Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert PeelAnonymous
History
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert Peel
Anonymous
Great Britain -- History
We need not follow the track of the deserted army with much minuteness.
The moment Buonaparte was gone, all discipline and command ceased. The
chief officers quarrelled vehemently; and Murat denounced his Imperial
brother-in-law in the bitterest terms, and escaped away into Italy on
the first opportunity. The Austrians and Prussians marched off, and
the French, pursued by the Russians till they crossed the Niemen, were
continually assailed, and dispersed or killed; so that Macdonald at
length reached Königsberg with nine thousand men, the body of French
presenting anything but the appearance of an army! In this fatal
campaign, Boutourlin states that, of this splendid army, one hundred
and twenty-five thousand were killed; one hundred and thirty-two
thousand died from fatigue, hunger, and the severity of the climate;
and one hundred and ninety-three thousand, including forty-eight
generals and three thousand officers, were taken prisoners--an awful
comment on the assertions of Buonaparte that he had beaten the
Russians everywhere. The nine thousand soldiers who returned with
Macdonald leave only eleven thousand to be accounted for of the whole
four hundred and seventy thousand, besides women, children, and camp
servitors, who entered Russia. These eleven thousand were, no doubt,
dispersed fugitives, some of whom might eventually reach France. Such
a destruction of human life in one campaign, so utterly unfelt for by
the man who occasioned it, stands alone in the history of this world's
miserable wars. The crime of it, as it rests on the head of that guilty
soul, is beyond mortal calculation.
During this momentous struggle, Russia was munificently supported by
Great Britain. The peace which Mr. Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford
de Redcliffe, our ambassador at Constantinople, had been the means of
effecting between Turkey and Russia, released Admiral Tchitchagoff and
his army of thirty thousand men to march against Buonaparte; and had
not that stupid personage suffered himself to be so grossly deceived by
the French Emperor at the Beresina, neither Buonaparte nor a man of his
army had ever got across that river. At the same time peace was made
with Russia by Great Britain, and Russia sent her fleet, for security,
to an English port during the invasion. Peace also was ratified between
Great Britain and Sweden; and Bernadotte was at liberty to pursue his
plans for aiding in the general movement of the North for the final
extinction of the Buonaparte rule. Great Britain also bountifully
supplied the Russians with money and arms, and other necessaries,
so that a French officer who accompanied General Lauriston to the
headquarters of the Russian army was astonished to find abundance of
British money circulating and in the highest esteem, though Buonaparte
had represented Great Britain as on the verge of bankruptcy. "When I
saw British bank-notes passing," he said, "as if they were gold, I
trembled for our daring enterprise."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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