The Ordeal of Captain Roeder: from the Diary of an Officer in the First Battalion of Hessian Lifeguards During the Moscow Campaign of 1812-13 / Translated and Edited from the Original Manuscript by Helen Roeder
At three o’clock on the morning of [November] the 17th the Hessians prepared to march against the enemy. Captain Roeder’s company had been reduced to seven sergeants and twenty-seven men. The total strength of the Lifeguards, who had numbered 660 combatants when they left Viazma some ten days earlier, was now twenty-six officers, 442 men, while the Prince’s Own (Regiment) could only number twenty-three officers, 450 men. ‘What a brigade of Guards of four battalions! And yet we are much stronger than the French!’ The Captain wrote a little letter of farewell to his family, and then they marched for about two hours back along the road to Smolensk. They took their stand in battalions to the left of the road, and there they remained until about eight o’clock. ‘I found it terribly hard; cold and drowsiness.’ At eight o’clock a Russian corps approached towards the town, and by nine the Hessians stood facing the enemy. From half past nine until half past twelve they were ‘exposed to the fire of about ten cannon and two howitzers, and especially of a battery of about six pieces lying a little to the left, which fired at us unceasingly and with great violence, so that even in the great battles of Wagram and Aspern we had never had to stand up to such a cannonade of such long duration. I left my place for a moment to have a word with Captain Schwarzenau, and just before 1 returned to it a ball passed through prodigiously close to Lieutenant Succow, who had stepped in, killing outright the men who were standing in the second and third rank to the right. The first of these was my old cook, Heck, an honest fellow, who died a noble death. In all, from twenty-seven men including officers, for I had lost many more from weakness during the march, I lost one dead and three wounded. Yet another shot passing close to my eyes, tore through a gap in the rank without damage, but struck the hand off a drummer in the Fourth Company.
‘The Prince’s Own, which was close to the Russian cavalry, unfortunately had to form a square, and in a short time suffered a loss of ten officers and 119 men dead and wounded. All the wounded officers fell into the hands of the Russians.
‘The First Corps, like ourselves, were stationed in a wood filled with Russian sharpshooters, but several times they had to form closed columns and attack at the double. The Russians did not yield, and nothing was done to circumvent or dislodge them par force, for this fight only aimed to hold back a little the corps which was stationed there under General Orlov, or to see whether they were supported by their main army or by a strong corps. We withdrew therefore at one o’clock, and, covered by a weak division, retreated with all speed as far as the frontier of Old Russia five hours beyond the little town of Lodsi.’
The Captain, ‘fearfully weary and suffering from a total lack of any kind of food’, tried to find the recruit who had been supposed to hold his horse on the neighbouring hillside, but the boy had taken himself off to a place of safety with the horse and such meagre supplies as might be in the saddle-bags. It was a Russian pony commandeered to replace the big horse that had collapsed a few days before. The starving Captain looked round him hopelessly; already the looters were at their work, stripping the corpses almost before they were dead. One of these men approached him with a bloodstained fur coat ripped by the cannon ball which had killed its wearer, a French subaltern in the Voltigeurs. The Captain gave a gratuity to the corpse-stripper; the coat was torn but at least it was warm, and this was neither the time nor the place for feelings of refinement. There was no need to freeze even if one did have to starve. He put his frozen hand into the pocket and found there a piece ‘of the most excellent sugar’. So at least he had something to gnaw. Another soldier brought him a small bag of barley coffee, ‘which had been found in the pocket of the fallen Heck, and since nobody wanted it I put it in my pocket’. So even in death his old cook provided him with a meal, for he managed to nourish himself that day upon six cups of barley coffee with the sugar added, ‘ladled out so that the roasted grain could be eaten too’.
The bivouac was horrible. They spent the night without shelter and ‘marched on, fasting, at five o’clock’. The Captain’s feet were beginning to swell dangerously and his hands also were frost-bitten, for he had lost the gloves which Mina [his wife] had knitted for him. The recruit did not return, having allowed the saddle-bags to be pillaged by the French, so his small store of food was gone. ‘I begged a piece of bread from Prince Wittgenstein, and then gave it to Amman because I thought that his need was the greater. Also I gave Captain Hoffmann my reserve flask of brandy. He promised me bread in return but gave me none.’ He tried to take note of the country through which they were passing, but was no longer able to do so; all he could do was to stagger on somehow. ‘We went by Kazani, where there was only one bridge, and this blocked by vehicles, so that the greater part of the infantry had to go through the water and ice, which terribly retarded our march. We laid stakes across it and passed over very slowly, and still most of us fell into the water. Here I ate some horseflesh grilled on the cinders and found it excellent. We went on for about another hour and a half beyond Kazani and bivouacked on the road by a great church. I lodged in a house with a number of officers of the Sixth Tirailleur Battalion. I have no batman.’
The next day he woke shivering and streaming, with his feet so swollen that he was unable to draw on his boots, so that he was constrained to borrow shoes from a soldier and they were too big for him. ‘Before the march out I lost my blue handkerchief in the straw. I could not search for it in the room full of officers.’ It is difficult for us in the twentieth century to understand how they could in such circumstances have continued to observe the punctilio which was considered proper to officers in the Guards. And yet, if they survived at all it may have been in some part due to the observance of a rigid code. They had no boots, sometimes no feet, but they knew how to die with dignity.
‘At half past four this morning between our encampment and the town of Dubrovna we were harassed by Cossacks, but we are not being pursued as we should be.
‘I was shivering from riding and from my indisposition, so I asked Prince Emil for a drop of the schnapps which he had offered me yesterday, and I also had to accept from him a slice of the Göttingen sausage which Mother had sent me and I had presented to him. It was excellent.
