Passage of the BEREZINA
Positions at Midday
Nov. 28, 1812.
Wittgenstein left Steingell at Borisov to disarm the prisoners; the rest of his army was directed upon Studianka. Vlastov drove back the Berg troops into the main line of the 9th Corps; but was then checked, though a battery established by Diebich made terrible havoc among the wild crowd which was surging around the entrance to the bridges. All the non-combatants, when the balls began to fall among them, crowded to the river marge in utter confusion and there remained, huddled in a mass more than 200 yards deep and extending for three-quarters of a mile. The panic was fearful, and the horrors that took place in the crowd will never be known. Men fought their way ahead by any and every means, and drove their vehicles remorselessly through the press. Men, women, and children were murdered, trodden down, and forced helplessly into the river, while all the while the Russian cannon-balls were falling with the snow. Many of those who reached the bridges were thrust off them and drowned or crushed beneath the wheels of vehicles. Many committed suicide to avoid a worse fate: there is at least one well-authenticated case of a mother who, herself mortally wounded, killed her child before she died. Yet carriages of Napoleon’s staff and of the Generals of the Guard were laden with helpless women and children whom their protectors made every effort to save. Marshal Bessières and General Laborde in particular earned by their humanity laurels fairer than any which they had gained upon the field of battle.
CROSSING THE BEREZINA
The Baden Brigade crossing the upper bridge during the night of the 28-29th of November, 1812
From the painting by J.A. Nikutowski at Carlsruhe
General Berg’s first division quickly supported Vlastov. The Badeners on the right were driven back; but Napoleon at once took the Russians in flank by establishing a battery on the other side of the river. The Badeners reoccupied their position and held it all day against incessant assaults—at grievous cost to themselves. Further to the left Victor’s Polish troops executed a fierce counter-attack, and were on the point of piercing the Russian centre when Fock arrived with his division and restored the conflict. Victor’s men were now hopelessly outnumbered, but they fought on with magnificent tenacity until nightfall. An attempt to turn the left was checked by a gallant charge of Fournier’s troopers and repulsed by the Saxons and a Polish regiment. Berg’s second division, owing to some misunderstanding, did not arrive until the action was over. Victor’s left was thrown back, but he still covered the bridges.
At 9 p.m. Victor received orders to cross, and began to withdraw. All round the bridges huddled the living mass of human beings and animals, heaving sluggishly with convulsive movements to escape, but practically inert. The eastern outlets were blocked by a hideous heap of broken vehicles and dead or dying human beings and horses piled one upon another in the trampled and blood-stained snow, through which it was impossible to make way. Eblé and his engineers literally had to make a cutting through the horrible heap and pile up the corpses on each side to keep back the unhappy mob. Through this ghastly passage, and along others like it made for them by the pioneers, the weary remains of the German and Polish regiments defiled, but even so they often had to fight their way. It was not until 1 a.m. on the 29th that they were at last across. Victor and Eblé vainly endeavoured to persuade some of the mob to follow, but most of them were torpid with misery and hopelessness and would not move. At dawn on the 29th a small detachment of the 9th Corps which had remained to the last was withdrawn. Eblé’s orders were to fire the bridges at 8 a.m., but he waited until 8.30, hoping to save some more lives. A few of the non-combatants followed Victor’s rear-guard, but the passages were soon blocked. At 8.30 Eblé fired the bridges, and there was a last scene of horror. Many of the unhappy wretches, at last alive to the situation, strove to dash through the flames, others endeavoured to cross on the thin ice between the bridges, many threw themselves into the icy stream to wade or swim. It is useless as well as painful to dwell longer upon the tragedy, the details of which may be gathered from countless works. Perhaps no event in history has ever so completely united in itself every element of misery.
The loss of life at the passage of the Berezina will never be exactly known. The Grand Armée lost 1200 officers killed and wounded, which may perhaps indicate a total of all ranks of 12,000 to 15,000. The 2nd and 9th Corps lost half their effective strength. Including prisoners and deaths from cold and misery during the three days the army was probably diminished by from 20,000 to 25,000 men. Enormous quantities of baggage were lost, but few guns—the Russians claimed 23. The loss of life among the non-combatants must have been enormous; almost all who were captured died of hunger or cold; their captors had little to spare them, and if the Russian regular soldiers often behaved with kindliness, the wilder Cossacks stripped their captives of everything. Perhaps the most awful incident was the fate of 500 women who were huddled in a barn at Borisov, without food for several days, and almost without fires. Only some 20 survived.