THE LAST REVIEW
I
The loss of the Grand Army at the River Bérézina will never be fully told.
All the world knows now that more than twelve thousand corpses were taken from the river when the ice melted in the spring; but this is to give no account of the many who were butchered by the Cossacks, and of the thousands of unhappy men, and women too, who went into the Russian prisons when the last of the bridges was blown up.
We were a mere remnant that got away in safety.
I have heard the number variously estimated, but in my own opinion no more than thirty thousand of those who marched to Moscow so proudly struggled on towards Kovno when the battle of the Bérézina had been fought.
At this time, too, we were so many hordes of miserable men rather than an army. Many lost the road and wandered for weeks in the frozen wilderness. Hardly a regiment preserved anything of its original formation; those that did so were inspired by loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor. When he left us at Smorgoni on the morning of December 5th and entrusted the command to Murat all order was finally done with. The Cossacks pursued us as sheep are hunted by wolves. We struggled into Vilna to find the town plundered. The mighty host which had set out to conquer Russia now rotted beneath the snows of the steppes we had crossed.
It was every man for himself afterwards, as you can well imagine. We made up little companies of friends and went together in the fashion of the East. Naturally, Valerie St. Antoine was of my own party; and with the child Joan and my own nephew Léon we had Sergeant Bardot, who had been with us in the adventure at Moscow. I have told you of the sergeant's adroitness, and we found him invaluable these later days. Where others starved he would plunder. From a brawl at Vilna, when the stores were rifled, Gustav Bardot emerged with as many bottles of brandy as would have made a regiment drunk, and a supply of flour under which our horses staggered. With this we set out almost gaily upon our journey to the Prussian frontier. France seemed near to us now, though so many hundreds of leagues away.
To be sure we lost the road frequently enough, and were yet to meet with some surprising adventures. It is of one of the most curious of these that I am now about to write.