The Two Great Retreats of History

by George Grote; comte de Philippe-Paul Ségur

On the 27th, Napoleon, with about five thousand guards, and Ney's corps, now reduced to six hundred men, crossed the Berezina about two o'clock in the afternoon: he posted himself in reserve to Oudinot, and secured the outlet from the bridges against the efforts of the Russians.

He had been preceded by a crowd of baggage and stragglers, and numbers of them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted.

But Partouneaux with his division was not so fortunate. At every point where he attempted to pass, he encountered the enemy's fires, and was obliged to turn back: in this way he wandered about for several hours altogether at random, in plains covered with snow, in the midst of a violent tempest. At every step he saw his soldiers pierced through by the cold, and exhausted with hunger and fatigue, falling half dead into the hands of the Russian cavalry, who pursued him without intermission.

This unfortunate general was still struggling with the heavens, with men, and with his own despair, when he felt even the ground giving way under his feet. In fact, deceived by the snow, he was marching upon a lake, which not being frozen sufficiently hard to bear him, he had fallen in and was on the point of being drowned, and then only did he yield and give up his arms.

While this catastrophe was accomplishing, his other three brigades, being more and more hemmed in upon the road, lost all power of movement. They delayed their surrender, however, till the next morning, first by fighting, and then by parleying: at length they all fell, one after the other, and a common misfortune again united them with their general.

Of the whole division, a single battalion only escaped.

During the whole of that day, the 28th, the situation of the ninth corps under General Victor, was so much the more critical, as a weak and narrow bridge was its only means of retreat; in addition to which its avenues were obstructed by the baggage and the stragglers. By degrees, as the action became warmer, the terror of these poor wretches increased their disorder. First of all they had been alarmed by the rumors of a serious engagement; then their terror was increased by seeing the wounded returning from it; and, last of all, they were thrown into the utmost consternation by the batteries of the Russian left wing, some shot from which began to fall among them.

They had been already crowding one upon the other, and the immense multitude heaped upon the bank pell-mell with the horses and carriages, formed there a most alarming encumbrance. It was about the middle of the day that the first Russian balls fell into the midst of this chaos, and they were the signal of universal despair.

Then it was, as in all cases of extremity, that the real dispositions of men exhibited themselves without disguise, and actions were witnessed, some of them the most base, and others the most noble and even sublime. In accordance with their character, some furious and determined, with sword in hand, cleared for themselves a horrible passage. Others, still more cruel, opened a way for their wagons by driving them without mercy over the crowds of unfortunate persons who stood in their way, and crushed them to death. Their detestable avarice made them sacrifice their companions in misfortune to the preservation of their baggage. Others again, seized with a pusillanimous terror, wept, supplicated, and sank under the influence of a passion which completed the exhaustion of their strength. Some were observed (and these were principally the sick and wounded) who, renouncing life, went aside, and, resigned to their fate, sat themselves down, gazing with a fixed and motionless eye on the snow which was shortly to be their winding-sheet.

Numbers of those who started first among this crowd of desperadoes, missing the bridge, attempted to scale it by the sides, but the greater part were pushed into the river. There were seen women in the midst of the stream and among the masses of floating ice, with their children in their arms, raising them by degrees as they felt themselves sinking, and when completely submerged, their stiffened arms still holding them above the water.