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Napoleon's Campaign in Russia, Anno 1812; Medico-Historical

by Achilles Rose · English · Gutenberg #7973 · 357,679 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Napoleon's Campaign in Russia, Anno 1812; Medico-Historical

Author: Achilles Rose


        
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                Most recently updated: October 18, 2020

Language: English

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Napoleon’s Campaign in Russia Anno 1812

MEDICO-HISTORICAL

by Dr. A. Rose


Contents

 PREFACE
 CROSSING THE NIEMEN
 ON TO MOSCOW
 THE GRAND ARMY IN MOSCOW
 ROSTOPCHINE
 RETREAT FROM MOSCOW
 WIASMA
 VOP
 SMOLENSK
 BERESINA
 TWO EPISODES
 WILNA
 FROM WILNA TO KOWNO
 PRISONERS OF WAR
 TREATMENT OF TYPHUS
 AFTER THE SECOND CROSSING OF THE NIEMEN
 LITERATURE
 INDEX




PREFACE


There is no campaign in the history of the world which has left such a
deep impression upon the heart of the people than that of Napoleon in
Russia, Anno 1812.

Of the soldiers of other wars who had not come home it was reported
where they had ended on the field of honor. Of the great majority of
the 600 thousand who had crossed the Niemen in the month of June Anno
1812, there was recorded in the list of their regiments, in the
archives “_Disappeared during the Retreat_” and nothing else.

When the few who had come home, those hollow eyed specters with their
frozen hands, were asked about these comrades who had disappeared
during the retreat, they could give no information, but they would
speak of endless, of never-heard-of sufferings in the icy deserts of
the north, of the cruelty of the Cossacks, of the atrocious acts of the
Moushiks and the peasants of Lithuania, and, worst of all, of the
infernal acts of the people of Wilna. And it would break the heart of
those who listened to them.

There is a medical history of the hundreds of thousands who have
perished Anno 1812 in Russia from cold, hunger, fatigue or misery.

Such medical history cannot be intelligible without some details of the
history of events causing and surrounding the deaths from cold and
hunger and fatigue. And such a history I have attempted to write.

Casting a glance on the map on which the battle fields on the march to
and from Moscow are marked, we notice that it was not a deep thrust
which the attack of the French army had made into the colossus of
Russia. From the Niemen to Mohilew, Ostrowno, Polotsk, Krasnoi, the
first time, Smolensk, Walutina, Borodino, Conflagration of Moscow, and
on the retreat the battles of Winkonow, Jaroslawetz, Wiasma, Vop,
Krasnoi, the second time, Beresina, Wilna, Kowno; this is not a great
distance, says Paul Holzhausen in his book “Die Deutschen in Russland
1812” but a great piece of history.

Holzhausen, whose book has furnished the most valuable material of
which I could avail myself besides the dissertation of von Scherer, the
book of Beaupré and the report of Krantz, and numerous monographs, has
brought to light valuable papers of soldiers who had returned and had
left their remembrances of life of the soldiers during the Russian
campaign to their descendants and relatives who had kept these papers a
sacred inheritance during one hundred years.

The picture in the foreground of all histories of the Russian campaign
is the shadow of the great warrior who led the troops, in whose
invincibility all men who followed him Anno 1812 believed and by whom
they stood in their soldier’s honor, with a constancy without equal, a
steadfastness which merits our admiration.

Three fourths of the whole army belonged to nations whose real
interests were in direct opposition to the war against Russia.
Notwithstanding that many were aware of this fact, they fought as brave
in battle as if their own highest interests were at stake. All wanted
to uphold their own honor as men and the honor of their nations. And no
matter how the individual soldier was thinking of Napoleon, whether he
loved or hated him, there was not a single one in the whole army who
did not have implicit confidence in his talent. Wherever the Emperor
showed himself the soldiers believed in victory, where he appeared
thousands of men shouted from the depth of their heart and with all the
power of their voices Vive l’Empereur!

A wild martial spirit reigned in all lands, the bloody sword did not
ask why and against whom it was drawn. To win glory for the own army,
the own colors and standards was the parole of the day. All the masses
of different nations felt as belonging to one great whole and were
determined to act as such.

And all this has to be considered in a medical history of the campaign
Anno 1812.

Throughout Germany, Napoleon is the favorite hero. In the homes of the
common people, in the huts of the peasants, there are pictures
ornamenting the walls, engravings which have turned yellow from age,
the frames of which are worm eaten. These pictures represent a variety
of subjects, but rarely are there pictures missing of scenes of the
life of Napoleon. Generally they are divided into fields, and in the
larger middle field you see the hero of small stature, on a white
horse, from his fallow face the cold calculating eyes looking into a
throng of bayonets, lances, bearskin caps, helmets, and proud eagles.
The graceful mouth, in contrast to the strong projecting chin, modifies
somewhat the severity of this face, a face of marble of which it has
been said that it gave the impression of a field of death, and the man
with this face is accustomed to conquer, to reign, to destroy. He is
the inexorable God of war himself, not in glittering armour, but in a
plain uniform ornamented with one single order for personal bravery.
The tuft of hair on his high and broad forehead is like a sign of
everlasting scorn. A gloomy, dreadfully attractive figure. In some of
the pictures we see him in his plain gray overcoat and well-known hat,
surrounded by marshals in splendid dress parade, forming a contrast to
the simplicity of their master, on some elevation from which he looks
into burning cities; again we see him unmoved by dreadful surroundings,
riding through battle scenes of horror.

Over my desk hangs such an old steel engraving, given to me by an old
German lady who told me that her father had thought a great deal of it.
On Saturdays he would wash the glass over the other pictures with
water, but for washing the Napoleon picture he would use alcohol.

Before this man kings have trembled, innumerable thousands have
cheerfully given their blood, their lives; this man has been adored
like a God and cursed like a devil. He has been the fate of the world
until his hour struck. Many say providence had selected him to
castigate the universe and its enslaved peoples. A great German
historian, Gervinus, has said: “He was the greatest benefactor of
Germany who removed the gloriole from the heads crowned by the grace of
God.” He accomplished great things because he had great power, he
committed great faults because he was so powerful. Without his
unrestricted power he could not have accomplished one nor committed the
other.

History is logic. Whenever great wrongs prevail, some mighty men appear
and arouse the people, and these extraordinary men are like the storm
in winter which shatters and breaks what is rotten, preparing for
spring.

The German school boy, when he learns of the greatest warriors and
conquerors, of Alexander the Great, of Julius Caesar, is most
fascinated when he hears the history of the greatest of all the
warriors of the world, the history of Napoleon, and he is spellbound
reading the awfully beautiful histories concerning his unheard of
deeds, his rise without example, and his sudden downfall.

And he, the great man, the soldier-emperor, he rides on his white horse
in the boy’s dreams, just as depicted on the engravings upon which the
boys look with a kind of holy awe.

The son of a Corsican lawyer, becoming in early manhood the master of
the world, what could inflame youthful fiction more than this wonderful
career?

All great conquerors come to a barrier. Alexander, when he planned to
subdue India, found the barrier at the Indus. Caesar found it at the
Thames and at the Rhine. Our hero’s fate was to be fulfilled at Moscow.
His insatiable thirst to rule had led him into Russia. He stood at the
height of his power and glory. Holland, Italy, a part of Germany, were
French, and Germany especially groaned under the heel of severe
xenocraty. The old German Empire had broken down, nothing of it was
left but a ridiculous name, “_Römisches Reich deutscher Nation_.” The
crowned heads of Germany held their thrones merely by the grace of
Napoleon. Only Spain, united with England, dared him yet. Since
Napoleon could not attack the English directly, on account of their
power at sea, he tried to hit them where they were most sensitive, at
their pocket. He instituted the continental blocus. Russia with the
other lands of Continental Europe had to close her ports and markets
against England, but Russia soon became tired of this pressure and
preferred a new war with Napoleon to French domination.

In giving this sketch of the popularity of Napoleon’s memory in
Germany, I have availed myself of a German calendar for the year 1913,
called Der Lahrer hinkende Bote.

Except the English translation of Beaupré’s book I have taken from
French and German writings only.

I desire to thank Mr. S. Simonis, of New York, who has revised the
entire manuscript and read the proofs; next to him I am under
obligations to Reichs Archiv Rat Dr. Striedinger, of Munich, and Mr.
Franz Herrmann, of New York, who have loaned me most valuable books and
pointed out important literature, and finally to Miss F. de Cerkez, who
has aided me in the translation of some of the chapters.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Transportation of Cannon under Difficulties
Attack of Cossacks
“And Never Saw Daylight Again,”
Beresina
Gate of Wilna
In the Streets of Wilna
Retreat Across the Niemen
“No Fear, We Shall Soon Follow You”
In Prison




CROSSING THE NIEMEN


On May 10th., 1812, the Moniteur published the following note: “The
emperor has left to-day to inspect the Grand Army united at the
Vistula.” In France, in all parts of the Empire, the lassitude was
extreme and the misery increasing, there was no commerce, with dearth
pronounced in twenty provinces, sedition of the hungry had broken out
in Normandy, the gendarmes pursuing the “refractories” everywhere, and
blood was shed in all thirty departments.

There was the complaint of exhausted population, and loudest was the
complaint of mothers whose sons had been killed in the war.

Napoleon was aware of these evils and understood well their gravity,
but he counted on his usual remedy, new victories; saying to himself
that a great blow dealt in the north, throwing Russia and indirectly
England at his feet, would again be the salvation of the situation.

Caulaincourt, his ambassador to the Tzar, had told him in several
conversations, one of which had lasted seven hours, that he would find
more terrible disaster in Russia than in Spain, that his army would be
destroyed in the vastness of the country by the iron climate, that the
Tzar would retire to the farthest Asiatic provinces rather than accept
a dishonorable peace, that the Russians would retreat but never cede.

Napoleon listened attentively to these prophetic words, showing
surprise and emotion; then he fell into a profound reflection, but at
the end of his revery, having enumerated once more his armies, all his
people, he said: “Bah! a good battle will bring to reason the good
determination of your friend Alexander.”

And in his entourage there were many who shared his optimism. The
brilliant youth of that new aristocracy which had begun to fill his
staff was anxious to equal the old soldiers of the revolution, the
plebeian heroes.

They prepared for war in a luxurious way and ordered sumptuous outfits
and equipages which later on encumbered the roads of Germany, just as
the carriages of the Prussian army had done in 1806.

These French officers spoke of the Russian campaign as a six months’
hunting party.

Napoleon had calculated not to occupy the country between the Vistula
and the Niemen before the end of May, when the late spring of those
regions would have covered the fields with green, so that the 100
thousand horses marching with the army could find feed.

He traversed Germany between a double lane of kings, and princes bowed
in an attitude of adoration.

He found them at Mainz, at Wuerzburg, at Bamberg, and his advance might
be compared to the royal progress of an Asiatic potentate.

Whole populations were turned out to salute him, and during the night
the route over which the imperial carriages passed was illuminated by
lighted piles of wood—an extensive line of fire in his honor.

At Dresden he had the attendance of an emperor (that of Austria) and of
kings and reigning princes, who were present at his levees, together
with their prime ministers (the better to catch, to report, the words
he said, however insignificant) while high German dignitaries waited on
him at the table.

The Emperor and the Empress of Austria had come at their own desire to
salute their daughter and their son-in-law and to present their good
wishes for the success of the great expedition.

Twelve days in succession he had at dinner the Emperor and Empress of
Austria, the King and Queen of Saxony, the Saxon princes, the Prince
Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine—even the King of Prussia was
present; he offered his son for adjutant, which offer, however,
Napoleon was tactful enough not to accept.

All the kings and reigning princes from the other States of Germany
presented their best wishes and pledged faithfulness to Napoleon in his
war against Russia.

Around the French emperor and empress at Dresden there was a court the
like of which Europe had never seen and never will see again.

A Te Deum was sung to thank heaven for his arrival; there was a
magnificent display of fireworks, but the climax of all was a great
concert with an apotheosis showing, as the principal figure, the sun
with the inscription: “Less great and less beautiful than He.” “It
appears that these people take me for very stupid,” said Napoleon to
this, shrugging his shoulders.

In speaking to one of his intimates he called the King of Prussia a
sergeant instructor, _une bête_, but openly he treated him with great
courtesy.

He made rich presents: gold and enameled boxes, jewelry and portraits
of himself enriched with costly stones. During the happy days of
Dresden he enjoyed for once an intimate family life.

On one occasion he held a long conversation with his father-in-law,
during which he developed his plans of the Russian campaign, with
minute and endless military details of which the emperor of Austria,
being no strategist at all, understood nothing and said afterward: “My
son-in-law is alright here,” pointing to the heart, “but here”—pointing
to the forehead—he made a significant gesture.

This criticism of Napoleon by the Emperor of Austria became popular and
has been accepted by many writers. All reproaches about Cesarian
insanity which were cast at the great man and his whole life date from
that time. Some have said that he wanted to conquer England and Russia
because these two he considered the arch enemies of Europe, that he
foresaw the threatening growth of these two countries as dangerous, and
if he did not take advantage of the good opportunity the future of
Europe would be at the mercy of Russia and England.

The conquest of Russia was the keynote of his universal policy.

The much calumniated blocus, say other writers, would finally have been
the greatest blessing for continental Europe; its aim had already been
attained in so far as many London houses failed, and famine reigned on
the British islands in consequence of the high cost of living.

And these writers say Napoleon had by no means become insane, but, on
the contrary, frightfully clear. Another explanation given was that he
worried about his dynasty, his child, entertaining fear that his empire
might fall to pieces after his death, like the empire of Charles the
Great.

Although he was enjoying good health, he had been warned by his
physician, _Corvisart_, of cancer of the stomach, from which Napoleon’s
father had died. Some suspicious black specks had been observed in the
vomit. Therefore no time was to be lost, all had to be done in haste.

The rupture originated with Russia, for at the end of the year 1810 the
Tzar annulled the blocus and even excluded French goods or placed an
inordinate duty on them—this was, in fact, a declaration of war. Russia
wanted war while the Spanish campaign was taxing France’s military
forces.

The only reliable report of Napoleon’s communications at St. Helena has
been given by General de Gourgaudin the diary which he kept while with
the Emperor from 1815 to 1818, and which has been published in the year
1898. Here is what Napoleon said on this subject:

On June 13th., 1816, he remarked in conversation with _Gourgaud_, “I
did not want the war with Russia, but _Kurakin_ presented me a
threatening note on account of _Davout’s_ troops at Hamburg. _Bassano_
and _Champagny_ were mediocre ministers, they did not comprehend the
intention which had dictated that note. I myself could not argue with
_Kurakin_. They persuaded me that it meant declaration of war. Russia
had taken off several divisions from Moldavia and would take the
initiative with an attack on Warsaw. _Kurakin_ threatened and asked for
his passports. I myself believed finally they wanted war. I mobilized!
I sent _Lauriston_ to Alexander, but he was not even received. From
Dresden I sent _Narbonne_, everything convinced me that Russia wanted
war. I crossed the Niemen near Wilna.

“Alexander sent a General to me to assure me that he did not wish war;
I treated this ambassador very well, he dined with me, but I believed
his mission was a trick to prevent the cutting off of _Bagratian_. I
therefore continued the march.

“I did not wish to declare war against Russia, but I had the impression
that Russia wanted to break with me. I knew very well the difficulties
of such a campaign.”

_Gourgaud_ wrote in his diary a conversation which he had with
Montholon on July 9th., 1817. “What was the real motive of the Russian
campaign? I know nothing about it, and perhaps the Emperor himself did
not know it. Did he intend to go to India after having dethroned the
Moscowitic dynasty? The preparations, the tents which he took along,
seem to suggest this assumption.”

Montholon answered: “According to the instructions which I, as
ambassador, received I believe that His Majesty wanted to become
Emperor of Germany, that he aimed to be crowned as ‘_Emperor of the
West_’. The Rhenish Confederation was made to understand this idea. In
Erfurt it was already a foregone conclusion, but Alexander demanded
Constantinople, and this Napoleon would not concede.”

At another conversation Napoleon admitted “I have been too hasty. I
should have remained a whole year at the Niemen and in Prussia, in
order to give my troops the much needed rest, to reorganize the army
and also to eat up Prussia.”

All these details, Napoleon’s admission included, show that nobody knew
and nobody knows why this gigantic expedition was undertaken. Certain
is, however, that England had a hand in the break between Napoleon and
Alexander.

When Napoleon called on the generals to lead them into this expedition
they all had become settled to some extent, some in Paris, others on
their possessions or as governors and commanders all over Europe, which
at that time meant France; in consequence there existed a certain
displeasure among these officers, especially among the older ones and
those of high rank.

The high positions which he had created for them and the rich incomes
which they enjoyed had developed their and their wives’ taste for a
luxurious and brilliant mode of living. Besides, most of them, as well
as their master, had attained the age between forty and fifty, their
ambition gradually had relented, they had enough; and the family with
which they had been together for very brief periods only between two
campaigns, clung to them now and held them tightly.

Notwithstanding these conditions, they all came when the Emperor
called; after they had shaken off wife and children and had mounted in
the saddle, while the old veterans and the young impatient soldiers
were jubilant around them, they regained their good humor and went on
to new victories, the brave men they always had been.

Especially at first when, at the head of their magnificent regiments,
they marched eastward through the conquered lands, from city to city,
from castle to castle, like masters of the world, when in Dresden they
met their comrades in war and their friends, and when they saw how all
the crowned heads of Europe bowed before their Emperor, then the Grand
Army was in its glory.

As we know from history the Grand Army had contingents from twenty
nationalities: Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Swiss,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Poles, Illyrians, etc., and numbered over half a
million men, with 100 thousand horses, 1,000 cannon.

