Taki Taki

High life | 23 March 2016

Uncle Vlad did a Kutuzov in Syria

On 17 November 1813, Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, had been the last to march out of Smolensk amid harrowing scenes. The hospital wards, the corridors and the stairs were full of the dead and dying. Napoleon had gone into Russia the year before with 500,000 men and was now leaving with fewer than 40,000. Ney had only 6,000 under his command but was determined not to fall into Russian hands. The Russian commander Miloradovich had already failed to capture Prince Eugene, Napo’s son-in-law, and the great Davout, so he set his heart on capturing the 43-year-old son of a barrel-maker from Lorraine.

Ney did what he knew best. He charged. The first frontal attack failed at the last moment as the French ranks were raked with canister shot. Ney, leading the group, reassembled and charged again. ‘Whole ranks fell, only to be replaced by the next ones coming up to die in the same place,’ wrote a Russian officer. When General Miloradovich saw how the French were charging, he exclaimed, ‘Bravo, bravo, Monsieurs les Français, you have attacked with astonishing vigour, an entire corps with a handful of men. It is impossible to be braver!’ He then ordered his gunners to cut them down, which they did.

As at Waterloo two years later, where Ney had four horses shot down from under him, the Marshal survived the Smolensk battle and the ensuing trap to capture him by swimming for it. The Russians were, how should I put it, magnificent in their cruelty in slowly strangling Napoleon’s men, watching them freeze to death, relieving them of their furs and booty, with the fat, lazy Kutuzov letting mother nature take care of the invaders. The latter had been at first surprised at the stubbornness of the Russian defenders, as well as by the almost spiritual manner in which the soldiers readied themselves for battle.

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