CHAPTER VIII.

I TRAVEL WITH PICART--THE COSSACKS--PICART IS WOUNDED--A CONVOY OF FRENCH PRISONERS--A HALT IN A FOREST--POLISH HOSPITALITY--AN ATTACK OF INSANITY--WE REJOIN THE ARMY--THE EMPEROR AND THE SACRED BATTALION--THE CROSSING OF THE BEREZINA.

Since the Battle of Malo-Jaroslawetz, Picart had been separated from his regiment, as he had been sent in the escort of a convoy composed of part of the Imperial equipage. This detachment was always two or three days' march in advance of the army, and in consequence had not suffered anything like the same privations as the rest. As there were only 400 of them, they had often been able to find provisions, and, besides, had means of transport. At Smolensk they had found enough flour and biscuits to last for several days. At Krasnoe they had the good luck to arrive and get away twenty-four hours before the Russians got there. At Orcha again they had found flour. In any village they came to there were always houses enough available for shelter, if only post-houses at some distance from each other. We, on the other hand, had to march 150,000 strong to begin with, afterwards only half that number, and had had only forests and marshes to sleep in, only horseflesh to eat--and very little of it--water to drink, and sometimes not even that. My old comrade's sufferings only began when he joined me.

Picart told me that the man lying by our fire had been wounded by some Polish Lancers in an attack during the afternoon. This is the account he gave of it:

'More than 600 Cossacks and other cavalry attacked our convoy. We were sheltered, however, by our carts, formed into a square, and letting the enemy come quite close to us, at our first discharge we stretched eleven of them on the snow; a greater number still were wounded and carried off by their horses. They fled, but met some Polish Lancers of General Dombrouski's corps,[35] who put them to utter rout. The man by the fire was brought back a prisoner, and several others with him, but I don't know why they left him. After the affair I told you of, there was a good deal of confusion. Those in charge of the waggons tried to get through the defile near the forest before each other, so that the shelter of the trees might guard them against a surprise. Some of them, hoping to find a crossing higher up, were deceived by the aspect of the snow, and fell into a deep crevasse--the first waggon turned completely over with the two _cognias_.[36]

'The other waggons avoided the same fate by turning to the left, but I do not know if they arrived safely or not. They left me here to take care of this d----d waggon, and two Chasseurs with me, saying that they would send some men and horses to fetch it or its contents away. An hour afterwards, however, as it was getting dark, nine men, stragglers from different regiments, passed by.

Seeing the overturned waggon, and only three men to guard it, they broke into it, on the pretext of finding food, in spite of everything we said to the contrary.

'Seeing that all our efforts were unavailing, we followed their example, taking and putting aside anything we could find. But it was now too late, as all the best things had been taken, and the horses were cut up into twenty pieces. I managed to secure this white cloak for myself. I cannot understand how the Chasseurs with me contrived to get away without my seeing them.'

I told Picart that the men who had pillaged the waggon belonged to the Grand Army, and if he had only asked them for news they could have told him as much, or more, than I.

'After all, Picart, it was just as well that they took what they did, for the Russians will be here very soon.'

'You are right,' said Picart; 'and we had better put our arms in order.'

'First of all, I must find my musket,' I said. 'I have never lost it before. I have carried it for six years, and I am so familiar with it that at any hour of the night, in the middle of a pile of others, I know it by touching it--even by the noise it makes in falling.'

As no fresh snow had fallen, I fortunately was able to find it. Picart helped me by lighting my way with a piece of resinous wood.

After having looked to our boots--an important consideration--we cooked a piece of horseflesh, of which Picart had a good store. After eating, and drinking a little brandied snow, we put some meat into our knapsacks, and, standing to warm ourselves before the fire, we considered the next step to be taken.

'Well,' said the good fellow, 'which way now for us?'

'That infernal music's in my ears still,' I said.

'Perhaps we are making a mistake. Very likely it's the first bugle, or our Horse-Grenadiers' reveille--you know the air:

'Fillettes, aupres des amoureux Tenez bien votre serieux,' etc.

I interrupted Picart by telling him that there had been no first bugle or reveille for the last fortnight; that we had no more cavalry; that with the few that still remained a squadron called the Doomed Squadron had been formed, commanded by the oldest Marshal in France, that the Generals were Captains, and the Colonels and other officers served as private soldiers; that just the same thing had happened to a battalion now called the Doomed Battalion; that, in short, of 40,000 men in the cavalry, only 1,000 remained.

Without leaving him time to reply, I told him that what we had heard was the signal of departure for the Russian cavalry, and it was that which brought him out of the waggon.

'Oh, _mon pays_, it wasn't only that which made me clear out: I had been watching you some time trying to set me on fire!'

Picart had hardly finished speaking, when he seized me by the arm suddenly, saying, 'Silence! Lie down!' I threw myself on the ground at once. He followed my example, and covered the fire with a cuirass. I looked up, and saw the Russian cavalry defile above us in the utmost silence. This lasted for quite a quarter of an hour.

As soon as they had gone, Picart said, 'Follow me,' and, linking arms, we started walking in the direction they had come from.

After going for some time, Picart stopped, saying quite softly:

'Now we can breathe; we are safe, at least, for a time. We've been lucky, for if that wounded bear' (the Cossack) 'had seen his people, he would have bellowed like a bull to attract them, and God knows what would have happened then! But that reminds me: I have forgotten something most important--a saucepan at the back of the waggon--more useful for us than anything else. We must go back for it.' As he saw I was unwilling, he said: 'Come quick, or we may die of hunger!'

We got back to our bivouac. We found the fire almost extinct, and the poor devil of a Cossack rolling about in the snow in the most terrible sufferings, with his head almost in the fire. We could do nothing to relieve him, but we laid him on some sheepskin schabraques, so that he might die more comfortably.

'He will not die just yet,' said Picart. 'Look at his eyes: they shine like two candles.'

We had placed him sitting up, holding him by his arms, but as soon as we let him go he fell down again, his face in the fire. We dragged him out only just in time to prevent his being burnt. We left him then to look for our saucepan, which we found so battered that it was past using. Picart, however, strapped it all the same on to my back.

We then tried to get up the steep bank, and reach the wood before daylight, where there would be shelter both from the cold and the enemy. After twice rolling down from the top to the bottom, we managed to make a footing in the snow. We reached the top at the exact place from which I had fallen the evening before, and where the Russian cavalry had filed past. We stopped for an instant to take breath and make out our bearings.

'Straight on,' said Picart. 'Follow me.'

He started off as he spoke, and I followed; but hardly had he gone twenty yards when he disappeared in a hole six feet deep. He stood up without speaking, and I helped him out with his musket; but as soon as he was safe he began swearing against the God of Russia and the Emperor Napoleon, whom he called 'Conscript.'

'He is a regular fool of a conscript to have waited so long in Moscow. A fortnight was long enough to eat and drink everything we found there; but to stay there thirty-four days just waiting for winter to come on! I call that folly. If he were here, I could tell him to his face that isn't the way to lead men. Good God! the dances he has led me the last sixteen years. We suffered enough in Egypt--in the Syrian deserts; but that's nothing compared with these deserts of snow!' and he began blowing on his hands.

'Come, my poor fellow,' I said, 'this is not the time to stand and talk--we must do something; let us see if we can't find a better way to the left.'

Picart had drawn out the ramrod of his musket, and walked about sounding the snow in front of him. It was just as deep all round. In the end we got across near where he had fallen in. Once on the other side, we went on, still sounding as we went. Halfway to the wood we came upon another deep ditch, like that one in which we had spent the night. We crossed it, and with very great difficulty reached the other side. We were so tired that we were forced to stop and take breath.

To the right we saw some black clouds coming on us with frightful rapidity. The clouds coming with a north wind foretold a terrible storm, and a cruel day in store for us. The wind roared through the pines and birch-trees, and drove us just the way we did not want to go. Sometimes we fell into holes concealed by the snow. At last, after an hour's walking, we arrived at our haven just as the snow began to fall in great flakes.

The storm burst with such force that trees broken or torn up by the roots fell on all sides, and we were compelled to leave the forest. We kept on the edge of the wood, with the wind to our left, but were stopped by a great lake which we could have easily crossed, as it was frozen hard, if it had been in the right direction. The quantity of snow falling prevented our seeing, and we were forced finally to stop altogether, sheltering behind two large birch-trees, until the weather had mended a little.

For a long time we stood there, stamping our feet to keep out the frost, when I noticed that the wind had abated a little. I mentioned this to Picart, and proposed going further on. We had skirted a good way along the lake, when suddenly Picart stopped and looked steadily before him. He then seized my arm and whispered:

'Hold your tongue!' Then, dragging me behind a bush, he said in a low voice, 'Don't you see?'

'I don't see anything. What is it?'

'Smoke. A bivouac.'

I looked, and saw it too. An idea came to me, and I said:

'Perhaps the fire belongs to the bivouac of the cavalry we saw this morning.'

'I think very likely it does,' he said; 'we must behave as if we were sure of it. We made a great mistake this morning in not loading our muskets while we were near the fire. Now our hands are numbed, and the barrels full of snow, we can't do it.'

The snow fell very lightly now, and the sky was clearer. All at once I caught sight of a horse gnawing the bark of a birch on the edge of the lake. I pointed it out to Picart, and as the horse was not harnessed, he thought it might be a wounded one, abandoned by the Russian cavalry.

While we were talking, the horse suddenly threw up his head and began to neigh, then quietly came straight up to us and snuffed at Picart as if he knew him. We dared neither move nor speak. The confounded horse stopped there, his head against Picart's fur cap, who dared hardly breathe, fearing that his master might come to look for him. Seeing, however, that he had a wound in the chest, we concluded that he was abandoned, and no doubt the bivouac also. We moved forward, and reached a cleared semicircle covered with shelters and fires, and seven horses killed and partly eaten. We guessed that more than 200 men must have passed the night here.

'It was the Russians,' said Picart, warming his hands in the ashes. 'I remember that yellow horse; he was my mark in the attack. I think I got his master a commission for the next world.'

After a thorough look round we revived the fire in front of the shelter, which the leader of the party had apparently occupied.

The snow had stopped, and a dead calm had succeeded the wind. We now began to make soup, but thought it wiser to keep back our own store of meat, as there was plenty to be had here. Picart cut some fresh meat with my little axe, enough for soup, and also some to take away with us. We tried to break through the ice for water, but had not enough strength or patience for the job. Now we were quite warm, and the prospect of having some good soup filled me with joy. When one is in real trouble, how little it takes to make one happy! Our saucepan was of no use in its dilapidated condition, but Picart, who was full of resource, and whom nothing put out, set to work to put it right. He cut down a pine-tree to about a foot and a half from the ground, and using the stump as an anvil, and another thick piece as a hammer (wrapped in rag to dull the sound), he began his tinker's work, singing and keeping time with his blows. These were the words he sang, just as he used to sing them during the night-marches to his company:

'C'est ma mie l'aveugle, C'est ma mie l'aveugle, C'est ma fantaisie; J'en suis amoureux.'

