On our way back, winter came upon us, a month earlier than usual,—a thing that those stupid scientific men have never properly explained,—and the cold caught us. Then there was no more army; do you understand? No army, no generals, no sergeants even! After that it was a reign of misery and hunger—a reign where we were all equal. We thought of nothing except of seeing France again. Nobody stooped to pick up his gun, or his money, if he happened to drop them; and every one went straight on, arms at will, caring nothing for glory. The weather was so bad that Napoleon could no longer see his star—the sky was hidden. Poor man! It made him sick at heart to see his eagles flying away from victory. It was a crushing blow to him.
Well, then came the Beresina. And now, my friends, I may say to you, on my honor and by everything sacred, that never—no, never since man lived on earth—has there been such a mixed up hodgepodge of army, wagons, and artillery, in the midst of such snows, and under such a pitiless sky! It was so cold that if you touched the barrel of your gun you burned your hand.
It was there that Gondrin—who is now present with us—behaved so well. He is the only one now living of the pontooners who went down into the water that day and built the bridge on which we crossed the river. The Russians still had some respect for the Grand Army, on account of its past victories; but it was Gondrin and the pontooners who saved us, and [pointing at Gondrin, who was looking at him with the fixed attention peculiar to the deaf] Gondrin is a finished soldier and a soldier of honor, who is worthy of your highest esteem.
I saw the Emperor that day, standing motionless near the bridge, and never feeling the cold at all. Was that natural, do you think? He was watching the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptian soldiers. It was the end of everything. Women, wagons, cannon—all were being destroyed, demolished, ruined, wrecked! A few of the bravest guarded the eagles; because the eagles, you understand, stood for France, for you, for the civil and military honor that had to be kept unstained and that was not to be humbled by the cold.
We hardly ever got warm except near the Emperor. When he was in danger, we all ran to him—although we were so nearly frozen that we would not have held out a hand to our dearest friend. They say that he used to weep at night over his poor family of soldiers. Nobody but he and Frenchmen could ever have pulled out of there. We did pull out, but it was with loss—terrible loss. Our allies ate up all of our provisions, and then began the treachery which the Red Man had foretold.
The blatherskites in Paris, who had kept quiet since the formation of the Imperial Guard, thought that the Guard had finally perished. So they got up a conspiracy and hoodwinked the Prefect of Police into an attempt to overthrow the Emperor. He heard of this and it worried him. When he left us he said: "Good-by, boys. Guard the posts. I will come back to you."
After he had gone, things went from bad to worse. The generals lost their heads; and the marshals quarreled with one another and did all sorts of foolish things, as was natural. Napoleon, who was good to everybody, had fed them on gold until they had become as fat as pigs, and they didn't want to do any more marching. This led to trouble, because many of them remained idle in forts behind the army that was driving us back to France, and didn't even try to relieve us by attacking the enemy in the rear.
The Emperor finally returned, bringing with him a lot of splendid recruits whom he had drilled into regular war-dogs, ready to set their teeth into anything. He brought also a bourgeois guard of honor, a fine troop, which melted away in battle like butter on a hot gridiron. In spite of the bold front that we put on, everything went against us; although the army performed feats of wonderful courage. Then came regular battles of mountains—nations against nations—at Dresden, Lutzen, and Bautzen. Don't you ever forget that time, because it was then that Frenchmen showed how wonderfully heroic they could be. A good grenadier, in those days, seldom lasted more than six months. We always won, of course; but there in our rear were the English, stirring up the nations to take sides against us. But we fought our way through this pack of nations at last. Wherever Napoleon showed himself, we rushed; and whenever, on land or sea, he said, "I wish to pass," we passed.
We finally got back to France; and many a poor foot-soldier was braced up by the air of his native country, notwithstanding the hard times we had. As for myself, in particular, I may say that it renewed my life.
It then became a question of defending the fatherland—our fair France—against all Europe. They didn't like our laying down the law to the Russians, and our driving them back across their borders, so that they couldn't devour us, as is the custom of the North. Those Northern peoples are very greedy for the South, or at least that's what I've heard many generals say. Then Napoleon saw arrayed against him his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made kings, and all the scoundrels whom he had put on thrones. Finally, in pursuance of orders from high quarters, even Frenchmen, and allies in our own ranks, turned against us; as at the battle of Leipsic. Common soldiers wouldn't have been mean enough to do that! Men who called themselves princes broke their word three times a day.