Germany From the Earliest Period, Volume 4

Excerpt: ...to escape. Napoleon triumphed; but at what a price! After a fearful struggle, in which he lost forty thousand men in killed and wounded,13 the latter of whom perished almost to a man, owing to want and neglect.14 Moscow was now both defen ... Read more

Excerpt: ...to escape. Napoleon triumphed; but at what a price! After a fearful struggle, in which he lost forty thousand men in killed and wounded,13 the latter of whom perished almost to a man, owing to want and neglect.14 Moscow was now both defenceless and void of inhabitants. Napoleon traversed this enormous city, containing two hundred and ninety-five churches and fifteen hundred palaces rising from amid a sea of inferior dwellings, and took possession of the residence of the czars, the 14th of November, 1812. The whole city was, however, deserted, and scarcely had the French army taken up its quarters in it than flames burst from the empty and closely shut-up houses, and, ere long, the whole of the immense city became a sea of fire and was reduced, before Napoleon's eyes, to ashes. Every attempt to extinguish the flames proved unavailing. Rostopchin, the commandant of Moscow, had, previously to his retreat, put combustible materials, which were ignited on the entrance of the French by men secreted for that purpose, into the houses.15 A violent wind aided the work of destruction. The patriotic sacrifice was performed, nor failed in its object. Napoleon, instead of peace and plenty, merely found ashes in Moscow. Instead of pursuing the defeated Russians to Kaluga, where, in pursuance of Toll's first laid-down plan, they took up a position close upon the flank of the French and threatened to impede their retreat; instead of taking up his winter quarters in the fertile South or of quickly turning and fixing himself in Lithuania in order to collect reinforcements for the ensuing year, Napoleon remained in a state of inaction at Moscow until the 19th of October, in expectation of proposals of peace from Alexander. The terms of peace offered by him on his part to the Russians did not even elicit a reply. His cavalry, already reduced to a great state of exhaustion, were, in the beginning of October, surprised before the city of Tarutino and repulsed with... ** Less