As I listened to his powerful voice ringing out, I was obliged to say, '_Mon vieux camarade_, you quite forget: this is hardly the time for singing.'

Picart looked at me, smiling, and without answering he started again:

'Elle a le nez morveux Et les yeux chassieux. C'est ma mie aveugle, C'est ma fantaisie; J'en suis amoureux!'

He stopped, seeing that I was afraid of his singing, and showed me the saucepan, now fit to use.

'Do you remember,' he said, 'the day of the Battle of Eylau, when we were on the right of the church?'

'Yes, of course I do,' I said; 'we had weather just like to-day. I have reason to remember it, for a brutal Russian bullet carried away my saucepan. Have you forgotten it, Picart?'

'By Heaven, no!' he said; 'that's why I remind you of it, and ask you if a little patience and industry would not have mended your pan?'

'Certainly not, no more than Gregoire's and Lemoine's heads which it carried off, too.'

'How the devil do you remember their names?'

'I cannot forget them; Gregoire was a Velite like me, and a good friend, too. That day I had some biscuits and haricots in the saucepan.'

'Yes,' said Picart, 'which were splashed all over us. Great God! what a day that was!'

While we talked the snow melted in the pan. We put as much flesh in as it would hold, so that we might have some cooked meat to take away with us.

My curiosity prompted me to look into the canvas bag which I had picked up the evening before. I found in it only three cotton handkerchiefs, two razors, and several letters in French, dated from Stuttgart, written to Sir Jacques (_sic_), a Baden officer in a Dragoon regiment. The letters were full of affection from a sister to a brother. I kept them for some time, but they were lost when I was taken prisoner.

Picart sat down before the fire at the entrance to our shelter, his back turned to the north, and opened his knapsack. He drew out a handkerchief, with some salt tied up in one corner, and a little oatmeal in another. It was long enough since I had seen so much, and my mouth watered merely to think of soup salted with real salt, when for the last month all the seasoning I had taken was powder.

I was terribly tired, and the warmth of the fire made me sleepy. I told Picart that I should drop off.

'All right,' he said, 'drop off. Get into the shelter, and I'll look after the soup, and I can clean and load our arms. How many cartridges have you?'

'Three packets of fifteen.'

'Very good. I have four, so that makes a hundred and five; more than enough to do for twenty-five Cossacks, if they should come this way. Get along; go to sleep.'

I did not need telling twice, and, wrapping myself in my bearskin cloak, with my feet to the fire, I fell asleep. I was sleeping soundly, when Picart awoke me, saying:

'_Mon pays_, you have been sleeping like an angel for two hours. I have had supper; now it's your turn to eat and mine to rest, for I want it badly. Here are our muskets cleaned and loaded. Mind you keep good watch, and when I am rested a bit we will get on.'

He wrapped himself in his white cloak and lay down, while I took the saucepan between my knees and began with a tremendous appetite on the soup. I do not think I ever enjoyed, or ever shall enjoy, anything so much.

After my supper, I got up to take my turn at the watch; but I had not been there for more than five minutes, when I heard the wounded horse neigh loudly several times, and then gallop off on to the middle of the lake. Then he stopped and neighed again. Several other horses answered him, and he started off in the direction of the sound. I hid myself behind a clump of firs, and saw the horse join a detachment of cavalry which was crossing the lake. There were about twenty-three of them. I called Picart, already sleeping so soundly that I could not make him hear, and I was obliged to pull his legs. At last he opened his eyes.

'Well, what is it?'

'Quick, Picart! Get up! Russian cavalry on the lake. We must get back to the wood.'

'You ought to have let me sleep. I deserved it.'

'I am sorry, _mon vieux_, but you told me to warn you, and no doubt a lot more may be coming.'

'Oh yes,' he said, 'that's true. What a devilish trade this is! Where are they?'

'Rather to the right, and out of range.'

Five others passed directly afterwards, half a gun-shot off. We saw the first few stop, and, dismounting, make a circle near a place on the lake, where they had probably broken the ice before to water their horses, for we saw them strike the new ice with the butts of their lances.

We decided to pack and be off as soon as possible; to strike the road again, and, if possible, rejoin the army. It was about eleven o'clock; thus we had until dark--_i.e._, about four o'clock. The army, I knew, could not be far off, as the Russians were waiting for us at the crossing of the Berezina, where all our scattered troops would have to collect.

We hurried our preparations as much as possible. Picart filled his knapsack with meat, and I did the same with the canvas bag. He decided to regain the road by the way we had come, following the outskirts of the forest. If we were surprised by the Russians, we should have the wood for shelter; and if we were not molested, we should be on a road we could not easily lose.

We started then--he with more than fifteen pounds of fresh meat, and I carrying the saucepan filled with the meat already cooked. Picart told me that he always liked carrying the food on a march in preference to other things, as after a few days it diminished greatly in quantity; he quoted Aesop as a proof of what he said. As he was talking, we heard musket-shots from the opposite side of the lake. 'Back! Into the wood!' said Picart; but the noise soon ceased, and we set out again.

The storm, so long quiet, now threatened to break out afresh. Great clouds covered the forest, making it so dark that we dared not enter it for shelter. As we stopped to consider our next move, we heard more firing, this time much nearer. We now saw two troops of Cossacks trying to surround seven of our infantrymen, who were coming down a hill, apparently from a little hamlet on the opposite side of the lake. We could see them fire on the enemy, and then retreat to the side of the lake, evidently trying to gain the forest, where they could set the Cossacks at defiance.

There were more than thirty of the Cossacks; half of them came down to the edge of the lake opposite to us, to cut off our men's retreat. Our firearms were ready loaded, and I had thirty cartridges ready to receive them if they came over to our side, and perhaps to help our men to get off. Picart, who kept his eyes fixed on them, said:

'_Mon pays_, you must load, and I will engage to bring them down like so many ducks. As a beginning, we'll both fire together.'

Our men, however, continued to retreat. Picart recognised them as the same men who had pillaged the waggon the day before; but now there were only seven, instead of nine. The cavalry were now only about forty yards off, so Picart, slapping me on the shoulder, said: 'Attention to the word of command! Fire!' The men stopped astonished, and one of them fell from his horse. When the Cossacks saw this they scattered, and only two remained with the wounded man, who was now sitting on the ice, supporting himself by one hand. Picart, anxious to lose no time, fired a second time, and wounded a horse. Then they all fled, leaving their wounded comrade, and sheltering themselves behind their horses, which they led by the bridles. We next heard savage cries on our left hand, and saw our unfortunate comrades surrounded by Cossacks on all sides. On our right we could see the two men return for the wounded one, and as he was unable to walk, they dragged him by the legs over the ice.

We specially noticed a Cossack on the look-out for us, gazing at the place where he had first seen us. Picart could contain himself no longer; he fired, and the Cossack was struck on the head, for we saw him reel in his saddle, drop his head forward, and, with his arms stretched out, fall from his horse. He was dead.[37]

At the noise of the shot the Cossacks who surrounded our comrades turned round astonished. Our infantry fired at them, and four Cossacks fell at once. Then we heard shouts of rage, and a stubborn fight followed. We were just about to help in a vigorous manner, when the storm, which had threatened for so long, broke. The snow, which had been falling all the time, grew so thick as completely to blind us. We found ourselves in a thick cloud, obliged to cling to each other to avoid being blown down by the wind. All at once the cloud disappeared, and six yards off we saw the enemy, who yelled out on seeing us. We could not fire, our hands were so frozen by the cold; but we faced them with the bayonet, and regained the wood, while they galloped off.

On entering the wood, we saw the three infantrymen pursued by five Cossacks from the other side of the lake. We fired on them, but without success, and were beginning again, when all at once we saw them sink in the lake and disappear, two Cossacks with them. The unfortunate men had passed over the place which the Russians had broken in for their horses, and the new ice was not strong enough to bear any weight. A third Cossack, seeing the others disappear, tried to stop his horse, and made him rear upright. The horse's hind-legs slipped, and he fell over with his rider, and they, too, disappeared after the others.

We were horror-struck, and our pursuers remained motionless on the ice, not attempting to help their comrades. We could hear piercing cries from the hole in the ice, and several times saw horses' heads appear; then the water bubbled up and spread over the ice.

Ten cavalrymen with their commander came up, and, approaching the fatal spot, plunged their lances in; apparently finding no bottom to the lake, they looked over to our side, and then galloped off again. We lost sight of them, and all was quiet.

We were now left alone in this deserted spot, leaning on our firearms, and looking at the bodies of the wretched men. After a silence of some minutes, Picart said:

'I have a longing for a pipe. I have a good mind to look for some tobacco among these men; I shall be very unlucky if I don't find any.'

I said this was an imprudent thing to do, as we did not know where the first of the cavalry had gone to; and as I spoke we saw a number of horsemen and peasants carrying long poles towards the ice where the unfortunate men had been engulfed. A cart with two horses followed them.

'Good-bye to my tobacco,' said Picart.

We now thought it advisable to go to the farthest side of the wood; there we found a shelter, probably belonging to a last night's bivouac, where we could hide ourselves and watch the Cossacks. They partly stripped the bodies of our men, and the peasants came afterwards and stripped them naked. I had the greatest difficulty while this was going on to keep Picart from shooting at them.

The rest of them, with the peasants, went on towards the hole in the ice, and began to make preparations for dragging out the submerged men. When we saw them at work, there was nothing more for us to wait for. It was not quite so cold, and might be about mid-day. We noticed two Cossacks patrolling the outskirts of the wood, following our footprints in the snow. At sight of them, Picart flew into a rage, and said:

'If they have seen us, there is nothing more for us to do; they will follow us wherever we go by our footmarks. Let us hurry on, and get into the wood as soon as we can, and if they're not more than two, we can account for them.' He stopped directly afterwards. 'Confound them! I had counted on them for tobacco. The cowards! They were too frightened to follow us.'

We kept as much as possible to the forest; but the fallen trees here and there barred our way, and we had to come out occasionally. Once we looked back, and saw the two men, one behind the other, about thirty yards off. One of them no doubt saw us, as he spurred on his horse, then waited for his companion to come up. We retired into the wood, where we could see them without being seen, and we walked as quickly as possible--sometimes in the wood, sometimes outside--in order to draw the two men farther and farther from their companions.

After half an hour's walking, we were stopped by a wall of snow ending in a ravine, so we were forced to take a few steps back towards the forest to hide ourselves. The Cossacks were now close to us, but Picart, who knew the art of war, whispered: 'I want them at the other side of the ditch; they will be further off from the others.'

When the Cossacks saw that they could not get through, they went down the ravine so as to come up on the other side of the snow wall. We had in the meantime found a passage for ourselves. We took advantage of the moment when they were in the ditch for getting out of the forest; but just as we thought we had got rid of them, and I waited for a breathing-space, for my legs were beginning to fail under me, Picart turned his head, and saw our two friends behind, trying to take us by surprise, when we thought they were in front. We re-entered the forest quickly, and, making several detours, we returned and saw them walking very softly. Again we took to the forest, running in and out to deceive them, and finally returning to hide behind a group of little pine-trees covered with snow.

