Thread by @2econd_crossing

#OTD 10 December, 1812, the Grande Armée was forced to abandon Vilna, which, in two days, had become "but one vast lazaretto." Most of its belongings, including St. Ivan's Cross, were thrown away on the Ponary Hills.
Napoleon, meanwhile, entered Warsaw.
#Voicesfrom1812

Vilna was all but a mirage. Already, the Army of Moldavia had infiltrated the road to the town's eastern suburb, between Ochmiana and Paradomin. Enfilades of volleys from the Cossacks' sledges, breaking into pieces the few thousand French rearguard, petrified the refugees.

Worst of all, the commander-in-chief, hitherto renowned as a "soldier without pear for intrepidity, for courage, despising danger, accustomed to throw himself saber in hand on the enemy," had abandoned his own men without proper measures.
(Cesare de Laugier)

Presuming the unceasing cannonade to be from the whole of Kutuzov's army, as speculated by Marbot, Murat left the town ahead of the 9,000 soldiers and and the 20,000 wounded at Vilna.
The half of the storehouses, which contained a month's victuals, remained hopelessly closed.

At night of the 9th, when the headquarter had been relocated to "a cafe on the Kovno road, Ney was given a unilateral notice by Berthier that Murat, with the Imperial Guard, "intends to march at 4 o'clock tomorrow morning...to reach Kovno as fast as possible." (Laug., Berthier)

Of course the dispatch did not make mention of the fact that Mortier had not been informed of the plan, allowing only Lefebvre to react at the first cannonade.
In the time between, Ney was expected to use his endeavours to rally the fugitives and stragglers." (Berth., Fezen.)

Again, Ney was returned to the rearguard:
"It is the King [of Naples]' intention that you should continue to form the rearguard, and to protect the retreat, with the aid of de Wrede's and Loison's divisions, and as many soldiers as you can rally and add to those troops."

Just as in Smolensk, he would remain at the town gate until Eblé blows up all the guns, caissons, and muskets which cannot be carried.
As for the wounded, Ney was expected to "write to the general in command of the Russian troops" and "recommend to him the sick we have behind."

It is hard to believe to the dispatch to be written by the observant marshal, who must have at least heard of the treatment of POWs in this country. Had Berthier resigned himself to carrying out the new commander's order without objection, a trait he was criticized for by Segur?

Or, given his dejection after being abandoned by Napoleon, he might have felt that in this point, nothing could make much difference.
Berthier rationalized the departure as follows:
"Under present circumstances all that the King can do is to proceed in haste to Kovno...

His Majesty leaves it optional with you to march, according as circumstances may require it, and to do the best under this painful situation, when the bitterness of the cold has completed the disorganization of the army."
Thus, the men were set for another retreat.

Brigades of Polish Chevau-légers, joined by parts of Eugene and Davout's corps, began marching at 11 p.m. on the 9th. It is noteworthy that quite a few of them found themselves leaving on the very day of their arrival, without a night's repose. (Rosetti, La.)

At the drum roll, people frantically purchased whatever they could at exorbitant sums, sledges in particular. Jakob Walter, who had entered Vilna that evening, bought from the Jews "a flask of brandy, about a pint and a half" and a piece of bread. (Walter)

He was too exhausted to feel its effect. Without bothering to haggle, he also obtained "a decent gin brandy" for a silver rubles, but found no more bread left.
For him, everything became "a question of 'Bird, eat or die!'" (Walter)

Colonel Griois became overwhelmed by despair:
"Never in my life shall I forget how we felt... I was stunned. The most utter discouragement seized hold of me. Death seemed preferable to the fatigues and sufferings we were again going to have to endure."
(Austin)

Eugene judged that "his feeble remnant could no longer content with the enemy" and decided to "take advantage of the darkness of night to get away from so dangerous a position." (Labaume)
The temperature still remained around -30°C. (Marbot)

So did Davout. Major Le Roy, as a 'grandfather' to his 85th Line Infantry, exhorted all to wake up:
"Come along, captains! Come along, lieutenants! You who've got this far, surely you aren't going to let me leave all on my own?...