According to Bleibtreu (Die grosse Armee, Stuttgart, 1908), and
Kielland (Rings um Napoleon, Leipzig, 1907) the Grand Army was made up
as follows:

_First Corps_—Davout, six divisions of the best troops under the
command of Morand, Friant, Gudin. In this corps were, besides French,
Badensian, Dutch, and Polish regiments. Davout commanded also 17
thousand Prussian soldiers under General Grawert. Among the generals
were Compans and Pajol, the engineer Haxo, and the handsome General
Friederich 67,000

_Second Corps_—Oudinot with the divisions of Generals Merle, Legrand,
Maison, Lannes’ and Massena’s veterans 40,000

_Third Corps_—Ney with two divisions of veterans of Lannes; to this
corps belonged the Wuerttembergians who had served under Ney before
49,000

_Fourth Corps_—Prince Eugene with Junot as second commander, and the
Generals Grouchy, Broussier, the two brothers Delzon. In this corps
were the best soldiers of the Italian army 45,000

_Fifth Corps_—Prince Poniatowski. Soldiers of all arms, mostly Poles
26,000 Sixth Corps—General St Cyr. Mostly foreigners who had served in
the French army since 1809 25,000

_The Sixth Corps_—General St Cyr. Mostly foreigners who had served in
the French army since 1809 25,000

_The Seventh Corps_—General Reynier. Mostly Saxons and Poles 17,000

_The Eighth Corps_—King Jerome. Westphalians and Hessians 18,000

Besides, there were four corps of reserve cavalry distributed among the
corps of Davout, Oudinot, and Ney; the rest, excellent horsemen,
marched with the Imperial Guard 15,000

_The Imperial Guards_ were commanded by the Marshals Mortier and
Lefebvre and were divided into two corps, the old guard and the young
guard 47,000

There was the engineer park, composed of sappers, miners, pontooneers
and military mechanicians of all descriptions, the artillery park, and
train of wagons with attendants and horses. To these two trains alone
belonged 18 thousand horses.

In the active army which marched toward Russia there were 423 thousand
well drilled soldiers; namely, 300 thousand infantry, 70 thousand
cavalry and 30 thousand artillery with 1 thousand cannon, 6 pontoon
trains, ambulances, and also provisions for one month.

As reserve, the ninth corps—Marshal Victor—and the tenth
corps—Augereau—were stationed near Magdeburg, ready to complete the
army gradually.

The whole army which marched to Russia consisted of 620 thousand men.

The question of subsistence for this immense body occupied Napoleon
chiefly. He felt the extraordinary difficulty and great danger, he knew
that at the moment of coming in contact with the enemy all the corps
would be out of supplies in twenty or twenty-five days if there were no
great reserves of bread, biscuit, rice, etc., closely following the
army.

His system was that of requisition. To secure the needed supplies the
commanders of the corps were ordered to seize in the country all the
grain which could be found and at once to convert it into flour, with
methodic activity.

Napoleon himself superintended and hastened the work. At twenty
different places along the Vistula he had the grinding done
unceasingly, distributing the flour thus obtained among the corps and
expediting its transport by every possible means. He even invented new
measures for this purpose, among which the well-known formation of
battalions of cattle, an immense rolling stock destined to follow the
columns to serve twofold: for transportation of provisions, and finally
as food.

With the beginning of June these supreme preparations had been made or
seemed to have been made. In the lands through which the troops were to
march before they reached the Niemen, the spring had done its work;
there was abundance of forage.

Napoleon had impatiently awaited this time during ten months of secret
activity.

It was the hope of Russia and the fear of those Frenchmen who
understood the Russian climate that the campaign would drag into the
winter.

Russians already told of the village blacksmith who laughed when he was
shown a French horseshoe which had been found on the road, and said:
“Not one of these horses will leave Russia if the army remains till
frost sets in!” The French horseshoes had neither pins nor barbed
hooks, and it would be impossible for horses thus shod to draw cannons
and heavy wagons up and down hill over frozen and slippery roads.

The annihilation of the Grand Army is not to be attributed to the cold
and the fearful conditions on the retreat from Moscow alone, the army
was in reality annihilated before it reached Russia, as we shall see by
the following description which I have taken from a Latin dissertation
(translated also into German) of the surgeon of a Wuerttembergian
regiment, Ch. Io. von Scherer, who had served through the whole
campaign and in the year 1820 had submitted this dissertation,
“Historia Morborum, qui in Expeditione Contra Russiam Anno 1812 Facta
Legiones Wuerttembergicas invaserunt, praesertim eorum qui frigore orti
sunt,” to the Medical Faculty, presided over by F. G. Gmelin, to obtain
the degree of doctor of medicine.

The diseases which befell the soldiers in Russia extended over the
whole army. Von Scherer, however, gives his own observations only,
which he had made while serving in the Wuerttembergian corps of
fourteen to fifteen thousand men.

The expedition into Russia in the year 1812 was divided into ten
divisions, each of these numbering fifty to sixty thousand men, all
healthy, robust, most of them hardened in war. The Wuerttembergians
were commanded by General Count von Scheeler and the French General
Marchand; the highest commander was Marshal Ney.

In the beginning of May, 1812, the great army of Napoleon arrived at
the frontier of Poland, whence it proceeded by forced and most tiresome
marches to the river Niemen, which forms the boundary between Lithuania
and Poland, arriving at the borders of the river in the middle of June.

An immense body of soldiers (500,000) met near the city of Kowno,
crossed the Niemen on pontoons, and formed, under the eyes of the
Emperor, in endless battle line on the other side.

The forced march continued day and night over the sandy soil of Poland.
The tropical heat during the day and the low temperature at night, the
frequent rainstorms from the north, the camping on bare and often wet
ground, the ever increasing want of pure water and fresh provisions,
the immense masses of dust, which, cloudlike, hung over the marching
columns—all these difficulties put together had sapped the strength of
the soldiers already at the beginning of the campaign. Many were taken
sick before they reached the Niemen.

The march through Lithuania was hastened as much as the march through
Poland. Provisions became scarcer all the time, meat from cattle that
had suffered from starvation and exhaustion was for a long time the
soldiers’ only food. The great heat, and the inhalation of sand and
dust, dried the tissues of the body, and the thirsty soldiers longed in
vain for a drink of water. Often there was no other opportunity to
quench the thirst than the water afforded by the swamps. The officers
were powerless to prevent the soldiers from kneeling down at stagnant
pools and drinking the foul water without stint.

Thus the army, tired to the utmost from overexertion and privation, and
disposed to sickness, entered the land of the enemy. The forced marches
were continued during the day, through sand and dust, until stormy
weather set in with rain, followed by cold winds.

With the appearance of bad weather, dysentery, which had already been
observed at the time of the crossing of the Niemen, showed itself with
greater severity. The route the army had taken from camp to camp was
marked by offensive evacuations. The number of the sick became so great
that they could not all be attended to, and medical treatment became
illusory when the supply of medicaments was exhausted.

The greater part of the army fought in vain, however courageously,
against the extending evil. As everything was wanting of which the sick
were in need, there was no barrier against the spread of the disease,
while at the same time the privations and hardships which had caused it
continued and reached their climax.

Some of these soldiers would march, equipped with knapsack and arms,
apparently in good spirits, but suddenly would succumb and die. Others,
especially those of strong constitution, would become melancholy and
commit suicide. The number of deaths increased from day to day.

Marvelous was the effect of emotion on the disease. Surgeon-General von
Kohlreuter, during and after the battle of Smolensk, witnessed this
influence. Of four thousand Wuerttembergians who took part in that
battle, there were few quite free from dysentery.

Tired and depressed, the army dragged along; but as soon as the
soldiers heard the cannon in the distance, telling them the battle was
beginning, they emerged at once from their lethargy; the expression of
their faces, which had been one of sadness, changed to one of joy and
hilarity. Joyfully and with great bravery they went into action. During
the four days that the battle lasted, and for some days afterward,
dysentery disappeared as if banished by magic. When the battle was over
and the privations were the same again as they had been, the disease
returned with the same severity as before—nay, even worse, and the
soldiers fell into complete lethargy.

The necropsy of those who had died from dysentery revealed derangement
of the digestive organs; the stomach, the large intestine, mostly the
rectum, were inflamed; the intima of stomach and duodenum, sometime the
whole intestine, were atonic. In some cases there were small ulcers,
with jagged margins, in the stomach, especially in its fundus, and in
the rectum; in other cases dysentery had proceeded to such an extent
that pretty large ulcers had developed, extending from the stomach into
the small and from there into the large intestine, into the rectum.
These ulcers were of sizes varying from that of a lentil to the size of
a walnut. Where the disease had been progressive the intima, the mucosa
and submucosa—very seldom, however, the serosa—were perforated by
ulcers; in many cases there were gangraenous patches in the fundus of
the stomach and along the intestinal tract. The gastric juice smelled
highly acid, frequently the liver was discolored and contained a bluish
liquid, its lower part in most cases hardened and bluish; the gall
bladder, as a rule, was empty or contained only a small amount of bile;
the mesenteric glands were mostly inflamed, sometimes purulent; the
mesenteric and visceral vessels appeared often as if studded with
blood. Such patients had suffered sometimes from gastralgy, had had a
great craving for food, especially vegetables, but were during that
time entirely free from fever.

Remarkably sudden disaster followed the immoderate use of alcohol. Some
Wuerttembergian soldiers, who during the first days of July had been
sent on requisition, had discovered large quantities of brandy in a
nobleman’s mansion, and had indulged in its immoderate use and died,
like all dysentery patients who took too much alcohol.

The number of Wuerttembergians afflicted with dysentery, while on the
march from the Niemen to the Dwina, amounted to three thousand, at
least this many were left behind in the hospitals of Malaty, Wilna,
Disna, Strizzowan and Witepsk. The number of deaths in the hospitals
increased as the disease proceeded, from day to day, and the number of
those who died on the march was not small. Exact hospital statistics
cannot be given except of Strizzowan, which was the only hospital from
which lists had been preserved; and here von Scherer did duty during
six weeks. Out of 902 patients 301 died during the first three weeks;
during the other three weeks when the patients had better care only 36
died.

In the hospitals established on the march, in haste, in poor villages,
medicaments were either wanting entirely or could be had only in
insufficient quantity. All medical plants which grew on the soil in
that climate were utilized by the surgeons, as, for instance in the
hospital of Witepsk, huckleberries and the root of tormentilla.
Establishing the hospital in Strizzowan von Scherer placed some of his
patients in the castle, others in a barn and the rest in stables. Not
without great difficulties and under dangers he procured provisions
from the neighborhood. As medicaments he used, and sometimes with
really good results, the following plants which were found in abundance
in the vicinity: 1. Cochlearia armoracia; 2. Acorus calamus; 3. Allium
sativum; 4. Raphanus sativus; 5. Menyanthes trifoliata; 6. Salvia
officinalis.

In the course of the following three weeks General Count von Scheeler
handed him several thousand florins to be used for the alleviation of
the sufferings of the soldiers under his care, and von Scherer procured
from great distances, namely, from the Polish cities Mohilew, Minsk and
Wilna, suitable medicines and provisions. The proper diet which could
now be secured, together with best medicines, had an excellent effect.
This is seen at a glance when perusing the statistics of the first
three and the last three weeks. In some cases in which the patients had
been on the way to recovery, insignificant causes would bring relapse.
Potatoes grew in abundance in the vicinity of the hospital, and
patients would clandestinely help themselves and eat them in excessive
quantities, with fatal result.

In some the intestinal tract remained very weak for a long time.
Emaciation of the convalescents improved only very slowly. Remarkable
was a certain mental depression or indolence which remained in many
patients. Even in officers who von Scherer had known as energetic and
good-humored men there was seen for a long time a morose condition and
very noticeable dulness. Whatever they undertook was done slowly and
imperfectly. Sometimes, even with a kind of wickedness, they showed an
inclination to steal or do something forbidden. Sometimes it was
difficult to induce them to take exercise. Von Scherer, in order to
cheer up the convalescents, ordered daily walks under guard, and this
was the more necessary as oedemata developed on the extremities in
those who remained motionless on their couches.

How injurious the immoderate use of alcoholic beverages proved to be
was demonstrated in three cases of convalescents, who were still
somewhat weak. They had secretly procured some bottles of brandy from
the cellar of the hospital, and with the idea of having a good time had
drunk all of it in one sitting. Very soon they had dangerous symptoms:
abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting followed by lachrymation from the
protruding and inflamed eyes. They fell down senseless, had liquid and
highly offensive evacuations and died, in spite of all medical aid, in
six hours. On the abdomen, the neck, the chest and especially on the
feet of the corpses of these men there were gangraenous spots of
different sizes, a plain proof that the acute inflammation, gangraene
and putrefaction had been caused by the excessive irritation of the
extremely weak body. Circumstances forbade necropsy in these cases.

Among different publications on the medical history of Napoleon’s
campaign in 1812, which I happened to find, was a dissertation of Marin
Bunoust, “Considerations générales sur la congelation pendant l’ivresse
observée en Russie en 1812.” Paris, 1817 (published, therefore, three
years before publication of von Scherer’s dissertation), in which the
author wishes to show that the physiological effect of drunkenness on
the organism is identical with that of extreme cold.

Von Scherer, after the hospital of Strizzowan had been evacuated, again
joined his regiment. The French army in forced marches pursued the
enemy on the road to Moscow over Ostrowno, Witepsk and Smolensk.
Dysentery did not abate. In the hospitals of Smolensk, Wiasma and
Ghiat, von Scherer found, besides the wounded from the battles of
Krasnoe, Smolensk and Borodino, a great number of dysentery patients;
many died on the march. The whole presented a pitiful sight, and the
soldiers’ contempt of life excited horror.

We shall return to von Scherer’s dissertation when describing the
retreat from Moscow.

While the dissertation of von Scherer treats on the fate of the
Wuerttembergian corps of Napoleon’s grand army, a memoir of First
Lieutenant von Borcke who served as adjutant of General von Ochs in the
Westphalian corps relates the fate of the Westphalians in the grand
army of 1812.

The Westphalians, 23,747 men strong, left Cassel in the month of March,
1812, to unite with the French army. One of the regiments was sent
later and joined the corps while the army was on the retreat from
Moscow at Moshaisk. This regiment, like another, which followed still
later and joined the army on the retreat at Wilna, was annihilated. Of
the 23,747 men a few hundred finally returned. On March 24th., the
Westphalians crossed the Elbe, von Borcke (it is a common error in
American literature to spell the predicate of nobility _von_ with a
capital V when at the beginning of a period, while neither von nor the
corresponding French de as predicate of nobility should ever be spelled
with a capital) at that time suffered from intermittent fever, but was
cured by the use of calisaya bark. I mention this to call attention to
the fact that quinine was not known in the year 1812. When the corps
marched into Poland the abundance of provisions which the soldiers had
enjoyed, came to an end.

There were no magazines from which rations could have been distributed,
and the poor Polish peasants, upon whom requisitions should have been
made, had nothing for the soldiers. Disorder among the troops who thus
far distinguished themselves by strictest discipline, made its
appearance. How the army was harassed by the plague of dysentery, how
the soldiers were marching during great heat, insufficiently supplied
in every way, and how they suffered from manifold hardships, has been
described in von Scherer’s dissertation. The Westphalian corps was in
as precarious a condition as the Wuerttembergian, as in fact the whole
army and the Westphalian battalions were already reduced to one-half
their former number. Many soldiers had remained behind on account of
sickness or exhaustion, and officers were sent back to bring them to
the ranks again.

The whole army would have dissolved if the march had not been
interrupted. Napoleon ordered a stay. An order from him called for a
rally of the troops, for the completion of war material, ammunition,
and horses and provisions; but where to take all these things from? The
war had not yet begun, and the troops were already in danger of
starvation. Only with sadness and fear could the soldiers, under these
circumstances, look into the future.

In what way, says Ebstein, can this great want, this insufficient
supply of provisions, which made itself felt even at the beginning of
the campaign, be explained? It has been shown how Napoleon exerted
himself to meet the extraordinary difficulty of supplying the grand
army of half a million of men and 100,000 horses with provisions, how
well he was aware of the great danger in this regard, how he
superintended and hastened the work of providing for men and horses by
every possible means, that he understood all the circumstances
surrounding the march of the grand army through a vast country
populated by few, and these mostly serfs who had barely sufficient food
for themselves and no means to replenish their stock in case it should
have been exhausted by Napoleon’s system of requisition, not to speak
of the marauding to which the French soldiers were soon forced to
resort. Ebstein says that the cause of the sad, the wretched condition
concerning supplies was due to the fact that incompetent officers had
been appointed as commissaries of the army; they held high military
rank, were independent and could not be easily reached for their
faults. It happened that soldiers were starving near well filled
magazines, such magazines at Kowno, Wilna, Minsk, Orcha being not only
well, but over, filled, while the passing troops were in dire need. We
shall later on come to frightful details of this kind.

The miserable maintenance had from the beginning a demoralizing effect
on the men, manifested by desertion, insubordination, marauding,
vandalism. General Sir Robert Wilson, British commissioner with the
headquarters of the Russian army, quoted by Ebstein, says: “The French
army, from its very entrance into the Russian territory (and this
cannot be repeated too often to lend the proper weight to the
consequences resulting therefrom), notwithstanding order on order and
some exemplary punishments, had been incorrigibly guilty of every
excess. It had not only seized with violence all that its wants
demanded, but destroyed in mere wantonness what did not tempt its
cupidity. No vandal ferocity was ever more destructive. Those crimes,
however, were not committed with impunity. Want, sickness, and an
enraged peasantry, inflicted terrible reprisals, and caused daily a
fearful reduction of numbers.”

But this description of the Englishman will apply to every army in
which there are such difficulties in obtaining the necessary supplies
as they existed here on the forced marches.

Further, he does not speak of the severe punishments meted out to the
culprits. By order of Napoleon entire squads of marauders were shot.
Von Roos, chief physician of a Wuerttembergian regiment, has seen that
before their execution they had to dig their own graves.

In Wilna already Davout ordered the execution of 70, and in Minsk of 13
marauders.

A Westphalian officer, von Lossberg, commander of a battalion, wrote in
his letters to his wife—which are of great value to the history of the
campaign—from Toloschin on July 25: “On our march we met a detachment
of Davout’s corps; they shot before our eyes a commissary of the army
who had been condemned to death for fraud. He had sold for 200 dollars
provisions which had been intended for the soldiers.”

Napoleon had stayed several days at Thorn, inspecting the departing
troops, visiting the magazines, bestowing a last glance upon
everything. Before the guards left their cantonments he wanted to see
the different corps and hold a great review. He loved to see again the
manly figures of the soldiers, their chests of iron, these braves who
stood before him, immovable in parade, irresistible in fight. Their
bearing and their expression gave him pleasure. Notwithstanding the
fatigues and the privations of the march, enthusiasm shone on all the
faces, in the brightening of all the eyes. He wanted to give with his
own mouth the order “forward march” to the regiments of the guard, and
he saw the endless defile of these proud uniforms, heard the
uninterrupted beating of the drums, the sound of the trumpets, the
acclamation “Vive l’Empereur” of the beautiful troops, the departure of
the officers, every one of whom had orders to set in motion or to halt
human masses. All this great movement around him, by his will, at his
word, animated and excited him. Now, the lot having irrevocably been
cast, he surrenders himself completely to his instincts as warrior, he
feels himself only soldier, the greatest and most ardent who has
existed, he dreams of nothing but victories and conquests. At night,
after having given orders all day long, he slept only at intervals,
passing part of the night walking up and down. One night those on duty,
who slept near his room, were surprised hearing him sing with plain
voice a popular song of the soldiers of the republic.