When the first man was about forty yards off, Picart said: 'The honour of the first shot is yours, sergeant, but wait till he comes nearer.'

As he spoke, the Cossack signed to his comrade to advance. He turned his horse to the right, facing the bush we were behind. When he was four yards off I fired, and wounded him in the breast. He cried out, and would have fled, but Picart rushed forward, seized the bridle of his horse, and struck him with the point of his bayonet, saying, 'Look out, _mon pays_; take care of the other.' As he spoke, the other came up and discharged his pistol at the head of Picart, who fell under the horse he was holding. I ran at the man who had fired, but, seeing me, he threw away his pistol, turned, and galloped off to the plain, a hundred yards from us. I could not fire at him, as my musket was not reloaded, and with my benumbed hands it was impossible to do it.

Picart was now on his feet, but the Cossack I had wounded fell from his horse as if dead. Picart lost no time. He gave me the horse to hold. Walking twenty paces off, he aimed at the other man, sending a ball whistling by his ear, which he avoided by laying himself almost flat on his horse, and then made off at a gallop. Picart reloaded his musket, and then said to me, 'The victory is ours, but we must be quick; let us use the conqueror's rights, and see if this man has anything for us. We can go off with the horse.'

I asked Picart if he was not wounded, but he said it was nothing; we would talk of that later. He took two pistols, one of them loaded, from the dead man, and said, 'I believe he is shamming; I saw him open his eyes.'

In the meantime I tied the horse to a tree, and took the man's sword and a pretty little case set in silver, which I recognised as belonging to a surgeon in our army. This I hung round my neck, but I threw the sword into the brushwood. The Cossack wore two French uniforms under his cloak, a Cuirassier's, and a red Lancer's of the Guard, with an officer's decoration of the Legion d'Honneur, which Picart promptly secured. He wore besides several very fine waistcoats folded in four, making a thick breastplate, which no ball could have pierced. In his pockets we found more than 300 francs in five-franc pieces, two silver watches, and five crosses of honour, all taken from the dead and dying, or from carts left behind. If we had stayed longer we should probably have found more.

Picart picked up his lance and unloaded pistol. He hid them in a bush, and we set off. Picart walked in front, leading the horse, and as I followed it occurred to me to feel inside a portmanteau fastened on the horse, which I could see had belonged to an officer of Cuirassiers of our own army. When I got my hand inside I felt something very much like a bottle. When I told Picart, he cried, 'Halt!' The portmanteau was opened in a couple of minutes, and I drew out a bottle filled with something the colour of gin. Picart swallowed some of it without troubling to smell it, and then passed it to me. 'Your turn, sergeant.' An exquisite sensation impossible to describe came over me after I had drunk some. We agreed that this was the most precious of all our finds. We must be very careful of it; and as I had in my pouch a little china cup I had brought from Moscow, we decided that it should be the measure each time we drank.[38]

We plunged into the forest, and after a quarter of an hour's painful progress, on account of the quantity of fallen trees, we reached a road five or six feet wide, going precisely in the direction we must take to rejoin the highroad where the army must have passed.

Feeling now easier in my mind, I raised my head and looked at Picart. His face was all covered with blood. Blood had formed in icicles on his moustache and beard. I told him that he was wounded on his head. He said 'yes,' he had discovered it when his cap had caught on a branch, and blood had flowed down his face; it was nothing of any consequence. 'And besides,' he continued, 'this is not the time to bother about it; it will do this evening.'

I proposed that, to get on faster, we should both mount the horse. 'Let us try,' he said. We therefore took off the wooden saddle he had on his back, leaving only a cloth underneath, and we both got astride, Picart in front, and I behind. We drank some of our spirit and started, holding our muskets across like balancing-poles. We trotted on, sometimes we galloped; often our way was barred by fallen trees, and the idea occurred to Picart to cut down a few more which looked on the point of falling, and thus to form a barrier against the cavalry if they came after us. He dismounted, and with my axe he felled some small pine-trees across the road, which would effectually provide twenty-five men with work for an hour. After he had mounted again, we trotted on for a quarter of an hour, when he stopped and said:

'_Coquin de Dieu!_ this tartar has a hard trot!'

I said he was taking his revenge on us for having killed his master.

'Ah, sergeant,' he said, 'the drop of drink has made you merry, I see.'

Picart arranged the flaps of his white cloak carefully on the horse's back to make his seat easier, and we went on for a quarter of an hour at a walking pace. Some time the horse was half buried in the snow. We now saw a road crossing ours, which we concluded must be the highroad, but we had to be careful before entering it. We jumped down, and leading the horse, we retired into the forest, in order to examine the road without being seen. We soon recognised it as being the road leading to the Berezina, by the vast number of corpses half covered by snow, and footmarks coming towards us; and the traces of blood on the snow looked as if a convoy of French prisoners, escorted by Russians, had passed not long since.

There was therefore no doubt that we were behind the Russian van-guard, and that very soon others would come after us. What were we to do? To follow the highroad was the only course open to us. Picart's opinion was this:

'An idea has occurred to me. You shall be the rear-guard, and I the van-guard. I will guide the horse forward if I see nothing coming; you, my friend, with your head turned towards his tail, can look out behind.'

It was not easy to put Picart's idea into practice. We had to sit back to back, like a double eagle, as he said, with two eyes in front and two behind. We each took a small glass of gin, reserving the rest for a case of necessity, and we put the horse to a walk, setting off again in this silent and lonely forest.

The north wind was bitterly cold, and the rear-guard suffered severely from it, hardly able as he was to keep his position; but, fortunately, the atmosphere was clear, and one could see objects quite a long way off; the road we followed was also a straight one, so that we had no fear of being surprised at a sudden bend. We progressed in this way for half an hour, when we met in the wood bordering the road seven peasants, who appeared to be waiting for us. They each wore a sheepskin coat, and their boots were made of the bark of trees. They came up to us, wished us good-day in Polish, and seemed pleased to find that we were French. They made us understand that they had to go to Minsk to join the Russian army, as they belonged to the militia; they had been forced to march against us by blows from the knout, and Cossacks were stationed in all the villages to drive them out.

We went on our way, and when they were out of sight I asked Picart if he had understood what the peasants said. Minsk was one of our great depots in Lithuania, containing storehouses of food, and where a large part of the army was to meet. He said he had understood perfectly, and if it was true, _Papa Beau-pere_[39] had played us a nasty trick. As I did not understand, he explained that the Austrians must have betrayed us.[40] He was going on at some length, when he suddenly pulled the horse up, saying, 'Look out, there! Isn't that a column of troops?' I saw something black, which disappeared again; but directly afterwards the head of a column appeared as if coming from a deep hollow.

It was easy to see they were Russians. We had just time to turn to the right and enter the forest, but we had hardly gone four paces, when the horse sank breast-deep into the snow and threw me off. I dragged Picart with me into six feet of snow, and we had the greatest trouble in getting out again. The brute of a horse got off, but he cleared a passage for us through the woods, and we took advantage of it at once. After twenty yards we could go no further owing to the thickness of the trees, so we were obliged to return--there was no choice. We found our horse munching the bark off a tree, to which we tied him. We went some distance off behind a thick bush, and got ready to defend ourselves. While we waited Picart asked whether our bottle was either lost or broken. Luckily it was all right, so we each had a cup, which we wanted badly. While I undid the bottle, Picart looked to the priming of our guns, and took the snow out of the hammers.

After waiting for about five minutes, the head of the column appeared, preceded by ten or twelve armed Tartars and Kalmoucks, some with lances, others with bows and arrows, and peasants to right and left of the road, armed with anything they could lay their hands on. In the centre of the group were more than 200 prisoners of our army, hardly able to drag themselves along. Many of them were wounded; some had their arms in slings, others had frozen feet, and leant on thick staves for support. Several had fallen, and in spite of the blows from the peasants and from the lances of the Tartars, they did not move. I cannot describe the pain we suffered at seeing our comrades so ill-treated. Picart said nothing, but I feared every instant that he would rush out from his cover at the offenders. Just then an officer galloped up, and, addressing the prisoners in French, he said:

'Why don't you walk faster?'

'We cannot,' said a soldier lying in the snow, 'and, for my part, I would rather die here than further on.'

The officer said that he must have patience, that carts were coming, and that the most seriously ill would be put into them.

'You will be better off than you were with Napoleon, for at the present moment he is a prisoner with all his Guard and the rest of his army, and the bridges over the Berezina are cut.'

'Napoleon a prisoner with his Guard!' replied an old soldier. 'May God forgive you, sir! You do not know them. They would only be taken dead. They swore it! They cannot be prisoners!'

'Come,' said the officer, 'here are the waggons.'

We now saw two of our waggons and a travelling forge filled with sick and wounded men. Five men were thrown out, whom the peasants at once stripped absolutely naked. These were replaced by five others, three of whom were unable to move by themselves. We heard the officer order the peasants to return the clothes they had taken to the prisoners most in need of them. As they did not hurry themselves to obey his orders, he gave each of them several smart blows with a whip. We then heard him say to some soldiers who were thanking him:

'I am French myself. I have been in Russia for twenty years. My father died there, but my mother is still alive. I hope now that we shall get back to France and our property there. I know quite well you have not been conquered by force of arms, but by this unendurable Russian climate.'

'And the want of food, besides,' replied a wounded man. 'If it were not for that, we should be at St. Petersburg.'

'Perhaps so,' said the officer.

The convoy moved slowly on.

When it was out of sight we went for our horse, and found him with his head in the snow searching for grass. By chance we came upon the remains of a fire. We relit it and warmed our frozen limbs. We jumped up every moment, and looked to right and left, when all at once we heard a groan, and saw a man coming towards us almost naked. He had on a coat half burnt, a dilapidated forage-cap on his head. His feet were wrapped in rags, and string was tied round them, and round a ragged pair of gray trousers. His nose was almost frozen off, his ears covered with wounds. Only his thumb remained on the right hand; all the fingers had dropped off. This was one of the poor wretches abandoned by the Russians. We could not understand a word he said. When he saw our fire he almost threw himself upon it; he seemed as if he would devour it, kneeling down in front of the flame without a word. We got him with difficulty to swallow a little gin. More than half of what we gave him was wasted, for his teeth chattered so he could hardly unclose them.

His groans ceased, his teeth had almost stopped chattering, when he suddenly turned pale, and seemed to collapse without a word or sigh. Picart tried to raise him up, but he only lifted a corpse. This scene took place in less than ten minutes.

Everything my old comrade saw and heard seemed to impress him very much. He took his musket, and without a word to me turned on to the highroad, as if there was nothing more to trouble about. I hastened after him, leading the horse, and when I caught him up I told him to mount. He did so without speaking, and I after him, and we pressed forward, hoping to get out of the forest before nightfall.