Are you going to abandon your eagle when you're just getting back to a friendlier country? Come, lads, just a little more courage!"
He warned them never to expect "tender mercies of a enemy who's furiously determined to ruin [them]." (Austin)

"Oh, believe me, you can hope no pity. Stay here, and you're giving yourselves over to death!" he harangued.
Davout's ADC Lejeune, now left with no post in the army, obtained permission for a leave and prepared to depart for Paris before daybreak. (Lejune)

Column by column, the men "started in absolute silence, leaving the streets covered with drunken, sleeping or dead soldier...not one even condescended to notice the commands of the officers."
Around 1 a.m., Eugene joined Murat in the Kovno suburb. (Labaume)

Murat uttered, "There is no way we can resist. We have to continue with the retreat. We'll put the army into motion. Try to reach the Neman and we'll see..."
"Never before have such scenes of confusion been illuminated by so beautiful a moon," Brandt described the moment.

The Old Guard followed at 2 a.m., while the III Corps, now detached under Marchand's command, was ordered to start moving in 4 hours. Ney, "destined to save what remained of the army to the very last," was assigned to command the VI Corps and Loison's division.
(Fezensac)

Mortier, not in the know of the emergency due to Murat's neglect of communication, "learned of the departure by chance." (Fezensac)
Some of the Young Guard were marched along the Old Guard, while the rest, as can be inferred from primary sources, would leave as late at 7 a.m.

Captain Coignet of the Young Guard, who had only arrived on the 10th, got a sudden notice from his general:
"Be ready at 4 in the morning to leave the city, for the enemy is now arriving on the heights, and we shall be bombarded at daylight. Do not lose any time."
(Coignet)

At 3 a.m., Lejeune was all set for the long journey to Danzig, where he would join his sister who had left a day ago.
The sledge carrying him and the Polish officer General Kovitzki as his guide and interpreter "crossed the ice covering," "the least frequented route" to Kovno.

In the same hour, Coignet tried to shake his friend awake, who refused to leave his bed. When he gave the exhausted man a fake ultimatum, "Very well, I shall kill you if you do not follow me," he aloofly replied, "All right; kill me."
(Coignet)

"I drew my saber, and gave him some stout blows with it, thus forcing him to follow me. I loved my brave comrade, and would not leave him to the enemy," wrote Coignet.
At 4 a.m., when the two scurried to the town gate, Murat and the other marshals resumed their march. (Fez.)

They soon confronted the Ponary, "the foot of a small mountain, which was inaccessible, owing to the steepness of the ascent and the sheet of ice with which it was covered."
(Labaume)
Three days ago, Oudinot's carriage had crossed the same height with immense difficulties.

Grenadier Pils, who had accompanied the Oudinots', "had all the possible difficulties to climb this rise" by "pushing the wheels to help the horses."
"One can judge from this the disorder which was going to be produced when the army had to climb this steep slope," he wrote.

His anxiety was indeed foretelling of everything to come, as shown by Rapp's chilling description of the Ponary Hill:
"We soon arrived at the fatal heights where we were obliged to abandon all the remainder of our matériel. It was impossible to ascend it." (Rapp)

Just a league away from Vilna, the "heavy and frightened column" was stalled. (Segur)
The sharp ascent covered with ice, according to Fezensac, proved "as fatal for our baggage as the passage of the Berezina has been."

In retrospect, the bottleneck could have been eliminated in two ways. First, according to Berthezène, the army could have taken "another easier route...on the side of the Wilia," frozen solid. No one but few private travellers, including Lejeune, had thought of the alternative.

Or Maret and Hogendorp, who used to sprinkle sands over the hills, could have accompanied the army until this day to do the same. But few could be expected from them when they did not even keenly monitor the distrubution of supplies at Vilna.
(Zamoyski, Thiers)

The result was, as phrased by Thiers, "a scene of the most terrible confusion." For a few useless hours before daylight, the men engaged in the most "ineffecutal exertion" to pave their way.
Brandt singled out the moment as "one of the saddest incidents in the entire campaign."

On the opposite side of the hill, at 7 a.m., the remainder of the Young Guard and the III Corps were preparing to evacuate the town. But with the sunrise burst out the cacophony of hourrahs and shrieks in different languages!