On June 6th., Napoleon left Thorn while all the army was marching. At
Danzig he saw Murat, whom he had called directly from Naples. He did
not wish him near except for the fight where he would be an ornament in
battle and set a magnificent example. Otherwise he considered his
presence useless and hurtful. He had taken special pains to keep him
away from Dresden, from the assembly of sovereigns, from contact with
dynasties of the _ancien régime_, especially of the house of Austria,
because of his being a king of recent origin. He feared the
indiscretion of the newly made kings when brought together with the
sovereigns by the grace of God. He did not wish that any intimacy
should develop between them.

The meeting of the two brothers-in-law was at first cold and painful.
Each had a grievance against the other and did not restrain himself at
all to pronounce it. Murat complained, as he had done before, that he,
as King of Naples, was an instrument of domination and tyranny, and
added that he could find a way to extricate himself from such an
intolerable exigency. Napoleon reproached Murat of his more and more
marked inclination to disobey, of his digression in language and
conduct, and of his suspicious actions. He looked at him with a severe
mien, spoke harsh words, and treated him altogether with severity. But
then, suddenly changing his tone, he spoke to him in a language of
friendship, of wounded and misunderstood friendship, became emotional,
complained of ingratitude, and recalled the memory of their long
affection, their military comradery. The king who was easily moved, was
thinking of all the generosity he had enjoyed, and could not resist the
appeal, he became emotional in his turn, almost shed tears, forgot all
grief for a while, and was conquered.

And in the evening before his intimates the emperor lauded himself for
having played excellent comedy to regain Murat, that he had by turns
and very successfully enacted anger and sentimentality with this
Italian _pantaleone_, but, added he, Murat has a good heart.

Ahead of the emperor, between Danzig and Koenigsberg, traversing East
Prussia and some districts of Poland, marched the army—under what
difficulties has been described. At the same time, through the Baltic
and the Frische Haff, came the more ponderous war material, the
pontoons and the heaviest artillery, the siege guns. To complete the
supply of provisions before entering upon the campaign the troops
exhausted the land by making extensive requisitions. The emperor had
wished that all should go on regularly and that everything taken from
the inhabitants should be paid for, but this the soldiers did not
consider. They took and emptied the granaries, tore down the straw from
the roofs of the peasants’ houses, barns, and stables to make litter
for their horses, and treated the inhabitants not as friends, but as if
they were people of a conquered land. The cavalry which passed first
helped themselves for their horses to all the hay and all the grass,
the artillery and the train were obliged to take from the fields the
green barley and oats, and the army altogether ruined the population
where it passed. The men obliged to disperse during a part of the day
as foragers, got into the habit of disbanding and of looseness of
discipline, and the impossibility manifested itself to keep in order
and in ranks the multitude of different races, different in languages,
who with their many vehicles represented a regular migration.

Everything became monotonous—the country, the absence of an enemy. They
found Prussia and especially Poland, ugly, dirty, miserable, all the
houses were full of dirt and vermin, domestic animals of all kinds were
the intimate syntrophoi of the peasants in their living rooms. The
soldiers bore badly the inconvenience of the lodging, the coolness of
the night following the burning heat of the day, the fogs in the
mornings. But they consoled themselves with illusions, painting the
future in rosy colors, hoping to find across the Niemen a better soil,
a different people, more favorable to the soldier, and longed for
Russia as for the promised land.

The Grand Army had arrived at the Niemen. It was on June 24th., the sun
rose radiant and lightened with his fire a magnificent scene. To the
troops was read a short and energetic proclamation. Napoleon came out
of his tent, surrounded by his officers, and contemplated with his
field glass the sight of this prodigious force; hundreds of thousands
of soldiers united in one place! One could not find anything comparable
to the enthusiasm which the presence of Napoleon inspired on that day.
The right bank of the river was covered with these magnificent troops;
they descended from the heights and spread out in long files over the
three bridges, resembling three currents; the rays of the sun glittered
on the bayonets and helmets, and the cry _Vive l’Empereur_! was heard
incessantly.

If I were to give a full description to do justice to the magnificent
spectacle I would have to quote from the journals of that epoch, and if
I were a painter I could not find a greater subject for my art.




ON TO MOSCOW


Arrived in Russia the French were soon disappointed; gloomy forests and
sterile soil met the eye, all was sad and silent. After the army had
passed the Niemen and entered into Poland the misery, instead of
diminishing, increased, the hour had struck for these unfortunates. The
enemy destroyed everything on retreating, the cattle were taken to
distant provinces; the French saw the destruction of the fields, the
villages were deserted, the peasants fled upon the appearance of the
French army, all inhabitants had left except the Jews. When the army
came to Lithuania everything seemed to be in league against the French.
It was a rainy season, the soldiers marched through vast and gloomy
forests, and all was melancholy. One could have imagined himself to be
in a desert if it had not been for the vehicles, the cursing of the
drivers, discontented on account of hunger and fatigue, the
imprecations of the soldiers on every occasion; bad humor, due to
privations, prevailed everywhere. It would seem as if the furies of
hell were marching at the heels of the army. The roads were in a
terrible condition, almost unpassable on account of the rain which had
been continuous since the crossing of the Niemen; the artillery wagons
especially gave great trouble in passing marshes, and, on account of
the extreme exhaustion of the horses, a great many of these vehicles
had to be abandoned. The horses receiving no nourishment but green
herbs could resist even less than the men and they fell by the hundred.

The improper feeding of the animals caused gastric disturbances,
alternately diarrhoea and constipation, enormous tympanitis,
peritonitis. It is touching to read of the devotion of German
cavalrymen to their poor horses. They would introduce the whole arm
into the bowel to relieve the suffering creatures of the accumulated
fecal masses.

As the army advanced over these roads the extreme want of provisions
was bitterly felt. The warriors already reduced to such an excess of
misery were exposed to rain without being able to dry themselves; to
nourish themselves they were forced to resort to the most horrible
marauding, and sometimes they had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours
or even longer. They ran through the land in all directions,
disregarding all dangers, sometimes many miles away from the route, to
find provisions. Wherever they came they went through the houses from
the foundation to the roof, and when they found animals they took them
away; no attention was paid to the feeling of the poor peasants and
nothing was considered as being too harsh for them; in most instances
the latter had run away for fear of maltreatment. Nothing is so
afflicting as to see the rapacity of pillaging soldiers, stealing and
destroying everything coming under their hands. They took to excess
vodka found in the magazines which the enemy had not destroyed, or in
the castles off the main route. In consequence of this abuse of alcohol
while in their feeble condition many perished. The enemy retreated
behind the Dwina and fortified himself in camp. It was thought that he
would give battle, and all enjoyed this prospect.

On July 20, at a time when the conditions of the army were already
terrible, the heat became excessive. The rains ceased; there were no
rainy days, except an occasional storm, until September 17. The poor
infantrymen were to be pitied; they had to carry their arms, their
effects, their cartridges, harassed by continuous fatigue, overpowered
by hunger and a thousand sorrows, and were obliged to march 10, 12, 15,
and sometimes even 16 and 17 miles a day over dusty roads under a
burning sun, all the time tormented by a cruel thirst. But all this has
been fully described in an earlier chapter.

On July 23 the Prince of Eckmuehl (Davout) had a very hot engagement
with the Russian army corps under Prince _Bagratian_ before Mohilew; on
July 25, a bloody battle was fought near Ostrowno. The houses and other
buildings of Ostrowno were filled with wounded, the battlefield covered
with corpses of men and horses, and the hot weather caused quick
putrefaction. Kerckhove visited the battlefield on June 28 and says: “I
have no words to describe the horror of seeing the unburied cadavers,
infesting the air, and among the dead many helpless wounded without a
drop of water, exposed to the hot sun, crying in rage and despair.”

Napoleon made preparations to attack on July 28, but the enemy had
retreated. At Witepsk, hospitals were established for the wounded from
Ostrowno, among them 800 Russians. However, the designation “hospital”
is hardly applicable, for everything was wanting; the patients in
infected air, crowded, and surrounded by uncleanliness, without food or
medicines. These hospitals were in reality death-houses. The physicians
did what they could. On August 18, the French army entered Smolensk
which had been destroyed by projectiles and by fire; ruins filled with
the dead and dying; and in the midst of this desolation the
terror-stricken inhabitants running everywhere, looking for members of
their families—many of whom had been killed by bullets or by flames—or
sitting before their still smoking homes, tearing their hair, a picture
of distress truly heartrending. The soldiers who were the first to
enter Smolensk found flour, brandy and wine, but these things were
devoured in an instant. There were 10 thousand wounded in the so-called
hospitals, and among these unfortunates typhus and hospital gangraene
developed rapidly; the sick lying on the floor without even straw.

Holzhausen gives the following description:

After Smolensk had been evacuated by the Russians, most houses had been
burnt out; the retreating Russians had destroyed everything that could
be of any use. Corpses everywhere. Nobody had time to remove them, and
the cannons, the freight wagons, the horses, and the infantry passed
over them. On August 17th and 18th, was the battle of Polotsk in which
the Bavarians distinguished themselves. There were no medicines for the
wounded, not even drinking water, no bread, no salt. Of the many
unhealthy places in Russia this is the worst, it swarms with insects.
Nostalgia was prevailing. They had a so-called dying chamber in the
hospital for which the soldiers were longing, to rest there on straw,
never to rise again.

Awaiting their last the pious Bavarians repeated aloud their rosary,
took refuge with the Jesuits, who had a convent at Polotsk, to receive
the consolation of their religion.

Some thought Napoleon would rest here to establish the Polish kingdom.
But this reasonable idea, if he had ever entertained it, he discarded.
By giving his troops winter quarters, establishing magazines and
hospitals he would have succeeded in subduing Russia by reinforcing his
army; instead of all this he went on to Moscow without provisions,
without magazines.

On August 30, the army reached Wiasma, a city of 8 thousand or 9
thousand inhabitants which had been set on fire upon the approach of
the French. All the inhabitants had left. The soldiers fought the
flames and saved some houses into which they brought those of their
wounded and sick who could not drag themselves any farther. Cases of
typhus were numerous. From Wiasma the army marched to Ghiat, a city of
6 thousand or 7 thousand inhabitants; at this place Napoleon gave a two
days’ rest in order that the army could rally, clean their arms and
prepare for battle (the battle of Borodino on September 7. This battle
is known under three names: the Russians have called it after the
village of Borodino, of 200 inhabitants, near the battlefield and have
now erected a monument there, a collonade crowned with a cross; some
historians have called it the battle of Moshaisk, after a nearby town
of 4 thousand inhabitants, and Napoleon has named it the battle of the
Moskwa, after a river near the battlefield.) Napoleon had only 120
thousand to 130 thousand under arms, about as many as the Russians. It
was 6:30 a.m., a beautiful sunrise. Napoleon called it the sun of
Austerlitz. The Russian generals made their soldiers say their prayers.
A French cannon gave the signal to attack, and at once the French
batteries opened the battle with a discharge of more than 100 cannon.
Writing this medical history of the Russian campaign I feel tempted to
give a description of this most frightful, most cruel of all battles in
the history of the world in which about 1,200 cannon without
interruption dealt destruction and death; fracas and tumult of arms of
all kinds, the harangue, the shouts of the commanders, the cries of
rage, the lamentations of the wounded, all blended into one terrible
din. Both armies charged with all the force that terror could develop.
French and Russian soldiers not only fought like furious lions rivaling
each other in ardor and courage, but they fought with wild joy, devoid
of all human feeling, like maniacs; they threw themselves on the enemy
where he was most numerous, in a manner which manifested the highest
degree of despair. The French had to gain the victory or succumb to
misery; victory or death was their only thought. The Russians felt
themselves humiliated by the approach of the French to their capital,
and unshaken as a rock they resisted, defending themselves with grim
determination. The battle, Napoleon promised, would be followed by
peace and good winter quarters, but he was not as good a prophet as he
was a good general.

During the day the Westphalian corps was reduced to 1500 men. Napoleon
ordered these to do guard-duty on the battlefield, transport the
immense number of wounded to the hospitals, bury the dead and to remain
while the army marched and stayed at Moscow. What the Westphalians
could do for the wounded was very little, for everything was wanting.
The hospital system was incomplete, miserable. It is true, the surgeons
dressed, operated, amputated, during the battle and during the days
following, a great many wounded, but their number and their assistance
was inadequate for the enormous task; thousands remained without proper
attendance and died.

About one thousand Wuerttembergians were wounded in the battle of
Borodino, and on many of these surgical operations had to be performed.
Strange to say, the greatest operations on enfeebled wounded were more
successful, a great many more were saved, than was generally the case
under more favorable circumstances. Thus Surgeon General von Kohlreuter
observed that in the Russian campaign amputation of an arm, for
instance, gave much better chances, more recoveries, than in the Saxon
and French campaigns, during which latter the soldiers were still
robust, well nourished and well, even in abundance, supplied with
everything.

Means of transportation were lacking, for no wagons could be found in
the deserted villages, and for this reason many whose wounds had been
dressed had to be left to their fate—to die. Those but slightly wounded
and those even who could crawl in some manner followed the troops, or
went back at random to find their death in some miserable hut. Many
sought refuge in nearby villages, sometimes miles away from the
battle-field, there to fall into the hands of the Cossacks.

The Westphalians remained on the battle-field surrounded by corpses and
dying men, and they were forced to change position from time to time on
account of the stench. The scenes of suffering and distress which the
battle-field presented everywhere surpassed all description; the groans
of the mutilated and dying followed the men on guard even at a
distance, and especially was this terrible during the night; it filled
the heart with horror, von Borcke said that soldiers, at the request of
some of the wounded in extreme agony, shot them dead and turned the
face away while shooting. And soon they considered this an act of pity.
The officers even induced them to look for those who could not be
saved, in order to relieve them from their suffering. When von Borcke
was riding on horseback over the battle-field on the 5th. day after the
battle he saw wounded soldiers lying alongside the cadaver of a horse,
gnawing at its flesh. During the night flames could be seen here and
there on this field of death; these were fires built by wounded
soldiers who had crawled together to protect themselves from the cold
of the night and to roast a piece of horseflesh. On September 12th. the
Westphalians moved to Moshaisk, which was deserted by all inhabitants,
plundered, and half in ashes. While the battle raged several thousand
wounded Russians had taken refuge there, who now, some alive and some
dead, filled all the houses of the town. Burnt bodies were lying in the
ruins of the houses which had been burnt, the entrance of these places
being almost blockaded by cadavers. The only church, which stood on the
public square in the middle of the town, contained several hundred
wounded and as many corpses of men dead for a number of days. One
glance into this infected church, a regular pest-house, made the blood
curdle. Surgeons went inside and had the dead piled up on the square
around the church; those still alive and suffering received the first
aid, order was established and gradually a hospital arranged. Soldiers,
Westphalians as well as Russian prisoners, were ordered to remove the
corpses from the houses and the streets, and then a recleansing of the
whole town was necessary before it could be occupied by the troops.
Although there was only one stone building—and a hundred wooden ones—it
gave quarters to the whole Westphalian corps. Two regiments, one of
Hussars, the other of the light Horse Guards, both together numbering
not more than 300 men, had taken possession of a monastery in the
neighborhood. Two regiments of cuirassiers had marched with the French
to Moscow.

In the quarters of Moshaisk the Westphalians enjoyed a time of rest,
while the events in Moscow took place. The fate of those who had
remained in Moshaisk was not enviable, but what had been left of the
town offered at least shelter during the cold nights of the approaching
winter. This was a good deal after the fearful hardships, and it
contributed much toward the recuperation of the soldiers. Convalescents
arrived daily, also such as had remained in the rear; a number of the
slightly wounded were able for duty again, and in this manner the
number of men increased to 4,500. Life in Moshaisk was a constant
struggle for sustenance. There were no inhabitants, not even a single
dog or any other living animal which the inhabitants had left behind.
Some provisions found in houses or hidden somewhere benefitted only
those who had discovered them. The place upon the whole was a desert
for the hungry. Small detachments had to be sent out for supplies. At
first this system proved satisfactory, and with what had been brought
in from the vicinity regular rations could be distributed. But the
instinct of self-preservation had become so predominating that every
one thought only of himself. Officers would send men clandestinely for
their own sake, and when this was discovered it ended in a fight and
murder. Everyone was anxious to provide for himself individually, to be
prepared for the coming winter. Sutlers and speculators went to Moscow
to take advantage of the general pillage, to procure luxuries, like
coffee, sugar, tea, wine, delicacies of all description.
Notwithstanding the great conflagration at Moscow immense stores of all
these things had come into the hands of the French, and this had an
influence on Moshaisk, forty miles away from the metropolis, von Borke
was fortunate enough to secure a supply of coffee, tea, and sugar,
sufficient not only for himself, but also for some friends, and lasting
even for some weeks on the retreat. But the supply of meat, and
especially bread, was inadequate for the mass of soldiers. Ten days had
elapsed when the situation of those in Moshaisk became grave again,
namely, when communication with Moscow was cut off. Orderlies did not
arrive, no more convalescents came, news could not be had, details of
soldiers sent out for supplies were killed or taken prisoner by
Cossacks. The retreat of the French army, the last act of the great
drama, commenced.

While the Westphalians guarded the battle-field the army marched to
Moscow, exhausted, starving, finding new sufferings every day. On the
road from Moshaisk to Moscow they encountered frightful conditions in
the villages which were filled with wounded Russians. These
unfortunates, abandoned to cruel privations, dying as much from
starvation as from their wounds, excited pity. The water even was
scarce, and when a source was discovered it was generally polluted,
soiled with all sorts of filth, infected by cadavers; but all this did
not prevent the soldiers from drinking it with great avidity, and they
fought among themselves to approach it. All these details have to be
known before studying typhus in the grand army.

       *       *       *       *       *

The description of diseases given by the physicians who lived a century
ago is for us unsatisfactory; we cannot understand what they meant by
their vague designating of hepatitis, fibrous enteritis, diarrhoea and
dysentery, peripneumonia, remittent and intermittent gastric fever,
protracted nervous fever, typhus and synochus; there is no distinction
made in any of the writings of that period between abdominal and
exanthematic typhus.

However, before long physicians will discard much from our present
medical onomatology that is ridiculous, absurd, incorrect, in short,
unscientific, as, for instance, the designation typhoid fever.