After an hour's trotting, seeing nothing but dead bodies along the road, we came to what we took for the end of the forest. We found, however, that it was only a large clearing in semicircular form. In the centre was a fair-sized house with a few huts round it. This was one of the posting-stations, but, unfortunately for us, there were horses tied to the trees. Their riders came out of the house, and formed in order on the road; then they trotted off. There were eight of them, in white cloaks and very high-crested helmets. They were like the Cuirassiers we fought against at Krasnoe, in November. Luckily, they went off in the opposite direction from the road we were making for.

On re-entering the forest, we found it impossible to advance twenty yards. No human being could ever have set foot there, the trees were so crowded together, the brushwood was so thick, and there were so many fallen trunks half buried in the snow. We were forced to come out, and run the risk of being seen by following the forest outside. Our poor horse sank at every step into the snow, and night was drawing on before we had gone half our distance. To rest for a few minutes, we entered a road leading into the forest. We dismounted, and flew at once to our precious bottle. This was our fifth attack, and we could now see its contents diminishing.

As there were a good many felled trees about, we decided to get as far to the other side of them as possible, and we halted against a pile of wood which would prove a shelter. After Picart had rid himself of his knapsack, and I of my saucepan, he said, 'Now for the main thing--a fire. Quick! an old bit of linen.'

My old shirt was a wonderful thing for catching a blaze. I tore off a bit and gave it to Picart; he made it into a wick, and putting it with a bit of powder into the priming-pan of his gun, he fired. The linen caught fire, but a terrible report was the consequence, repeated again and again by echoes, and I feared it would betray us.

My poor friend Picart was not the same man since he had seen the prisoners and heard the officer's account of the Emperor's surrender. It had made a great effect on him; he even complained at times of a bad pain in his head, which was not at all the result of the Cossack's pistol. I cannot explain it. He forgot that he had loaded his musket, and after the report he just sat still without speaking, and finally only abused himself for a conscript and an old blockhead. Several dogs were set barking. Then he said he expected they would come and track us out like wolves. I tried to reassure him by saying that we need fear nothing at that late hour.

We soon had a good fire, as we found some really dry wood; we also found, to our joy, some straw, probably hidden by peasants. Providence seemed to smile on us again, and Picart said, 'Cheer up, _mon pays_; we are saved just for this night! God will do the rest to-morrow, and if we are lucky enough to find the Emperor, it will be all right.'

Picart, along with all the veterans, who idolized the Emperor, thought that once with him everything was bound to succeed, and that, in fact, nothing was impossible.

We made a comfortable litter for our horse with straw, and gave him something to eat as well, all the time keeping him ready harnessed, and with the portmanteau strapped on his back, ready for the first alarm. Picart took a piece of cooked meat from the saucepan to thaw it, and said:

'Do you know, I am thinking a great deal of what the Russian officer said.'

'What do you mean?'

'Why, that the Emperor and the Guard were taken prisoners. I know, of course, that it's not that--couldn't possibly be--but I can't get it out of my wooden head. It sticks there, and I shall have no peace till I am with the regiment. Just now let's eat and rest a little, and afterwards'--he went on in Picardy patois--'we'll drink a _tiote goutte_.'

The temperature was almost mild just then; we ate the horseflesh without much appetite, and Picart talked by himself, swearing all the time.

'I have forty gold napoleons in my belt, and seven Russian gold pieces, not counting the five-franc pieces; I would give the whole with all my heart to be with the regiment again. That reminds me,' he said; 'the pieces are not in my belt, but are sewn inside my white service waistcoat, and, as one never knows what may happen, they will belong to you.'

'Well,' I said, 'now for my last will and testament. I have 800 francs in notes and in gold. You may dispose of it all, if it is God's will I should die before finding the regiment.'

While warming myself, I put my hand mechanically into the little canvas bag I carried, and found something hard like a bit of cord and as long as two fingers. On examining it I found it was tobacco. What a discovery for poor Picart! When I gave it to him, he let fall a bit of meat he was eating, and took a quid of tobacco instead, to wait with, he said, while he found his pipe. As it was hardly the time to search for it, he contented himself with his quid, and I with a little cigar which I made _a l'Espagnole_ with a piece of paper.

We had been resting for about two hours, and it was not yet seven o'clock. We had therefore eleven or twelve hours yet to wait before continuing our march.

Picart had been walking a few yards off for a moment, and I was getting uneasy about him, when I heard a rustling in the brushwood in the opposite direction from that he had taken. I took my musket and put myself ready, when Picart appeared.

'It is all right, _mon pays_--quite right,' he said in a mysterious voice, signing to me to keep silence. Then he told me that two women had just passed along the road, one carrying a bundle and the other a pail. They had stopped to rest for a few minutes, chattering like magpies. 'We will follow them,' he said; 'probably we shall come to a village or some hut where we shall get shelter and greater safety than here, for listen to those confounded dogs barking!'

'But,' I said, 'we shall be sure to find Russians!'

He said we would risk that. So we set off again in the night, in the midst of a forest, not knowing where we were going, and with only a few footmarks in the snow to guide us. The footsteps ceased suddenly, and when we found them again, they turned off to the right. This put us out, as they led us away from the highroad. Very often, too, we almost lost sight of them, and Picart had frequently to go down on his knees and search for them with his hands.

Picart led the horse by the bridle, and I followed, holding his tail. A little further on we found two roads, both of them with footmarks, and we stopped, not knowing which to take. We thought of making the horse go first, and trusting to him to guide us; but at last God took compassion on our misery. We heard a dog bark, and a little further on we came to a fairly large building. Imagine the roof of one of our barns placed on the ground, and you will have an idea of the kind of building now before us. We walked round it three times before we could discover a door, hidden as it was by a thatched roof reaching down to the ground. Picart went under the roof, and found a second door, at which he knocked gently. No one answered. He knocked again. Still no answer. Thinking the house was deserted, he was about to push open the door, when a feeble voice was heard; the door opened, and an old woman appeared, holding a piece of resinous wood lighted in her hand. At seeing Picart, she dropped the wood in terror and fled. My companion picked up the wood, still alight, and advanced some steps. I fastened the horse up near the door, and on going in found Picart in a cloud of smoke. In his white cloak, with the light in his hand, he looked like a penitent. He broke the silence by the best greeting he could muster in Polish, and I repeated it after him. An old man heard us, and came forward. When he saw Picart, he exclaimed:

'Ah, Frenchmen, that is well!'

He said it in Polish, and repeated it in German. We told them that we were Frenchmen of Napoleon's Guard. At that name the Pole bowed, and would have kissed our feet. At the word 'French,' repeated by the old woman, two younger women came out of a little recess, and showed the greatest joy. Picart recognised them for the two women whose footsteps we had followed.

After being with these good people for about five minutes the heat of the cottage, to which I was so unaccustomed, nearly suffocated me. I retreated to the door, where I fell down unconscious.

Picart ran to help me, but the old woman and one of her daughters had already lifted me up, and placed me on a wooden stool. They relieved me of the saucepan and of my bearskin cloak, and made me lie down on a camp-bed covered with skins. The women seemed very sorry for us, seeing our great misery, and especially for me, as I was so young, and had suffered so much more than my comrade. My sufferings had made me so wretched that it was pitiful to see me. The old man had busied himself in bringing in our horse, and they did all they could for us. Picart remembered the gin in my pouch, and made me swallow a little, and I began to feel much better.

The old woman took off my boots for me. I had not had them off since Smolensk--that is to say, since November 10th; it was now the 23rd. One of the girls filled a great basin with warm water, and, kneeling down, took my feet gently one after the other and washed them, pointing out that I had a wound in the right foot. It was an old chilblain of 1807, at the time of the Battle of Eylau. I had not felt it since then, but now it opened again, and I suffered cruelly from it.[41]

The other girl, who seemed to be the elder, performed the same office for Picart. He submitted calmly, but seemed embarrassed. I said he had had an inspiration from God when he thought of following the girls' footsteps.

'Yes,' he said; 'but when I saw them in the forest, I never thought we should be received like this. I did not tell you,' he continued, 'that my head ached like the devil--and I still feel it. I believe that dog of a Cossack's ball did more damage than I thought. We'll see.'

He untied the cord under his chin, which held the sheepskin ear-coverings in their places; but hardly had he done this when the blood began to flow.

'Just look!' he said. 'But that's nothing--it's only a scratch; the bullet must have slipped down the side of my head.'

The Pole helped him off with his shoulder-belt. He had almost forgotten how to take off that and his fur cap, he had slept in them for so long. The girl who had washed his feet washed his head too. Everyone gathered round to serve him. The poor fellow was so much touched by their care for him that great tears rolled down his face. Scissors were needed to cut his hair, and all at once I remembered the surgeon's little case which I had taken from the Cossack. We found everything we wanted there for dressing the wound--two pairs of scissors, and several other surgical instruments, with lint and bandages. After cutting the hair off, the old woman sucked the wound, which went deeper than we thought. Then we put on some lint, a bandage, and a handkerchief. We found the ball in the midst of some rags which filled his cap. It had gone right through the left wing of the Imperial eagle on the front of the cap. To his great joy, he also found his pipe, a regular cutty, not three inches long, and he began to smoke it at once.

When our feet were washed, they dried them with lambskins, which served afterwards as a carpet; and on my chilblain they put some ointment, assuring me it would soon make me all right. They gave me a bit to take away in a piece of linen; this I put in the surgeon's case with all the instruments I had used for Picart. We already felt much better, and we thanked the Poles for all the care they had taken of us. They told us how grieved they were not to be able to do more. On a journey one must lodge one's enemies and wash their feet. How much more one's friends! Just then the old woman screamed and ran out. Her great dog had run off with Picart's cap. They wanted to beat him, but we begged him off. I proposed to Picart that we should examine the portmanteau still on the horse's back, so we carried it near the stove. First we found nine handkerchiefs embroidered in silk. 'Quick!' said Picart; 'two each for our princesses, and one for the old mother, and the others we will keep.' This was done immediately, to everyone's great satisfaction. Then we found three pairs of officer's epaulettes, three silver watches, seven crosses of honour, two silver spoons, two dozen Hussars' gilt buttons, two boxes of razors, six bank-notes of 100 roubles each, and a pair of linen trousers stained with blood. I hoped to find a shirt, but was disappointed. I had greater need of that than of anything else, as the warmth had revived the vermin which devoured me.

The girls opened their eyes wide as they looked at our presents, unable to believe they were really theirs. The gilt buttons gave them greater pleasure than anything else, and also some gold rings, which I enjoyed putting on their fingers. The girl who had washed my feet noticed, I am sure, that I gave her the best. Very likely the Cossacks cut off the dead men's fingers to take the rings.

To the old man we gave a large English watch and two razors, besides all the Russian small money, amounting to more than thirty francs. We noticed that he fixed his eyes continually on a commander's cross with the Emperor's portrait, so we also gave that to him. I cannot describe his pleasure. He pressed it several times to his lips and his heart, and finally fastened it round his neck by a leather band, making us understand that only death should part him from it.