Bourgogne had been laughing madly at his friend Picart's tale of adventure-how he "had passed himself off as the son of a Jewess" to get "some schnapps to drink and some nuts to crack"-until "a rattle of artillery" interrupted their banter. (Bourgogne)

When Bourgogne hesitated to return to the grim reality, the face of his garrulous friend immediately hardened:
"Come, mon pays... we belong to the Imperial Guard, and should be the first to go. We must not let these savages eat our bread." (Bourgogne)

Vionnet, perhaps owing to the delayed communication between Murat and Mortier, had time to take a bath and trim his long beards. All of his men had been "covered in ash with a kind of black crust" all over his face, so as to "resemble mulattos." (Vionnet)

On his way to Kovno, "a unit of Cossacks swept down, robbed a large number of administrative staff and some soldiers who were driving wagon trains and took them all prisoners." (Vionnet)
Those who had left the town on time, like Bourgogne and Vionnet, were the luckiest.

Around 8:30, von Suckow, who had fallen asleep at Cafe Lichtenstein, woke up from a punch
"from Mr. Lichtenstein in person. With a ferocious air this cafe-keeper who'd earned so much money from us and who'd always received us in the most flattering manner...now shouted...:

'Get up, you dog of a German! And get the hell out of here! Your comrades have already run away and are getting the treatment from the Cossacks they deserve.'"
Soon, he heard from everywhere "shouts, oaths, and whiplashes" and "groans in I don't know how many langauges." (Au.)

The locals of non-Polish descents, afraid of reprisals by the incoming Russians, went on a hysterical, unbridled rampage to prove their anti-French sentiment. They lured the drifting soldiers into their homes, stripped them of all possessions, and battered them to death. (Segur)

Marbot witnessed a haunting scene as he left Vilna, "when the infamous Jews threw themselves on the French, whom they had taken into their houses to get out of them what little money they had, stripped them of their clothing, and pitched them naked out of window." (Marbot)

Women would kick away the soldiers lodging in their houses, or stuff ordure into their mouths, saying,
"Le monsieur a du pain maintenant!" (Zamoyski)
These victims were left "unmercifully...to perish of cold" in the streets. (Segur)

Ney, after defending Vilna "to the last extremity," was obliged to retreat in the direction of Kovno. (Chichagov ; he falsely identified him as Davout)
Meanwhile, those facing the Ponary were forced to relinquish almost every vehicle they had clung onto.

Among Berthezene's men, Prince Emile of Hesse-Darmstadt was the only one who had saved his guns. A Bavarian artilleryman named Captain von Grawenreuth shed tears as he abandoned his last and favorite gun for its exceptional accuracy, named 'Mars.'
(Berthezene, Zamoyski)

Even the Imperial Treasure, carried by Paymaster Baron Peyrusse, was not the exception.
Suddenly, one of the chests tore open from volleys from the opposite direction-the Cossacks, after fighting Ney's rearguard, had appeared on the heights! (Austin)

When Bourgogne stumbled into the scene, he found "two hundred men, three-parts belonging to the Guard...facing the enemy, consisting of cavalry, many of whom were scouts."
Ney, ordered the punctured chests to be "opened and to let the men help themselves." (Marbot)

As for the remainder of the treasury, amounting to about five million francs in crowns, it incurred "the natural result that each man helped himself liberally to the spoil"-a claim repeated by Segur and Coignet and vehemently denied by Marbot. (Labaume)

"No, a thousand times no; never was there a such a sight!" wrote Coignet, remembering "all the chests and casks...burst open."
Among the riches abandoned before the hilltop were "the standards taken from the enemy which...ceased to interest us," including St. Ivan's cross. (L.)

Fezensac depicted the chaos reigning on the icy slopes.
"It was a strange spectacle to see men covered with gold and yet dying of hunger, and to see scattered in the snow of Russia all the luxurious commodities of Paris."

"It is quite impossible to convey an adequate idea of the demoralization of our army," wrote Labaume, who saw the soldiers, turned into "Cheap-Jacks" adorning their emaciated bodies with "court dresses and rich furs" from abandoned portmanteaux.

