(The second chapter arrives!)
In fact, on October 3, Napoleon quietly began preparations for the evacuation, and he ordered his troops to get ready to leave Moscow on the 15th or 16th. When Napoleon entered Russia, he had nearly 400,000 horses; now there are nearly 200,000 French troops in Moscow, including 20,000 cavalry. He still had 1,372 cannon, but not as many pack horses. There are nearly 10,000 to 15,000 wounded French soldiers in the hospital. Doctor Tulio reminded him: "Your Majesty, how can I get these people away?" But Napoleon didn't care about the lives of the wounded.
In any case, Napoleon was determined. Horses, wagons, stretchers and everything on wheels were loaded with wounded and valuable possessions such as gigantic sculptures, paintings, furniture and even copious amounts of Persian rugs. Then, with great reluctance, Napoleon gave the order to abandon the city. At noon on October 19, only 25 days after they occupied Moscow, Napoleon’s carriage, escorted by the imperial guards, drove slowly out of the gates of the Kremlin and left Moscow for the last time. Napoleon ordered the 4th Army led by Marshal Lune to take charge of the rear. The current 4th Army has less than 20,000 people, and bombarded the Kremlin on October 23. But for some unknown reason, the command was not executed.
Napoleon's original plan was to take the southern line and return via Smolensk, which had been looted by the French army. Napoleon hoped to defeat Kutuzov at Kaluga and thereby clear the way for this large-scale withdrawal. At the same time, the Cossack cavalry regiments continued to disrupt the French defenses, tracking the French like a pack of wolves. Murat was again surrounded by Russian troops, General Sebastiani's army was defeated by Vinkov, and Kutuzov failed to capture Murat's entire cavalry. But even in the best of times, it was difficult to feed 200,000 people and tens of thousands of war horses. What a dreadful sight it would be to have 40,000 chariots and horses loaded with ammunition and firewood in the snow and ice at the first frost! Part of the French army changed course along the old Kaluga road and marched towards Malojaroslavets via the Desna River. Juno's army marched on the Borodino road, and the two armies met at Mozatsk. Although Juno began to decline gradually, since more than 60 generals had been lost in the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon had no choice but to retain Juno's position on the grounds of his rich combat experience.
During the first two days after leaving Moscow, Meneveral lost control of one of his feet due to the cold. On October 22, Duktorov's army set out from Darutino in an attempt to intercept Napoleon's vanguard, while Kutuzov's army was now marching north to Kaluga. On October 24, Duktorov's army encountered a detachment of Eugene's and engaged in a pitched battle, but Eugene remained in control as Napoleon's army advanced from the northern flank. Although Duktorov retreated, the French lost seven more generals. On October 25, during a routine inspection, Napoleon, escorted only by a small detachment of the Imperial Guard, was almost captured. Escaping under the **** of Napoleon's adjutant. He then gave the order to stop the march to Kaluga and go instead to Mozatsk via Oshkov. This overly large column, about 50 miles long, struggled to retreat amid occasional skirmishes with the Russians.
The French army lost nearly a thousand horses and added thousands of wounded. There were discarded luggage, cannons and boots along the road. Colonel Mabot vividly compared the vast land of Russia to a "huge cemetery" that constantly devoured them, and what they left in this cemetery were "30,000 corpses bitten by wolves." They first reached Grzask, then Wismar, and advanced in the direction of Smolensk. To the north was the Russian army under General Chasniki, who continually disrupted the French 8th and 11th armies there, directly threatening Napoleon's plans to cross the Berezina. Chechakov led his army to set up roadblocks on the way to Brest-Litovsk and Slonim.
In the end Napoleon had to rely on the defenders of the Smolensk fortress against the pursuit of Kutuzov's vanguard led by Miloradovich. "The French army began to disintegrate and collapse," a French judge recorded. The corpses of thousands of horses are always left behind wherever the French army passes. Along the way, the Russian people who had been brutally plundered by the French army in the early days of the French invasion also rose up to resist the French army, thus restraining their retreat speed. While Napoleon was in Slavkova, Miloradovich's troops also arrived there and managed to hit Napoleon's rearguard. Davout was besieged, and was rescued by Prince Eugène only at the last moment.
