A multitude of wagons and of cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were thus abandoned on the hostile bank. They were seen wandering in desolate troops on the borders of the river. Some plunged into it in order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice which were floating along; and some there were who threw themselves headlong upon the timbers of the burning bridge, which, sinking under them, exposed them at the same time to the horrors of a twofold death. Shortly after, the bodies of many of these unfortunate creatures, wedged in the ice, were seen collecting against the trestles of the bridge. The rest awaited the Russians. The Russian general did not show himself upon the heights until an hour after Eblé's departure; and without having gained a victory, he reaped all the fruits of one.
Napoleon remained till the last moment on these melancholy banks, near the ruins of Brilowa, unsheltered and at the head of his guard, one-third of which was destroyed by the storm. During the day they stood to their arms, and were drawn up in order of battle; at night they bivouacked in a square round their leader; and there the old grenadiers incessantly kept feeding their fires. They sat on their knapsacks, with their elbows planted upon their knees, and their hands supporting their heads; slumbering in this manner, doubled upon themselves, that one limb might warm the other, and that they might feel less the emptiness of their stomachs.
About these bivouacs were collected men of all classes, of all ranks, of all ages; ministers, generals, administrators. Among them was remarked an elderly nobleman of by-gone days, when light and brilliant graces held sovereign sway. This general officer of sixty was seen sitting on the snow-covered trunk of some tree, occupying himself with unruffled gayety every morning in adjusting the details of his toilet: in the midst of a hurricane he had his hair elegantly dressed, and powdered with the nicest care, amusing himself in this manner with all our calamities, and with the fury of the elements which assailed him.
Near him were officers of scientific corps, still finding subjects for discussion. Imbued with the spirit of an age which a few discoveries have encouraged to hope for explanations of everything, these individuals, amid the acute sufferings we were enduring from the north wind, were seeking to divine the cause of its unvarying direction. The theory was advanced that, since his departure for the antarctic pole, the sun, by heating the southern hemisphere, had rarefied all its currents of air, elevated them, and left on the surface of that zone a vacuum, into which the currents of air of ours, which were lower on account of being more dense, were violently rushing. That thus the northern pole, loaded with these denser vapors, which had been collecting and cooling since the preceding summer, was discharging them by an impetuous and icy current, which swept over the Russian territory, and stiffened or destroyed everything it encountered in its course.
Others of these officers were remarking with curious attention the regular six-sided crystallization of each one of the flakes of snow which covered their garments.
The phenomena of the simultaneous appearance of several distinct images of the sun, reflected to the eye by means of the icy particles suspended in the atmosphere, was also a subject for observation, and several times momentarily diverted their thoughts from their sufferings.
§ 22. Napoleon abandons the Grand Army and sets out for Paris.
On the 29th the emperor quitted the banks of the Berezina, pushing on before him the crowd of disbanded soldiers, and marching with the ninth corps, which was already disorganized. The day before, the second and ninth corps and Dombrowski's division presented a total of fourteen thousand men; and now, with the exception of about six thousand, they had no longer any form of division, brigade, or regiment.
Night, hunger, cold, the fall of many of their officers, the loss of the baggage on the other side of the river, the example of such a number of runaways, and the much more revolting sight of the wounded abandoned on both sides of the river, and left weltering in despair on the snow, which was dyed with their blood: everything, in short, contributed to discourage them; and they were now confounded with the mass of disbanded men who had come from Moscow.