Part 13

Of another patient of this kind, an officer of the general staff, who had been treated after that fatal retreat from Moscow, von Kohlreuter reports that later on he recovered completely from the mental derangement, but died on his return, near the borders of Saxony, from exhaustion.

An infantry officer became mentally deranged sometime after he had returned to his home; it took a long time, but finally he recovered without special medical aid.

Recovery of such cases was accomplished by time, a mild climate, by social intercourse, and good nourishment; many of them, on the way through Germany and before they reached their own home, had completely regained their mental faculties, and only in a small number of cases did it take a long period of time and medication before recovery was assured.

The effect of intense cold on wounds was very severe: Violent inflammation, enormous swelling, gangraene—the latter often due to the impossibility of proper care. Larger wounds sometimes could not be dressed on the retreat, and while the cold weather lasted gangraene and death followed in quick succession. The effect of cold was noticed also on wounds which had healed and cicatrized.

Von Happrecht, an officer of the regiment Duke Louis, had been wounded in the foot by a cannon ball in the battle of Borodino on September 7th., and Surgeon-General von Kohlreuter had amputated it. Fairly strong and cheerful, this officer arrived safely at the Beresina. The passage over this river was, as is well known, very dangerous, and von Happrecht had to wait, exposed to cold, for some time before he could cross. Soon after traversing on horseback he felt as if he had lost the stump; he had no sensation in the leg the foot of which had been amputated. Unfortunately, he approached a fire to warm himself and felt a severe pain in the stump; extensive inflammation, with swelling, set in; gangraene followed and, notwithstanding most skillful attendance, he died soon after his arrival at Wilna.

So far von Scherer. Beaupré, speaking of his own observations of the effects of extreme cold, gives the following account:

Soldiers unable to go further fell and resigned themselves to death, in that frightful state of despair which is caused by the total loss of moral and physical force, which was aggravated to the utmost by the sight of their comrades stretched lifeless on the snow. During a retreat so precipitate and fatal, in a country deprived of its resources, amid disorder and confusion, the sad physician was forced to remain an astonished spectator of evils he could not arrest, to which he could apply no remedy. The state of matters remarkably affected the moral powers. The consternation was general. Fear of not escaping the danger was very naturally allied with the desperate idea of seeing one’s country no more. None could flatter himself that his courage and strength would suffice so that he would be able to withstand privations and sufferings beyond human endurance. Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, those from the temperate and southern parts of France, obliged to brave an austere climate unknown to them, directed their thoughts toward their country and with good reasons regretted the beauty of the heaven, the softness of the air of the regions of their birth.

Nostalgia was common…. The army was but three days from Smolensk when the heavens became dark, and snow began to fall in great flakes, in such a quantity that the air was obscured. The cold was then felt with extreme severity; the northern wind blew impetuously into the faces of the soldiers and incommoded many who were no longer able to see. They strayed, fell into the snow—above all, when night surprised them—and thus miserably perished.

Disbanded regiments were reduced to almost nothing by the loss of men continually left behind either on the roads or in the bivouacs.

Of the days of Smolensk he writes: In the streets one met with none but sick and wounded men asking for hospitals, soldiers of every sort, of every nation, going and coming, some of them trying to find a place where provisions were sold or distributed; others taciturn, incapable of any effort, absorbed by grief, half dead with cold, awaiting their last hour. On all sides there were complaints and groans, dead and dying soldiers, all of which presented a picture that was still further darkened by the ruinous aspect of the city…. At Smolensk Beaupré himself had a narrow escape from freezing to death; he narrates: During the frightful night when we left Smolensk I felt much harassed; toward 5 in the morning, a feeling of lassitude impelled me to stop and rest. I sat down on the trunk of a birch, beside eight frozen corpses, and soon experienced an inclination to sleep, to which I yielded the more willingly as at that moment it seemed delicious. Fortunately I was aroused from that incipient somnolency—which infallibly would have brought on torpor—by the cries and oaths of two soldiers who were violently striking a poor exhausted horse that had fallen down.

I emerged from that state with a sort of shock.

The sight of what was beside me strongly recalled to my mind the danger to which I exposed myself; I took a little brandy and started to run to remove the numbness of my legs, the coldness and insensibility of which were as if they had been immersed in an iced bath.

He then describes his experience in similar cases: It happened three or four times that I assisted some of those unfortunates who had just fallen and began to doze, to rise again and endeavored to keep them in motion after having given them a little sweetened brandy.

It was in vain; they could neither advance nor support themselves, and they fell again in the same place, where of necessity they had to be abandoned to their unhappy lot. Their pulse was small and imperceptible. Respiration, infrequent and scarcely sensible in some, was attended in others by complaints and groans. Sometimes the eyes were open, fixed, dull, wild, and the brain was seized by a quiet delirium; in other instances the eyes were red and manifested a transient excitement of the brain; there was marked delirium in these cases. Some stammered incoherent words, others had a reserved and convulsive cough. In some blood flowed from the nose and ears; they agitated their limbs as if groping. (This description of Beaupré complements the account given by von Scherer.)

Many had their hands, feet, and ears frozen. A great many were mortally stricken when obliged to stop to relieve nature; the arrival of that dreaded moment was in fact very embarrassing, on account of the danger of exposing oneself to the air as well as owing to the numbness of the fingers which rendered them unable to readjust the clothes….

And they traveled day and night, often without knowing where they were.

Ultimately they were obliged to stop, and, complaining, shivering, forced to lie down in the woods, on the roads, in ditches, at the bottom of ravines, often without fire, because they had no wood at hand, nor strength enough to go and cut some in the vicinity; if they succeeded in lighting one, they warmed themselves as they could, and fell asleep without delay.

The first hours of sleep were delightful, but, alas! they were merely the deceitful precursor of death that was waiting for them.

The fire at length became extinct for want of attention or owing to the great blast. Instead of finding safety in the sweets of sleep, they were seized and benumbed by cold, and never saw daylight again….

I have seen them sad, pale, despairing, without arms, staggering, scarce able to sustain themselves, their heads hanging to the right or left, their extremities contracted, setting their feet on the coals, lying down on hot cinders, or falling into the fire, which they sought mechanically, as if by instinct.

Others apparently less feeble, and resolved not to allow themselves to be depressed by misfortune, rallied their powers to avoid sinking; but often they quitted one place only to perish in another.

Along the road, in the adjacent ditches and fields, were perceived human carcasses, heaped up and lying at random in fives, tens, fifteens and twenties, of such as had perished during the night, which was always more murderous than the day.

When no longer able to continue walking, having neither strength nor will power, they fell on their knees.

The muscles of the trunk were the last to lose the power of contraction.

Many of those unfortunates remained for some time in that posture contending with death.

Once fallen it was impossible for them, even with their utmost efforts, to rise again. The danger of stopping had been universally observed; but, alas! presence of mind and firm determination did not always suffice to ward off mortal attacks made from all directions upon one miserable life!

WIASMA

About a mile and a half from Wiasma the enemy appeared to the left of the road, and his fire happened to strike the midst of the tail of the army, composed of disbanded soldiers without arms, with wounded and sick among them, and women and children. Every artillery discharge of the Russians caused frightful cries and a frightful commotion in the helpless mass.