stocks of food were not at the expected high levels, since Victor's and
Oudinot's corps had taken most of it when they headed north. Secondly,
his spies reported that the Russians were manoeuvring to cut off his
escape. While Kutusov dogged his steps, moving parallel to the French
column a little to the south, Wittgenstein was heading for the Beresina to
seize the bridges there while on the other flank Tshitsagov threatened the
great French supply dump at Minsk. Thirdly, word came of an
attempted coup in Paris by General Malet (the Emperor first heard of
this on 6 November). Finally, as the most pressing immediate problem, it
was clear that French morale had collapsed completely. An entire division
of reinforcements under General Baraguey d'Hilliers surrendered lamely
to an inferior fo rce south-west of Smolensk.
Napoleon remained in Smolensk for three days, trying vainly to instil
order into chaos. As more and more intelligence reached him, it must
have seemed to the Emperor that all the powers of heaven were
conspiring against him. MacDonald, it transpired, had abandoned the
siege of Riga and was currently lolling in inactivity, while Schwarzen
berger's corps to the south were also out of the picture. And by the time
the rearguard entered Smolensk, there was no food for them. In a
ruthless application of 'first come, first served', the vanguard ate up all
the food stocks, gorging themselves with no thought of their fellow
soldiers toiling in the rear. At first quartermasters asked fo r chits and
ration books, but the hungry men brushed them aside, took what they
wanted, broke into the reserve warehouses and consumed everything
there too.
Unable to control this rabble, Napoleon vented his fury on the
governor, Charpentier, who explained meekly that he had had no power
to countermand the orders of Oudinot and Victor, his superior in rank.
The Emperor was reduced to watching helplessly while his men enjoyed
the crudest fo rm of 'rest and recreation' - huddling in improvised camps
amid the rubble of the city they had destroyed three months earlier. The
infuriated rearguard, finding all the food gone, sacked and looted
whatever they could find in mindless acts of desperation. Cannibalism
became rampant as men ate the charred flesh of fallen comrades.
On 12 November Napoleon and the vanguard moved out of Smolensk,
now seriously concerned that the Dnieper crossing at Orsha and the
Beresina crossing at Orshov might already be in enemy hands. His army
was now a barely credible fighting force: a muster at Smolensk revealed
that numbers were down to 41,000, as against the 96,ooo present at
Maloyaroslavets and the 6s,ooo left at Viasma. Even so, the survivors did
marcin
(Marcin)
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