The plunder continued until the Cossacks resumed attacking. The men hurriedly crossed the defiles, during which Brandt was forced to let go of his sledge.
Everything else, including the gilded cross, had to be set to fire like their place of origin. (Vionnet)

The marauders "staggered under a weight of money," without a musket to themselves. They fell victims to the Cossacks who seized everything they had stolen.
The rest of the army, except Ney's rearguard, staggered into Éve, a town ten miles west of Vilna. (Labaume)

Meanwhile, General Krusemark returned to Riga to inform Yorck of the news of Napoleons's defeat, confirmed by the sight of endless fugitives he had seen in Vilna. (Clausewitz)
Berthier "had almost forgotten about" Macdonald and sent him his final order a day ago. (Berthezene)

With the Siege of Riga clearly neglected by Napoleon and Yorck increasingly disobeying him, the marshal had been "in a state of painful disquietude." It is worth noting that the cause of their mutual animosity was mostly personal, not ethnic.
(Clausewitz)

Communication with Yorck had long been suspended, when his Prussian division made up 2/3 of the X Corps.
Macdonald, however, "thought it beneath his dignity to make particular inquiries into these accounts," and uneasily waited for dispatches from Vilna. (Clausewitz)

Hartwich's anecdote of one dinner exemplifies a conspicuous discord between the French and the Prussians in Latvia. A French Captain Salentin, pointing to an engraving of "a rampant lion standing atop of a defeated hyena," said to Colonel von Horn:

"'That is [Macdonald];' pointing at the hyena, 'is the General Yorck.'"
The Prussian Colonel angrily shot back, "That's me and that's you!"
He "then grasped Salentin by the chest, opened the door of the room, threw him out and slammed the door."
(Hartwich, Smith)

On the 5th of December, the Marquis de Palucci, the new Governor of Riga, had secretly summoned Yorck and goaded him to defect. Being "too prudent a man to let himself be guided in this transaction by his mere animosity against Marshal Macdonald," he refused. (Clausewitz)

Macdonald deemed the unofficial news spurious, but sent a letter to Maret conveying his state of destitution:
"An officer who is come in from Vilna brings some absurd reports from that town; he, however, assures us that he saw [Napoleon] pass on his way to Kovno...

I cannot believe all I have just been reading in the Russian bulletins, which I forward...I expect from one moment to another to be enlightened by you. The shell has burst at last with General Yorck...The body is sound, but [the Prussians] are spoiling it;

the spirit os prodigiously changed...
In the name of Heaven, my Dear Duke, write me a word, that I may know what positions are about to be taken up; I am concentrating myself wrote."
This letter, dated on this day, would be intercepted by the army of Wittgenstein. (Clausewitz)

During this time, Napoleon's carriages were sliding through the snowy tract from Pultusk to Warsaw. The Emperor continued to talk of "the intrigues of the English...the 'fides Punica," his desire for peace, and "the weakness of the Bourbons in allowing a partition of Poland."

Every morning, he drank a cup of milk, sometimes in his sledge. He had a supper between 5 to 9 p.m. every night, after which he rested for an hour or two.
"I took advantage of this time to make hasty notes of our conversations," wrote Caulaincourt.

He kept returning to the subject of Britain's maritime trading, in which everything, he claimed, "depends on an imaginary factor" of credit.
He also asserted that the ongoing war with the British in Spain cost him no more than "any other compulsory defense against the English."

He predicted all of overseas colonies to "follow the example of the United States." America, in turn, would subject them to become its auxillaries, Mexico in particular.
He was certain that this trend, in "less than ten years," would greatly compromise England's power.

Whenever Caulaincourt made a defiant counterargument about, he would mutter:
"You see things as a young man; you don't understand."
"You don't understand anything about public affiairs."

In the evening, he finally arrived at Warsaw, "very cheerful" and "curious to see whether he would be recognized."
To his disappointment, few passerby took a glance at his "green velvet cloak with gold braid," but did not see Emperor Napoleon in it.

At 11 p.m., they arrived at Hotel Angleterre, where Napoleon finally ceased to play Secretary Rayneval.
In the new quarter with a somewhat ironic name, he prepared to summon Pradt for an insulting interview.

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