

E-text prepared by Denis Pronovost, Richard Hulse, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original illustrations.
      See 51418-h.htm or 51418-h.zip:
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/51418/51418-h/51418-h.htm)
      or
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/51418/51418-h.zip)


      Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/1812napoleoniin00vere


Transcriber’s note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).





“1812”

NAPOLEON I IN RUSSIA


------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ART

  GAINSBOROUGH. By WALTER ARMSTRONG, Director of the National Gallery,
     Ireland. With 62 Photogravures and 10 Lithographs in Colour. £5
     5_s._ net.

  LEONARDO DA VINCI. From the French of EUGÈNE MUNTZ. In 2 vols., with
     20 Photogravures, 26  Plates, and about 200 Text
     Illustrations. £2 2_s._ net.

  MEISSONIER. By VALLERY C. O. GREARD. From the French by LADY MARY
     LOYD and FLORENCE SIMMONDS. With 38 Full-page Plates, and 250
     Text Illustrations. £1 16_s._ net.

  CORREGGIO. By CORRADO RICCI. Translated by FLORENCE SIMMONDS. With
     16 Photogravures, 21 Full-page Plates in Colour, and 160
     Illustrations in Text. £2 2_s._ net.

  REMBRANDT. By EMILE MICHEL. Edited by FREDERICK WEDMORE. With 76
     Full-page Plates and 250 Text Illustrations. £2 2_s._ net.

                                -------

  NEW LETTERS OF NAPOLEON I. Omitted from the Edition published under
     the auspices of Napoleon III. Translated from the French by LADY
     MARY LOYD. 15_s._ net.

  NAPOLEON AND THE FAIR SEX. From the French of FRÉDÉRIC MASSON. With
     a Portrait. 6_s._

                       LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
                        21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration: Signed author’s portrait]


“1812”
NAPOLEON I IN RUSSIA

by

VASSILI VERESTCHAGIN

With an Introduction by R. Whiteing

Illustrated from Sketches and Paintings by the Author







[Illustration: Printer’s decoration]

London
William Heinemann
1899

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_This Edition enjoys copyright in
all countries signatory to the
Berne Treaty, and is not to be
imported into the United States of
America._

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                               _CONTENTS_


                                                _Page_
                        _Introduction_               1
                        _On Progress in Art_        16
                        _Realism_                   24
                    _I_ _Napoleon_                  53
                   _II_ _The Burning of Moscow_    180
                  _III_ _The Cossacks_             220
                   _IV_ _The Grande Armée_         227
                    _V_ _The Marshals_             256

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                       _FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS_

                                                     _Page_
             _Vassili Verestchagin_   _Frontispiece_
             _A Dispatch_                                72
             _Russian Grenadiers_                        78
             _At Borodino_                               92
             _Looking towards Moscow_                   108
             _Disillusion_                              128
             _On the Way Home_                          145
             _Bivouac_                                  155
             _Despair_                                  162
             _At a Council of War_                      176
             _Armed Peasant_                            186
             _In a Russian Church_                      197
             _Ney and the Staff_                        252

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                 “1812”
                          NAPOLEON I IN RUSSIA


                              INTRODUCTION

The following pages are not offered to the reader as a history of the
invasion of Russia by Napoleon. They are but the statement of the basis
of observation on which M. Verestchagin has founded his great series of
pictures illustrative of the campaign. These pictures are now to be
exhibited in this country, and the painter has naturally desired to show
us from what point of view he has approached the study of his
subject—one of the greatest subjects in the whole range of
history—especially for a Russian artist. The point of view is—inevitably
in his case—that of the Realist; and this consideration gives unity to
the conception of his whole career and endeavour. He has ever painted
war as it is, and therefore in its horrors, as one of its effects,
though not necessarily as an effect sought in and for itself. He has
tried to be “true” in all his representations of the battle-field. His
work may thus be said to constitute a powerful plea in support of the
Tsar’s Rescript to the Nations in favour of peace. My meaning will be
best illustrated by a short sketch of M. Verestchagin and his work, as
painter, as soldier, and as traveller.

He was born in the province of Novgorod, in 1842, of a well-to-do family
of landowners. The son wished to be an artist; the father wished to make
him an officer of marines. As the shortest way out of the difficulty, he
became both. He passed his work-hours at the naval school, and his
play-hours at a school of design, working at each so well that he left
the naval school as first scholar, and eventually won a silver medal at
the Academy of Fine Arts. He entered the service, but only for a short
time, and he was still three years under twenty when he quitted it to
devote himself wholly to art.

He was a hard-working student, though he always showed a strong
disposition to insist on working in his own way. When Gérôme sent him to
the antique, he was half the time slipping away to nature. He played
truant from the Athenian marbles to flesh and blood. In the meantime he
was true to the instinct—as yet you could hardly call it a principle—of
wandering from the beaten track in search of subjects. Every vacation
was passed, not at Asnières or Barbizon, but in the far east of Europe,
or even in Persia, among those ragged races not yet set down in artistic
black and white. He had been on the borders of a quite fresh field of
observation in these journeys; and he was soon to enter it for a full
harvest of new impressions. It was in 1867; Russia was sending an army
into Central Asia, to punish the marauding Turkomans for the fiftieth
time, and General Kauffman, who commanded it, invited the painter to
accompany him as an art volunteer. He was not to fight, but simply to
look on. It was the very thing; Verestchagin at once took service on
these terms with the expedition, and in faithfully following its
fortunes, with many an artistic reconnaissance on his own account, he
saw Asia to its core.

He returned from a second Asiatic journey to settle at Munich for three
years; and here he built his first “open-air studio.” “If you are to
paint out-door scenes,” he says, “your models must sit in the open;” and
so he fashioned a movable room on wheels, running on a circular tramway,
and open to sun and air on the side nearest the centre of the circle,
where the model stood. The artist, in fact, worked in a huge box with
one side out, while the thing he saw was in the full glare of day; and
by means of a simple mechanical contrivance he made his room follow the
shifting light.

After a long rest at Munich, he was impatient for action once more, and
in 1873 he set off for British India.

Verestchagin filled one entire exhibition with his Indian studies. They
form a definite part of his collection, a section of his life-work.
Amazing studies they are. The end of his sojourn coincided with the
visit of the Prince of Wales, and he saw India both at its best and at
its worst. In one immense canvas he has represented the royal entry into
Jeypore, the Prince and his native entertainer on a richly-caparisoned
elephant, and a long line of lesser magnates similarly mounted in the
rear. A scene of prayer in a mosque is noble in feeling, and it exhibits