Ebstein has pointed out all that is obscure to us in the reports of the
physicians of the Russian campaign; for instance, that we cannot
distinguish what is meant by the different forms of fever. According to
the views of those times fever was itself a disease _per se_; when
reaction was predominating it was called synocha, typhus when weakness
was the feature, and in case of a combination of synocha and typhus it
was called synochus, a form in which there was at first an inflammatory
and later on a typhoid stage, but which form could not be distinguished
exactly from typhus. From all the descriptions in the reports of the
Russian campaign it can be deduced that many of the cases enumerated
were of exanthematic typhus, notwithstanding that the symptomatology
given is very incomplete, not to speak of the pathological anatomy. The
only writer who has described necropsies is von Scherer. Some of the
physicians speak only of the sick and the diseases, as Bourgeois, who
says that on the march to Russia during the sultry weather the many
cadavers of horses putrefied rapidly, filling the air with miasms, and
that this caused much disease; further, in describing the retreat he
only says that the army was daily reduced in consequence of the
constant fighting, the privations and diseases, without enumerating
which diseases were prevailing; only in a note attached to his booklet
he mentions that the most frequent of the ravaging diseases of that
time and during the Russian campaign in general was typhus, and there
can be no doubt it was petechial or exanthematic typhus, for which the
English literature has the vague name typhus fever.

Very interesting are the historical data given by Ebstein: “As is well
known, the fourth and most severe typhus period of the eighteenth
century began with the wars of the French revolution and ended only
during the second decade of the nineteenth century with the downfall of
the Napoleonic empire and the restoration of peace in Germany.” During
the Russian campaign the conditions for spreading the disease were
certainly the most favorable imaginable.

Krantz, whom I shall quote later on, has described the ophthalmy
prevailing in York’s corps as being of a mild character.

Quite different forms reigned among the soldiers on their retreat from
Moscow.

The description of the death from frost given by von Scherer is similar
to that given by Bourgeois. The men staggered as if drunk, their faces
were red and swollen, it looked as if all their blood had risen into
their head. Powerless they dropped, as if paralyzed, the arms were
hanging down, the musket fell out of their hands. The moment they lost
their strength tears came to their eyes, repeatedly they arose,
apparently deprived of their senses, and stared shy and terror-stricken
at their surroundings. The physiognomy, the spasmodic contractions of
the muscles of the face, manifested the cruel agony which they
suffered. The eyes were very red, and drops of blood trickled from the
conjunctiva. Without exaggeration it could be said of these
unfortunates that they shed bloody tears. These severe forms of
ophthalmy caused by extreme cold would have ended in gangraene of the
affected parts if death had not relieved the misery of these
unfortunates.

But Bourgeois describes another very severe form of ophthalmy among the
soldiers which caused total blindness. It appeared when the army on its
retreat was in the vicinity of Orscha, attacked many soldiers and
resembled the ophthalmy which was prevailing in Egypt; there it was
caused by the heated sand reflecting powerfully the rays of the sun;
here, by the glaring white snow likewise reflecting the rays of the
sun. Bourgeois considers as predisposing moments the smoke of the
camp-fires, the want of sleep, the marching during the night, and
describes the affection as follows: The conjunctiva became dark red,
swelled together with the eyelids; there was a greatly exaggerated
lachrymal secretion associated with severe pain; the eyes were
constantly wet, the photophobia reached such a degree that the men
became totally blind, suffered most excruciating pain and fell on the
road.

Ebstein availed himself of the publications of J. L. R. de Kerckhove,
Réné Bourgeois, J. Lemazurier, and Joh. von Scherer, and the manuscript
of Harnier from which writings he collected all that refers to the
diseases of the grand army. It may not be out of place to quote the
interesting writings of de Kerckhove concerning the army physicians and
Napoleon and his soldiers:

De Kerckhove left Mayence on March 6th., 1812, attached to the
headquarters of the 3rd. corps, commanded by Ney; at Thorn he joined
those braves with whom he entered Moscow on September 14th. and with
whom he left on October 19th. When he returned to Berlin in the
beginning of February, 1813, the 3rd. corps was discharged. He writes:
The army was not only the most beautiful, but there was none which
included so many brave warriors, more heroes. How many parents have
cried over the loss of their children tenderly raised by them, how many
sons, the only hope and support of their father and mother, have
perished, how many bonds of friendship have been severed, how many
couples have been separated forever, how many unfortunate ones drawn
into misery? An army extinguished by hunger and cold!

Giving credit to the physicians and surgeons who took part in that
unfortunate expedition he says: With what noble zeal they tried to do
their duties. The horror of the privations, the severity of the climate
and fatigues and the want of eatables and medicines which characterized
the hospitals and ambulances in Russia, have not discouraged the
physicians so far as to become indifferent to the terrible fate
reserved for the sick. On the contrary, far from allowing themselves to
relax, they have doubled their activity to ameliorate sufferings. We
have seen physicians in the midst of the carnage and the terror of the
battles extend their care and bring consolation; we have seen them
sacrificing day and night in hospital service, succumbing to murderous
epidemics; in one word, despising all danger when it was a question of
relieving the sufferings of the warriors, immaterial whether Russian or
French. We can speak of many sick or wounded left in ambulances or
hospitals in want of food and medicines, many of such unfortunates
deprived of everything, dragging themselves under the ruins of cities
or villages, who found help from honest physicians.




THE GRAND ARMY IN MOSCOW


Three fifths of the houses and one half of the churches were destroyed.
The citizens had burned their capital. Before this catastrophe of 1812
Moscow was an aristocratic city. According to old usage, the Russian
nobility spent the winter there, they came from their country seats
with hundreds of slaves and servants and many horses; their palaces in
the city were surrounded by parks and lakes, and many buildings were
erected on the grounds, as lodgings for the servants and slaves,
stables, magazines. The number of servants was great, many of them
serving for no other purpose than to increase the number, and this
calling was part of the luxury of the noblemen. The house of the
seigneur was sometimes of brick, rarely of stone, generally of wood,
all were covered with copper plates or with iron, painted red or green.
The magazines were mostly stone buildings, on account of the danger of
fire. At that time the Russian nobility had not yet accustomed itself
to consider St. Petersburg the capital, they were obstinate in the
determination to come every winter to hold court in the mother of
Russian cities. The conflagration of 1812 broke this tradition. The
nobility, not willing or not being able to rebuild their houses, rented
the ground to citizens, and industry, prodigiously developing since
then, has taken possession of Moscow. This is how the city has lost its
floating population of noblemen and serfs, which amounted to 100
thousand souls, and how the aristocratic city has become an industrial
one. It is a new city, but the fire of 1812, from the ashes of which it
has risen, has left impressions on the monuments. Step by step in the
Kremlin and in the city proper are found souvenirs of the patriotic
war. You enter the Kremlin which Napoleon tried to explode, and which
has been restored, you visit there the church of the Annunciation, and
you will be told that the French soldiers had stabled their horses on
the pavement of agate; you visit the church of the Assumption and you
will be shown the treasures which, on the approach of the French, had
been taken to places of safety; you raise your eye to the summit of the
tower of Ivan and you learn that the cross had been removed by the
invaders and found in the baggage of the Grand Army. The door of St.
Nicholas has an inscription recalling the miracle by which this door
was saved in 1812. The tower surmounting it was split by an explosion
from above downward, but the fissure ended at the very point where the
icon is found; the explosion of 500 pounds of powder did not break even
the glass which covers the image or the crystal of the lamp which burns
before it. Along the walls of the arsenal are the cannon taken from the
enemy, and in the arsenal are other trophies, including the camp-bed of
Napoleon.

Russian accounts from eye-witnesses of the conflagration are few—in
fact, there exists none in writing. People who witnessed the
catastrophe could not write. What we possess are collections from
verbal accounts given by servants, serfs, who had told the events to
their masters. Nobody of distinction had remained in Moscow, none of
the nobility, the clergy, the merchants. The persons from whom the
following accounts are given were the nun Antonine, a former slave of
the Syraxine family, the little peddler Andreas Alexieef, a woman,
Alexandra Alexievna Nazarot, an old slave of the family Soimonof by the
name of Basilli Ermolaevitch, the wife of a pope, Maria Stepanova, the
wife of another pope, Helene Alexievna. A Russian lady has collected
what she had learned from these humble people, the eye-witnesses of the
catastrophe, and published it, pseudonym, in some Russian journal. All
these people had minutely narrated their experiences to her at great
length, not omitting any detail which concerned themselves or
circumstances which caused their surprise, and they all gave the dates,
the hours which they had tenaciously kept in their memory for sixty
years, for it was in the year 1872 when the Russian lady interrogated
them. Some had retained from those days of terror such vivid
impressions that a conflagration or the sight of a soldier’s casque
would cause them palpitation of the heart. There is much repetition in
their narrations, for all had seen the same: the invasion, the enemy,
the fire kindled by their own people, the misery, the dearth, the
pillage. There exist documents of the events in Moscow of 1812, the
souvenirs of Count de Toll, the apology of Rostopchine, which we shall
come to in another chapter, the recitals of Domerque, of Wolzogen, of
Ségur, but these reminiscences of people in Moscow are the only ones
from persons who actually suffered by the catastrophe, and they are in
their way as valuable as the writings of our two writers, von Scherer
and von Borcke. These plain people know nothing of the days of Erfurt,
nothing of the continental blocus, nothing of the withdrawal of
Alexander from the French Alliance; the bearers of the toulloupes
(sheepskin furs) in the streets of Moscow of the beginning of 1812 knew
nothing of the confederation of the Rhine; all they knew of Bonaparte
was that he had often beaten the Germans, and that on his account they
had to pay more for sugar and coffee. To them the great comet of 1811
was the first announcement of coming great events. Let us see the
reflections which the comet inspired in the abbess of the Devitchi
convent and the nun Antonine, and this will give us an idea of the
mental condition of the latter, one of the narrators. “One evening,”
she relates, “we were at service in St. John’s church, when all of a
sudden I noticed on the horizon a gerbe of resplendent flames. I cried
out and dropped my lantern. Mother abbess came to me to learn what had
caused my fright, and when she also had seen the meteor she
contemplated a long time. I asked, Matouchka, what star is this? She
answered this is no star, this is a comet. I asked again what is a
comet? I never had heard that word. The mother then explained to me
that this was a sign from heaven which God had sent to foretell great
misfortune. Every evening this comet was seen, and we asked ourselves
what calamity this one might bring us. In the cells of the convent, in
the shops of the city, the news, traveling as the crow flies, was heard
that Bonaparte was leading against Russia an immense army, the like of
which the world had never seen. Only the veterans of the battles of
Austerlitz, Eylau, and Friedland could give some information, some
details of the character of the invader. The direction which Napoleon
took on his march left no doubt to any one that he would appear in
Moscow. In order to raise the courage which was sinking they had the
miraculous image of the Virgin conductrice brought from Smolensk, which
place was to be visited by the French. This icon was exposed in the
cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel, for veneration by the people.
The abbess of our convent, who was from Smolensk, had a special
devotion for this image, she went with all the nuns to salute the
Protatrix. At St. Michael the Archangel there was a great crowd so that
one hardly could stand, especially were there many women, all crying.
When we, the nuns, began to push, to get near the image, one after the
other in a line endlessly long, they looked upon us with impatience.
One woman said: ‘These soutanes should make room for us, it is not
their husbands, it is our husbands’, our sons’ heads, which will be
exposed to the guns.’”

Rostopchine tried his best to keep the population at peace by his
original proclamations, which were pasted on all the walls and
distributed broadcast. After Borodino he urged the people to take up
arms, and he promised to be at the head of the men to fight a supreme
battle on the Three Mountains. Meanwhile he worked to save the
treasures of the church, the archives, the collections of precious
objects in the government palaces. From the arsenal he armed the
people. A tribune was erected from which the metropolitan addressed the
multitude and made them kneel down to receive his blessing. Rostopchine
stood behind the metropolitan and came forward after the priest had
finished his ellocution, saying that he had come to announce a great
favor of his majesty. As a proof that they should not be delivered
unarmed to the enemy, his majesty permitted them to pillage the
arsenal, and the people shouted: “Thanks, may God give to the Tzar many
years to live!” This was a very wise idea of Rostopchine to have the
arsenal emptied, a feat which he could not have accomplished in time in
any other way. The pillage lasted several days and went on in good
order.

       *       *       *       *       *

The French had entered Moscow. The first word of Napoleon to Mortier,
whom he had named governor of Moscow, was “no pillage!” But this point
of honor had to be abandoned. The 100 thousand men who had entered were
troops of the élite, but they came starving at the end of their
adventurous expedition. During the first days they walked the streets
in search of a piece of bread and a little wine. But little had been
left in the cellars of the abandoned houses and in the basements of the
little shops, and with the conflagration there was almost nothing to be
found. The Grand Army was starving as much almost as on the march. Dogs
which had returned in considerable numbers to lament on the ruins of
the houses of their masters were looked upon as precious venison. The
uniforms were already in rags, and the Russian climate made itself
felt. These poor soldiers, poorly clad, dying from starvation, were
begging for a piece of bread, for linen or sheepskin, and, above all,
for shoes. There was no arrangement for the distribution of rations;
they had to take from wherever they could, or perish.

Napoleon established himself in the Kremlin, the generals in the
mansions of the noblemen, the soldiers in the taverns or private houses
until the fire dislodged them. Napoleon, with a part of his staff, was
obliged to seek refuge in the park Petrovski, the commanders took
quarters wherever they could, the soldiers dispersed themselves among
the ruins. Supervision had become an impossibility. The men, left to
themselves, naturally lost all discipline under these circumstances of
deception and under so many provocations among a hostile population.
Notwithstanding all these conditions, they behaved well in general and
to a great extent showed self-control and humanity toward the
conquered. The example of pillage had been set by the Russians
themselves. Koutouzof had commanded the destruction of the mansions.
The slaves burned the palaces of their masters.

All eye-witnesses speak of the extreme destitution of the soldiers in
regard to clothing after one month’s stay in Moscow. Already at this
time, even before the most terrible and final trials of the retreat
which awaited them, one had to consider them lost. When they first took
to woman’s clothes or shoes or hats it was considered an amusement, a
joke, but very soon a mantilla, a soutane, a veil became a precious
object and nobody laughed at it when frozen members were wrapped in
these garments. The greatest calamity was the want of shoes. Some
soldiers followed women simply for the purpose of taking their shoes
from them. A special chapter of horrors could be written on the
sufferings of the soldiers on the retreat over ice and snow fields on
account of the miserable supply of shoes.

At first Napoleon reviewed the regiments near the ponds of the Kremlin,
and at the first reviews the troops marched proudly, briskly, with firm
step, but soon they began to fail with astonishing rapidity. They
answered the roll of the drums calling them together, clad in dirty
rags and with torn shoes, in fast diminishing numbers. During the last
weeks of their stay in Moscow many had reached the last stage of
misery, after having wandered through the streets looking for a little
bit of nourishment, dressed up as for a carnival, but without desire to
dance, as one remarked in grim humor.

These were the men whose destination had brought them many hundreds of
miles from home to the semi-Asiatic capital of the Ivans, who had been
drinking in the glory and the joy of warriors, and who now died from
hunger and cold, with their laurels still intact. Thanks to the
authorized military requisitions and the excesses of the stragglers of
the Grand Army, a desert had been made of the city before Napoleon had
begun his retreat. No more cattle, no provisions, and the inhabitants
gone, camping with wife and children in the deepest parts of the
forests. Those who had remained or returned to the villages, organized
against marauders whom they received with pitchforks or rifles, and
these peasants gave no quarter.

“The enemy appeared nearly every day in our village (Bogorodsic),” says
Maria Stepanova, the wife of a pope, “and as soon as they were
perceived all men took up arms; our cossacks charged them with their
long sabers or shot them with their pistols, and behind the cossacks
were running the peasants, some with axes, some with pitchforks. After
every excursion they brought ten or more prisoners which they drowned
in the Protka which runs near the village, or they fusilladed them on
the prairie. The unfortunates passed our windows, my mother and I did
not know where to hide ourselves in order not to hear their cries and
the report of the firearms. My poor husband, Ivan Demitovitch, became
quite pale, the fever took him, his teeth chattered, he was so
compassionate! One day the cossacks brought some prisoners and locked
them up in a cart-house built of stone. They are too few, they said, it
is not worth while to take any trouble about them now; with the next
lot which we shall take we will shoot or drown them together. This
cart-house had a window with bars. Peasants came to look at the
prisoners and gave them bread and boiled eggs; they did not want to see
them starving while awaiting death. One day when I brought them
eatables I saw at the window a young soldier—so young! His forehead was
pressed against the bars, tears in his eyes, and tears running down his
cheeks. I myself began to cry, and even to-day my heart aches when I
think of him. I passed lepecheks through the bars and went away without
looking behind me. At that time came an order from the government that
no more prisoners should be killed but sent to Kalouga. How we were
contented!”

Many savageries have been committed by the low class of Russians who
had remained in Moscow. This is not surprising because these were of
the most depraved of the population, including especially many
criminals who had been set free to pillage and burn the city. “A little
while before the French entered,” tells the serf Soimonof, “the order
had been given to empty all the vodka (whiskey) from the distilleries
of the crown into the street; the liquor was running in rivulets, and
the rabble drank until they were senselessly drunk, they had even
licked the stones and the wooden pavement. Shouting and fighting
naturally followed.”

The really good people of Moscow had given proofs of high moral
qualities, worthy of admiration, under the sad circumstances. Poor
moujiks who had learned of the defeat of the Russians at Borodino said
their place was no longer in a city which was to be desecrated by the
presence of the enemy, and, leaving their huts to be burned down, their
miserable belongings to be pillaged, they went on the highways at the
mercy of God, disposed to march as long as their eyes could see before
them. Others, running before the flames, carried their aged and sick on
their shoulders, showing but one sentiment in their complete ruin,
namely, absolute resignation to the will of God.

Some readers may say that the foregoing chapter does not give the
medical history of the campaign. To these I wish to reply that it is
impossible to understand the medical history without knowing the
general conditions of the Grand Army, which were the cause of the death
of hundreds of thousands of soldiers from cold and starvation.




ROSTOPCHINE


The conflagration of Moscow in 1812 and the fall of the French empire
are two facts which cannot be separated, but to the name of Moscow is
attached another name, that of Rostopchine. Count Fedor Wassiljavitch
Rostopchine is connected with one of the greatest events in universal
history. He caused a crisis which decided the fate of Russia and
arrested the march of ascending France by giving the death blow to
Napoleon. The latter, in admitting that Rostopchine was the author of
his ruin, meant him when he said, “one man less, and I would have been
master of the world.”