We asked for some bread, and they brought us what they had not dared give us before, they said, it was so bad. We really could not eat it. It was made of a black paste, full of grains of barley, rye, and bits of straw, rough enough to tear one's throat to pieces. They said this bread came from the Russians, that three leagues off the French had beaten them that very morning, and had taken a large convoy from them. This news had been brought to them by the Jews who were flying from all the villages on the road to Minsk. They had also sold them this bread, which was quite uneatable, and although I had not eaten any bread for more than a month, I could not manage to get my teeth into it. For a long time, too, my lips had been so cracked by the frost that they bled constantly.

When the peasants saw that we could not eat the bread, they brought us a piece of mutton, a few potatoes, some onions, and some pickled cucumber. They gave us, in fact, everything they had, saying that they would do their best to get us something better. We put the mutton into the saucepan to make some soup. The old man told us that half a league off there was a village filled with refugee Jews, and as they had carried off all their food with them, he hoped he could find there something better to eat than what they had set before us. We wished to give him some money, but he refused it, saying that what we had given him and his daughters would be quite sufficient, and that one of them had already gone off with her mother and the big dog.

They had made a bed for us on the ground, of straw and sheepskins. Picart had already gone to sleep, and I soon followed his example. We were awakened by the loud barking of the dog. 'Good!' said the Pole, 'my wife and daughter have come back.' They brought us some milk, a few potatoes, and a little cake of rye-meal, which they had procured by heavy payment, but brandy, _nima_.[42]

The little there was had been taken by the Russians. We thanked these kind people who had walked nearly two leagues, with the snow up to their knees, in the middle of the night, too, in terrible cold, and exposed to the attacks of wolves and bears, which abound in Lithuanian forests. We made some milk soup and drank it at once. I felt much better after I had eaten, and then sat reflecting, my head in my hands. Picart asked me what I was thinking of.

'I am thinking,' I said, 'that if I were not with you, and bound by honour and my oath, I should stay here in this forest with these good people.'

'Cheer up,' he said. 'I have had a lucky dream. I dreamed I was in the barracks at Courbevoie, eating a piece of _Mere aux bouts'_ pudding, and drinking a bottle of Suresnes wine.'[43]

While Picart was speaking, I noticed that his face was very red, and that he frequently put his hand to his forehead. I asked him if his head pained him. He said it did, but that was caused very likely by the heat, or by having slept too long, but he seemed to me to be in a fever. His vision of the barracks at Courbevoie confirmed me in this opinion. 'I want to go on with my dream, and try to find _Mere aux bouts_ again,' he said. 'Good-night!' He was asleep in two minutes.

I, too, tried to rest, but my sleep was constantly broken by the pains in my legs, the result of my continued over-walking. The dog began to bark soon after Picart went to sleep; he roused the people of the house, and the old man, who was seated on a bench near the stove, got up and seized a lance fastened to a long pine-branch, his only means of defence. He ran to the door, followed by his wife, and I did the same, taking care not to wake Picart, and armed myself with my musket and bayonet. We heard someone trying the outer door, and in reply to the old man's question of who was there, a nasal voice answered, 'Samuel!' The wife then told her husband that it was a Jew from the village. I resumed my place on hearing that a son of Israel was at the door, taking care to collect all our possessions around me, so little confidence had I in the new-comer. I slept for two hours, when Picart awoke me to take my share of the mutton soup. He still complained of a bad pain in his head, saying he had dreamt of nothing but Paris and Courbevoie, and, forgetting that he had already related his dream to me, told me that he had been dancing at the barriere du Roule,[44] and had drunk with the Grenadiers who were killed at the Battle of Eylau.

As we sat down to eat, the Jew gave us a bottle of gin, which Picart took possession of at once, and speaking in German, he asked its history. When he tasted it, all the thanks the Jew got was the exclamation that it was not worth the devil. It was bad gin made from potato-spirit.

The idea came to me that we might make use of the Jew as a guide; we had quite enough with us to tempt his love of gain. Picart approved of my plan, and just as he was prepared to propose it, the horse raised himself, terrified, trying to break his tether, and the dog gave tongue, and at the same moment some wolves began howling at the door. Picart took his musket to chase them away, but our host warned him against this, on account of the Russians. He contented himself, therefore, by taking his sword in one hand, and in the other a piece of flaming pine. Then opening the door, he ran at the wolves and put them to flight. He came in again, saying that the air had done him good, and that his headache had nearly gone. The wolves afterwards came back, but we took no notice of them.

As I had expected, the Jew asked us if we had anything to sell or exchange. I said to Picart that now was the time for proposals, as we wanted to be put on our way to Borisow, or to the first French outpost. I asked him how far we were from the Berezina, and he answered nine leagues by the high road; but we made him understand that we wished to get there by a shorter route, and I proposed that he should guide us if we could arrange it. We gave him the three pairs of epaulettes, and a bank-note worth 100 roubles, the whole the value of 500 francs; I made the conditions, however, that the epaulettes should be left in charge of our host, who would hand them over to him on his return, and that I would give him the bank-note on arriving at our destination--that is, at the first French outpost. When he returned the epaulettes would be given to him on presentation of a silk handkerchief which I showed to the assembled company. The handkerchief was to be given to the younger daughter, who had washed my feet, and the Jew agreed to give our host and hostess 25 roubles. The son of Israel accepted the conditions, observing, however, that he should be running a great many risks in thus leaving the highroad. Our host said how sorry he felt that he was not ten years younger, so that he might guide us for nothing, and defend us also against any Russians who might come; saying this, he shook his halberd. He gave the Jew a great many instructions as to the road, and he at last consented to guide us, after satisfying himself that everything we had given him was of full value.

At nine in the morning we started. It was November 24th. The Polish family stood on the highest piece of ground they could find, following us with their eyes, and waving to us with their hands. Our guide went first, leading our horse. Picart talked to himself, sometimes standing and going through the musket-drill. All at once he stopped, and, on turning round, I saw him motionless, porting arms as if on parade. Suddenly he thundered out, 'Vive l'Empereur!' I went up to him, and, taking him by the arm, I said, 'What is the matter with you, Picart?' fearing that he had gone mad.

'What!' he answered, as if only just awake, 'isn't the Emperor inspecting us?'

I was distressed to hear him, and answering that it was not to-day, but to-morrow, I took his arm, and hurried him along to catch up with the Jew. Large tears were falling down his face.

'What,' I said, 'an old soldier crying!'

'Let me cry,' he said; 'it will do me good. I feel miserable, and if we don't get to the regiment to-morrow, it's all up with me.'

'Cheer up! We shall be there to-morrow, I hope, or the next day at latest. How's this? You are taking on just like a woman.'

'That is so,' he said; 'I can't explain it. I was either sleeping or dreaming; but I am better now.'

'That's right, _mon vieux_. It's nothing; it has often happened to me before. But since you came I have felt quite hopeful.'

As I talked, I saw our guide stop continually to listen. Suddenly Picart threw himself full length in the snow, and shouted in a commanding voice, 'Silence!'

'Now,' I said to myself, 'he's done with--my old comrade has gone mad! What will become of me?'

I looked at him petrified. He then got up, and shouted again, 'Vive l'Empereur! The guns! Listen! We're saved!'

'What do you mean?' I said.

'Yes, listen,' he went on.

I listened, and really heard the sound of distant guns.

'Ah, now I can breathe again!' he said; 'the Emperor is not a prisoner, as that fool of an emigrant said yesterday. It had got regularly on my brain, and I should have died of rage and mortification. Now let us go in that direction; it's a safe guide.'

The Israelite assured us that the guns were in the direction of the Berezina, and my old comrade was so delighted that he began to sing:

Air du _Cure de Pomponne._

'Les Autrichiens disaient tout bas; Les Francais vont vite en besogne Prenez, tandis qu'ils n'y sont pas, L'Alsace et la Bourgogne. Ah! tu t'en souviendras, la-ri-ra, Du depart de Boulogne' (_bis_).[45]

Half an hour later we could not advance any further, so difficult had our march become; our guide believed he had missed the way. We heard the booming of the guns continually; it might be about mid-day. All at once the sound of the guns ceased, the wind got up again, and the snow began falling in such quantities that we could not see each other, and the poor son of Israel gave up leading the horse. We advised him to mount the beast, which advice he took. I began to feel terribly tired, and uneasy in my mind, but said nothing; while Picart swore like a madman because he could not hear the guns, and at the wind which prevented our hearing. The trees were now so close together that we could not possibly penetrate through them. Every moment something caught our feet, and we fell headlong on the ground half buried in the snow; and after much painful walking we found ourselves at the place we had left an hour before.

We now stopped for a few minutes, drank some of the bad gin which the Jew had given us, and discussed our next move. We decided that we must return to the highroad. I asked the guide if he could take us back to where we had spent the night, in the event of our not being able to find the road. He said he could, but that we must make landmarks where we passed. Picart accomplished this by 'blazing' the young birches and pines as he went along. When we had gone about half a league, we came upon a cottage; it was only just in time, as my strength was now failing me. We decided to halt there for half an hour while we fed the horse, and ourselves also. By a stroke of luck, we found there a quantity of dry wood for burning, two benches made of rough wood, and three sheepskins; these we thought we would take away with us, in case we were obliged to spend the night in the forest.

We warmed ourselves while we ate a piece of horseflesh. Our guide would not touch it, but drew from under his sheepskin cloak a wretched-looking cake of barley-flour mixed with straw, which he begged us to share with him. He swore to us by his father Abraham that he had nothing with him but that and a few nuts. We therefore divided it into four; the Jew took two parts, and we each had one. We also drank a little of the bad gin. When I offered some to him he refused, as he would not drink out of our cup, but he accepted some poured into the hollow of his hand.

Then he told us that the next hut was a good hour's walk off, so we resolved to set out at once for fear of being overtaken by the darkness. The road was so narrow that we had the greatest difficulty in getting along, but Samuel, our guide, had pluck, and kept on assuring us that it would become wider farther on.

As a finishing stroke to our misfortunes, the snow began to fall again heavily, and completely hid the way from us. Our guide burst into tears, saying that he did not know where we were. We tried to retrace our steps, but this was worse, as the snow flew straight in our faces, and now the best thing we could do was to stand against a group of pine-trees, waiting till it pleased God to stop the snow-storm. It lasted for more than half an hour longer. We were almost perished with cold. At times Picart swore, and then he would hum:

'Ah! tu t'en souviendras, la-ri-ra, Du depart de Boulogne!'

The Jew continually cried out, 'My God! my God!' For my part, I said nothing, but my thoughts were gloomy, and had it not been for my bearskin and the Rabbi's cap, which I wore under my shako, I should have yielded to the cold.

As soon as the weather grew a little better, we tried to find our way, but a complete calm had followed the storm, so that we could not distinguish the north from the south. We were now completely lost. We walked on at random in great circles, continually coming back to the same place.

