In this manner did Ney support the retreat from Wiazma to Eve, and a few wersts beyond it. He attempted in vain to rally a few of them; and he who had hitherto been almost the only one whose commands had been obeyed, was now compelled to follow it.
He arrived along with it at Kowno, which was the last town of the Prussian empire. Finally, on the 13th of December, after marching forty-six days under the most terrible sufferings, they once more came in sight of a friendly country. Instantly, without halting or looking behind them, the greater part plunged into, and dispersed themselves in, the forests of Prussian Poland. Some there were, however, who, on their arrival on the friendly bank of the Niemen, turned round, and there, when they cast a last look on that land of horrors from which they were escaping, and found themselves on the same spot whence, five months before, their countless legions had taken their victorious flight, tears gushed from their eyes, and they broke out into exclamations of the most poignant sorrow.
Two kings, one prince, eight marshals, followed by a few officers, generals on foot, dispersed, and without attendants; finally, a few hundred men of the old guard, still armed—these were its remains—these alone represented the grand army.
The camp-fires of the invaders in Russia were at an end. From Moscow to the Niemen they could be traced in circles of death. Every bivouac had its throng of victims, conquered more by the climate than the troops of Russia. Like a vast stream, which gradually disappears in the ground as it flows, the grand army of four hundred thousand men had vanished amid the snows of Russia. Upon the banks of the Niemen, it lived only in Marshal Ney.
THE CAMP-FIRE AT LUTZEN.
