The Camp-fires of Napoleon / Comprising The Most Brilliant Achievemnents of the Emperor and His Marshals

by Henry C. Watson

Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of disbanded men, the sick and wounded, upward of a hundred pieces of cannon, ammunition wagons, and a multitude of vehicles of every kind, lined the bank and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford the river, through the floating ice which was carried along by its current. The first guns that were attempted to be got over reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while at the same time the bed of the stream at the place of passage was continually deepened by the wheels and by the efforts of the horses, and at length the stoppage became general.

Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts; hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the viceroy finally found himself compelled to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners were allowed scarcely a moment to part from their effects; while they were selecting from them such articles as they most needed, and loading their horses with them, a multitude of soldiers came rushing up; they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; these they broke in pieces and rummaged every part, avenging their poverty on the wealth, and their privations on the superfluities they here found, and snatching them from the Cossacks, who were in the meantime looking on at a distance.

But it was provisions of which most of them were in quest. They threw aside embroidered clothes, pictures, ornaments of every kind, and gilt bronzes for a few handfuls of flour. In the evening it was a strange sight to behold the mingled riches of Paris and of Moscow, the luxuries of two of the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised on the snow of the desert.

At the same time, most of the artillerymen spiked their guns in despair, and scattered their powder about. Others laid a train with it as far as some ammunition wagons, which had been left at a considerable distance behind the baggage. They waited till the most eager of the Cossacks had come up to them, and when a great number, greedy of plunder, had collected about them, they threw a brand from a bivouac upon the train. The fire ran, and in a moment reached its destination; the wagons were blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not killed on the spot, dispersed in dismay.

A few hundred men, who were still called the 14th division, were opposed to these hordes, and sufficed to keep them at a respectful distance till the next day. All the rest, soldiers, sutlers, women, and children, sick and wounded, driven by the enemy’s balls, crowded the bank of the river. But at the sight of its swollen current, of the sharp and massive fragments of ice floating down its stream, and the necessity of aggravating their already intolerable sufferings from cold by plunging into its chilling waves, they all started back.

Colonel Delfanti, an Italian, was obliged to set the example and cross first. The soldiers then moved, and the crowd followed. The weakest, the least resolute, and the most avaricious, stayed behind. Such as could not make up their minds to part from their booty, and to forsake fortune which was forsaking them, were surprised in the midst of their hesitation. The next day, amid all this wealth, the savage Cossacks were seen still covetous of the squalid and tattered garments of the unfortunate creatures who had become their prisoners: they stripped them, and then, collecting them in troops, drove them along over the snow, hurrying their steps by hard blows with the shafts of their lances.

The army of Italy, thus completely dismantled, soaked in the waters of the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow near a village where its officers expected to have found lodgings for themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on every habitation, profiting by the darkness, which prevented them from recognising their officers or being known by them. They tore down every thing, doors, windows, and even the woodwork of the roofs, feeling but little compunction in compelling others, be they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.

Their generals attempted in vain to drive them off: they took their blows without a murmur or the least opposition, but without desisting—even the men of the royal and imperial guards; for, throughout the whole army, such were the scenes that occurred every night. The unfortunate fellows kept silently but actively at work on the wooden walls, which they pulled in pieces on every side at once, and which, after vain efforts, their officers were obliged to relinquish to them, for fear they would fall upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in their design and of respect for the anger of their superiors.

Having kindled good fires, they spent the night in drying themselves, amid the shouts, imprecations[imprecations], and groans of those who were still crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated into it, and drowned.

It is a fact by no means creditable to the enemy, that during this disaster, and in sight of so rich a booty, a few hundred men, left at the distance of half a league from the viceroy, on the other side of the Wop, were sufficient to curb for twenty hours not only the courage, but even the cupidity of Platoff’s Cossacks.