Picart swore continually, but now it was at the Jew. However, after walking for some time, we found ourselves in an open space, about 400 yards in circumference, and we hoped to find a road here, but after wandering round it several times, we discovered nothing. We looked at each other, hoping for an idea from someone. My old comrade leant his musket against a tree, and, looking all round him, he drew his sword from its sheath. Hardly had he done so, when the poor Jew, thinking he was going to be killed, set up a piercing shriek, and, leaving the horse, prepared to fly; his strength, however, failed him, and he fell on his knees, imploring mercy of God and of us; quite needlessly, however, as Picart had only drawn his sword to cut down a small birch-tree and consult it as to our direction. He looked fixedly at the part of the tree still in the ground, and then said calmly, 'That is the direction we must take. The bark on this side, which must be the north, is a little red and rotted, and the other side, that of the south, is white and perfect. Let us walk towards the south.'

We had no time to lose, as our greatest dread was that night should overtake us. We tried to beat out a path for ourselves, taking care not to lose the direction of our starting-point.

Just then the Jew, who was in front of us, uttered a cry, and we saw him stretched full length on the ground. He had fallen down in trying to drag the horse between two trees where there was not room to pass. The poor _cognia_ could neither go forward nor back. We had to stop and disentangle the man from the horse; the burden the horse carried, as well as his harness, had been pressed backwards on to his hind-quarters.

I was much put out at this loss of time. I would willingly have left the horse behind, but at the end of half an hour's efforts we discovered a fairly wide path, which the Jew recognised as being the continuation of the road we had lost. He knew the road by some beehives in the trees, too high, unfortunately, for us to reach.[46]

Picart looked at his watch, and saw that it was nearly four o'clock, therefore we had no time to lose. We now found ourselves close to a frozen lake, known to our guide. We crossed it without difficulty, and, turning to the left, continued our journey. Very soon we saw four men, who stopped on seeing us. We naturally got on guard at once, but it was soon apparent that they were more frightened than we, and after consulting together they came towards us, wishing us good-day. They were four Jews, known to our guide, belonging to a village on the high road. As the village was occupied by the French army, they could not possibly remain there without dying of cold and hunger. The provisions were all gone, and not a single house was left for shelter, even for the Emperor. From them we learnt, to our joy, that the French army was only two leagues off. They advised us, however, to go no further that day, as we might easily miss the road. We could pass the night in the first hut we should come to, not far off. They left us, bidding us good-night, and we fortunately soon found our resting-place for the night, There was a quantity of straw and wood in the hut, and we immediately lit a good fire in an earthenware stove we found there. It would have taken too long to make soup, so we contented ourselves with a piece of roast meat, and then decided to watch in turn two hours at a time, with loaded weapons near us.

I do not know how long I had been asleep, when I was awakened by the horse, frightened in his turn by the howling of the wolves outside. Picart took a long pole, and tying some straw and resinous wood to the end, he lit it and rushed on the animals, holding his flaming pole in one hand and his sword in the other, and for the moment they fled. He returned triumphant, but he had scarcely lain down again when they came back with redoubled fury. He then took a great piece of lighted wood, and, throwing it a dozen yards off, he told the Jew to take out a quantity of dry wood to keep up the blaze. After this we heard no more howling.

At about four o'clock Picart woke me with an agreeable surprise. Without telling me, he had made soup with some oatmeal and flour he had left, and had roasted a good piece of horseflesh. We both set to with a good appetite. Picart had given the Jew his share, and we took care of the horse also. We had filled several wooden tubs with snow, which was now melted; we purified it by putting in a quantity of lighted charcoal. This served for our drink, for soup, and for watering the horse, who had drunk nothing since the evening before. After looking to our boots, I took a piece of charcoal, and wrote the following inscription on a plank in large letters:

'Two Grenadiers of the Emperor Napoleon's Guard, lost in this forest, passed the nights of November 24th and 25th in this hut. The day before they enjoyed the hospitality of a kind Polish family.' This inscription I signed.

We had scarcely gone fifty yards, when our horse stopped short. Our guide said he thought he saw something on the road, and on going nearer there were two wolves sitting waiting for us. Picart fired, and the wolves disappeared. Half an hour afterwards we were safe.

We first came across a bivouac of twelve men, German soldiers attached to our army. We stopped near their fire to ask for news. They looked at us without answering, and then consulted among themselves. They were in the last stage of destitution. Three dead bodies were lying near them. As our guide had now kept his bargain, we gave him what we promised him, and after asking him again to thank the good Poles for us, we bade him good-bye and a safe journey. He strode off quickly and disappeared.

We now prepared to gain the high road, only ten minutes' walk off, when five of the Germans surrounded us, begging us to leave our horse behind to be killed, and assuring us we should have our share. Two of them took hold of his bridle, but Picart, who had had enough of this, said, in bad German, that if they did not leave hold of the bridle he would cut their faces for them with his sword, and he drew it out of its sheath. The Germans took no notice, and Picart repeated what he had said. No answer. He then gave the two holding the bridle a smart blow with his fist which stretched them in the snow. He asked me to hold the horse, and said to the others: 'Come on, if you have any pluck.' Seeing, however, that no one moved, he took three pieces of meat out of the saucepan and gave them to the men. Those lying on the ground got up at once for their share. I saw that they were almost dead of hunger, and to make up for our rough treatment of them, I gave them a piece already cooked, weighing more than three pounds. They threw themselves on the food ravenously enough, and we continued on our way. A little farther on, we came on two fires almost extinguished, several men, half dead, lying around them. Two of them spoke to us; one cried, 'Comrades, are you going to kill the horse? I only want a little blood!'

We did not answer. We were still a gun-shot from the highroad. When at last we reached it, I said aloud to Picart, 'We are saved!'

A man near us, wrapped in a half-burned cloak, said, raising his voice, 'Not yet!' He moved off, looking at me and shrugging his shoulders. He knew what was going on better than I did.

Soon afterwards we saw a detachment of about thirty men, engineers and _pontonniers_. I recognised them as the men we had met at Orcha, where they formed part of the garrison.[47] This detachment, commanded by three officers, and which had joined us only four days ago, had not suffered. They looked strong and well, and were travelling in the direction of the Berezina. I asked an officer to direct us to the Imperial quarters, and he replied that it was still in the rear, but had begun to move, and that we should soon see the head of the column appear. He warned us to look well after our horse, as the Emperor had given orders to take all that were found for the use of the artillery and the wounded. While we waited for the column we hid ourselves in the wood.

I cannot possibly describe all the sufferings, anguish, and scenes of desolation I had seen and passed through, nor those which I was fated still to see and endure; they left deep and terrible memories, which I have never forgotten.

This was November 25th, perhaps about seven o'clock in the morning, and as yet it was hardly light. I was musing on all I had seen, when the head of the column appeared. Those in advance seemed to be Generals, a few on horseback, but the greater part on foot. There were also a great number of other officers, the remnant of the Doomed Squadron and Battalion formed on the 22nd, and barely existing at the end of three days. Those on foot dragged themselves painfully along, almost all of them having their feet frozen and wrapped in rags or in bits of sheepskin, and all nearly dying of hunger. Afterwards came the small remains of the Cavalry of the Guard. The Emperor came next, on foot, and carrying a baton. He wore a large cloak lined with fur, a dark-red velvet cap with black fox fur on his head. Murat walked on foot at his right, and on his left the Prince Eugene, Viceroy of Italy. Next came the Marshals, Berthier--Prince of Neufchatel--Ney, Mortier, Lefebvre, with other Marshals and Generals whose corps had been nearly annihilated.

The Emperor mounted a horse as soon as he passed: so did a few of those with him, the greater part of them having no more horses to ride. Seven or eight hundred officers and non-commissioned officers followed, walking in order and perfect silence, and carrying the eagles of their different regiments, which so often had led them to victory. This was all that remained of 60,000 men.

After them came the Imperial Guard on foot, marching also in order. The first were the Chasseurs. Poor Picart, who had not seen the army for a month, gazed in silence; but it was easy to see how much he felt. He struck the ground many times with the butt of his musket, then his breast and forehead with his clenched hand. Great tears fell from his eyes, rolled down his cheeks, and froze in his moustache. Then, turning to me, he said:

'I don't know, _mon pays_, if I am awake or dreaming. It breaks my heart to see our Emperor on foot, his baton in his hand. He, so great, who made us all so proud of him!' He went on: 'Did you notice how he looked at us?'

The Emperor had turned his head towards us as he passed. He looked at us as he always looked at the men of his Guard when he met them alone. He seemed, in this hour of misfortune, to inspire us by his glance with confidence and courage. Picart declared that the Emperor had recognised him, which was quite possible. My old comrade, fearful of looking ridiculous, had taken off his white cloak and carried it over his left arm, and although his head still pained him, he had put on his fur cap, not liking to appear in the sheepskin the Poles had given him. Poor Picart forgot all his own miseries, and now only thought of the Emperor, and of the comrades he longed to see.

At last the old Grenadiers appeared. These were the first regiment; Picart belonged to the second. We were not long in catching sight of them, however, as the first column was a short one--in my opinion quite half were missing. When at last his own regiment came up to us, Picart advanced to join it.

Then someone said:

'Look! Isn't that like Picart?'

'Yes,' answered Picart, 'it is I; and I will not leave you again, except to die.'

The company immediately took possession of him (for the sake of the horse, of course). I walked with him for some time longer, to get a piece of the horse's flesh if they killed him, but a shout was heard:

'The horse belongs to the company, like the man!'

'I belong to the company, certainly,' said Picart; 'but the sergeant, who claims a bit of the horse, killed his master in the first place.'

'Very well, then,' said a sergeant who knew me, 'he shall have some.'

This sergeant took the place of a sergeant-major who had died the day before.

The column came to a halt, and an officer asked Picart where he came from, and how he happened to be in front, as those who had escorted the convoy had come back three days ago. The halt lasted for some time. Picart related his adventures, stopping continually to ask after several comrades whom he failed to see in the ranks. They were all dead. He dared not ask after his bed-mate, who was also from his own country. But at last he ventured.

'And where is Rougeau?'

'At Krasnoe,' said the drummer.

'Ah! I understand.'

'Yes,' continued the drummer, 'he died from a ball which cut both his legs off. Before he died he made you his executor. He gave me for you his cross, his watch, and a little leather bag containing money and different things. He begged me to tell you that they were for his mother. If, like him, you were so unfortunate as not to see France again, you were to commission someone else.'

The drummer, named Patrice, then took all the things out of his knapsack before all the company, saying to Picart:

'I give them to you just as I received them from his hands. He took them out of his knapsack--which we replaced under his head--and directly afterwards he died.'

'If I have the good fortune to get back to Picardy,' said my friend, 'I will carry out my comrade's last wishes.'

They began the march, and I bade good-bye to my old friend, saying we should meet again at bivouac in the evening.

Then I waited by the side of the road until my regiment came by, as I heard it formed part of the rear-guard.

