CHAPTER TWENTY-THREENapoleon left Moscow with the aim of rejoining the 37,000 men of IX
Corps at Smolensk, using the supplies and arsenals there, and thus
appearing to good advantage at the end of the hitherto disastrous Russian
campaign. He made yet another of a catalogue of mistakes in 1812 by
failing to order his men to travel light and fa st. Weakly he allowed them
to take their immense hoards of booty with them, arguing that they
needed proofs of their 'victory' in the campaign. The result was a
tatterdemalion marching column well described by Louis-Philippe de
Segur, an eyewitness: 'It looked like a caravan, a wandering nation, or
rather, like one of those armies of antiquity returning with slaves and
spoil after a great devastation.'
The army marched in wide parallel columns towards Kaluga. Not even
the regimental commanders were told the true destination of the once
proud Grand Army. The seeds of a disaster were all there in the form of
insufficient food and inadequate winter clothing; there was horse fodder
for less than a week. As the man appointed 'Governor of Moscow' during
the 35-day sojourn, it fell to Mortier and 8,ooo of the Young Guard to
remain behind in Moscow to set fu ses, blow up the Kremlin and gut the
city. Mortier, angry that one in seven of the Guard had succumbed on
the march to Moscow through heat, starvation, fatigue and desertion,
disobeyed his orders and spent the time trying to collect supplies for the
perilous homeward march. It was not until 23 October that he finally quit
Moscow. It was lucky for him, and the Grande Armee in general that
Kutusov's military intelligence was so poor that he did not learn of the
French retreat until the 22nd.
Napoleon had originally intended to strike south and west across
country unravaged by war and therefore plentiful in supplies. Because of
a signal failure of nerve, he instead directed his army on 26 October to
follow the outward route - the post road leading north-west to Smolensk
- terrain which had been devastated first by the Russian scorched-earth
policy and then by the advancing French army. A crow flying over this
barren area would have needed to carry its own provisions. The decision