The Russians, being incited to this campaign by the remembrance of the defeat of Austerlitz, and by the fear of seeing Poland snatched from their grasp, were not deterred by the winter season, and resolved to open the attack on the Emperor at once; and as the latter was not the man to allow himself to be forestalled, he consequently abandoned his winter quarters, and quitted Warsaw at the end of January. On the 8th of February the two armies met at Eylau; and there took place, as is well known, a bloody battle, in which both sides showed equal courage, and nearly fifteen thousand were left dead on the field of battle, equally divided in number between the French and Russians. The gain, or rather the loss, was the same to both armies; and a 'Te Deum' was chanted at St.
Petersburg as well as at Paris, instead of the 'De Profundis', which would have been much more appropriate. His Majesty complained bitterly on returning to his headquarters that the order he had sent to General Bernadotte had not been executed, and in consequence of this his corps had taken no part in the battle, and expressed his firm conviction that the victory, which remained in doubt between the Emperor and General Benningsen, would have been decided in favor of the former had a fresh army-corps arrived during the battle, according to the Emperor's calculations. Most unfortunately the aide-de-camp bearing the Emperor's orders to the Prince of Ponte-Corvo had fallen into the hands of a party of Cossacks; and when the Emperor was informed of this circumstance the day after the battle, his resentment was appeased, though not his disappointment. Our troops bivouacked on the field of battle, which his Majesty visited three times, for the purpose of directing the assistance of the wounded, and removal of the dead.
Generals d'Hautpoult, Corbineau, and Boursier were mortally wounded at Eylau; and it seems to me I can still hear the brave d'Hautpoult saying to his Majesty, just as he dashed off at a gallop to charge the enemy:
"Sire, you will now see my great claws; they will pierce through the enemy's squares as if they were butter" An hour after he was no more.
One of his regiments, being engaged in the interval with the Russian army, was mowed down with grape-shot, and hacked to pieces by the Cossacks, only eighteen men being left. General d'Hautpoult, forced to fall back three times with his division, led it back twice to the charge;
and as he threw himself against the enemy the third time shouted loudly, "Forward, cuirassiers, in God's name! forward, my brave cuirassiers?"
But the grapeshot had mowed down too many of these brave fellows; very few were left to follow their chief, and he soon fell pierced with wounds in the midst of a square of Russians into which he had rushed almost alone.
I think it was in this battle also that General Ordenerl killed with his own hands a general officer of the enemy. The Emperor asked if he could not have taken him alive. "Sire," replied the general with his strong German accent, "I gave him only one blow, but I tried to make it a good one." On the very morning of the battle, General Corbineau, the Emperor's aide-de-camp, while at breakfast with the officers on duty, declared to them that he was oppressed by the saddest presentiments; but these gentlemen, attempting to divert his mind, turned the affair into a joke. General Corbineau a few moments after received an order from his Majesty, and not finding some money he wished at Monsieur de Meneval's quarters, came to me, and I gave it to him from the Emperor's private purse; at the end of a few hours I met Monsieur de Meneval, to whom I
rendered an account of General Corbineau's request, and the sum I had lent him. I was still speaking to Monsieur de Meneval, when an officer passing at a gallop gave us the sad news of the general's death. I have never forgotten the impression made on me by this sad news, and I still find no explanation of the strange mental distress which gave warning to this brave soldier of his approaching end.
Poland was relying upon the Emperor to re-establish her independence, and consequently the Poles were filled with hope and enthusiasm on witnessing the arrival of the French army. As for our soldiers, this winter campaign was most distasteful to them; for cold and wretchedness, bad weather and bad roads, had inspired them with an extreme aversion to this country.
In a review at Warsaw, at which the inhabitants crowded around our troops, a soldier began to swear roundly against the snow and mud, and, as a consequence, against Poland and the Poles. "You are wrong, Monsieur soldier," replied a young lady of a good bourgeois family of the town, "
not to love our country, for we love the French very much."--"You are doubtless very lovable, mademoiselle," replied the soldier; "but if you wish to persuade me of the truth of what you say, you will prepare us a good dinner, my comrade and I."--"Come, then, messieurs," said the parents of the young Pole now advancing, "and we will drink together to the health of your Emperor." And they really carried off with them the two soldiers, who partook of the best dinner the country afforded.
The soldiers were accustomed to say that four words formed the basis of the Polish language,-- kleba? niema; "bread? there is none;" voia?
sara; "water? they have gone to draw it."
As the Emperor was one day passing through a column of infantry in the suburbs of Mysigniez, where the troops endured great privations since the bad roads prevented the arrival of supplies, "Papa, kleba," cried a soldier. "Niema," immediately replied the Emperor. The whole column burst into shouts of laughter, and no further request was made.