Part 21

However, on the 10th, the march upon Kowno was begun. But the extreme cold and the excess of snow completed the rout of the army. The final disbanding occurred on the 10th, and 11th., only a struggling column remained, extending along the road, strewn with corpses, setting out at daybreak to halt at night in utter confusion. In fact, there was no army left. How could it have subsisted with 25 degrees of cold? The onslaught, alas, was not of the foe, but of the harshest and severest of seasons fraught with crippling effect and untold suffering.

Berthier, as well as Murat, would have wished to remain in Kowno through the 12th., but the disorder was extreme. Houses were pillaged and sacked, half the town was burned down, the Niemen was being crossed at all points, and it was impossible to stem the tide of fugitives. An escort was barely available for the protection of the King of Naples, the generals, and the Imperial eagles. And all amidst the cold, the intense cold, stupefying and benumbing!

Four fifths of the army—or what bore the name of such, though reduced to a mere conglomeration and bereft of fighting men—had frozen limbs; and when Koenigsberg was reached, in a state of complete disorganisation, the surgeons were constantly employed in amputating fingers and toes.

Dr. W. Zelle, a German military surgeon, in his book “1812” describes the last days of the army. Kowno was occupied by a considerable force of artillery, with two German battalions, and it contained also very large supplies, a great deal of ammunition, provisions, clothing, and arms of various kinds. About an hour’s march from Wilna the retreating masses encountered the hill and defile of Ponary and it was at this point where the imperial treasure, so far conscientiously guarded by German troops from Baden and Wuerttemberg, was lost. When the leaders of the treasure became convinced of the impossibility to save it, the jaded horses not being able after 15 hours’ effort to climb the ice covered hill, they had the wagons opened, the money chests broken, and the coin surrendered to the soldiers.

The sight of the gold brought new life even to the half frozen ones; they threw away their arms and were so greedy in loading themselves down with the mammon that many of them did not notice the approaching Cossacks until it was too late. Friend and foe, Frenchmen and Russians pillaged the wagons. Honor, money, and what little had remained of discipline, all was lost at this point.

However, side by side with these outrages, noble deeds could also be recorded. Numerous wagons with wounded officers had to be abandoned, the horses being too weak to take another step, and many of the soldiers disregarded everything to save these unfortunates, carrying them away on their shoulders. An adjutant of the emperor, Count Turenne, distributed the private treasure of the emperor among the soldiers of the Old Guard, and not one of these faithful men kept any of the money for himself. All was honestly returned later on, and more than 6 millions of francs reached Danzig safely.

The retreat during these scenes and the following days, when the terrible cold caused more victims from hour to hour, was still covered by Ney whose iron constitution defied all hardships. From five until ten at night he personally checked the advance of the enemy, during the night he marched, driving all stragglers before him. From seven in the morning until ten the rear guard rested, after which time they continued the daily fight.

His Bavarians numbered 260 on December 11th., 150 on the 17th. and on the 13th. the last 20 were taken prisoners. The corps had disappeared. The remainder of Loison’s division and the garrison of Wilna diminished in the same manner until, finally, the rear guard consisted of only 60 men.

What was left of the army reached Kowno on the 12th, after a long, tedious march, dying of cold and hunger. In Kowno there was an abundance of clothes, flour, and spirits. But the unrestrained soldiers broke the barrels, so that the spilled liquor formed a lake in the market place. The soldiers threw themselves down and by the hundreds drank until they were intoxicated. More than 1200 drunken men reeled through the streets, dropped drowsily upon the icy stones or into the snow, their sleep soon passing into death. Of the entire corps of Eugene there remained only eight or ten officers with the prince. Only one day more (the 13th.) was the powerful Ney able, with the two German battalions of the garrison, to check the Cossacks, vigorously supported by the indefatigable generals, Gerard and Wrede. Not until the 14th., at 9 o’clock at night, did he begin to retreat, with the last of the men, after having destroyed the bridges over the Wilia and the Niemen. Always fighting, receding but not fleeing, his person formed the rear guard of this Grand Army which five months previous crossed the river at this very point, now, on the 14th, consisting of only 500 foot guards, 600 horse guards, and nine cannon.

It is nobody but Ney who still represents the Grand Army, who fires the last shot before he, the last Frenchman, crosses the bridge over the Niemen, which is blown up behind him. If we look upon the knightly conduct of Ney during the entire campaign we cannot but think how much greater he was than the heroes of Homer.

This man has demonstrated to the world upon this most terrible of all retreats that even fate is not able to subdue an imperturbable courage, that even the greatest adversity redounds to the glory of a hero.

More than a thousand times did Ney earn in Russia the epithet, “the bravest of the brave,” and the legend which French tradition has woven around his person is quite justified. No mortal has ever performed such deeds of indomitable moral courage; all other heroes and exploits vanish in comparison!

