Setting up outposts in and around the village of Vinkovo, Murat paused for breath. The following two weeks gave the much depleted and exhausted Russian Army a crucial period in which to recuperate, encamped as they were in a strong position, well-fed and receiving reinforcements.
Kutuzov, aware of the increasingly superior position of his own troops, organised an ambush by Russian troops of Murat's advance guard. Although losses were fairly even, Murat was forced to abandon his position so as to avoid being surrounded.
On the 19th October , the French evacuated Moscow and its surrounding area. Whilst light rain and some intervention by Muscovites prevented all the fuses from firing, nevertheless, large parts of it were destroyed, and a stretch of the surrounding wall collapsed completely.
When Russian troops re-entered the city, they found scenes of terrible destruction, as many dead lay unburied in the streets and those buildings which were not burnt had sustained significant damage or were blackened with smoke; inside, everywhere was plundered and many churches had been defiled. The Moscow rabble also played a role in this. After two nights spent in Fominskoye, Napoleon then reached Borovsk. On the 24th October came clashes at Maloyaroslavets, a small town to the southwest of Moscow.
Each side lost about 7, men, and although the French side managed to hold on to their position, the Russians fell back just south of Maloyaroslavets, importantly blocking the Kaluga road. The following day, on the 1st November , Napoleon reached Viazma. On the Russian side, Miloradovitch leading Kutuzov's advance guard was approaching.
He was far from the rest of the army however, since they had marched further south. By the 3rd November , Napoleon passed the village of Semelevo, a few kilometres north-east of Smolensk, then arrived at Slavkovo, where he stayed until the next day. This same day also saw the winter's first significant snowfall. This marked a dramatic change to the earlier milder weather, which some have argued lulled the Emperor into a false sense of security. The winter of became an unusually cold and bitter one.
On the 5th November , Napoleon reached Dorogobuzh. His plot was foiled in less than twenty-four hours and Malet and his main accomplices were executed less than a week later, on the 29th October , following trial by a military commission. Thus this event was perhaps an important factor in his decision to return to Paris not long afterwards.
On the 9th November , Napoleon arrived at Smolensk, where he remained for several days. The French troops left behind, as the main body rushed to Moscow, had been involved in a stand off around the town of Polotsk. The assault sometimes called the Second Battle of Polotsk had taken place on the 18th October the first having taken place in early August , in which Russian forces, under Wittgenstein, outnumbered Napoleon's troops, under Oudinot and Gouvion Saint-Cyr, by almost five to one.
A pupil of Gros, Boissard had the same precocious talent. The painter focuses on one element of the disaster to illustrate the whole. The colouring has a tragic feel to it, with a glaring red, melancholic browns, ochres and earth shades and a wintry white. The whole horror of war can be read on these faces: those of two soldiers a dragoon of the imperial guard and a hussar who have been abandoned by the rest of the army, seen continuing on its way in the distance.
See more at IMDbPro. Photos 2. Add image. Storyline Edit. Russia was the only unconquered country of importance on the continent when Napoleon assembled such an army as never before in his history and moved on Moscow with confidence that he would soon be dictating terms of peace in the old Russian capital as in Berlin and Vienna; but he encountered for the first time a man who had taken a lesson from our own Washington in tactics, those of conducting a masterly retreat before a superior force to draw the enemy away from their source of supplies and stretch their line of communication to the serious detriment of the main body.
Just as Washington avoided risking the fate of our cause upon a battle where the chances were all against him, so Alexander retreated. He closely followed the policy of Washington in letting the enemy win battles of no import while constantly retiring from entrenched positions. An army gaining nothing by advancing through a devastated country, where there is no noble principle involved, where only the glory of a selfish leader is concerned, becomes ripe for discouragement at a crisis.
Looting of the town began. Greedy soldiers disregarded discipline, left their posts and fought with the rabble for the spoils, mere looters with military license to pilfer.
Was it for that Napoleon had marched over two thousand miles with his grandest army? When the fire reached the hospitals thousands of helpless creatures were consumed amid scenes of unmitigated horror to the everlasting disgrace of the invader. The bodies of French and Russian soldiers who died during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow have been laid to rest at a ceremony in western Russia.
Along with the soldiers, three women and three teenage boys were also buried. The remains were discovered two years ago by a team of French and Russian archaeologists.
Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow, in , marked the end of his invasion of Russia.
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