The 6th. of December was a frightful day, although the cold had not yet reached its climax which happened on the 7th. and 8th. of December, namely 28 deg. below zero, Reaumur (31 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit).
[Illustration: “The Gate of Wilna.”]
Holzhausen gives a graphic description of the supernatural silence which reigned and which reminded of the silence in the arctic regions. There was not the slightest breeze, the snowflakes fell vertically, crystal-clear, the snow blinded the eyes, the sun appeared like a red hot ball with a halo, the sign of greatest cold.
The details of the descriptions which Holzhausen has collected from old papers surpass by far all we have learned from von Scherer’s and Beaupré’s writings. And all that Holzhausen relates is verified by names of absolute reliability; it verifies the accounts of the two authors named.
General von Roeder, one of the noblest of the German officers in Napoleon’s army—a facsimile of one of his letters is given in Holzhausen’s book—says about the murderous 7th. of December: “Pilgrims of the Grand Army, who had withstood many a severe frost indeed, dropped like flies, and of those who were well nourished, well clothed—many of these being of the reserve corps having but recently come from Wilna to join the retreating army,—countless numbers fell exactly like the old exhausted warriors who had dragged themselves from Moscow to this place.”
The reserve troops of which Roeder speaks were the division Loison, the last great body of men that had followed the army. They had been in Koenigsberg and had marched from there to Wilna during the month of November, had remained in the latter place until December 4th., when they were sent to protect the retreating soldiers and the Emperor himself, on leaving the wreck of his once grand army at Smorgoni on December 5th.
These troops who thus far had not sustained any hardships, came directly from the warm quarters of Wilna into the terrible cold.
It was quite frightful, says Roeder, to see these men, who a moment before had been talking quite lively, drop dead as if struck by lightning.
D. Geissler, a Weimaranian surgeon, renders a similar report and adds that in some cases these victims suffered untold agonies before they died.
Lieutenant Jacobs states that some said good bye to their comrades and laid down along the road to die, that others acted like maniacs, cursed their fate, fell down, rose again, and fell down once more, never to rise again. Cases like the latter have been described also by First Lieutenant von Schauroth.