furious and told his aides: 'Junot has let them escape. He is losing the
campaign for me.' Junot never recovered from the disgrace, went mad
and finally threw himself out of a window to his death in July 1813.
Perhaps his mind was already on the turn at Smolensk, for he was known
to have brooded that he, alone of the Emperor's inner circle, had not
received his marshal's baton, despite having started with Bonaparte at
Toulon and been with him in Egypt and Austerlitz; in his own mind, too,
he had been made the Duke of Abrantes for his 'sterling' services in
Spain.
The main French Army began entering Smolensk at dawn on the 18th,
to find it a smoking ruin and a charnel house of corpses; even hardened
veterans vomited at the gruesome piles of dead and dying they saw.
Napoleon meanwhile spent the day once again in inactivity and
indecision, this time uncertain whether the Russians were retreating
north or east and therefore reluctant to commit the bulk of his Army; yet
again his inertia ruined the chance of finding the two enemy armies and
splitting them. He was particularly at fault in not staying in close touch
with Ney and Junot, whose timidity he might have been able to overrule;
instead he returned from the front to Smolensk to rest at 5 p.m.
He was in vindictive mood that day. Fires were still raging through the
battle-scarred city and the Emperor, with ill-judged levity, described the
devastation as a second eruption of Vesuvius. Pointing to the inferno still
raging, he nudged Caulaincourt: 'Isn't that a fine spectacle?' 'Horrible,
sire,' Caulaincourt replied. Napoleon made a dismissive gesture. 'You
should remember the saying of one of the Roman emperors: the corpse of
an enemy always smells good.' It was noticeable that the Emperor, his
keen sense of smell notwithstanding, was the only one who seemed
unaffected by the stench of the dead and the scale of the suffering. In
cynical mood he wrote to Mamet, his Foreign Minister, boasting that he
had captured Smolensk without the loss of a single man. But he was not
the only cynic. The Russians, in headlong flight, had the self-deceiving
audacity to celebrate a solemn Te Deum in St Petersburg for the
'victories' of Vitebsk and Smolensk.
For another week Napoleon remained in Smolensk, seemingly still
dithering, still undecided what to do next, but apparently hoping that the
capture of the 'holy city' of Smolensk would make the Czar see reason
and come to terms. While Murat was sent to dog Barclay's tracks, the
Emperor brooded on his third failure to bring the Russians to a decisive
battle. There seemed to have been a succession of errors: failure to scout
Neveroski's defence force properly on the 14th, the day of inactivity
on the rsth, underestimate of the fortifications of Smolensk which
marcin
(Marcin)
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