Until the year 1876 there existed a mystery around this man and his
deed, a mystery which was deepened by Rostopchine himself when he
published in 1823 a pamphlet entitled “The Truth about the
Conflagration of Moscow,” which did not give the truth but was a
mystification.

Alexander Popof, a Russian Counselor of State, who made a special study
of the history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon, has explored the
archives of St. Petersburg, and his researches, the result of which he
published in Russian in the year 1876, have brought to light all
diplomacy had concealed about the events which led to the destruction
of the Russian capital.

What document, one might ask, could be more precious than the memoirs
of Rostopchine, the governor of Moscow in 1812? What good fortune for
the historian! In 1872 Count Anatole de Ségur, grandson of Rostopchine,
the author of a biography of the latter, wrote, concerning these
memoirs, that they were seized, together with all the papers of his
grand-father, by order of the Emperor Nicholas, immediately after
Rostopchine’s death in the year 1826, and were locked up in the
archives of the Imperial Chancellor where they would remain, perhaps
forever. Fortunately, one of the daughters of Count Rostopchine had
taken a copy of some passages of this precious manuscript. These
passages were published in 1864 by a son of Rostopchine, Count Alexis
R., in a book entitled “Materiaux en grande partie inédits, pour la
biographie future du Comte Rostopchine,” which is of a rare
bibliographic value, for only twelve copies were printed. These same
fragments, three in number, were reproduced by Count Anatole de Ségur
in the biography of his ancestor, of which we have spoken. Aside from
these extracts nothing was known of Rostopchine’s memoirs until Popof
had made his researches. To verify the memoirs Popof quotes long
passages which he compares carefully with other documents of that
epoch. This book on the whole is a continuous commentary upon the
memoirs of Rostopchine.

Rostopchine, having been made governor of Moscow in March, 1812, wrote
to the Tzar: “Your empire has two strongholds, its immensity and its
climate. It has these 16,000,000 men who profess the same creed, speak
the same language, and whose chin has never been touched by a razor.
The long beards are the power of Russia, and the blood of your soldiers
will be a seed of heroes. If unfortunate circumstances should force you
to retreat before the invader, the Russian emperor will always be
terrible in Moscow, formidable in Kazan, invincible at Tobolsk.” This
letter was dated June 11/23, 1812.

At that time Rostopchine was 47 years of age, in perfect health and had
developed a most extraordinary activity, something which was not known
of his predecessors; the governors of Moscow before his time had been
old and decrepit. He understood the character of the Russian people and
made himself popular at once, and adored, because he made himself
accessible to everybody. He himself describes how he went to work: “I
announced that every day from 11 to noon everybody had access to me,
and those who had something important to communicate would be received
at any hour during the day. On the day of my taking charge I had
prayers said and candles lighted before such miraculous pictures as
enjoyed the highest popular veneration. I studied to show an
extraordinary politeness to all who had dealings with me; I courted the
old women, the babblers and the pious, especially the latter. I
resorted to all means to make myself agreeable; I had the coffins
raised which served as signs to the undertakers and the inscriptions
pasted on the church doors. It took me two days to pull the wool over
their eyes (_pour jeter la poudre aux yeux_) and to persuade the
greater part of the inhabitants that I was indefatigable and that I was
everywhere. I succeeded in giving this idea by appearing on the same
morning at different places, far apart from each other, leaving traces
everywhere of my justice and severity; thus on the first day I had
arrested an officer of the military hospital whose duty it was to
oversee the distribution of the soup, but who had not been present when
it was time for dinner. I rendered justice to a peasant who had bought
30 pounds of salt but received only 25; I gave the order to imprison an
employee who had not done his duty; I went everywhere, spoke to
everyone and learned many things which afterward were useful to me.
After having tired to death two pairs of horses I came home at 8
o’clock, changed my civilian costume for the military uniform and made
myself ready to commence my official work.” Thus Rostopchine took the
Moscovitians by their foibles, played the rôle of Haroun-al-Raschid,
played comedy; he even employed agents to carry the news of the town to
him, to canvass war news and to excite enthusiasm in the cafés and in
all kinds of resorts of the common people.

When the emperor notified him one day of his coming visit to the
capital and transmitted a proclamation in which he announced to his
people the danger of the country, Rostopchine developed great activity.
“I went to work,” he writes in his memoirs, “was on my feet day and
night, held meetings, saw many people, had printed along with the
imperial proclamation a bulletin worded after my own fashion, and the
next morning the people of Moscow on rising learned of the coming of
the sovereign. The nobility felt flattered on account of the confidence
which the emperor placed in them, and became inspired with a noble
zeal, the merchants were ready to give money, only the common people
apparently remained indifferent, because they did not believe it
possible that the enemy could enter Moscow.” The longbeards repeated
incessantly:

“Napoleon cannot conquer us, he would have to exterminate us all.”

But the streets became crowded with people, the stores were closed,
every one went first to the churches to pray for the Tzar, and from
there to the gate of Dragomilof to salute the imperial procession upon
its arrival. The enthusiasm ran so high that the idea was conceived to
unhitch the horses from his coach and carry him in his carriage. This,
as Rostopchine tells us, was the intention not only of the common
people but of many distinguished ones also, even of such as wore
decorations. The emperor, to avoid such exaggerated manifestations, was
obliged to arrange for his entry during the night. On the next morning
when the Tzar, according to the old custom, showed himself to his
people on the red stairs, the hurrahs, the shouts of the multitude
drowned the sounds of the bells of the forty times forty churches which
were ringing in the city. At every step, thousands of hands tried to
touch the limbs of the sovereign or the flap of his uniform which they
kissed and wet with their tears.

“I learned during the night,” writes Rostopchine, “and it was confirmed
in the morning, that there were some persons who had united to ask the
emperor how many troops we had, how many the enemy, and what were the
means of defense. This would have been a bold and, under the present
circumstances, a dangerous undertaking, although I hardly feared that
these people would venture to do so, because they were of those who are
brave in private and poltroons in public.

“At any rate, I had said repeatedly and before everybody that I hoped
to offer the emperor the spectacle of an assembly of a faithful and
respectful nobility, and that I should be in despair if some malevolent
person should permit himself to create disorder and forget the presence
of the sovereign. I promised that any one who would do this might be
sure of being taken in hand and sent on a long journey before he would
have finished his harangue.

“To give more weight to my words I had stationed, not far from the
palace, two telegues (two-wheeled carts) hitched up with mail horses
and two police officers in road uniform promenading before them. If
some curious person should ask them for whom these telegues were ready,
they had orders to answer, ‘for those who will be sent to Siberia.’

“These answers and the news of the telegues soon spread among the
assembly; the bawlers understood and behaved.”

The nobility of Riazen had sent a deputation to the emperor to offer
him 60 thousand men, armed and equipped. Balachef, the minister of
police, received this deputation scornfully and ordered them to leave
Moscow at once.

There were other offers which were not surprising at that period when
the mass of the people consisted of serfs, but which appear strange to
us. “Many of my acquaintances,” writes Kamarovski, “said that they
would give their musicians, others the actors of their theaters, others
their hunters, as it was easier to make soldiers of them than of their
peasants.”

The Russian noblemen in their love for liberty sacrificed their slaves.
Rostopchine, together with many aristocrats, was not entirely at ease.
It was something anomalous to call to arms for the sake of liberty a
nation of serfs who vividly felt the injustice of their situation;
besides, it had been heard that some moujiks said, “Bonaparte comes to
bring us liberty, we do not want any more seigneurs.”

The Russian people in their generality, however, did not justify the
fears of the aristocrats. Their religious fanaticism, nourished by the
priests, their passionate devotion to the Tzar, made them forget their
own, just complaints.

In Moscow business was at a standstill, the ordinary course of things
was likewise suspended, the population lived in the streets, forming a
nervous crowd, subject to excitement and terror. The question was to
keep them in respectfulness.

Here Rostopchine’s inborn talent as tribune and publicist, as comedian
and tragedian, showed itself to perfection. He gave a free rein to his
imagination in his placards, in which he affected the proverbial
language of the moujik, made himself a peasant, more than a peasant, in
his eccentric style, to excite patriotism. He published pamphlets
against the French, and the coarser his language the more effect it had
on the masses.

“At this time,” he writes, “I understood the necessity of acting on the
mind of the people to arouse them so that they should prepare
themselves for all the sacrifices, for the sake of the country. Every
day I disseminated stories and caricatures, which represented the
French as dwarfs in rags, poorly armed, not heavier than a gerbe which
one could lift with a pitchfork.”

For curiosity’s sake, as an example of his style of fiction by which he
fascinated the Russian peasantry may serve the translation of one of
the stories: “Korniouchka Tchikhirine, an inhabitant of Moscow, a
veteran, having been drinking a little more than usual, hears that
Bonaparte is coming to Moscow, he becomes angry, scolds in coarse terms
all Frenchmen, comes out of the liquor store and under the eagle with
the two heads (the sign that the place is the crown’s) he shouts: What,
he will come to us! But you are welcome! For Christmas or carnival you
are invited. The girls await you with knots in their handkerchiefs,
your head will swell. You will do well to dress as the devil; we shall
say a prayer, and you will disappear when the cock crows. Do better,
remain at home, play hide and seek or blind man’s buff. Enough of such
farces! don’t you see that your soldiers are cripples, dandies? They
have no touloupes, no mittens, no onoutchi (wrappings around the legs
in place of stockings). How will they adapt themselves to Russian
habits? The cabbage will make them bloated, the gruel will make them
sick, and those who survive the winter will perish by the frost at
Epiphany. So it is, yes. At our house doors they will shiver, in the
vestibule they will stand with chattering teeth; in the room they will
suffocate, on the stove they will be roasted. But what is the use of
speaking? As often as the pitcher goes to the well, as often their head
will be broken. Charles of Sweden was another imprudent one like you,
of pure royal blood, he has gone to Poltava, he has not returned. Other
rabbits than you Frenchmen were the Poles, the Tartars, the Swedes; our
forefathers, however, have dealt with them so that one can yet see the
tomb-hills around Moscow, as numerous as mushrooms, and under these
mushrooms rest their bones. Ah! our holy mother Moscow, it is not a
city, it is an empire. You have left at home only the blind and the
lame, the old women and the little children. Your size is not big
enough to match the Germans; they will at the first blow throw you on
your back (this remark is wonderfully prophetic). And Russia, do you
know what that is, you cracked head? Six hundred thousand longbeards
have been enlisted, besides 300 thousand soldiers with bare chins, and
200 thousand veterans. All these are heroes; they believe in one God,
obey one Tzar, make the sign with one cross, these are all brethren.
And if it pleases our father and Tzar, Alexander Pavlovitch, he has to
say only one word: To arms, Christians! And you will see them rising.
And even if you should beat the vanguard? Take your ease! the others
will give you such a chase that the memory of it will remain in all
eternity. To come to us! well then! Not only the tower of Ivan the
Great, but also the hill of Prosternations will remain invisible to you
even in your dream. We shall rely on white Russia and we shall bury you
in Poland. As one makes his bed so one sleeps. On this account reflect,
do not proceed, do not start the dance. Turn about face, go home, and
from generation to generation remember what it is, the Russian nation.
Having said all, Tchikhirine went on, briskly singing, and the people
who saw him go said wherever he came, that is well spoken, it is the
truth!”

Rostopchine knew very well how to make Tchikhirine speak when he had
been drinking more than usual, he knew how to make the saints speak, he
invented pious legends which were not guaranteed by the Holy Synod and
not found in the Lives of the Saints.

“After the battle of Borodino,” said he in his memoirs, “I ceased to
have recourse to little means to distract the people and occupy their
attention. It required an extraordinary effort of the imagination to
invent something that would excite the people. The most ingenious
attempts do not always succeed, while the clumsy ones take a surprising
effect. Among those of the latter kind there was a story after my
fashion of which 5 thousand copies at one kopek a copy were sold in one
day.”

The population of Moscow was in a peculiar moral condition. They were
most superstitious, believed the most improbable reports and saw signs
from heaven of the downfall of Napoleon.

“In the city,” writes Rostopchine, “rumors were current of visions, of
voices which had been heard in the graveyards. Passages from the
Apocalypsis were quoted referring to Napoleon’s fall.”

But Rostopchine himself, was he free from credulity? A German by the
name of Leppich constructed, secretly, in one of the gardens of Moscow,
a balloon by means of which the French army should be covered with
fire, and some historians say that Rostopchine was one of the most
enthusiastic admirers of Leppich.

As it may be interesting to learn how he was ahead of his time in
regard to ideas about military balloons let us give the full statement
of Popof on this matter.

In 1812 in Moscow it was exactly as in 1870 in Paris; everybody built
hopes on the military airship, and expected that by means of a Greek
fire from a balloon the whole army of the enemy would be annihilated.
Rostopchine, in a letter dated May 7/19, 1812, gave an account to
Emperor Alexander of the precautions he had taken that the wonderful
secret of the construction of the airship by Leppich should not be
revealed. He took the precaution not to employ any workmen from Moscow.
He had already given Leppich 120 thousand rubles to buy material.

“To-morrow,” he writes, “under the pretext of dining with some one
living in his vicinity I shall go to Leppich and shall remain with him
for a long time; it will be a feast to me to become more closely
connected with a man whose invention will render military art
superfluous, free mankind of its internal destroyer, make of you the
arbiter of kings and empires and the benefactor of mankind.”

In another letter to the emperor, dated June 11/23, 1812, he writes, “I
have seen Leppich; he is a very able man and an excellent mechanician.
He has removed all my doubts in regard to the contrivances which set
the wings of his machine in motion (indeed an infernal construction)
and which consequently might do still more harm to humanity than
Napoleon himself. I am in doubt about one point which I submit to the
judgment of your majesty: when the machine will be ready Leppich
proposes to embark on it to fly as far as Wilna. Can we trust him so
completely as not to think of treason on his part?” Three weeks later
he wrote to the emperor “I am fully convinced of success. I have taken
quite a liking to Leppich who is also very much attached to me; his
machine I love like my own child. Leppich suggests that I should make
an air voyage with him, but I cannot decide about this without the
authorization of your majesty.”

On September 11th., four days before the evacuation, the fate of Moscow
was decided. On that day at 10 o’clock in the forenoon the following
conversation took place in the house of Rostopchine between him and
Glinka.

“Your excellency,” said Glinka, “I have sent my family away.”

“I have already done the same,” answered the count, and tears were in
his eyes.

“Now,” added he, “Serge Nicholaevitch, let us speak like two true
friends of our country. In your opinion, what will happen if Moscow is
abandoned?”

“Your excellency knows what I have dared to say on the 15/27 July in
the assembly of the nobility; but tell me in all frankness, count, how
shall Moscow be delivered, with blood, or without blood (s kroviou ili
bez krovi)?”

“Bez krovi (without blood),” laconically answered the count.

His word to prince Eugene had been: Burn the capital rather than
deliver it to the enemy; to Ermilof: I do not see why you take so much
pains to defend Moscow at any price; if the enemy occupies the city he
will find nothing that could serve him.

The treasures which belong to the crown and all that is of some value
have already been removed; also, with few exceptions, the treasures of
the churches, the ornaments of gold and silver, the most important
archives of the state, all have been taken to a place of safety. Many
of the well-to-do have already taken away what is precious. There
remain in Moscow only 50 thousand persons in the most miserable
conditions who have no other asylum.

This was what he said on September 13, and on the same day he wrote to
the emperor that all had been sent away.

But this was not true; there still remained 10 thousand wounded—of whom
the majority would perish in case of a conflagration; there remained an
immense stock of provisions, flour and alcoholic liquor, which would
fall into the hands of the enemy; there was still the arsenal in the
Kremlin containing 150 cannon, 60 thousand rifles, 160 thousand
cartridges and a great deal of sulphur and saltpeter.

During the night from the 14th. to the 15th. Rostopchine developed a
great activity, though he could save only some miraculous images left
in the churches, and destroy some magazines.

The inhabitants suddenly aroused from their security went to the
barriers of the city and obstructed the streets with vehicles; to
remove what still remained in Moscow the means of transportation and
the time allowed for this purpose were insufficient.

Those who remained had nothing to lose and were glad to take revenge on
the rich by burning and pillaging their mansions.

On the 14th. the criminals in the prisons, with one-half of their heads
shaved, were set at liberty that they might participate in the burning
and pillaging.

Before leaving Moscow Rostopchine uncovered his head and said to his
son, “Salute Moscow for the last time; in half an hour it will be on
fire.”

Quite a literature has developed on the question: who has burned
Moscow? The documents which Popof has examined leave no doubt
concerning Rostopchine’s part in regard to its conflagration. But,
after all, it was caused by those who had a right to do it, those who,
beginning at Smolensk, burned their villages, their hamlets, even their
ripening or ripened harvest, after the Russian army had passed and the
enemy came in sight. Who? The Russian people of all classes, of all
conditions without exception, men even invested with public power, and
among them Rostopchine.




RETREAT FROM MOSCOW


During the night from October 18th. to October 19th., all soldiers were
busy loading vehicles with provisions and baggage. On October 19th.,
the first day of the retreat, forever memorable on account of the
misfortune and heroism which characterized it, the grand army presented
a strange spectacle. The soldiers were in a fair condition, the horses
lean and exhausted. But, above all, the masses following the army were
extraordinary. After an immense train of artillery of 600 cannon, with
all its supplies, came a train of baggage the like of which had never
been seen since the centuries of migration when whole barbarous nations
went in search of new territories for settlement.

The fear that they might run short of rations had caused every
regiment, every battalion, to carry on country wagons all they had been
able to procure of bread and flour; but these wagons carrying
provisions were not the heaviest loaded, not loaded as much as those
which were packed with booty from the conflagration of Moscow; in
addition, many soldiers overtaxing their strength and endurance had
filled their knapsacks with provisions and booty. Most officers had
secured light Russian country wagons to carry provisions and warm
clothing. The French, Italian, and German families, who lived in Moscow
and now feared the returning Russians when again entering their
capital, had asked to accompany the retreating army and formed a kind
of a colony among the soldiers; with these families were also
theatrical people and unfortunate women who had lived in Moscow on
prostitution.

The almost endless number, the peculiarity of vehicles of all
description, drawn by miserable horses, loaded with sacks of flour,
clothing and furniture, with sick women and children, constituted a
great danger, for the question was, how could the army maneuvre with
such an impediment and, above all, defend itself against the Cossacks?