‘We occupied an odious bivouac to the right of the road towards Orsza, where it was impossible to make even a decent fire. I had nothing to eat, but managed to purchase three platefuls of groats [crushed grain, usually oats] for three francs from one of my soldiers. Amman was still my guest and slept by my fire. Coffee I still had, but the sugar of the dead French officer was all the solid nourishment I had taken until then, and even that I had shared too liberally. My lad Dietrich with all my best effects has not yet put in an appearance. Musketeer Alt with the furs, fodder and cooking pots may well be utterly lost.
‘20th.Very ill. After one and a quarter hours we reached Orsza, where I rode straight over the Dnieper Bridge 125 paces long. On the opposite side I found Colonel Follenius on a hill with a number of officers, who had mustered all those of our men who had gone ahead. Their number was equal to that of the regiments we had with us. Upon this hill we were informed that the army was to take three different routes via Minsk, Vilna and Vitebsk respectively. We were to take the first route with the Emperor.
‘There was to have been a great seizure of flour and brandy here, and the men were each given a schoppen of brandy to empty the magazine, but those who were to have removed the stores immediately became so sozzled that the twenty sacks of flour could not be brought away. So in spite of the superfluity, the soldiers in general received nothing, for only very starving men could wrest some of it from the universal pillaging and bring it over the bridge. I bought a little schnapps extremely dear.
‘My batman Dietrich has arrived safely with my best effects. I have just learned that my groom, Gottfried Köppinghof, died at the first night station after Smolensk, after I myself had left him quite cheerful and well provided and able to make the march on foot. I had thought that the hope of soon being back in his native land would have helped him to a complete recovery. The news came to me as a great shock and I was very sorry to hear it. Colonel Follenius has invited me to take a place in his chaise, so that I shall procure him night quarters and bring him through the French.
‘Riding back over the Dnieper my horse slipped on the bridge and lay with both back legs over the side. I had to fling myself quickly over its head into the throng of wagons and horses. But being an intelligent pony, he knew so well how to balance himself and remained so quiet that it was possible to help him up.
‘In the evening, after standing about in mud and darkness for a distribution at which there was nothing to distribute, we went on for about three quarters of an hour to a village to the right of the road, where we bivouacked.
‘21st. While we were on the march today about twenty Cossacks approached and carried off a wagon and two horses under the noses of our brigade and the cavalry, which rode on instead of letting fly at them. Our Schützen [light infantry] and the brigade thereupon opened fire, but naturally they made off with all speed. We marched for about seven hours, crossed a river and bivouacked at Kochanovo. I reported sick.’
They were approaching the Beresina and the worst of their ordeal was yet to come. [A Russian officer, a major, who also left an account of the retreat] gives a strange picture of their plight between Krasnoi and the terrible crossing:
‘The second period of the retreat began at Krasnoi and continued to the Beresina; a distance of about twenty-six leagues. At first things appeared to be more favourable for the French army, for, once across the Dnieper, they expected to link up with the corps of Victor and Oudinot and Dombrowski’s division, which together were over 30,000 men strong. Also the pursuit had been somewhat retarded by the fight with the Ney Corps on the 18th. Thirdly the army had now entered the area of its magazines and was in a country which it could regard as its ally, and fourthly the weather had grown somewhat milder. All these ameliorations collapsed before the fact that Admiral Tschitschagov with the Army of the Danube had pressed on via Minsk to catch the French army at the Beresina, and Count Wittgenstein was approaching from Tschasnik with his corps reinforced by General Steinheil, in order to link up with the Army of the Danube. By the movements of these armies the French were placed in great peril, and the least they could expect was a repetition of Krasnoi. Napoleon, perfectly well aware of the danger of his position, hurried to the Beresina by swift marches. When he came through Orsza he found the deputies of the Province of Mohilev waiting to receive the Emperor’s orders. The Emperor, usually so ready to avail himself of this kind of attention, sent them packing without seeing them. He had every reason for not wishing to exhibit his army, which had certainly lost some of its demeanour in the course of the march and was somewhat fantastically attired in priestly vestments and even women’s gowns as a protection against the cold.
‘As soon as Napoleon had taken on his reinforcements, he sent the Poles to the left against Borisov, which town had been occupied by Admiral Tschitschagov, and threw the Victor Corps to the right against Count Wittgenstein. Under cover of these detachments he reached the Beresina with the remainder of the army on the 25th, flung a bridge across it fifteen versts [a verst is approximately 1,000 metres, or two-thirds of a mile] above Borisov at Semlin, and crossed without losing time. Because of its horrors the crossing of the Beresina will live long in the memory of soldiers. For two days the crossing continued. Right from the beginning the troops surged over in disorder, for in the French army order had long been abandoned, and already many found a watery grave. Then, as the Russians forced back the corps of Victor and Dombrowski and everyone surged across the bridge in wild flight, terror and confusion reached their summit. Artillery and baggage, cavalry and infantry all wanted to get over first; the stronger threw the weaker into the water or struck him to the ground, whether he were officer or no. Many hundreds were crushed under the wheels of the cannon; many sought a little room to swim, and froze; many tried to cross the ice and were drowned. Everywhere there were cries for help, and help there was none. When at last the Russians began to fire on the bridge and both banks, the crossing was interrupted. A whole division of 7,500 men from the Victor Corps surrendered together with their general. Many thousands were drowned, as many more crushed and a mass of cannon and baggage was abandoned on the left bank. This was the end of the second period. To the Russians it brought over 20,000 prisoners, 200 cannon and immeasurable booty.’
