At 2 p. m. on Saturday 5 December 1812, Napoleon’s carriage entered the small town of Smorgoni, on the border of Lithuania and White Russia. For miles behind it stretched the debris of the greatest army he had ever assembled: 450,000 French and allied troops had invaded Russia the previous June. Of the 100,000 who had reached Moscow, only 10,000 fighting soldiers now remained after six weeks of retreating the way they had come, beset by freezing temperatures and bands of marauding Cossacks. Though the world did not yet know the extent of the disaster, it was clear that a major blow had been struck at Napoleon’s domination of Europe.1
Smorgoni was little more than a village, built mostly of wood, and with just a few thousand inhabitants, the vast majority Jewish, as was the case with most of the urban centres in the region.2 This remote settlement, however, did have one peculiar claim to fame. In the seventeenth century the local landowners, the powerful Radziwill family, had established there a training academy for dancing bears which had acquired a European reputation. This fact was known to Napoleon’s soldiers, and momentarily distracted them from their miseries as they approached the town. In the words of Baron Lejeune, the general and painter of battle scenes, in his memoirs:
Smorgoni, the name piqued our curiosity. We knew that the inhabitants of this village, situated in the middle of an immense region of forests, made their living from hunting bears and selling their fur, and from the gymnastic education ofthe young bears, whom they would take performing throughout Europe. Everybody had fled before us; they had taken to their heels with their merchandise and their pupils.3
Figure i. Freezing French soldiers near Smorgoni, 3 December 1812. An eyewitness sketch by Major Faber du Faur.
In this incongruous setting, Napoleon reached a momentous decision. Setting up his headquarters in a manor house in the village, he summoned his senior officers, and told them that the time had come for him to leave the army and return to France. If the Russian advance were to be stemmed, a new army would have to be raised, and this could only be done from Paris. ‘I am leaving you’, he declaimed, ‘but it is to go and raise 300,000 more soldiers.’ Napoleon barely acknowledged the disaster that had befallen his existing army, still less his own responsibility for it. Instead, he presented to his marshals and generals a picture of a brilliantly organized campaign frustrated by unforeseeable accidents of fate, above all the burning of Moscow and the freakishly early drop in temperature:
The unheard-of audacity of arsonists, an exceptionally extreme winter, cowardly intrigues, foolish ambitions, some errors, perhaps even treason, and shameful mysteries that will no doubt one day be uncovered, all this has brought us back to where we started! Were ever such favourable prospects ruined by such unpredictable vexations!
The Emperor then announced who would accompany him to Paris and who would remain with the army. Caulaincourt, his Grand Equerry, would travel with him in his carriage and organize the relays of horses needed at each stage of the journey. His secretary, Baron Fain, his valet Constant, Duroc, the Grand Marshal of the Palace and General Mouton would follow in two other carriages. Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat, the king of Naples, was given command of the army, with orders to concentrate what was left of it at Vilna—which, as it turned out, he signally failed to do. Marshal Berthier, the veteran Chief of Staff, who was completely exhausted by the privations of the retreat, burst into tears at being left behind and received a blast of Napoleon’s famously foul temper: ‘You can’t come too; you have to stay with the King of Naples. I know you’re useless, but nobody else does, and your name will have some effect on the army.’5
With these arrangements made, there was no longer any reason for delay. At 10 p. m. Napoleon took his leave of Murat and the marshals, climbed into his carriage, and rolled off into the night.
World History