Napoleon, surprised and almost alarmed, thought at first to establish
order, but, after some reflection, came to the conclusion that the
accidents of the road would soon reduce the quantity of this baggage,
that it would be useless to be severe with the poor creatures, that,
after all, the wagons would serve to transport the wounded. He
consented therefore to let all go along the best they could, he only
gave orders that the column of these people with their baggage should
keep at a distance from the column of the soldiers in order that the
army would be able to maneuvre.

On October 24th. was the battle of Jaroslawetz in which the Russians,
numbering 24 thousand, fought furiously against 10 thousand or 11
thousand French, to cut off the latter from Kalouga, and the French, on
their part, fought with despair.

The center of the battle was the burning city taken and retaken seven
times; many of the wounded perished in the flames, their cadavers
incinerated, and 10 thousand dead covered the battlefield.

Many of the wounded, who could not be transported had to be left to
their fate at the theater of their glorious devotion, to the great
sorrow of everybody, and many who had been taken along on the march
during the first days after the battle had also to be abandoned for
want of means of transportation. The road was already covered with
wagons for which there were no horses.

The cries of the wounded left on the road were heartrending, in vain
did they implore their comrades not to let them die on the way,
deprived of all aid, at the mercy of the Cossacks.

The artillery was rapidly declining on account of the exhausted
condition of the horses. Notwithstanding all cursing and whipping, the
jaded animals were not able to drag the heavy pieces. Cavalry horses
were taken to overcome the difficulty and this caused a reduction of
the strength of the cavalry regiments without being of much service to
the artillery. The riders parted with their horses, they had tears in
their eyes looking for the last time on their animals, but they did not
utter a word.

Cavalrymen, with admirable perseverance and superhuman efforts, dragged
the cannon as far as Krasnoe. All men had dismounted and aided the
exhausted animals only two of which were attached to each piece.

Notwithstanding all the misery of a three-days-march to Moshaisk all
were hopeful. The distance from Moshaisk to Smolensk was covered in
seven or eight days; the weather, although cold during the night, was
good during the day, and the soldiers gladly anticipated to find, after
some more hardship, rest, abundance, and warm winter quarters in
Smolensk.

[Illustration]

On the march the army camped on the battlefield of Borodino when they
saw 50 thousand cadavers lying still unburied, broken wagons,
demolished cannons, helmets, cuirasses, guns spread all over—a horrid
sight! Wherever the victims had fallen in large numbers one could see
clouds of birds of prey rending the air with their sinister cries. The
reflections which this sight excited were profoundly painful. How many
victims, and what result! The army had marched from Wilna to Witebsk,
from Witebsk to Smolensk, hoping for a decisive battle, seeking this
battle at Wiasma, then at Ghjat, and had found it at last at Borodino,
a bloody, terrible battle. The army had marched to Moscow in order to
earn the fruit of all that sacrifice, and at this place nothing had
been found but an immense conflagration. The army returned without
magazines, reduced to a comparatively small number, with the prospect
of a severe winter in Poland, and with a far away prospect of
peace,—for peace could not be the price of a forced retreat,—and for
such a result the field of Borodino was covered with 50 thousand dead.
Here, as we have learned, were found the Westphalians, not more than 3
thousand, the remainder of 10 thousand at Smolensk, of 23 thousand who
crossed the Niemen.

Napoleon gave orders to take the wounded at Borodino into the baggage
wagons and forced every officer, every refugee from Moscow who had a
vehicle, to take the wounded as the most precious load.

The rear guard under Davout left the fearful place on October 31st.,
and camped over night half-way to the little town of Ghjat. The night
was bitter cold, and the soldiers began to suffer very much from the
low temperature.

From this time on, every day made the retreat more difficult, for the
cold became more and more severe from day to day, and the enemy more
pressing.

The Russian general, Kutusof, might now have marched ahead of
Napoleon’s army, which was retarded by so many impediments, and
annihilated it by a decisive battle, but he did not take this risk,
preferring a certain and safe tactic, by constantly harassing the
French, surprising one or the other of the rear columns by a sudden
attack. He had a strong force of cavalry and artillery, and, above all,
good horses, while the rearguard of the French, for want of horses,
consisted of infantry; there was, for instance, nothing left of General
Grouchy’s cavalry. The infantry of Marshal Davout, who commanded the
rearguard, had to do the service of all arms, often being compelled to
face the artillery of the enemy which had good horses, while their own
was dragged along by exhausted animals scarcely able to move.

Davout’s men fought the Russians with the bayonet and took cannons from
them, but being without horses they were compelled to leave them on the
road, content rearguarding themselves to remain undisturbed for some
hours.

Gradually the French had to part with their own cannons and ammunition;
sinister explosions told the soldiers of increasing distress.

As it is in all great calamities of great masses: increasing misery
also increases egotism and heroism. Miserable drivers of wagons to whom
the wounded had been entrusted took advantage of the night and threw
the helpless wounded on the road where the rearguard found them dead or
dying. The guilty drivers, when discovered, were punished; but it was
difficult to detect them, with the general confusion of the retreat
making its first appearance.

Wounded soldiers who had been abandoned could be seen at every step.
The tail of the army, composed of stragglers, of tired, discouraged or
sick soldiers, all marching without arms and without discipline,
continually increased in number, to the mortification of the rearguard
which had to deal with these men who would not subordinate their own
selves to the welfare of the whole.

It is tempting to describe the terrible engagements, the almost
superhuman, admirable bravery of Napoleon’s soldiers, who often, after
having had the hardest task imaginable and constantly in danger of
being annihilated, were forced to pass the bitter cold nights without
eating, without rest, and although all details bear on the medical
history I am obliged to confine myself to a few sketches between the
description of purely medical matters.

       *       *       *       *       *

I happened to find in the surgeon-general’s library a rare book:
Moricheau Beaupré, A Treatise on the Effects and Properties of Cold,
with a Sketch, Historical and Medical, of the Russian Campaign.
Translated by John Clendining, with appendix, xviii, 375 pp. 8vo.,
Edinburgh, Maclachnan and Stewart, 1826.

This most valuable book is not mentioned in any of the numerous
publications on the medical history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon
which I examined, and I shall now give an extract of what Beaupré
writes on the Effects of Cold in General:

Distant expeditions, immaterial whether in cold or warm countries, with
extremes of temperature, are always disadvantageous and must cause
great sacrifice of life, not only on account of the untried influence
of extreme temperatures on individuals born in other climates, but also
on account of the fatigues inseparable from traversing long distances,
of an irregular life, of a multiplicity of events and circumstances
impossible to foresee, or which at least had not been foreseen, and
which operate very unfavorably, morally and physically, on military
persons. The expedition of the French army into Russia offers a sad
proof of this truth, but history has recorded similar experiences. The
army of Alexander the Great suffered frightfully from cold on two
occasions: first, when that ambitious conqueror involved himself amid
snows, in savage and barbarous regions of northern Asia before reaching
the Caucasus; the second time, when, after having crossed these
mountains, he passed the Tanais to subdue the Scythians, and the
soldiers were oppressed with thirst, hunger, fatigue, and despair, so
that a great number died on the road, or lost their feet from
congelation; the cold seizing them, it benumbed their hands, and they
fell at full length on the snow to rise no more. The best means they
knew, says Q. Curtius, to escape that mortal numbness, was not to stop,
but to force themselves to keep marching, or else to light great fires
at intervals. Charles XII, a great warrior alike rash and unreflecting,
in 1707 penetrated into Russia and persisted in his determination of
marching to Moscow despite the wise advice given him to retire into
Poland. The winter was so severe and the cold so intense that the
Swedes and Russians could scarcely hold their arms. He saw part of his
army perish before his eyes, of cold, hunger, and misery, amid the
desert and icy steppes of the Ukraine. If he had reached Moscow, it is
probable that the Russians would have set him at bay, and that his
army, forced to retire, would have experienced the same fate as the
French.

In the retreat of Prague in 1742 the French army, commanded by Marshal
Belle-Isle, little accustomed to a winter campaign, was forced to
traverse impracticable defiles across mountains and ravines covered
with snow. In ten days 4 thousand men perished of cold and misery; food
and clothing were deficient, the soldiers died in anguish and despair,
and a great many of the officers and soldiers had their noses, feet and
hands frozen. The Russians regard the winter of 1812 as one of the most
rigorous of which they have any record; it was intensely felt through
all Russia, even in the most southerly parts. As a proof of this fact
the Tartars of the Crimea mentioned to Beaupré the behavior of the
great and little bustard, which annually at that season of the year
quit the plain for protection against the cold and migrate to the
southern part of that peninsula toward the coasts. But during that
winter they were benumbed by the cold and dropped on the snow, so that
a great many of them were caught. In the low hills, in the spring of
1813, the ground in some places was covered with the remains of those
birds entire.

Of the effects of cold in general Beaupré says that soldiers who are
rarely provided with certain articles of dress suitable for winter,
whose caps do not entirely protect the lateral and superior parts of
the head, and who often suffer from cold in bivouacs, are very liable
to have ears and fingers seized on by asphyxia and mortification.
Troopers who remain several days without taking off their boots, and
whose usual posture on horseback contributes to benumb the extremities,
often have their toes and feet frozen without suspecting it.

Cold produces fatal effects above as well as below the freezing point.
A continued moderate cold has the same consequences as a severe cold of
short duration. When very intense, as in the north, it sometimes acts
on the organism so briskly as to depress and destroy its powers with
astonishing rapidity. As the action of cold is most frequently slow and
death does not take place until after several hours’ exposure, the
contraction that diminishes the caliber of the vessels more and more
deeply, repels the blood toward the cavities of the head, chest, and
abdomen; it causes, in the circulation of the lungs, and in that of the
venous system of the head, an embarrassment that disturbs the function
of the brain and concurs to produce somnolence. The probability of this
explanation is strengthened by the flowing of the blood from the nose
to the ears, spontaneous haemoptysis, also by preternatural redness of
the viscera, engorgements of the cerebral vessel, and bloody effusion,
all of which conditions have been found after death.

It is certain that in spite of every possible means of congestion or
effusion within the cranium, constant and forced motion is necessary
for the foot soldier to save him from surprise. The horseman must
dismount as quickly as possible and constrain himself to walk.
Commanders of divisions should not order halts in winter, and they
should take care that the men do not lag behind on the march. Necessary
above all are gaiety, courage, and perseverance of the mind; these
qualities are the surest means of escaping danger. He who has the
misfortune of being alone, inevitably perishes.

In Siberia, the Russian soldiers, to protect themselves from the action
of the cold, cover their noses and ears with greased paper. Fatty
matters seem to have the power of protecting from cold, or at least of
greatly diminishing its action. The Laplander and the Samoiede anoint
their skin with rancid fish oil, and thus expose themselves in the
mountains to a temperature of -36 deg. Reaumur, or 50 deg. below zero
Fahrenheit. Xenophon, during the retreat of the 10 thousand, ordered
all his soldiers to grease those parts that were exposed to the air. If
this remedy could have been employed, says Beaupré, on the retreat from
Moscow, it is probable that it would have prevented more than one
accident.

Most of those who escaped the danger of the cold ultimately fell sick.
In 1813 a number of soldiers, more or less seriously injured by cold,
filled the hospitals of Poland, Prussia, and other parts of Germany.
From the shores of the Niemen to the banks of the Rhine it was easy to
recognize those persons who constituted the remainder of an army
immolated by cold and misery the most appalling. Many, not yet arrived
at the limit of their sufferings, distributed themselves in the
hospitals on this side of the Rhine, and even as far as the south of
France, where they came to undergo various extirpations, incisions, and
amputations, necessitated by the physical disorder so often inseparable
from profound gangraene.

Mutilation of hands and feet, loss of the nose, of an ear, weakness of
sight, deafness, complete or incomplete, neuralgy, rheumatism, palsies,
chronic diarrhoea, pectoral affections, recall still more strongly the
horrors of this campaign to those who bear such painful mementos.

       *       *       *       *       *

But now let us return to the dissertation of von Scherer which gives
the most graphic and complete description of the effect of cold.

After the battle of Borodino, on September 5th. and 7th., the army
marched to Moscow and arrived there on September 11th., exhausted to
the highest degree from hunger and misery. The number of
Wuerttembergians suffering from dysentery was very large. A hospital
was organized for them in a sugar refinery outside of Moscow. Many died
here, but the greater number was left to its fate during the retreat of
the army.

The quarters at Moscow until October 19th. improved the condition of
the army very little. Devoured by hunger, in want of all necessities,
the army had arrived. The terrible fire of the immense city had greatly
reduced the hope for comfortable winter quarters. Although the eatables
which had been saved from the fire were distributed among the soldiers
who, during the weeks of their sojourn, had wine, tea, coffee, meat,
and bread, all wholesome and plentiful, yet dysentery continued and in
most patients had assumed a typhoid[1] character. Besides, real typhus
had now made its appearance in the army and, spreading rapidly through
infection, caused great loss of life and brought the misery to a
climax. The great number of the sick, crowded together in unfit
quarters; the stench of the innumerable unburied and putrefying
cadavers of men and animals in the streets of Moscow, among them the
corpses of several thousand Russians who had been taken prisoners and
then massacred, not to speak of the putrefying cadavers on the
battlefields and roads over which the army had marched, all this had
finally developed into a pest-like typhus.

 [1] The word typhoid means “resembling typhus,” and in Europe this
 term is correctly employed to designate a somnolent or other general
 condition in all kinds of feverish diseases which remind one of typhus
 symptoms. What English and American physicians call typhus or typhus
 fever is known to European physicians under the name of exanthematic
 or petechial typhus, indicating a symptom by which it is distinguished
 from abdominal typhus.

After the retreat from Moscow had been decided upon, many thousands of
the sick were sent ahead on wagons under strong guards. These wagons
took the shortest road to Borodino, while the army took the road to
Kaluga. Several thousand typhus patients were left in Moscow, all of
whom died, with the exception of a few, according to later information.
Many of those who, although suffering from typhus, had retained
strength enough to have themselves transported on the wagons, recovered
on the way, later to become victims of the cold.

Weakened in body and mind, the army left Moscow on October 18th. and
19th. The weather was clear, the nights were cold, when they proceeded
in forced marches on the road to Kaluga. Near Maloijorolawez the enemy
attempted to bar the way, and an obstinate engagement developed during
which the French cavalry suffered severely.

It is true, the Russian battle line was broken, and the way was open,
but the French army had received its death-blow.

The order which thus far had kept the army was shaken, and disorder of
all kinds commenced.

The retreat now continued in the direction of Borodino, Ghjat, and
Wiasma, the same road which had been followed on the march toward
Moscow, a road which was laid waste and entirely deserted.

The soldiers, in view of the helplessness which manifested itself, gave
up all hope and with dismay looked into a terrible future.

Everywhere surrounded by the enemy who attacked vehemently, the
soldiers were forced to remain in their ranks on the highway; whoever
straggled was lost—either killed or made prisoner of war.

On the immense tract of land extending from Moscow to Wilna during a
march of several days, not a single inhabitant, not a head of cattle,
was to be seen, only cities and villages burnt and in ruins. The misery
increased from day to day. What little of provisions had been taken
along from Moscow was lost, together with the wagons, on the flight
after the engagement of Maloijorolawez, and this happened, as we have
seen, before the army reached Borodino; the rations which the
individual soldier had with him were consumed during the first few
days, and thus a complete want made itself felt. The horses, receiving
no food, fell in great numbers from exhaustion and starvation; cannon
and innumerable wagons, for want of means to transport them, had to be
destroyed and left behind.

From the last days of October until mid-December, at which time the
army arrived at Wilna, horse meat was the only food of the soldiers;
many could not obtain even this, and they died from starvation before
the intense cold weather set in. The meat which the soldiers ate was
either that of exhausted and sick horses which had not been able to
walk any further, or of such as had been lying dead on the road for
some time. With the greatest greed and a beastly rage the men threw
themselves on the dead animals; they fought without distinction of rank
and with a disregard of all military discipline—officers and privates
alike—for the possession of the best liked parts of the dead animal—the
brain, the heart, and the liver. The weakest had to be contented with
any part. Many devoured the meat raw, others pierced it with the
bayonet, roasted it at the camp fire and ate it without anything else,
often with great relish.

Such was the sad condition when the setting in of extreme cold weather
brought the misery—the horrors—to a climax.

During the last days of October, when the army had scarcely reached
Borodino, cold winds blew from the North.

The first snowfall was on October 26th., and the snow made the march of
the enfeebled army difficult in the extreme.

From that date on the cold increased daily, and the camping over night
was terrible; the extremities of those who had no chance to protect
themselves with clothes nor to come near the campfire became frozen.

During the first days of November the thermometer had fallen to -12
Reaumur (+4 Fahrenheit).

Derangements of mind were the first pernicious effects of the low
temperature that were noticed.

The first effect on the brain in the strong and healthy ones, as well
as in the others, was loss of memory.

Von Scherer noticed that, with the beginning of the cold weather, many
could not remember the names of the best known, the everyday things,
not even the eagerly longed for eatables could they name, or name
correctly; many forgot their own names and were no longer able to
recognize their nearest comrades and friends. Others had become
completely feebleminded, their whole expression was that of stupidity.
And those of a stronger constitution, who had resisted the effects of
cold on body and mind, became deeply horrified on observing, in
addition to their own sufferings, how the mental faculties of the best
men, hitherto of strong will power, had become impaired, and how these
unfortunates sooner or later, yet gradually, with lucid intervals of a
few moments’ duration, invariably became completely insane.

The intense cold enfeebled, first of all, the brain of those whose
health had already suffered, especially of those who had had dysentery,
but soon, while the cold increased daily, its pernicious effect was
noticed in all.

The internal vessels, especially those of the brain and the lungs, in
many became congested to such a degree that all vital activity was
paralyzed.

On necropsy, these vessels of the brain and lungs and the right heart
were found to be bloated and stretched; in one case the different
vessels of the brain were torn and quite an amount of blood was effused
between the meninges and the brain, in most cases more or less serum
had collected in the cavities.

The corpses were white as snow, while the central organs in every case
were hyperaemic.

At the beginning, while the cold was still tolerable, the effect of the
humors from the surface of the body to the central organs had caused
only a slight derangement of the functions of these organs, like
dyspnoea, mental weakness, in some more or less indifference, a
disregard of their surroundings; in short, all those symptoms of what
was called at that time “Russian simpleton.”

Now all actions of the afflicted manifested mental paralysis and the
highest degree of apathy.

This condition resembles that of extreme old age, when mind and body
return to the state of childhood.

