Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

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"In a month after the enemy passed the Inn, on the same day, at the same hour, we entered Vienna. Their militia, their levies en masse , their ramparts, created by the impotent rage of the princes of the House of Lorraine, have fallen at the first sight of you. The princes of that house have abandoned their capital, not like the soldiers of honor, who yield to circumstance and the reverses of war, but as perjurers haunted by the sense of their crime. In flying from Vienna, their adieus to its inhabitants have been murder and conflagration. Like Medea, they have with their own hands massacred their own offspring. Soldiers: The people of Vienna, according to the expression of a deputation of the suburbs, abandoned , widowed , shall be the object of your regards. I take its good citizens under my special protection. As to the wicked and turbulent, they shall meet with exemplary justice. Soldiers: Be kind to the poor peasants; to those worthy people who have so many claims upon your esteem. Let us not manifest any pride at our success. Let us see in it but a proof of that divine justice which punishes the ungrateful and the perjured."

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"Hungarians: The moment is come to revive your independence. I offer you peace, the integrity of. your territory, the inviolability of your constitutions,—whether of such as are in actual existence, or of those which the spirit of the time may require. I ask nothing of you. I desire only to see your nation free and independent. Your union with Austria has made your misfortunes. Your blood has flowed for her in distant regions. Your dearest interests have always been sacrificed to those of the Austrian hereditary estates. You form the finest part of the Empire of Austria, yet you are treated as a province. You have national manners, a national language; you boast an ancient and illustrious origin. Resume, then, your existence as a nation. Have a king of your own choice, who will reside among you, and reign for you alone."

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"Soldiers: The second war of Poland has commenced. The first war terminated at Friedland and Tilsit. At Tilsit, Russia swore eternal alliance with France, and war with England. She has openly violated her oath, and refuses to offer any explanation of her strange conduct till the French Eagle shall have passed the Rhine, and, consequently, shall have left her allies at her discretion. Russia is impelled onward by fatality. Her destiny, is about to be accomplished. Does she believe that we have degenerated? that we are no longer the soldiers of Austerlitz? She has placed us between dishonor and war. The choice cannot for an instant be doubtful. Let us march forward, then, and crossing the Niemen, carry the war into her territories. The second war of Poland will be to the French army as glorious as the first. But our next peace must carry with it its own guarantee, and put an end to that arrogant influence which, for the last fifty years, Russia has exercised over the affairs of Europe."

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"Soldiers: This is the battle you have so much desired. The victory depends upon you! It is now necessary to us . It will give us abundance of good winter quarters, and a prompt return to our country. Behave as at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Witepsk, at Smolensk, and let the latest posterity recount with pride your conduct on this day; let them say of you, 'He was at the battle under the walls of Moscow.'"

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Moscow, Sept. 20, 1812.

" Monsieur, my brother: —Having been informed that the brother of your Imperial Majesty's Minister at Cassel was in Moscow, I sent for him, and we have had a conversation of some length. I have advised his making my sentiments known to your Majesty.

"The superb and beautiful city of Moscow no longer exists. Rostoptchine gave orders to burn it. Four hundred incendiaries were arrested on the spot, all of whom declared that they had received their orders from the governor and the director of the police; they were shot.

"The fire at last appears to have ceased. Three-quarters of the buildings have been burned, the other quarter remains.

"Such conduct is atrocious and useless. Was its object to make way with some treasure? But the treasure was in caves which could not be reached by the fire.

"Moreover, why destroy one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the work of centuries, for so paltry an end? It is the same line of conduct that has been followed from Smolensk, and has left 600,000 families homeless. The fire-engines in Moscow were either broken or made way with, and a portion of the arms in the arsenal given to malefactors, which obliged us to fire a few shots at the Kremlin in order to disperse them.

"Humanity, the interests of your Majesty and of this great city, required that the city should be confided to me as a trust, since it was exposed by the Russian army. It should not have been left without administration, magistrates, and civil guards. Such a plan was adopted at Vienna, Madrid, and twice at Berlin. We ourselves followed out this plan at the time of the entrance of Sonvarof.

"Incendiaries authorize pillage, to which the soldiers surrender themselves in order to dispute the débris with the flames.

"If I imagined for an instant that such a state of affairs was authorized by your Majesty, I should not write this letter; but I hold it as impossible that, with your Majesty's principles, and heart, with the justice of your Majesty's ideas, you could authorize excesses that are unworthy of a great sovereign and of a great nation. While the engines were carried from Moscow, one hundred and fifty pieces of field cannon, 60,000 new muskets, 1,600,000 infantry cartridges, 400,000 weights of powder, 300,000 weights of saltpetre, as much sulphur, etc., were left behind.

"I wage war against your Majesty without animosity; a note from you before or after the last battle would have stopped my march, and I should even have liked to have sacrificed the advantage of entering Moscow. If your Majesty retains some remains of your former sentiments, you will take this letter in good part. At all events, you will thank me for giving you an account of what is passing at Moscow."

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Palais des Tuileries, Feb. 14, 1813.

"I entered Russia. The French armies were constantly victorious on the fields of Ostrono, Polotsk, Mohilef, Smolensk, Moskova, Malo-Yaroslavetz. Nowhere could the Russian armies stand before our eagles. Moscow fell into our power.

"When the Russian borders were forced and the powerlessness of their arms was recognized, a swarm of Tartars turned their parricidal hands against the most beautiful provinces of the empire they had been called upon to defend. Inside a few weeks, in spite of the grief and despair of the unfortunate Muscovites, they set fire to over four thousand of their most prosperous villages, and more than fifty of their most beautiful cities; thus gratifying their ancient hatred, and, on the pretext of retarding our progress, surrounding us by a desert waste.

"But we triumphed over all these obstacles; even the conflagration of Moscow, where, in four days, they destroyed the fruits of the toil and thrift of forty generations, in no way changed the prosperous condition of my affairs. But the rigor of an extreme and premature winter laid the weight of a terrible calamity upon my army. In a few nights every thing changed. I met with great losses. My soul would have been crushed beneath their weight had I been accessible to any other feelings than the interest, the glory, and the future of my people.