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When he saw for himself the poverty of the surroundings, Napoleon gave the order for the units in the principal strike force under his personal command to make a last-minute requisition and seize whatever they could in the way of provisions before marching out. Thus the unfortunate inhabitants of East Prussia suddenly found that their every cart was taken and filled with anything that came to hand. Napoleon brushed aside the complaints reaching him from all quarters about shortage of supplies and dwindling forces. There was nothing he could do about it anyway – except defeat the Russians as quickly as possible. And he trusted in his extraordinary ability to achieve what he wanted in the face of insuperable obstacles.
On 16 June he wrote to ‘Quiouquiou’, as the King of Rome’s governess the Comtesse de Montesquiou had been dubbed by her charge, thanking her for informing him that his son’s teething was nearly over. Two days later he heard from Marie-Louise that she was not pregnant, as he had been led to believe by a hint from one of his courtiers. He registered his disappointment and his hope that they would have a chance to put that right in the autumn. He wrote to her daily, in short, scribbled, mis-spelt notes of remarkable banality. ‘I am often on horseback, and it is doing me good,’ he informed her on 19 June.30
The following day, at Gumbinnen, he was reached by a courier from the French embassy in St Petersburg who informed him that Lauriston had been refused an audience with the Tsar and forbidden to travel to Vilna. He and the diplomatic representatives of the various allied states had been instructed to call for their passports, which amounted to a declaration of hostilities.
Napoleon’s propaganda machine, the Bulletins de la Grande Armée, which presented his troops and the world with his version of events, swung into action. The first Bulletin of the campaign detailed his long and painstaking efforts to keep the peace, and reminded the world of the generosity with which he had treated the defeated Russians in 1807, all to no avail. ‘The vanquished have adopted the tone of conquerors,’ the Bulletin announced, ‘they are tempting fate; let destiny then take its course.’ He announced to his soldiers that they would be required to fight soon. ‘I promise and give you my imperial word on it that it will be for the last time, and that you will then be able to return to the bosom of your families.’31
The three corps – Davout’s, Ney’s and Oudinot’s – which were to cross the Niemen first, along with Murat’s cavalry, were massing in the low-lying ground between Wyłkowyszki and Skrawdzen, concealed from view behind the high left bank of the river. The summer heat was intense, made more unbearable for the marching men by the clouds of dust kicked up by the hundreds of thousands of feet and hooves. On 22 June Napoleon set out from Wylkowyszki, passing the marching columns, and reached Skrawdzen at dusk. He had supper in the garden of the parish priest’s house, and asked the priest whether he prayed for him or for Alexander, to which the man replied: ‘For Your Majesty.’ ‘And so you should, as a Pole and as a Catholic,’ replied Napoleon, delighted by the answer.32
At about eleven o’clock he climbed back into his carriage, which drove off in the direction of the Niemen, past large encampments of Davout’s infantry and Murat’s cavalry, which had been instructed to remain out of sight of the river. He did not want the Russians patrolling the other bank to see a single French uniform, and only Polish patrols, which were a familiar sight, were allowed to show themselves.
It was well past midnight when Napoleon’s carriage rolled up to the bivouac of the 6th Polish Lancers. He got out, proceeded to swap his famous hat and overcoat for the cap and coat of a Polish lancer, and made General Haxo of the Engineers, Berthier and Caulaincourt do the same before they mounted horses and set off, escorted by a platoon of lancers. Napoleon rode into a village, from one of whose houses he and Haxo could, unnoticed, survey the city of Kovno on the other side of the river through their telescopes. He then rode up and down the bank, looking for the best place for a crossing. As he was riding along at full gallop a hare started just in front of his horse, causing it to shy abruptly, and Napoleon was thrown. He jumped up immediately and remounted without a word.
Caulaincourt and others of his entourage were astonished: normally Napoleon would have launched into a string of curses directed at his horse, the hare and the terrain, but this time he acted as though nothing had happened. ‘We would do well not to cross the Niemen,’ Berthier said to Caulaincourt. ‘This fall was a bad omen.’ Napoleon himself must have felt the same. ‘The Emperor, who was ordinarily so gay and so full of ardour at times when his troops were executing a major manoeuvre, remained very serious and preoccupied for the rest of the day,’ wrote Caulaincourt.33
Napoleon spent most of that day, 23 June, working in the tent that had been pitched for him. He seemed in sombre mood, and his entourage reflected this by maintaining a silence that many later interpreted as being full of foreboding. But this may have been hindsight. ‘Despite the uncertain future, there was enthusiasm, a great deal of it,’ recalled Colonel Jean Boulart of the artillery of the Guard. ‘The army’s confidence in the genius of the Emperor was such that nobody even dreamed that the campaign could turn out badly.’34
Amongst other things, Napoleon was working on a proclamation to be read out to his troops the following morning:
Soldiers! The Second Polish War has begun. The first ended at Friedland and Tilsit: at Tilsit Russia swore an eternal alliance with France and war on England. She is now violating her promises. She refuses to give an explanation of her strange behaviour unless the French eagles retire beyond the Rhine, thereby leaving our allies at her mercy. Russia is tempting fate! And she will meet her destiny. Does she think that we have become degenerate? Are we no longer the soldiers of Austerlitz? She has forced us into a choice between dishonour and war. There can be no question as to which we choose, so let us advance! Let us cross the Niemen! Let us take the war onto her territory. The Second Polish War will be glorious for French arms, as was the first; but the peace that we will conclude will be a lasting one, and will put an end to that arrogant influence which Russia has been exerting on the affairs of Europe over the past fifty years.35
The proclamation would be greeted with enthusiastic shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ when it was read out the following morning. Some were left cold, but according to Étienne Labaume, an officer on Prince Eugène’s staff who hated Napoleon, it ‘excited the ardour of our soldiers, always ready to listen to anything that flattered their courage’. ‘His words,’ affirmed Boulart, ‘acted mightily on the imagination of all and awakened all the ambitions.’ ‘It was so fine, that I almost had it by heart,’ recalled an eighteen-year-old military surgeon.36
At six o’clock that evening, Napoleon mounted up and rode over to the riverbank once again. He spent the next six hours reconnoitring and then watching as, at ten o’clock, three companies of the 13th Light Infantry crossed the river silently in boats and fanned out on the other side, while General Jean-Baptiste Eblé and his men began putting in place three pontoon bridges. A patrol of Russian Hussars rode up to the infantrymen, and its officer challenged them with the regulation French ‘Qui vive?’ It was not a particularly dark night, but uniforms were hard to make out. ‘France!’ came the answer. ‘What are you doing here?’ the Russian shouted, again in French. ‘F—k,* we’ll show you!’ they shouted back, letting off a volley of shots which scattered the Hussars.
Napoleon was annoyed by the sound of musketry, as he had hoped to keep the Russians in ignorance of his movements for as long as possible. He rode back to his tent to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep, but at three o’clock in the morning he was back in the saddle, riding a horse named ‘Friedland’ after his last victory over the Russians. By dawn the three bridges were in place, and General Morand’s division, the first of Davout’s corps, was on the other side, ready to cover the crossing of Murat’s cavalry.