After the Grenadiers came more than 30,000 men, almost all with their feet and hands frozen, a great number of them without firearms, as they were quite unable to make use of them. Many of them walked leaning on sticks; generals, colonels, other officers, privates, men on horseback, men on foot, men of all the different nations making up our army, passed in a confused rabble, covered with cloaks and coats all torn and burnt, wrapped in bits of cloth, in sheepskins, in everything they could lay their hands on to keep out the cold. They walked silently without complaining, keeping themselves as ready as they could for any possible struggle with the enemy. The Emperor in our midst inspired us with confidence, and found resources to save us yet. There he was--always the great genius; however miserable we might be, with him we were always sure of victory in the end.

I had more than an hour to wait before the column had passed by, and after that there was a long train of miserable wretches following the regiments mechanically. They had reached the last stage of destitution, and could not hope to get across the Berezina, although we were now so near it. Then I saw the remains of the Young Guard, skirmishers, flank-men, and some of the light companies, escaped from Krasnoe. All these regiments mingled together marched in perfect order. Behind them came the artillery and several waggons. The bulk of the artillery, commanded by General Negre, had already gone before. Next came the Fusiliers-Chasseurs. Their numbers were greatly diminished. Our regiment was still separated from me by some pieces of artillery, drawn by poor beasts with no power left in them. After that I saw my regiment marching to left and right of the road to join the Fusiliers-Chasseurs. The Adjutant-Major, Roustan, saw me the first, and cried out, 'Hallo, poor Bourgogne! Is that you? We thought you were dead behind us, and here you are alive in front! This is first-rate. Have you met some of our men behind?' I told him that for the last three days I had been in the woods to avoid being taken by the Russians. M. Cesarisse said to the Colonel that he knew I had stayed behind since the 22nd, and that he was surprised beyond everything to see me again. My company came at last, and I took my own place in it before my friends were aware of it.[48] When at last they saw me, they came round me asking questions which I had not strength to answer; I was as overwhelmed to find myself once more amongst my comrades as if I had been with my own family. They told me they could not imagine how I had become separated from them, and that if they had only known I was ill and could not follow, it should not have happened. As I glanced over the company, I saw that their numbers also were terribly diminished. The Captain was missing. He had lost all his toes by the frost, and just at that moment they did not know where he was, although they had found a wretched horse for him to ride. Two of my friends took hold of me under the arms, seeing that I could scarcely walk.[49]

We joined the Fusiliers-Chasseurs. I never remember in all my life having such a terrible longing for sleep, and yet we were obliged to go on. My friends supported me under the arms again, telling me to go to sleep. This we did for each other in turn, for sleep overcame us all. Frequently it happened that we stopped short, all three of us having gone off. The cold, fortunately, was much less that day, otherwise most of us might have been frozen to death.

In the middle of the night we reached Borisow. The Emperor stayed in a country house on the right of the road, and the Guard bivouacked round it. General Roguet, who commanded us, took possession of a greenhouse for the night. I and my friends were behind it. During the night the cold increased very much. The next day (the 26th) we took up a position on the banks of the Berezina. The Emperor was at Studianka, a little village on a hill in front.

We saw the brave _pontonniers_ working hard at the bridges for us to cross. They had worked all night, standing up to their shoulders in ice-cold water, encouraged by their General.[50] These brave men sacrificed their lives to save the army. One of my friends told me as a fact that he had seen the Emperor himself handing wine to them.

The first bridge was finished at two o'clock in the afternoon. It was a painful and difficult piece of work, as the trestles sank continually in the mud. Marshal Oudinot's corps crossed immediately to attack the Russians, who had tried to prevent our passage. The cavalry of the 2nd Corps had already swum across, not waiting for the bridge to be finished, and every man took a foot soldier behind him. The second bridge, for the artillery and cavalry, was finished at four o'clock.[51]

Directly we arrived at the banks of the river I lay down wrapped up in my fur, and then found myself trembling all over with fever. I was delirious for a long time. I fancied I was at my father's house, eating potatoes, bread and butter _a la flamande_, and drinking beer. I do not know how long I was in this condition, but I remember my friend bringing me some hot broth in a bowl, which I drank eagerly, and I was soon in a perspiration, in spite of the cold. Besides my bearskin cloak, my friends had covered me with a great piece of waterproofing they had torn off a waggon. The rest of the night I lay quiet without moving.

On the next day (the 27th) I felt rather better, but terribly weak. That day the Emperor crossed the Berezina with part of the Guard, and about a thousand men belonging to Marshal Ney's corps. Our regiment remained on the banks. Suddenly I heard my name called; I turned my head and saw M. Peniaux, director of the Emperor's stage posts and relays, who had searched me out. They told him that I was ill, and he came at once, not to give me anything--he had nothing to give, except encouragement. I thanked him for his kindness, and said I did not expect even to cross the Berezina, or to see France again; but I begged him, if he were more fortunate than I, to tell my parents of my sad situation. He offered me money, but I declined it. I would willingly have exchanged 800 francs for the potatoes and bread-and-butter I dreamed I had eaten at home.

Before he left me he pointed out the house where the Emperor had stayed, saying he had been unfortunate, as the house was a flour warehouse, but the Russians had taken it all, so that he had nothing to offer me. He shook me by the hand and left me to cross the bridge.

As soon as he had gone, I remembered that he had spoken of some flour in the Emperor's house, so I rose, and, weak as I was, I dragged myself in that direction. The Emperor had only just left the house, and yet they had already taken off all the doors. I went through several rooms, and the traces of flour could be seen in them all. In one of them the boards in the floor were very badly laid down; there was more than an inch between them. I sat down and scraped out with my sword as much dirt as flour, which I collected and put into my handkerchief. After working more than an hour, I got out about two pounds in weight, an eighth of which was dirt, straw, and little bits of wood. That did not matter in the least; I went out happy. As I made my way towards our bivouac I saw a fire, where several men from the Guard were warming themselves. Amongst them was a musician from our regiment, who had a tin bowl on his knapsack. I signed to him to come to me, and as he seemed unwilling to leave his place, I pointed to my parcel, making him understand there was something inside it. He rose with difficulty, and when he was near enough I said, in a voice which the others could not hear, that if he would lend me his bowl, I would make some cakes which we could share. He consented directly, and as there were several fires near, we looked out for one in a quiet place. I then made a paste and four cakes from it; the half I gave to my musician, and took him back with me to the regiment, still camped on the bank of the river. I divided the rest of the cakes with the men who had helped me along the road; they thought them very good, still hot as they were from the baking. After drinking some of the muddy water of the Berezina, we warmed ourselves, waiting for the order to cross the bridges.

Near our fire was a man belonging to the company attired in _full uniform_! I asked him what that was for, and he only laughed at me. The poor fellow was ill; that laugh was the laugh of death, as he succumbed during the night.

A little further off was an old soldier with two chevrons--fifteen years service, that is. His wife was _cantiniere_. They had lost everything--carts, horses, baggage, besides two children, who had died in the snow; all this poor woman had left to her was despair and a dying husband. The poor creature, still a young woman, was sitting on the snow, holding her dying husband's head on her knees. She did not weep; her grief seemed beyond that. Behind her, leaning on her shoulder, was a beautiful young girl of thirteen or fourteen years, the only child remaining to her. This poor child was sobbing bitterly, her tears falling and freezing on her father's cold face. She wore a soldier's cape over her poor dress, and a sheepskin on her shoulders to keep out the cold.[52] None of their own comrades were there to comfort them. Their regiment was utterly destroyed. We did all that we possibly could for them, but I was not able to find out if these unhappy people were saved. Whichever way one turned, these terrible scenes were taking place. Old carts and waggons furnished us with wood enough to warm ourselves, and we made the most of this opportunity. My friends wanted to hear how I had spent my three days of absence. They told me on their side that on the 23rd, when they were marching across the forest, they caught sight of the 9th Corps drawn up by the roadside, shouting 'Vive l'Empereur!' They had not set eyes on this corps for five months. These men, who had scarcely suffered at all, and had never wanted food, were distressed at seeing their comrades' destitution. They could hardly believe that this was the Moscow army, then so splendid, now so miserable, and so sadly reduced in numbers.

The 2nd _Corps d'Armee_, commanded by Marshal Oudinot, and the 9th by Marshal Victor, Duke of Bellune, also the Poles under General Dombrowski, had not been to Moscow, but had remained in Lithuania. For the last few days, however, they had been engaged against the Russians, had repulsed them, and taken a large quantity of baggage; as the Russians retired they had burnt the bridge. This was the only bridge over the Berezina, and had stopped our advance, keeping us penned up between two forests in the middle of a marsh. We were a medley of Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Croats, Germans, Poles, Romans, Neapolitans, and even Prussians. I saw some canteen men whose wives and children were in great despair, weeping. We noticed that the men seemed to suffer more, both morally and physically, than the women. The women bore their sufferings and privations with an astonishing courage, enough to reflect shame on certain men, who had no courage and resignation to endure their trials. Very few of these women died, except those who fell into the Berezina in crossing the bridge, or some who were suffocated.

We were quiet when night came, every one in his bivouac, and no one came to cross the bridge during the night of the 27th-28th, a most astonishing thing. I slept, as we had a good fire, but in the middle of the night I was seized with fever again, and became delirious. The sound of firing woke me at about seven o'clock. I got up, took my firearms, and without speaking to anyone I went up to the bridge and crossed it alone. I met no one but the _pontonniers_, who camped on the two banks to repair the bridge in case of any accident.

The first thing I saw when I reached the other side was a large wooden hut. The Emperor had slept there, and had not come out yet. I was shivering with fever, so went up towards a fire where several officers were engaged in studying a map. I received such a cold welcome, however, that I hastily retired. One of our men, who had observed me, now came up to tell me that our regiment had crossed the bridge, and was in the second line of battle behind Marshal Oudinot's corps. As the cannon roared, and the bullets came rattling over to where we were standing, I started off to join the regiment, saying to myself that I had better be shot than die of cold and hunger, so I walked forward into the wood. On the way I overtook a corporal of my company dragging himself painfully along, so we helped each other and arrived at the regiment together. There we saw a fire, and as the corporal was shivering with fever, I led him up to it. Hardly had we arrived, when a ball struck my poor comrade in the chest, and stretched him dead at my feet. I could not help crying out, 'Poor Marcelin! How lucky you are!' Just then the rumour ran that Marshal Oudinot was wounded.

When the Colonel saw one of his men fall, he ran to the fire, and noticing how ill I was, he ordered me to go back to the end of the bridge and wait for men who had not come up, and bring them to the regiment. The greatest disorder prevailed at this place. All the men who had not taken advantage of the night to cross had thrown themselves in a mass on to the banks of the river as soon as they heard the artillery, in order to cross by the bridges.

