[Illustration: Map of the Russian Campaign 1812.]
Technically Napoleon had won, since an important frontier fortress was captured; but he had not fought his great battle, nor had he cut off his enemy's retreat. Ney and Murat were despatched in pursuit, but it is charged on good authority that they acted recklessly, without concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian Smolensk with the Syrian Acre. Murat had foreseen that an affair at Smolensk would amount to nothing, and had begged Napoleon to avoid a conflict. Rapp came in after the victory, and recalled the scenes of distress which had marked every step of his long journey from the Niemen: the numerous victims of dysentery and typhus who lay dying along the roadsides, the desperate bands of marauders and deserters who were eking out a doubtful existence by ravaging the villages, the maddened hordes of peasants and tradespeople who were shooting or striking down the enfeebled stragglers from the army like bullocks in the shambles. Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded with the Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport barges had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains were without horses or oxen to draw them. The counterfeit paper money he had brought from Paris would no longer pass; where was he to find sustenance for his still numerous force of a hundred and eighty-five thousand men at least? Only by pressing on to some populous city; and on the twenty-fourth his army was in motion eastward. If Alexander could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk. The line from the Niemen to Moscow was very long, yet Schwarzenberg was on the right to prevent Tormassoff from breaking through, and Napoleon felt sure that Wittgenstein on the left was too weak to be a menace. If the great captain had halted at Smolensk and strengthened himself on the double line of the Dwina and Dnieper, as was perhaps possible in spite of all difficulties, he would have been quite as strong in a military way as before Austerlitz or Eylau. But had Russia learned nothing from these two experiences, and would she come on again a third time as on those two occasions to certain defeat? To have acted on the affirmative hypothesis would have been to expect much. The Czar would rather take time to raise the whole nation; if need be, to organize, discipline, and drill his numerous levies; to wear out the patience of the invaders and strike when the advantage was his, not theirs. Making all allowance for troops to be left in garrison, Napoleon would still have a hundred and fifty-seven thousand men, hardened veterans who, though murmuring and grumbling after the soldier's manner, were nevertheless altogether trustworthy, and would turn sulky if compelled to retreat.