Although Lie's Sixth Army had now been decimated by the Russians, Lie's Third Army was ordered to replace Davout's army as Napoleon's rearguard. The French cavalry regiment also dropped sharply from nearly 20,000 people when it first set off from Moscow to only a few thousand people. They have neither protection nor the ability to protect themselves. In the first week of November, the hungry and cold French army was in disorder, and the Russian army swarmed like wolves to besiege the French army, and the Cossack cavalry also attacked them from time to time. At this time, there was heavy snow in the world, which deeply covered the bodies of those fallen soldiers. Maybe the snow will not melt in the next 154 days.
However, the French army did not retreat to Vitebsk in the northwest direction. On November 12, the forward troops of the French army retreated in the southwest direction, passing through Krassoni and Borisov, and along the Berezina River to Minsk. Behind them, Kutuzov's troops were closing in, while Platov's more aggressive cavalry and Miloradovich's main force approached from the north and the south. To make matters worse, Vechestan's 30,000-man army, which now controls Vitebsk and Polotsk, is also moving westward, while General Chechakov's 40,000-man army is moving from Ming Minsk rushed straight at Napoleon's army - and Napoleon originally planned to retreat to Minsk for temporary refuge. So far, Napoleon is still completely unaware that he has been surrounded.
After reaching Krasnoye on January 15, Napoleon spent two full days waiting for the rest of his troops to arrive here. However, his Imperial Guard suffered heavy losses when they broke through Kutuzov's interception on the way to Minsk; but also achieved a small victory by repelling nearly 35,000 Russian troops.
The situation was still very worrying, and Napoleon, besieged on all sides, could not sit still. Because of this small victory, he ordered the French to advance at full speed, leaving Ney's rearguard far behind, for he had just learned that Chchakov had captured the original Shichak from the French. Minsk, where Watzenberg was stationed—this move had cut off Napoleon's supply lines and retreat.
Napoleon marched at full speed with his whole army, and crossed the Berezina before the troops of Chechakov and Kutuzov assembled at Orsha to stop them. The road to Warsaw was cut off due to the occupation of Minsk by the Russians, where a fierce battle broke out between French and Russian armies. Napoleon had only one option left, which was to march northwestward, pass the Dnieper River, the Dvina River and the Ur River, head towards Smorgeny and Kovno, cross the Neman River along the old road, and arrive at the Konigsberg and Gdansk controlled by the French army.
But then, the bad news came that Marshal Lune, the commander of the 4th Army, was killed in battle, and all the 4th Army was annihilated or captured. Yi led the 6th Army, which had only more than 2,000 people left, to surrender to the Russian army.
From November 26th to 29th, Napoleon's remaining troops finally crossed the Neman River, and Napoleon successfully escaped from danger. After arriving in Morodino on December 5, Napoleon, who was extremely frustrated, drafted the famous "29th Army Proclamation" and signed an order to recruit 300,000 more recruits. On the same day at Smogeny Napoleon summoned his top generals for the last time ~www.mtlnovel.com~ leaving the disgruntled Murat to command the rest of his army - another grave mistake Napoleon made, Because in the battle not long after, Murat once again abandoned his troops and fled.
On December 20, a few days before Christmas, Napoleon finally returned to Paris with his remnants. According to the final statistics: 400,000 of the 612,000 French troops were killed in action, and 10,000 were captured by the Russian army; according to official statistics, 243,612 French soldiers were burned to death or buried alive by the Russian army. On New Year's Day in 1813, the Russian army, which was still tracking the French army, crossed the frozen Niemen River and headed straight for the Rhine. At the same time, the king of Prussia was preaching to his people how necessary it was to "restore an independent Germany", and the emperor of Austria began to clamor to regain lost territory and dignity. The British envoy also set off again to Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg, proposing that the countries form the sixth anti-French alliance to deal the final blow to Napoleon and his empire.
Similarly, in Iberia, Xiao Jie also started to get busy. He once again issued a conscription order. In order to be able to deal with the future situation, he needs to form another army with a scale of 100,000 people. Now the situation on the European continent has been completely changed because of Napoleon's fiasco, and this is also a rare opportunity. A chance to free Iberia from the shadow of France.
(To be continued, if you want to know what will happen next, please log in to .FU., more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)