A corporal of our company named Gros-Jean, who came from Paris, asked me with tears in his eyes if I had seen his brother. I said no. Then he told me that he had been with him ever since the Battle of Krasnoe, as he was ill with fever; but just now, by some dreadful fatality, they had been separated. Thinking he had gone on in front, he had been inquiring of his comrades on all sides, and not finding him, he was going back over the bridge, for if he did not find him he would die. Wishing to dissuade him from such a fatal resolution, I begged him to stay with me at the head of the bridge, where we should very likely see his brother as he passed. But the poor fellow stripped off his arms and knapsack, saying that, as I had lost my own, he would make me a present of them if he did not return, and that there were plenty of muskets over at the other side. He then made as if he would go, but I stopped him. I pointed out to him the number of dead and dying already on the bridge, these last preventing others passing over by catching hold of their legs, and all rolling together in the Berezina. They appeared for a moment amongst bits of ice, only to disappear altogether and make way for others. Gros-Jean did not even hear me. Fixing his eyes on this scene of horror, he thought he perceived his brother on the bridge, struggling to clear a pathway for himself through the crowd. So, listening only to the voice of despair, he climbed over the dead bodies of men and horses which blocked up the way from the bridge,[53] and rushed on. Those he first met tried to thrust him back, but he was strong, and did not give way. He succeeded in reaching the unfortunate man whom he had taken for his brother; but, alas! it was not he. I followed all his movements with my eyes. Seeing his mistake, he redoubled his efforts to reach the further end; but he was knocked over on to his back, on the edge of the bridge, and nearly thrown into the water. They walked over his body, his head, but nothing vanquished him. He collected all his strength for a new effort to rise, and seized hold of a Cuirassier's leg, who, in his turn, got hold of another man's arm. The Cuirassier, however, was hindered by a cloak over his shoulder; he staggered, fell, and rolled into the Berezina, dragging after him Gros-Jean and the man whose arm he held. They sank then, adding to the number of men underneath the bridge and on each side of it.

The Cuirassier and his companion disappeared under the ice; but Gros-Jean, more fortunate, had seized one of the supports of the bridge, against which he found a horse. Climbing on to the horse by his knees, he begged for help, for a long time speaking to deaf ears. Finally some engineers threw him a rope, which he was clever enough to catch and tie round his body; and thus from one support to another, over dead bodies and lumps of ice, he was drawn over to the further side. I did not see him again; but I heard the next day that he had found his brother, a little distance off, but in a dying condition. Thus perished these two poor brothers, and also a third in the 2nd Lancers. When I got back to Paris I saw their parents, who begged me for news of their children. I left them one ray of hope by saying that their sons had been taken prisoners, but I felt certain they died.

While these sad events were taking place, the Grenadiers of the Guard, accompanied by an officer, went round the bivouacs, asking for dry wood to warm the Emperor. Everyone willingly gave the best they had. Even dying men raised their heads to say, 'Take what you can for the Emperor.' By this time it might be ten o'clock, and the second bridge, built for the cavalry and artillery, had just broken in under the weight of the latter; a number of men sank with it, and most of them perished. The disorder and confusion were thus doubly increased, for, as everyone rushed to the other bridge, it became an absolute impossibility to get across. Men, horses, carts, canteen men, with their wives and children, were all mingled in frightful disorder, crushed against each other; and in spite of the shouts of Marshal Lefebvre, who stood at the end of the bridge to keep all the order possible, he could not remain there. He was swept on with the others and forced to cross, to avoid being suffocated or crushed to death. I had managed to get together five men of our regiment, three of whom had lost their firearms in the confusion, and I had ordered them to make a fire. I kept my eyes fixed all the time on the bridge, and saw a man in a white cloak; he was pushed by those behind him, and fell over the body of a horse stretched on the ground. With extreme difficulty he got up, staggered a few steps, fell again, rose a second time, only to fall again by our fire. He remained thus for a little while, and, thinking that he was dead, we were about to lay him on one side and remove his cloak, when he raised his head and looked at me. It was the gunsmith of our regiment. He said sadly:

'Ah, sergeant, what misfortunes I have had! I have lost everything--horses, carts--all I had! I have only one mule left which I brought from Spain, and I have just been forced to leave him. I was carried across the bridge, but I nearly died.'

I told him that he would be very fortunate, and ought to thank Heaven, if he got back to France alive.

So many men now crowded round our fire that we were obliged to leave it and make another some little way back. The confusion and disorder went on increasing, and reached their full height when Marshal Victor was attacked by the Russians, and shells and bullets showered thickly upon us. To complete our misery, snow began to fall and a cold wind blew. This dreadful state of things lasted all day and through the next night, and all this time the Berezina became gradually filled with ice, dead bodies of men and horses, while the bridge got blocked up with carts full of wounded men, some of which rolled over the edge into the water. Between eight and nine o'clock that evening Marshal Victor began his retreat. He and his men had to cross the bridge over a perfect mountain of corpses. On the night of the 28th-29th it was possible for all the unfortunate wretches on the opposite bank to get across, but, paralyzed by the cold, they stayed behind to warm themselves by the warmth of the burning waggons, which had been set on fire on purpose to make the men go across.

I remained in the rear with seventeen men and a sergeant named Rossiere, led by one of the men, as he had become almost blind, and was shivering with fever.[54] I was sorry for him, and offered to lend him my bearskin to cover him, but so much snow had fallen during the night that it had saturated the cloak. The snow then melted with the heat of the fire and dried up again. When I took hold of the skin in the morning, it was as hard as iron and useless for wearing, and I had to leave it behind. Wishing, however, to make it useful to the last, I laid it over a dying man. We had passed a wretched night. Many of the men in the Imperial Guard had died. At about seven o'clock on the morning of the 29th I went towards the bridge, hoping to find some more of our men. The unfortunate men who had not taken advantage of the night to get away had at the first appearance of dawn rushed on to the bridge, but now it was too late. Preparations were already made to burn it down. Numbers jumped into the water, hoping to swim through the floating bits of ice, but not one reached the shore. I saw them all there in water up to their shoulders, and, overcome by the terrible cold, they all miserably perished. On the bridge was a canteen man carrying a child on his head. His wife was in front of him, crying bitterly. I could not stay any longer, it was more than I could bear. Just as I turned away, a cart containing a wounded officer fell from the bridge, with the horse also.[55] They next set fire to the bridge, and I have been told that scenes impossible to describe for horror then took place. The details I had witnessed were merely slight sketches of the horrible picture that followed.

I was now told that the regiment was moving. I made the men take up their arms, and counted them to the number of twenty-three, without the gunsmith. As the regiment moved off, each man joined his company.

We were at last on the march; it might be, perhaps, nine o'clock. We crossed a wooded piece of ground interspersed by marshes, which we traversed by means of bridges made of pine-wood, fortunately not burned by the Russians. We waited now and then for those in the rear to come up with us. The sun was shining, and I sat down on Gros-Jean's knapsack and went off to sleep; but an officer, M. Favin, catching sight of me, pulled me by the ears and the hair, others kicked me from behind, all without waking me. Several of them got hold of me and forced me to rise, and well for me that they did, or I should have slept the sleep of death. I felt very cross, however, at being roused.

Many who we thought had perished came on from the Berezina. They embraced and congratulated each other as if it were the Rhine they had crossed, still 400 leagues off. They felt so happy that they were sorry for those left behind. They advised me to walk a little in front, so that I should not fall asleep again. This advice I took.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: The corps commanded by General Dombrouski, a Pole, had not been as far as Moscow. It was marching just now to Borisow to cut off the Russians from the bridge over the Berezina.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 36: _Cognia_ in Polish, and in Russian also, means _horse_.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 37: Picart was one of the best shots in the Guard. In camp at target practice he always carried off the prizes.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 38: I still have the little cup; it is at home, under a glass case, with a little silver cross found in the crypt of the Church of St. Michael, and under the Emperors' tombs.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 39: The Emperor of Austria.]

[Footnote 40: Picart knew what he was about in speaking of Austrian treason, as I learnt since that an alliance had been made against us.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 41: The Battle of Eylau began on February 7th, 1807, at daybreak; we had slept the night before on a plain behind the town, a quarter of a league away. This plain was covered with snow and with dead bodies, the rear-guard having been engaged there just before our arrival. It was scarcely daybreak when the Emperor ordered us to move forward. This we had great difficulty in doing, as we walked through ploughed fields, and snow up to our knees. He placed the Guard near the town--a part of it near the cemetery, and a part on a lake fifty yards off. Balls and shells falling on the lake cracked the ice, and threatened to submerge those who stood on it. All day we stood in this position, our feet in the snow, and half crushed by the shells and grape-shot. The Russians were four times as strong as we were, and they also had the advantage of the wind, which blew dead against us, driving the snow, and the smoke from our powder and theirs, into our faces. Up till seven o'clock we remained in this position. At three in the afternoon our regiment was sent to resume the position of the morning, which the Russians wanted to take. All night, as during the battle, the snow never ceased to fall. That day my right foot was frozen, and was only cured at Finkeistein, before the battles of Essling and Friedland.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 42: _Nima_ in Polish and Lithuanian means 'no,' or 'there is none.'--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 43: _Mere aux bouts_ was an old woman who came at six o'clock every morning to the barracks at Courbevoie, and sold us, for ten centimes, a piece of pudding six inches long. We feasted on this every day before our drill, and drank ten centimes' worth of Suresnes wine, to help us to wait for the soup at ten o'clock. What Velite or old Grenadier of the Guard has not known _Mere aux bouts_?--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 44: Place where the old Grenadiers of the Guard met their mistresses and danced.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 45: This song had been composed on leaving the camp at Boulogne in 1805, to go to Austria for the Battle of Austerlitz.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 46: In Poland, Lithuania, and a part of Russia, large trees are chosen; and about ten feet from the ground a hole of about a foot deep and wide is made. Here the bees deposit their honey, and often it is stolen by the bears, who are very numerous in these forests, and very greedy. Thus the hives frequently become traps to take them.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 47: The _pontonniers_ and the engineers saved us, and to them we owed the construction of the bridges over the Berezina.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 48: They marched with their heads bent, their eyes fixed on the ground, hardly seeing anything; the frost and the bivouac fires had nearly ruined their sight.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 49: Grangier and Leboude.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 50: General Eble.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 51: This second bridge broke soon afterwards, when the artillery began to cross. A great many perished.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 52: The girl, and also her mother, wore Astrakan caps on their heads.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 53: At the outlet of the bridge was a marsh, a slimy, muddy place, where many of the horses sank, and could not get out again. Many of the men, also, being dragged by the weight of the others to the outlet, sank down exhausted when left to themselves in the marsh, and were trampled upon by others coming on behind.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 54: I learned afterwards that the sergeant had the luck to return to France; as he had plenty of money, he got a Jew to take him as far as Koenigsberg, but when he arrived in France he went mad and blew out his brains.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 55: Thus perished M. Legrand, the brother of Dr. Legrand, of Valenciennes. He had been wounded at Krasnoe, and had just got as far as the Berezina. Just after the scene I have described, and while the Russians were firing at the bridge, I was told that he was badly wounded before being thrown into the water.--_Author's Note._]