The bodies of those suffering from intense cold were shriveled and
wrinkled. Men formerly models of bodily and mental strength, hardened
in war, now staggered along, leaning on a stick, wailing and lamenting
childlike, begging for a piece of bread, and if something to eat was
given to them they burst out in really childish joy, not seldom
shedding tears.

The faces of these unfortunates were deadly pale, the features
strangely distorted. Lads resembled men of 80 years of age and
presented a cretin-like appearance; the lips were bluish, the eyes
dull, without luster, and constantly lachrymal; the veins very small,
scarcely visible; the extremities cold; the pulse could not be felt,
neither at the radius nor at the temple bone, somnolency was general.

Often it happened that the moment they sank to the ground the lower
extremities became paralyzed; soon after that, a few drops of blood
from the nose indicated the moribund condition.

Severed were all bonds of brotherly love, extinguished all human
feeling toward those who, from exhaustion, had fallen on the road.

Many men, among them his former best comrades and even relatives, would
fall upon such an unfortunate one to divest him of his clothing and
other belongings, to leave him naked on the snow, inevitably to die.

The impulse of self-preservation overmastered everything in them.

During the second half of November, and more so during the first days
of December, especially on the 8th., 9th., and 10th., when the army
arrived at Wilna, the cold had reached the lowest degree; during the
night from December 9th. to December 10th. the thermometer showed -32 R
(-40 F.). The cold air caused severe pain in the eyes, resembling that
of strong pressure. The eyes, weakened by the constant sight of snow,
suffered greatly under these circumstances.

Many were blinded to such an extent that they could not see one step
forward, could recognize nothing and had to find their way, like the
blind in general, with the aid of a stick. Many of these fell during
the march and became stiffened at once.

During this period von Scherer noticed that those who had been
suffering very much from cold would die quickly when they had fallen to
the frozen, ice-covered ground; the shaking due to the fall probably
causing injury to the spinal cord, resulting in sudden general
paralysis of the lower extremities, the bladder and the intestinal
tract being affected to the extent of an involuntary voiding of urine
and feces.

Surgeon-major von Keller stated to von Scherer the following case: “I
was lying near Wilna, it was during the first days of December, during
one of the coldest nights, together with several German officers, on
the road close to a camp fire, when a military servant approached us
asking permission to bring his master, a French officer of the guards,
to our fire.

“This permission was willingly granted, and two soldiers of the guard
brought a tall and strong man of about thirty years of age whom they
placed on the ground between themselves.

“When the Frenchman learned of the presence of a surgeon he narrated
that something quite extraordinary had happened to him.

“Notwithstanding the great general misery, he had thus far been
cheerful and well, but half an hour previous his feet had stiffened and
he had been unable to walk, and now he had no longer any sensation from
the toes up the legs.

“I examined him and found that his feet were completely stiff, white
like marble, and ice cold.

“The officer was well dressed and, notwithstanding his pitiful
condition, more cheerful than myself and my comrades.

“Soon he felt a strong desire to urinate, but was unable to do so.

“With great relish he ate a large piece of horse flesh which had been
roasted at the fire, but soon complained of great illness.

“His cheerfulness changed suddenly to a sensation of great distress.
Ischuria persisted for several hours and caused him great pain; later
on during the night, he involuntarily voided feces and a large amount
of urine. He slept a great deal, the breathing was free, but at dawn he
fell into a helpless condition, and, at daybreak, before we had left
the fire, this strong man, who eight to ten hours before had been in
good health, died.”

Most excellent and ingenious men in the prime of manhood all suffered
more or less from the cold; with the exception of a few cases, the
senses of all were, if not entirely deranged, at least weakened. The
longest and sometimes complete resistance to the cold was offered by
those who had always been of a cheerful disposition, especially those
who had not become discouraged by the great privations and hardships,
who ate horse flesh with relish and who in general had adapted
themselves to circumstances.

One of the Wuerttembergian officers, a man of considerable military
knowledge and experience, was attacked, a few days before reaching
Wilna, with so pronounced a loss of sensation that he only vegetated,
moving along in the column like a machine.

He had no bodily sickness, no fever, was fairly well in strength, had
never or rarely been in want, but his whole sensory system was
seriously affected by the cold.

Von Scherer saw him, after he arrived at an inn in Wilna, somewhat
recovered by warmth and food, but acting childishly.

While he ate the food placed before him he would make terrible
grimaces, crying or laughing for minutes at a time.

His constitution badly shaken, but gradually improving, he returned
home, and it took a long time before he recovered completely.

All traces of his sickness disappeared finally, and as active as ever
he attended his former duties.

Another officer, with whom von Scherer traveled a few days between
Krasnoe and Orscha, had not until then suffered any real want.

He rode in a well-closed carriage drawn by strong horses, had two
soldiers as servants, was well dressed and suffered, therefore, much
less than others. Especially was he well protected from the cold, yet
this had a severe effect on him. His mind became deranged, he did not
recognize von Scherer with whom he had been on intimate terms for
years, nor could he call either of his servants by name; he would
constantly run alongside the carriage, insisting that it belonged to
the French emperor and that he was entrusted to guard his majesty.

Only when he had fallen asleep, or by force, was von Scherer able, with
the aid of the two servants, to place him in the carriage.

His mental condition became worse every day; von Scherer had to leave
him.

This officer reached Wilna, where he was made a prisoner and soon died
in captivity.

Many more cases resembling these two were observed by von Scherer, and
other army surgeons reported instances of the like effect of cold.

Surgeon General von Schmetter had remained with the Crown Prince of
Wuerttemberg in Wilna, while the army marched to Moscow.

He reported many cases of unfortunates whom he had received in the
hospital in Wilna, who by cold and misery of all kinds had been reduced
to a pitiful state—men formerly of a vigorous constitution presented a
puerile appearance and had become demented.

A cavalryman of the regiment Duke Louis, who, during February, 1813,
had been admitted into the hospital of Wilna, suffering from quiet
mania without being feverish, was constantly searching for something.

Hands and feet had been frozen. He became ill with typhus and was more
or less delirious for two weeks.

After the severity of the sickness had abated he again began to search
anxiously for something, and after the fever had left him he explained
that thirty thousand florins, which he had brought with him to the
hospital, had been taken away.

It was learned that this cavalryman had been sent, together with other
comrades, with dispatches to Murat; that these men had defended Murat
with great bravery when he was in danger in the battle of Borodino.

Murat, in recognition of their bravery, which had saved him, had given
them a wagon with gold, which they were to divide among themselves.

The share of each of these cavalrymen amounted to over thirty thousand
florins, and the gold was transported on four horses, but these horses,
for want of food, had broken down under the load, and the gold had
fallen into the hands of the Cossacks.

The patient became quite ecstatic when, during his convalescence, he
was told that he had brought no gold with him into the hospital; only
gradually could he be made to understand that he had been mistaken.

[Illustration]

He said, however, that he could not recollect having been robbed during
the retreat, although this fact had been testified to by two witnesses.

Two years after he had left the hospital and quitted the military
service, when he was perfectly well and vigorous again, he recollected
that on a very cold day he had been taken prisoner by Cossacks, who had
left him, naked and unconscious, in the snow.

He could not remember how and when he had come into the hospital.
Notwithstanding all these later recollections, he still imagined from
time to time that he had brought the gold with him into the hospital.

Surgeon General von Schmetter reported further the case of a cavalryman
of the King’s regiment who, like many others, had returned from Russia
in an imbecile condition.

He spoke alternately, or mixed up, Polish, Russian, and German; he had
to be fed like a child, could not remember his name or the name of his
native place, and died from exhaustion eight days after admittance into
the hospital.

On necropsy of the quite wrinkled body, the cerebral vessels were found
full of blood, the ventricles full of serum. On the surface of the
brain between the latter and the meninges were found several larger and
smaller sacs filled with lymph, the spinal canal full of serum; in the
spinal cord plain traces of inflammation. In the lungs there was much
dark coagulated blood, and likewise in the vena cava; in the stomach
and intestines, many cicatrices; the mesenteric glands and pancreas
were much degenerated and filled with pus; the rectum showed many
cicatrices and several ulcers.

In the hospital of Mergentheim eight necropsies were held on corpses of
soldiers who had returned mentally affected in consequence of exposure
to extreme cold. Similar conditions had presented themselves in all
these cases.

Surgeon General von Kohlreuter attended an infantry officer who had
arrived at Inorawlow, in Poland, where the remainder of the
Wuerttembergian corps had rallied. He showed no special sickness, had
no fever, but fell into complete apathy. For a long time he had great
weakness of mind, but recovered completely in the end.

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.

[Illustration: “And never saw daylight again.”]

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.

And the rear guard, in trying to make them advance, ill-treated them,
the soldiers who had clung to the flag assumed the right to despise
those who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, had abandoned it.

Of the old generals of Davout some had been killed, Friant was so
severely wounded that he could not be about, Compans had been wounded
in the arm, Moraud in the head, but these two, the former with one arm
in a sling, the other with a bandaged head, were on horseback,
surrounding the marshal commanding the first corps which had been
reduced to 15 thousand from 20 thousand at Moshaisk, from 28 thousand
in Moscow, and from 72 thousand crossing the Niemen. The remaining 15
thousand were all old warriors whose iron constitution had triumphed.

The battle of Wiasma took place on the 2d. of November. The Russians
under Miloradovitch had 100 cannon, whereas the French under Ney,
Davout, and the wounded generals named above, had only 40. This day
cost the French 1,500 to 1,800 men in killed and wounded, and, as
mentioned, these were of the oldest and best; the loss of the Russians
was twice that number, but their wounded were not lost, while it was
impossible to save a single one of the French, for the latter had no
attendance at all; the cold being very severe it killed them, and those
who did not perish by the frost were put to death by the cruel,
ferocious Russian peasants.

Entering Wiasma at night, nothing in the way of provisions was found;
the guard and the corps which had been there before the battle had
devoured everything. No provisions were left of those taken along from
Moscow. The army passed a sombre and bitter cold night in a forest;
great fires were lighted, horse meat was roasted, and the soldiers of
Prince Eugene and of Marshal Davout, especially the latter who had been
on their feet for three days, slept profoundly around great camp-fires.
During two weeks they had been on duty to cover the retreat and during
this time had lost more than one half of their number.

Napoleon arrived at Dorogobouge on November 5th., the Prince Eugene on
the 6th., the other corps on the 7th. and 8th.

Until then the frost had been severe but not yet fatal. All of a
sudden, on the 9th., the weather changed, and there was a terrible
snow-storm.

On their way to Moscow the regiments had traversed Poland during a
suffocating heat and had left their warm clothing in the magazines.

Some soldiers had taken furs with them from Moscow, but had sold them
to their officers.

Well nourished, they could have stood the frost, but living on a little
flour diluted with water, on horse meat roasted at the camp fire,
sleeping on the ground without shelter, they suffered frightfully. We
shall later on speak more in detail of the miserable clothing.

The first snow which had been falling after they had left Dorogobouge
had seriously increased the general misery. Except among the soldiers
of the rear guard which had been commanded with inflexible firmness by
Davout, and which was now led by Ney, the sense of duty began to be
lost by almost all soldiers.

As we have learned, all the wounded had to be left to their fate, and
soldiers who had been charged to escort Russian prisoners relieved
themselves of their charge by shooting these prisoners dead.

The horses had not been shod in Russian fashion for traveling on the
ice. The army had come during the summer without any idea of returning
during the winter; the horses slipped on the ice, those of the
artillery were too feeble to draw cannon even of small calibre, they
were beaten unmercifully until they perished; not only cannons and
ammunition had to be left, but the number of vehicles carrying
necessities of life diminished from day to day. The soldiers lived on
the fallen horses; when night came the dead animals were cut to pieces
by means of the sabre, huge portions were roasted at immense fires, the
men devoured them and went to sleep around the fires. If the Cossacks
did not disturb their dearly bought sleep the men would awake; some
half burnt, others finding themselves lying in the mud which had formed
around them, and many would not rise any more. General von Kerner, of
the Wuerttembergian troops had slept in a barn during the night from
November 7th. to November 8th. Coming out at daybreak he saw his men in
the plain as they had lain down around a fire the evening before,
frozen and dead. The survivors would depart, hardly glancing at the
unfortunates who had died or were dying, and for whom they could do
nothing.

The snow would soon cover them, and small eminences marked the places
where these brave soldiers had been sacrificed for a foolish
enterprise.

It was under these circumstances that Ney, the man of the greatest
energy and of a courage which could not be shaken by any kind of
suffering, took command of the rear guard, relieving Davout whose
inflexible firmness and sense of honor and duty were not less admirable
than the excellent qualities of Ney. The bravest of the brave, as
Napoleon had called Ney, had an iron constitution, he never seemed to
be tired nor suffering from any ailment; he passed the night without
shelter, slept or did not sleep, ate or did not eat, without ever being
discouraged; most of the time he was on his feet in the midst of his
soldiers; he did not find it beneath the dignity of a Marshal of
France, when necessary, to gather 50 or 100 men about him and lead
them, like a simple captain of infantry, against the enemy under fire
of musketry, calm, serene, believing himself invulnerable and being
apparently so indeed; he did not find it incompatible with his rank to
take up the musket of a soldier who had fallen and to fire at the enemy
like a private. There is a great painting in the gallery of Versailles
representing him in such an action. He had never been wounded in
battle. And this great hero was executed in the morning of December
7th., 1815, in the garden of the Luxembourg.

Louis XVIII, this miserable and insignificant man of legitimate royal
blood who had never rendered any service to France, wanted revenge—Ney
was arrested and condemned by the Chamber of Peers after the marshals
had refused to condemn him. His wife pleaded in vain for his life, the
king remained inflexible. Ney was simply shot by 12 poor soldiers
commanded for the execution. After the marshal had sunk down, an
Englishman suddenly rode up at a gallop and leaped over the fallen
hero, to express the triumph of the victors. It was in as bad taste as
everything that England contrived against Napoleon and his men.[2]

 [2] Brave men were condemned to deportation or were executed; derision
 and mocking of Napoleon’s generals was the order of the day.

Among the spectators there was also a Russian general in full uniform
and on horseback. Tzar Alexander expelled him from the army after he
had heard of it.

The Bourbons commenced a tromocraty which was called, in contrast to
the terrorisms of the revolution, the white terror.

Much has been written about the fantastic costume of Murat, but I do
not recollect having read the true explanation of it. All writers agree
that he was the bravest, the greatest cavalry general. As such he meant
to be distinguished from far and near in the midst of the battle where
danger was greatest, so that the sight of his person, his exposure to
the enemy, should encourage and inspire his soldiers. He rode a very
noble white horse and wore a Polish kurtka of light blue velvet which
reached down to the knees, embroidered with golden lace, dark red
mameluke pantaloons with golden galloons, white gauntlets and a
three-cornered general’s hat with white plumes; the saddle was of red
velvet and a caparison of the same stuff, all embroidered with gold.
The neck of the king was bare, a large white scalloped collar fell over
the collar of the kurtka. A strong black full beard gave a martial
expression to his face with the fiery eyes and regular features.
Sometimes he wore a biretta with a diamond agraffe and a high plume of
heron feathers. Very seldom he appeared in the uniform of a marshal.

And this other great hero, who, like Ney, had never been wounded in
battle, was executed by order of the court of Naples on October 13th.,
1815, in the hall of castle Pizzo.




VOP


In order to give an idea of the great difficulties the soldiers had to
face, and examples of their heroic behavior under trying circumstances,
let us relate the disaster of Vop.

While Napoleon, with the imperial guard, the corps of Marshal Davout
and a mass of stragglers, all escorted by Marshal Ney, was marching on
the road to Smolensk, Prince Eugene had taken the road to
Doukhowtchina. The prince had with him 6 or 7 thousand men under arms,
including the Italian guard, some Bavarian cavalry which still had
their horses and their artillery mounted, and also many stragglers,
with these a number of families who had been following the Italian
division.

At the end of the first day’s journey—it was on November 8th.—near the
castle Zazale, they hoped to find at this castle some provisions and an
abode for the night. A great cold had set in, and when they came to a
hill the road was so slippery that it was almost impossible to
negotiate the elevation with even the lightest load. Detaching horses
from the pieces in order to double and treble the teams they succeeded
in scaling the height with cannons of small calibre, but they were
forced to abandon the larger ones.

The men being exhausted as well as the horses they felt humiliated at
being obliged to leave their best pieces. While they had exerted
themselves with such sad results, Platow had followed them with his
Cossacks and light cannons mounted on sleighs and incessantly fired
into the French. The commander of the Italian artillery, General
Anthouard, was severely wounded and was compelled to give up his
command.

A gloomy night was passed at the castle Zazale.

On the morning of the 9th. they left at an early hour to cross the Vop,
a little rivulet during the summer but now quite a river, at least four
feet deep and full of mud and ice.

The pontooneers of Prince Eugene had gone ahead, working during the
night to construct a bridge, but frozen and hungry they had suspended
their work for a few hours, to finish it after a short rest.

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.

       *       *       *       *       *

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.

And it is one thing to suffer cold and hunger, traveling under ordinary
circumstances, and another to suffer thus and at the same time being
followed by the enemy.




BERESINA


In order to understand the disaster of the Beresina it is necessary to
cast a glance at the condition of Napoleon’s army at that time.

After the battle at Krasnoe, Napoleon at Orscha, on November 19th.,
happy to have found a place of safety at last, with well furnished
magazines, made a new attempt to rally the army by means of a regular
distribution of rations. A detachment of excellent gendarmes had come
from France and was employed to do police duty, to engage everybody,
either by persuasion or by force, to join his corps. These brave men,
accustomed to suppress disorder in the rear of the army, had never
witnessed anything like the condition with which they were obliged to
deal at this time. They were dismayed. All their efforts were in vain.
Threats, promises of rations if the soldiers would fall in line, were
of no avail whatever. The men, whether armed or not, thought it more
convenient, above all more safe, to care for themselves instead of
again taking up the yoke of honor, thereby taking the risk of being
killed, or wounded,—which amounted to the same thing—they would not
think of sacrificing their individual self for the sake of the whole.
Some of the disbanded soldiers had retained their arms, but only to
defend themselves against the Cossacks and to be better able to maraud.
They lived from pillaging, taking advantage of the escort of the army,
without rendering any service. [Illustration] In order to warm
themselves they would put fire to houses occupied by wounded soldiers,
many of whom perished in the flames in consequence. They had become
real ferocious beasts. Among these marauders were only very few old
soldiers, for most of the veterans remained with the flag until death.

