the tone of a man irritated at being continually disturbed.
"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.
"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an
angry gesture.
The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report,
but the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped,
came back, and called Berthier.
"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms
slightly apart. "Who do you think should be sent there?"
he asked of Berthier (whom he subsequently termed "that gosling
I have made an eagle").
"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier,
who knew all the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.
Napoleon nodded assent.
The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes
later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward.
Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.
"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't
send Claparede. Send Friant's division."
Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division
instead of Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and
delay in stopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order
was carried out exactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard
to his army he was playing the part of a doctor who hinders by
his medicines- a role he so justly understood and condemned.
Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into
the smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued
to arrive at a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same
thing. They all asked for reinforcements and all said that the
Russians were holding their positions and maintaining a hellish
fire under which the French army was melting away.
Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.
M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since
morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest
lunch to His Majesty.
"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?"
said he.
Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the
negation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M.
de Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that
there is no reason for not having lunch when one can get it.
"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely,
and turned aside.
A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed
on M. de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.
Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that
of an ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money
about and always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated
all the chances of the game, finds that the more he considers
his play the more surely he loses.
His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same
preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same
proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same:
he knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and
skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz
and Friedland- yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally
become impotent.
All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with
success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack
by reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by
"the men of iron," all these methods had already been
employed, yet not only was there no victory, but from all sides
came the same news of generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements
needed, of the impossibility of driving back the Russians, and
of disorganization among his own troops.
Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered
a few phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with
congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken,
the corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards,
cannon and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the
cavalry to gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi,
Marengo, Arcola, Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now
something strange was happening to his troops.
Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that
this was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened
in his former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt
by all the men about him experienced in the art of war. All their
faces looked dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes-
only a de Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was
happening.
But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the
meaning of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight
hours, after all efforts had been expended. He knew that it was
a lost battle and that the least accident might now- with the
fight balanced on such a strained center- destroy him and his
army.
When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian
campaign in which not one battle had been won, and in which not
a flag, or cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months,
when he looked at the concealed depression on the faces around
him and heard reports of the Russians still holding their ground-
a terrible feeling like a nightmare took possession of him, and
all the unlucky accidents that might destroy him occurred to his
mind. The Russians might fall on his left wing, might break through
his center, he himself might be killed by a stray cannon ball.
All this was possible. In former battles he had only considered
the possibilities of success, but now innumerable unlucky chances
presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like
a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack
him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow
which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels that his
arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable
destruction seizes him in his helplessness.
The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of
the French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently
on a campstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on
his knees. Berthier approached and suggested that they should
ride along the line to ascertain the position of affairs.
"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes,
tell them to bring me my horse."
He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.
Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space
through which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools
of blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his
generals had ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in
such a small area. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten
hours, wearied the ear and gave a peculiar significance to the
spectacle, as music does to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up
the high ground at Semenovsk, and through the smoke saw ranks
of men in uniforms of a color unfamiliar to him. They were Russians.
The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village
and its knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line
and sent forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it
was a continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to
the French or the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again
fell into the reverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He
could not stop what was going on before him and around him and
was supposed to be directed by him and to depend on him, and from
its lack of success this affair, for the first time, seemed to
him unnecessary and horrible.
One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer
to lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing
near Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this
general's senseless offer.
Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.
"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have
my Guard destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode
back to Shevardino.
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