Free The Illustrious Dead by Stephan Talty Page A

issued a proclamation telling the Russians what Napoleon had done: “He has come with treachery in his heart and loyalty on his lips to enslave us with the help of this legion of slaves. Let us drive this plague of locusts out! Let us carry the Cross in our hearts, and steel in our hands! Let us pluck the fangs out of the lion’s mouth and overthrow the tyrant who would overthrow the earth!” The biblical imagery was clear. The fusing of the campaign into a combination of nationalist struggle and holy war had begun.
    The Grande Armée’s mood was buoyant, even though a series of bad omens had plagued the beginning of the march. When Napoleon went to review the army, huge thunderheads rolled in, hail pelted down, and the sky darkened so that soldiers could see only by the flashes of lightning. “I have never witnessed so horrific, so frightful a storm,” wrote Dr. Larrey. Napoleon, superstitious to a fault, canceled the review. But it would be hard to overestimate the faith that Napoleon’s veterans placed in his leadership, and the lengths they were willing to go to win him another victory.
    Alexander had placed all his hope in a strategy devised by his German general Karl Ludwig von Phull, who had settled on the idea of creating a fortresslike camp at Drissa, 140 miles northeast of Vilna, which would tempt Napoleon into a disastrous siege. Once the French, eager for a single overwhelming victory, attacked this impregnable position, the emperor’s flanks would be crushed from the north by General Barclay and the First Army and from the south by General Bagration and the Second Army. For eight months before the invasion, fortifications were built and entrenchments dug at a spot devoid of a natural defensive feature—a hill or a stream—to give the Russians an advantage against the hordes that would sweep down on it. When the German strategist Carl von Clausewitz was sent to inspect Drissa, he reported to Alexander on July 8 that the work had been a complete waste of time and that the camp offered no tactical advantages to the troops who would defend it. Drissa was a trap not for Napoleon but for the Russians.
    The tsar was crushed. Phull had left him defenseless against an invader already on the march. On July 12, he ordered his bewildered troops to abandon Drissa and retreat west to the city of Vitebsk, near the border of modern-day Latvia.
    Napoleon could hardly contain his joy. The Italian general Rossetti, who was assigned to the cavalry corps under the dashing Marshal Murat, gave the emperor the news of the Russian withdrawal from their defensive prize, and Napoleon began striding back and forth, galvanized, preening. “You see, the Russians no longer know how to make peace or war!” he cried. “It’s a degenerate nation. What! They abandon their ‘palladium’ without striking a blow! Let’s go! Let’s go! One more final push and my brother will repent for having followed the advice of my enemies.”
    As the Russian defense collapsed, typhus and other diseases were beginning their work. The army’s health had been excellent when the soldiers began their march to their rendezvous in Germany. The Belgian doctor J. L. R. de Kerckhove accompanied III Corps led by “the Bravest of the Brave,” Marshal Ney, and kept a lively diary that would closely mirror the condition of the troops. At the beginning, he rated the men highly: “The army was not only the most beautiful,” he wrote in his medical account of the campaign, “but there was none which included so many brave warriors, so many heroes.” During the march to the Niemen River, he had noted “with astonishment” how low the sick rate was in such an immense army. “Nothing announced a disastrous future.” The bountiful food of the Dutch lowlands and Germany had delivered an unusually fit force.
    But when they were deep into Poland, Dr. Larrey reported disturbing news. He noted in his memoirs, “60,000 [troops] were admitted by their commanding