Napoleon addressed the guards, appealing to their sense of duty, saying
that they were the last to uphold military honor, that they, above all,
had to set the example to save the remainder of the army which was in
danger of complete dissolution; that if they, the guards, would become
guilty, they would be more guilty than any of the other corps, because
they had no excuse to complain of neglect, for what few supplies had
been at the disposal of the army, their wants had always been
considered ahead of the rest of the army, that he could resort to
punishments, could have shot the first of the old grenadiers who would
leave the ranks, but that he preferred to rely on their virtue as
warriors to assure their devotedness. The grenadiers expressed their
assent and gave promises of good conduct. All surviving old grenadiers
remained in the ranks, not one of them had disbanded. Of the 6 thousand
who had crossed the Niemen, about 3,500 survived, the others had
succumbed to fatigue or frost, very few had fallen in battle.

The disbanded soldiers of the rest of the army, having in view another
long march, with great sufferings to endure, were not disposed to
change their ways. They now needed a long rest, safety, and abundance,
to make them recognize military discipline again. The order to
distribute rations among those who had rallied around the flag could
not be kept up for more than a few hours. The magazines were pillaged,
as they had been pillaged at Smolensk. The forty-eight hours’ stay at
Orscha was utilized for rest and to nourish a few men and the horses.

In these days Napoleon was as indefatigable as he ever had been as
young Bonaparte. His proclamation of the 19th. did not remain quite
unheeded even among the disbanded, but, on the march again, the nearer
they came to the Beresina the more pronounced became the lack of
discipline. In the following description I avail myself of the
classical work of Thiers’ “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire.”

The only bridge over the Beresina, at Borisow, had been burned by the
Russians. It was as by miracle that General Corbineau met a Polish
peasant who indicated a place—near the village Studianka—where the
Beresina could be forded by horses. Napoleon, informed of this fact on
November 28th., at once ordered General Eblé to construct the bridge
and on November 25th., at 1 o’clock in the morning, he issued orders to
Oudinot to have his corps ready for crossing the river. The moment had
arrived when the great engineer, the venerable General Eblé, was to
crown his career by an immortal service.

He had saved six cases containing tools, nails, clamps, and all kinds
of iron pieces needed for the construction of trestle bridges. In his
profound foresight he had also taken along two wagon-loads of charcoal,
and he had under his command 400 excellent pontooneers upon whom he
could reply absolutely.

General Eblé has been described as the model of an officer, on account
of his imposing figure and his character.

Eblé and Larrey were the two men whom the whole army never ceased to
respect and to obey, even when they demanded things which were almost
impossible. General Eblé then with his 400 men departed in the evening
of November 24th. for Borisow, followed by the clever General
Chasseloup who had some sappers with him, but without their tools.
General Chasseloup was a worthy associate of the illustrious chief of
the pontooneers. They marched all night, arriving at Borisow on the
25th., at 5 o’clock in the morning. There they left some soldiers in
order to deceive the Russians by making them believe that the bridge
was to be constructed below Borisow. Eblé with his pontooneers,
however, marched through swamps and woods along the river as far as
Studianka, arriving there during the afternoon of the 25th. Napoleon in
his impatience wanted the bridges finished on that day, an absolute
impossibility; it could not be done until the 26th., by working all
night, and not to rest until this was accomplished was the firm
resolution of these men who by that time had marched two days and two
nights. General Eblé spoke to his pontooneers, telling them that the
fate of the army was in their hands. He inspired them with noble
sentiments and received the promise of the most absolute devotedness.
They had to work in the bitter cold weather—severe frost having
suddenly set in—all night and during the next day, in the water, in the
midst of floating ice, probably under fire of the enemy, without rest,
almost without time to swallow some boiled meat; they had not even
bread or salt or brandy. This was the price at which the army could be
saved. Each and every one of the pontooneers pledged himself to their
general, and we shall see how they kept their word.

Not having time to fell trees and to cut them into planks, they
demolished the houses of the unfortunate village Studianka and took all
the wood which could serve for the construction of bridges; they forged
the iron needed to fasten the planks and in this way they made the
trestles. At daybreak of the 26th. they plunged these trestles into the
Beresina. Napoleon, together with some of his generals, Murat,
Berthier, Eugene, Caulaincourt, Duroc, and others, had hastened to
Studianka on this morning to witness the progress of Eblé’s work. Their
faces expressed the greatest anxiety, for at this moment the question
was whether or not the master of the world would be taken prisoner by
the Russians. He watched the men working, exerting all their might in
strength and intelligence. But it was by no means sufficient to plunge
bravely into the icy water and to fasten the trestles, the almost
superhuman work had to be accomplished in spite of the enemy whose
outposts were visible on the other side of the river. Were there merely
some Cossacks, or was there a whole army corps? This was an important
question to solve. One of the officers, Jacqueminot, who was as brave
as he was intelligent, rode into the water, traversed the Beresina, the
horse swimming part of the way, and reached the other shore. On account
of the ice the landing was very difficult. In a little wood he found
some Cossacks, but altogether only very few enemies could be seen.
Jacqueminot then turned back to bring the good news to the emperor. As
it was of the greatest importance to secure a prisoner to obtain exact
information about what was to be feared or to be hoped, the brave
Jacqueminot once more crossed the Beresina, this time accompanied by
some determined cavalry men. They overpowered a Russian outpost, the
men sitting around a fire, took a corporal with them, and brought this
prisoner before Napoleon who learned to his great satisfaction that
Tchitchakoff with his main force was before Borisow to prevent the
passage of the French, and that at Studianka there was only a small
detachment of light troops.

It was necessary to take advantage of these fortunate circumstances.
But the bridges were not ready. The brave General Corbineau with his
cavalry brigade crossed the river under the above-described
difficulties, and established himself in the woods. Napoleon mounted a
battery of 40 cannons on the left shore, and now the French could
flatter themselves to be masters of the right shore while the bridges
were made, and that their whole army would be able to cross. Napoleon’s
star seemed to brighten again, the officers grouped around him,
saluting with expressions of joy, such as they had not shown for a long
time.

All was now depending on the completion of the bridges, for there were
two to be constructed, each 600 feet in length; one on the left for
wagons, the other, on the right, for infantry and cavalry. A hundred
pontooneers had gone into the water and with the aid of little floats
built for this purpose, had commenced the fixation of the trestles. The
water was freezing and formed ice crusts around their shoulders, arms,
and legs, ice crusts which adhered to the flesh and caused great pain.
They suffered without complaining, without appearing to be affected, so
great was their ardor. The river at that point was 300 feet wide and
with 23 trestles for each bridge the two shores could be united. In
order to transport first the troops, all efforts were concentrated on
the construction of the bridge to the right—that is, the one for
infantry and cavalry—and at 1 o’clock in the afternoon it was ready.

About 9 thousand men of the corps of Marshal Oudinot passed over the
first bridge and under great precautions took two cannons along.
Arrived on the other side, Oudinot faced some troops of infantry which
General Tschaplitz, the commander of the advance guard of Tchitchakoff,
had brought there. The engagement was very lively but of short
duration. The French killed 200 men of the enemy and were able to
establish themselves in a good position, from where they could cover
the passage. Time was given now for the passage of enough troops to
meet Tchitchakoff, during the rest of the day, the 26th. and the
succeeding night. Concerning many details I have to refer to Thiers’
description.

At 4 o’clock in the afternoon the second bridge was completed.
Napoleon, on the Studianka side, yet supervised everything; he wanted
to remain among the last to cross the bridge. General Eblé, without
himself taking a moment of rest, had one-half the number of his
pontooneers rest on straw while the other half took up the painful task
of guarding the bridges, of doing police duty, and of making repairs in
case of accidents, until they were relieved by the others. On this day
the infantry guards and what remained of cavalry guards marched over
the bridge, followed by the artillery train.

Unfortunately, the left bridge, intended for vehicles, shook too much
under the enormous weight of wagons following one another without
interruption. Pressed as they were, the pontooneers had not had time to
shape the timber forming the path, they had to use wood as they found
it, and in order to deaden the rumbling of the wagons they had put
moss, hemp, straw—in fact, everything they could gather in
Studianka—into the crevices. But the horses removed this kind of litter
with their feet, rendering the surface of the path very rough, so that
it had formed undulations, and at 8 o’clock in the evening three
trestles gave way and fell, together with the wagons which they
carried, into the Beresina. The heroic pontooneers went to work again,
going into the water which was so cold that ice immediately formed anew
where it had been broken. With their axes they had to cut holes into
the ice to place new trestles six, seven and even eight feet deep into
the river were the bridge had given way. At 11 o’clock the bridge was
secure again.

General Eblé, who had always one relief at work while the other was
asleep, took no rest himself. He had extra trestles made in case of
another accident. At 2 o’clock in the morning three trestles of the
left bridge, that is the one for the vehicles, gave way, unfortunately
in the middle of the current, where the water had a depth of seven or
eight feet. This time the pontooneers had to accomplish their difficult
task in the darkness. The men, shaking from cold and starving, could
not work any more. The venerable General Eblé, who was not young as
they were and had not taken rest as they had, suffered more than they
did, but he had the moral superiority and spoke to them, appealing to
their devotedness, told them of the certain disaster which would
annihilate the whole army if they did not repair the bridges; and his
address made a deep impression. With supreme self-denial they went to
work again. General Lauriston, who had been sent by the emperor to
learn the cause of the new accident, pressed Eblé’s hand and, shedding
tears, said to him: For God’s sake, hasten! Without showing impatience,
Eblé, who generally had the roughness of a strong and proud soul,
answered with kindness: You see what we are doing, and he turned to his
men to encourage, to direct them, and notwithstanding his age—he was 54
years old—he plunged into that icy water, which those young men were
hardly able to endure (and this fact is stated by all the historians
whose works I have read). At 6 o’clock in the morning (November 27th.)
this second accident had been repaired, the artillery train could pass
again.

The bridge to the right—for infantry—did not have to endure the same
kind of shaking up as the other bridge, and did not for one moment get
out of order. If the stragglers and fugitives had obeyed all could have
crossed during the night from November 26th. to November 27th. But the
attraction of some barns, some straw to lie on, some eatables found at
Studianka, had retained a good many on this side of the river. The
swamps surrounding the Beresina were frozen, which was a great
advantage, enabling the people to walk over them. On these frozen
swamps had been lighted thousands of fires, and 10 thousand or 15
thousand individuals had established themselves around them and did not
want to leave. Soon they should bitterly regret the loss of a precious
opportunity.

In the morning, on November 27th., Napoleon crossed the Beresina,
together with all who were attached to his headquarters, and selected
for his new headquarters the little village Zawnicky, on the other side
of the Beresina. In front of him was the corps of Oudinot. All day long
he was on horseback personally to hasten the passage of detachments of
the army, somewhat over 5 thousand men under arms. Toward the end of
the day the first corps arrived, under Davout, who since Krasnoe had
again commanded the rear guard. This was the only corps which still had
some military appearance.

The day of November 27th. was occupied to cross the Beresina and to
prepare for a desperate resistance, for the Russians could no longer be
deceived as to the location of the bridges. At 2 o’clock in the
afternoon a third accident happened, again on the bridge to the left.
It was soon repaired, but the vehicles arrived in great numbers, and
all were pressing forward in such a way that the gendarmes had
extraordinary difficulties to enforce some order.

The 9th. corps, that of Marshal Victor, had taken a position between
Borisow and Studianka, in order to protect the army at the latter
place. It had been foreseen that the crossing would be little
interfered with during the first two days, the 26th. and 27th., because
Tchitchakoff was as yet ignorant of the real points elected for the
bridges, expecting to find the French army below Borisow on the other
side of the Beresina. Wittgenstein and Kutusoff had not yet had time to
unite and did not sufficiently press the French.

Napoleon had good reasons to expect that the 28th. would be the
decisive day. He was resolved to save the army or to perish with it.
Taking the greatest pains to deceive Tchitchakoff as long as possible
he ordered Marchal Victor to leave the division Partouneaux, which had
been reduced by marches and fights from 12 thousand to 4 thousand
combatants, at Borisow. Victor with 9 thousand men and 700 to 800
horses was to cover Studianka.

These 9 thousand were the survivors of 24 thousand with whom Victor had
left Smolensk to join Oudinot on the Oula. During one month’s marching
and in various engagements 10 thousand to 11 thousand had been lost.
The bearing, however, of those who survived was excellent, and seeing
what was left of the grand army, the glory of which had, not long ago,
been the object of their jealousy, in its present condition, they were
stricken with pity and asked their oppressed comrades who had almost
lost their pride as a result of the misery, what calamity could have
befallen them? You will soon be the same as we are, sadly answered the
victors of Smolensk and Borodino.

The hour of the supreme crisis had come. The enemy, having now learned
the truth, came to attack the French when many of them had not yet
crossed the Beresina and were divided between the two sides of the
river. Wittgenstein, who with 3 thousand men had followed the corps of
Victor, was behind the latter between Borisow and Studianka, and ready
with all his might to throw Victor into the Beresina. Altogether,
including the forces of Tchitchakoff, there were about 72 thousand
Russians, without counting 30 thousand men of Kutusoff in the rear,
ready to fall on Victor’s 12 thousand to 13 thousand and Oudinot’s 7
thousand or 8 thousand of the guards; 28 thousand to 30 thousand French
were divided between the two shores of the Beresina hampered by 40
thousand stragglers, to fight, during the difficult operation of
crossing the Beresina, with 72 thousand partly in front, partly in the
rear.

This terrible struggle began in the evening of the 27th. The
unfortunate French division of Partouneaux, the best of the three of
Victor’s corps, had received orders from Napoleon to remain before
Borisow during the 27th., in order to deceive, as long as possible, and
to detain Tchitchakoff. In this position Partouneaux was separated from
his corps which, as we have seen, was concentrated around Studianka, by
three miles of wood and swamps. As could be easily foreseen,
Partouneaux was cut off by the arrival of the troops of Platow,
Miloradovitch, and Yermaloff, who had followed the French on the road
from Orscha to Borisow. In the evening of the 27th. Partouneaux
recognized his desperate position. With the immense dangers threatening
him were combined the hideous embarrassment of several thousand
stragglers who, believing in the passage below Borisow, had massed at
that point, with their baggage, awaiting the construction of the
bridge. The better to deceive the enemy they had been left in their
error, and now they were destined to be sacrificed, together with the
division of Partouneaux, on account of the terrible necessity to
deceive Tchitchakoff.

When the bullets came from all sides, the confusion soon reached the
climax; the three little brigades of Partouneaux forming for defense
found themselves entangled with several thousand stragglers and
fugitives who clamorously threw themselves into their ranks; the women
of the mass, with baggage, especially with their frightful, piercing
cries, characterized this scene of desolation. General Partouneaux
decided to extricate himself, to open a way or to perish. He was with a
thousand men against 40 thousand. Several challenges to surrender he
refused, and kept on fighting. The enemy, likewise exhausted, suspended
firing toward midnight, being certain to take the last of this handful
of braves who resisted so heroically in the morning. With daybreak the
Russian generals again challenged General Partouneaux, who was standing
upright in the snow with the 400 or 500 of his brigade, remonstrating
with him, and he, with desperation in his soul, surrendered. The other
two brigades of his division that had been separated from him also laid
down their arms. The Russians took about 2 thousand prisoners, that is,
the survivors of Partouneaux’s division of 4 thousand, only one
battalion of 300 men had succeeded, during the darkness of the night,
in making its escape and reaching Studianka.

The army at Studianka had heard, during this cruel night, the sound of
the cannonade and fusillade from the direction of Borisow. Napoleon and
Victor were in great anxiety; the latter thought that the measure
taken, i.e., the sacrifice of his best division, of 4 thousand men who
would have been of great value, had been unjustifiable, because after
the crossing had begun on the 26th. it was no longer possible to
deceive the enemy.

The night was passed in cruel suspense, but being the prey of sorrows
of so many kinds the French could hardly pay due attention to the many
new ones which presented themselves at every moment. The silence which
reigned on the morning of the 28th. indicated the catastrophe of the
division Partouneaux.

The firing now began on the two sides of the Beresina, on the right
shore against the troops that had crossed, on the left against those
covering the passage of the rear of the army. From this moment on
nothing was thought of but fight. The cannonade and fusillade soon
became extremely violent, and Napoleon, on horseback, incessantly
riding from one point to another, assumed that Oudinot resisted
Tchitchakoff while Eblé continued to care for the bridges, and that
Victor, who was fighting Wittgenstein, was not thrown into the icy
floods of the Beresina together with the masses which had not yet
crossed.

Although the firing was terrible on all sides and thousands were killed
on this lugubrious field; the French resisted on both banks of the
river.

For the description of this battle I desire to refer to Thiers’ great
work. Taking all circumstances into consideration, it did the greatest
honor to Napoleon’s guns, to the valor of his generals and of his
soldiers.

The confusion was frightful among the masses that had neglected to
cross in time, and those who had arrived too late for the opportunity.
Many, ignoring that the first bridge was reserved for pedestrians and
horsemen, the second for wagons, crowded with delirious impatience upon
the second bridge. The pontooneers on guard at the entrance of the
bridge to the right were ordering the vehicles to the one on the left,
which was 600 feet farther down. This precaution was an absolute
necessity, because the bridge to the right could not endure the weight
of the wagons. Those who were directed by the pontooneers to go to the
other bridge had the greatest difficulty to pass through the compact
masses pressing and pushing to enter the structure. A terrible
struggle! Opposing currents of people paralyzed all progress. The
bullets of the enemy, striking into this dense crowd, produced fearful
furrows and cries of terror from the fugitives; women with children,
many on wagons, added to the horror. All pressed, all pushed; the
stronger ones trampled on those who had lost their foothold, and killed
many of the latter. Men on horseback were crushed, together with their
horses, many of the animals becoming unmanageable, shot forward,
kicked, reared, turned into the crowd and gained a little space by
throwing people down into the river; but soon the space filled up
again, and the mass of people was as dense as before.

This pressing forward and backward, the cries, the bullets striking
into the helpless crowd, presented an atrocious scene—the climax of
that forever odious and senseless expedition of Napoleon.

The excellent General Eblé, whose heart broke at this spectacle, tried
in vain to establish a little order. Placing himself at the head of the
bridge he addressed the multitude; but it was only by means of the
bayonet that at last some improvement was brought about, and some
women, children, and wounded were saved. Some historians have stated
that the French themselves fired cannon shots into the crowd, but this
is not mentioned by Thiers. This panic was the cause that more than
half the number of those perished who otherwise could have crossed.
Many threw themselves, or were pushed, into the water and drowned. And
this terri

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