On the 14th, Platov's Cossacks, followed by two battalions of Russian infantry, mounted on sledges together with several guns, appeared at Kovno which they attacked at a number of points. But Marshal Ney, helped by General Gerard, held them off until nightfall, when he took us across the frozen Nieman, and was the last to leave Russian territory.

We were now in Prussia, an allied country!… Marshal Ney, worn out and ill, and regarding the campaign as finished, left us and went to Gumbinnen, where there was a gathering of all the marshals. From that moment the army had no overall commander, and each regiment made its own way into Prussia. The Russians, who were at war with this country, would have been entitled to follow us there, but satisfied with having re-conquered their territory, and not sure whether they should present themselves to the Prussians as friends or enemies, they decided to await instructions from their government, and halted at the Nieman. We took advantage of their hesitation to head for the towns of old Prussia.

The Germans are usually humane; many of them had relatives or friends in the regiments which had gone with us to Moscow. We were received well enough, and I can promise you that having slept for five months in the open, I was delighted to find myself in a warm room and a comfortable bed; but this sudden transition from a glacial bivouac to long-forgotten repose made me seriously ill. Nearly all the army were affected in this way: a number of them died, including Generals Eble and Lariboisiere, the artillery commanders.

In spite of the adequate reception given to us, the Prussians remembered their defeat at Jena, and the way in which Napoleon had treated them in 1807 when he seized part of their kingdom. Secretly they hated us and would have disarmed and captured us at the first signal from their King. Already General York, who led the numerous Prussian units which the Emperor had so unwisely placed on the left wing of the Grande Armee, and who were stationed between Tilsit and Riga, had made a pact with the Russians and had sent back Marshal Macdonald, whom, from some remnant of conscience, he did not dare to arrest.

The Prussians of all classes approved of General York's treachery, and as the provinces through which the sick and disarmed French soldiers were then passing were full of Prussian troops, it is probable that the inhabitants would have sought to take hold of them had it not been that they feared for their King, who was in Berlin, in the midst of a French army commanded by Marshal Augereau. This fear and the repudiation by the King (the most honest man in his kingdom) of General York, who was tried for treason and condemned to death, prevented a general uprising against the French. We profited from this to reach the Vistula and leave the country.

My regiment crossed the river near the fortress of Graudenz at the same place at which we had crossed on our way to Russia. But this time the crossing was much more dangerous because the thaw had already begun some leagues upstream and the ice was covered by about a foot of water and one could hear frightening crackings which heralded a general break-up. Added to which, it was in the middle of a dark night that I was given the order to cross the river immediately, for the General had just been informed that the King of Prussia had left Berlin and taken refuge in Silesia, in the midst of a considerable armed force, and that the populace was becoming restless and it was feared that they would rise against us as soon as the thaw prevented us from crossing the river. We had to get across at all costs, but this was a very dangerous operation, for the Vistula is quite wide at Graudenz, and there were many gaps in the ice which it was difficult to see by the light of the fires lit on both banks.

As there was no possibility of crossing with our sledges, we abandoned them. We led the horses and, preceded by some men armed with poles to indicate the crevasses, we commenced the perilous journey. We had icy water half-way up our legs, which was not good for the sick and injured, but the physical discomfort was nothing compared to the anxiety produced by the cracking of the ice, which threatened, at any moment, to sink beneath our feet. The servant of one of my officers fell into a crevasse and did not reappear. We eventually reached the other side where we spent the night warming ourselves in some fishermen's huts, and the next day we witnessed a total thaw of the Vistula, which, had we delayed our crossing for a few hours, would have made us prisoners.

From the spot where we had crossed the Vistula, we made our way to the little town of Sweld, where my regiment had been in cantonment before the war, and it was there that I greeted the year 1813. The year which had ended was certainly the hardest of my life.

Chap. 21.

Let us now cast an eye rapidly over the reasons for the failure of the Russian campaign.