Admitted neither to the stores nor to private houses, the majority of famished men headed for the hospitals where, although there was not enough food for all of them, they were at least sheltered from the piercing cold. This respite was enough to decide 20,000 sick and wounded, among whom were two hundred officers and eight generals, to go no further. They had reached the end of their physical and mental resources.
Lieutenant Hernoux, one of the most vigourous and brave officers in my regiment, was so overcome by what he had been through that he lay down on the snow, refusing to move, until he died. Several soldiers, of all ranks, blew their brains out, to escape from their suffering.
During the night 9th-10th December, in thirty degrees of frost, some Cossacks came and began shooting at the gates of Wilna. Many people thought this was the entire army of Koutousoff, and in a panic they fled from the town. I regret to say that King Murat was among them. He left without giving any orders, but Marshal Ney stayed and organised the retreat as best he could. We quitted Wilna on the morning of the 10th, leaving behind not only a great number of men, but also an artillery park and a part of the army's funds.
We had scarcely left the town when the infamous Jews turned on the men whom they had taken into their houses, stripped them of their clothes and threw them out, naked into the snow. Some officers of the Russian advance-guard, which was entering the town, were so indignant at this behaviour that they killed a number of them.
In the midst of this chaos, Marshal Ney had urged onto the road to Kowno all those whom he could stir into movement, but he had gone no more than a league when he came to the hill of Ponari. This small slope which in other circumstances the army would have hardly noticed, now became a most serious obstacle because the ice with which it was covered made it so slippery that the draught-horses were unable to drag up it the carts and wagons, so that what remained of the army's money would have fallen into the hands of the Cossacks had not Marshal Ney ordered that the wagons should be opened and the soldiers allowed to empty the strong-boxes. This sensible measure gave rise later to assertions that the men had robbed the Imperial treasury.
Several days before our arrival at Wilna, the intense cold having killed many of our horses and made the rest unfit to ride, my troopers all went on foot. I would have very much liked to join them but my injury prevented this, so I took to a sledge to which was harnessed one of my horses. This new method of transport gave me the idea that I might by this means save the sick men, of whom I had a considerable number. There is no dwelling in Russia so poor that it does not have a sledge, and it was not long before I had a hundred or so, each one drawn by a troop horse, carrying two sick men. This method of travel seemed to General Castex to be so convenient that he authorised me to put all my men on sledges. The commander of the 24th did the same and so the remains of the brigade became a sledge-borne unit.
You may think that in doing this we deprived ourselves of any means of defence, but you would be wrong, for we were much more mobile with the sleds, which could go anywhere, and whose shafts held up the horses, than we would have been in the saddle of animals which fell down all the time.
As the road was covered with abandoned muskets, each of our Chasseurs took two of them and an ample provision of cartridges, so that if any Cossacks dared to approach, they were met by a volume of fire which quickly drove them off. Our troopers could also fight on foot if need be. In the evening we formed a big square with our sledges, in the middle of which we lit our fires. Marshal Ney and General Maison often came to spend the night here, where they were secure, since the only enemies present were the Cossacks. This was undoubtedly the first time anyone had seen a rear-guard mounted on sledges; but it was a success in the prevailing conditions.
We continued to cover the retreat until, on the 13th of December, we saw the Nieman once more, and Kowno (Kaunas), the last town in Russia. It was at this spot that, five months earlier, we had entered the empire of the Czars. How greatly had our circumstances changed since then!… What appalling losses had we suffered!
On entering Kowno with the rear-guard, Marshal Ney found that the only garrison was a small battalion of Germans some 400 strong, whom he joined to the troops which he still had in order to defend the town for as long as possible, to give the sick and wounded the opportunity to cross into Prussia. When he heard that Ney had arrived, King Murat left for Gumbinnen.