Madame Ladoinski accepted the offer with gratitude, whereupon the aide-de-camp was informed that she was to be placed in a baggage-wagon, and that the drivers were to be told that if their passengers did not reach the end of the journey in safety they would answer for it with their lives. On the other hand, if she arrived safely in Poland, and declared that she and her boy had been well-treated on the way, each driver would receive five hundred francs.
In a few days Madame Ladoinski was once again in a baggage-wagon; but Napoleon's 'Grand Army' was now in a terrible condition. Ragged, starving, dispirited by the constant harassing from the enemy, and the continuous marching through snow, it made but slow progress. The gloomy forests through which the miserable army tramped on its way to attempt the passage of the Beresina were blocked with snow, and so difficult was it to move the guns that Napoleon ordered that one half of the baggage-wagons were to be destroyed, so that the horses and oxen might be utilised for dragging forward the artillery. The wagon in which Madame Ladoinski rode was one of the number condemned to destruction, but the men who had been ordered to protect her speedily found room for her in another vehicle.
A day or two later, when the bedraggled army was nearing the Polish frontier, Madame Ladoinski was startled from her dejection by hearing loud joyful shouts, and on enquiring of the driver the reason of the noise she was told that a reinforcement under Marshal Victor had unexpectedly arrived.
Soon the reinforcements were passing the wagon, but Madame Ladoinski possessed neither the energy nor the curiosity to glance out at them. She could think of nothing but her dead husband and her little orphaned boy. But suddenly as she sat brooding over her great loss she heard, 'Forward, lancers!' uttered in Polish. Believing that it was her husband's voice she had heard, she sprang up and looked out at the troop trotting ahead. But she could not recognise her husband among the lancers, and she turned to sit down, believing that she was the victim of a delusion. To her surprise she saw her little son standing, with a finger uplifted to urge silence, listening eagerly.
'What is it, darling?' she asked.
'Father!' he replied.
Again Madame Ladoinski's spirits rose, but they fell quickly when she remembered that the Polish Lancers had quitted Smolensk before she and her boy arrived there. It was madness, therefore, to imagine that her wounded husband could be with Marshal Victor's army, and she dismissed the hope from her mind.
Days of terrible suffering for Napoleon's army followed, but eventually Studzianka, on the left bank of the Beresina, was reached, and the soldiers hoped that once in Poland their trials would diminish. Madame Ladoinski, her spirits reviving at the prospect of soon being in her husband's native land, lay listening to the noise of the men busily engaged in building the bridges over which the French army was to pass. Suddenly there was a tremendous uproar; shouts of joy, cries of triumph. Looking out Madame Ladoinski saw at once the cause of the excitement—the enemy who had been encamped on the opposite bank of the river was in full retreat. The fierce battle which she had dreaded, in case her boy might be injured, would not be fought. Falling on her knees in the wagon, she thanked God for averting the danger she feared.
Now that the Russians were gone, the cavalry swam their horses across the river, and took up a position that would protect the crossing of the foot soldiers. The bridges were completed at last, and quickly the ragged regiments hurried over them. The baggage-wagons were to be left until the last, and for hours Madame Ladoinski sat watching regiment after regiment hurry across. Napoleon, stern and silent, passed close to her, and a mighty shout of 'Vive L'Empereur' burst from his trusting, long-suffering troops, when he gained the opposite bank.
Soon after Napoleon had crossed, Prince Eugène came along, and seeing Madame Ladoinski he rode over to her, and told her cheerfully that she would soon be among her husband's friends, and that her trials would then be at an end. Then, turning to the drivers, he commanded them not to forget the order he had given concerning their behaviour and care of the lady entrusted to them.