Here, at the Niemen, the pursuit by the Russians came to an end for the time being. They, too, had suffered enormously.

Not less than 18 thousand Russians were sick in Wilna; Kutusoff’s army was reduced to 35 thousand men, that of Wittgenstein from 50 thousand to 15 thousand. The entire Russian army, including the garrison of Riga, numbered not more than 100 thousand. The winter, this terrible ally of the Russians, exacted a high price for the assistance it had rendered them; of 10 thousand men who left the interior, well provided with all necessities, only 1700 reached Wilna; the troops of cavalry did not number more than 20 men.

In all the literature which I have examined I did not find a better description of the life and the struggle of the soldiers on the retreat than that given by General Heinrich von Brandt of his march from Zembin to Wilna. It is a vivid picture of many details from which we derive a full understanding of the great misery on the retreat in general.

I shall give an extensive extract in his own words:

“We arrived late at Zembin, where we found many bivouac fires. It was very cold. Here and there around the fires were lying dead soldiers.

“After a short rest, which had given us some new strength, we continued the march. If the stragglers arrive, we said to ourselves, we shall be lost; therefore, let us hurry and keep ahead of them. Our little column kept well together, but at every halt some men were missing. Toward daybreak the cold became more severe. While it was dark yet, we met a file of gunpowder carts carrying wounded; from a number of these vehicles we heard heart-rending clamors of some of the wounded asking us to give them death.

“At every moment we encountered dead or dying comrades, officers and soldiers, who were sitting on the road, exhausted from fatigue, awaiting their end. The sun rose blood-red; the cold was frightful. We stopped near a village where bivouac fires were burning. Around these fires were grouped living and dead soldiers. We lodged ourselves as well as we could and took from those who had retired from the scene of life—apparently during their sleep—anything that could be of service to us. I for my part helped myself to a pot in which I melted snow to make a soup from some bread crusts which I had in my pocket. We all relished this soup.

“After an hour’s rest we resumed our march and about 30 hours after our departure we reached Plechtchenissi. During this time we had made 25 miles. At Plechtchenissi we found, at a kind of farm, sick, wounded and dead, all lying pell-mell. There was no room for us in the house; we were obliged to camp outside, but great fires compensated us for the want of shelter.

“We decided to rest during part of the night. While some of the soldiers roasted slices of horse meat and others prepared oatmeal cakes from oats which they had found in the village, we tried to sleep. But the frightful scenes through which we had passed kept us excited, and sleep would not come.

“Toward 1 o’clock in the morning we left for Molodetchno. The cold was frightful. Our way was marked by the light of the bivouac fires which were seen at intervals and by cadavers of men and horses lying everywhere, and as the moon and the stars were out we could see them well. Our column became smaller all the while, officers and men disappeared without our noticing their departure, without our knowing where they had fallen behind; and the cold increased constantly. When we stopped at some bivouac fire it seemed to us as if we were among the dead; nobody stirred, only occasionally would one or the other of those sitting around raise his head, look upon us with glassy eyes, rest again, probably never to rise again. What made the march during that night especially disagreeable was the icy wind whipping our faces. Toward 8 o’clock in the morning we perceived a church tower. That is Molodetchno, we all cried with one voice. But to our disappointment we learned on our arrival that it was only Iliya, and that we were only half-way to Molodetchno.

“Iliya was not completely deserted by the inhabitants, but the troops that had passed through it before us had left almost nothing eatable in the place. We found abode in some houses and for a while were protected from the cold which was by no means abating. In the farm of which we took possession we found a warm room and a good litter, which we owed to our predecessors.

“It was strange that none of us could sleep; we all were in a state of feverish excitement, and I attribute this to an indistinct fear; once asleep we might perhaps not awake again, as we had seen it happen a thousand times.

“The longer we remained at Iliya the more comfortable we felt, and we decided to stay there all day and wait for news. Soup of buckwheat, a large pot of boiled corn, some slices of roast horse meat, although all without salt, formed a meal which we thought delicious.”

Von Brandt describes how they took off their garments, or their wrappings which served as garments, to clean and repair them; how some of his men found leather with which they enveloped their feet. The day and the night passed, and all had some sleep. But they had to leave.

“Some of the men refused to go; one of them when urged to come along said: ‘Captain, let me die here; we all are to perish, a few days sooner or later is of no consequence.’ He was wounded, but not seriously, a bullet had passed through his arm; it was a kind of apathy which had come over him, and he could not be persuaded. He remained and probably died.

“We left; the cold was almost unbearable. Along the road we found bivouacs, at which one detachment relieved the other; the succeeding surpassing the preceding one in misery and distress. Everywhere, on the road and in the bivouacs, the dead were lying, most of them stripped of their clothes.