Part 15

At daybreak those most anxious to cross went on the unfinished bridge which they thought was completed.

A heavy mist prevented them from recognizing their error until the first ones fell into the icy water emitting piercing cries. Finally horses and men waded through the water—some succeeded, other succumbed.

It would lead too far to give here a full description of the distressing scenes, the difficulty of passing with artillery and the mostly vain attempts to bring over the baggage wagons. But, to cap the climax, there arrived 3 or 4 thousand Cossacks shouting savagely. With the greatest difficulty only was the rear guard able to keep them at a distance so that they could not come near enough to make use of their lances. Their artillery, however, caused veritable desolation.

Among the poor fugitives from Moscow there were a number of Italian and French women; these unfortunates stood at the border of the river, crying and embracing their children, but not daring to wade through it. Brave soldiers, full of humanity, took the little ones in their arms and passed with them, some repeating this two and three times, in order to bring all the children safely over. These desolate families, not being able to save their vehicles, lost with them the means of subsistence brought from Moscow. All the baggage, the entire artillery with the exception of seven or eight pieces, had been lost, and a thousand men had been killed by the fire of the Cossacks.

This dreadful event on the retreat from Moscow is called the disaster of Vop and was the precursor of another disaster of the same nature, but a hundred times more frightful, the disaster of the Beresina.

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There was another cause of death of which we have not spoken yet: this was the action of the heat at the campfires. Anxious to warm themselves, most of the soldiers hastened to bring their limbs near the flame; but this sudden exposure to extreme heat, after having suffered from the other extreme—cold—was acting on the feeble circulation in the tissues and produced gangraene of the feet, the hands, even of the face, causing paralysis either partial, of the extremities, or general, of the whole body.

Only those were saved who had been able to keep up their circulation by means of hot drinks or other stimulants and who, noticing numbness, had rubbed the affected parts with snow. Those who did not or could not resort to these precautions found themselves paralyzed, or stricken with sudden gangraene, in the morning when the camp broke up.

The hospitals of Koenigsberg admitted about 10 thousand soldiers of Napoleon’s army, only a small number of whom had been wounded, most of them with frozen extremities, who had, as the physicians of that time called it, a pest, the fever of congelation which was terribly contagious.

The heroic Larrey although exhausted from fatigue had come to these hospitals to take care of the sick, but he became infected with the contagion himself and was taken sick.

A great calamity was the want of shoes; we have seen that this was already felt in Moscow, before they set out on the endless march over ice and snow.

The soldiers had their feet wrapped in rags, pieces of felt or leather, and when a man had fallen on the road some of his comrades would cut off his feet and carry them to the next camp fire to remover the rags—for their own use.

But the general appearance of the emaciated soldiers with long beards, and faces blackened by the smoke of camp-fires, the body wrapped in dirty rags of wearing apparel brought from Moscow, was such that it was difficult to recognize them as soldiers.

And the vermin! Carpon, a surgeon-major of the grand army, in describing the days of Wilna which were almost as frightful as the disaster of the Beresina, speaks on this subject. It is revolting. Strange to say, it is hardly ever mentioned in the medical history of wars, although every one who has been in the field is quite familiar with it.

At last I have found—in Holzhausen’s book—a description of the most revolting lice plague (phtheiriasis) from which, according to his valet, Constant, even the emperor was not exempted. As a matter of course under the circumstances—impossibility of bodily cleanliness—this vermin developed in a way which baffles description. Suckow, a Wuerttembergian first lieutenant, speaks of it as causing intolerable distress, disturbing the sleep at the campfire. Johann von Borcke became alarmed when he discovered that his whole body was eaten up by these insects. A French colonel relates that in scratching himself he tore a piece of flesh from the neck, but that the pain caused by this wound produced a sensation of relief.

SMOLENSK

All the corps marched to Smolensk where they expected to reach the end of all their misery and to find repose, food, shelter; in fact, all they were longing for.

Napoleon entered the city with his guards and kept the rest of the army, including the stragglers, out of doors until arrangements could have been made for the regular distribution of rations and quarters. But together with the stragglers the mass of the army became unmanageable and resorted to violence.

Seeing that the guards were given the preference they broke out in revolt, entered by force and pillaged the magazines. “The magazines are pillaged!” was the general cry of terror and despair. Every one was running to grasp something to eat.

Finally, something like order was established to save some of the provisions for the corps of Prince Eugene and Marshal Ney who arrived after fighting constantly to protect the city from the troops of the enemy. They received in their turn eatables and a little rest, not under shelter but in the streets, where they were protected, not from the frost, but from the enemy.

There were no longer any illusions. The army having hoped to find shelter and protection, subsistence, clothes and, above all, shoes, at Smolensk, they found nothing of all this and learned that they had to leave, perhaps the next day, to recommence the interminable march without abode for the night, without bread to eat and constantly fighting while exhausted, with the cruel certainty that if wounded they would be the prey of wolves and vultures.

This prospect made them all desperate; they saw the abyss, and still the worst was yet in store for them: Beresina and Wilna!

Napoleon left Smolensk on November 14th. The cold had become more intense—21 deg. Reaumur (16 deg. below zero Fahrenheit)—this is the observation of Larrey who had a thermometer attached to his coat; he was the only one who kept a record of the temperature.

The cold killed a great many, and the road became covered with dead soldiers resting under the snow.

To the eternal honor of the most glorious of all armies be it said that it was only at the time when the misery had surpassed all boundaries, when the soldiers had to camp on the icy ground with an empty stomach, their limbs paralyzed in mortal rigor, that the dissolution began.

It was even after the heroic battle of Wiasma that they fought day for day.

It was not the cold which caused the proud army to disband, but hunger.

Provisions could nowhere be found; all horses perished, and with them the possibility of transporting food and ammunition.