The Great White Army

by Max Pemberton

Hitherto our journey had not been unpleasant and had filled us with few apprehensions. It is true that the Russians were active, and there were not many villages to pillage, so that some murmurings were heard at an early date, and men complained bitterly of the lack of bread. But we were given to understand that all this would be set straight presently, and that we should find untouched supplies at Smolensk, the first big town between Moscow and the frontier. Meanwhile, many carried a little store of provisions in their knapsacks, and the officers were generally well looked after despite the difficulties. We found marching easy in the early days, and even when the rain fell, and the roads became heavy, the wagons were not seriously hampered. All went light-heartedly, thinking of our beloved France and of the triumph we were to celebrate there.

Then came the snow. It began to fall on the evening of the 29th, as I have said, and, save that there was cold rain during the following week, we never saw the green ground again until we came to the valley of the Rhine. Ah, the first of these terrible days—how well I remember it!

Léon and I rode side by side, a great press of horsemen before us; behind us, in a seemingly unbroken line, the carts and wagons of the transport. Upon either side were the hussars and the lancers, the chasseurs à cheval, the Guards from Portugal, the Italians, with Prince Eugène. The Emperor himself was then half a day's march ahead of us, but we expected to come up with him at Slawkowo, and there to enjoy our well-earned rest. We had frost, as you shall hear, but there is no pen that can tell you of what we suffered by the way.

There had been black clouds rolling down from the northward all day, but the snow itself did not burst upon us until the hour of sunset. It came heralded by a distant sound as of thunder upon a far horizon; but this was no thunder that we heard—only a north wind roaring across that interminable plain.

Anon it came upon us with the fury of a southern tempest. Flakes of snow almost as big as a man's hand tumbled out of that leaden sky, were caught by the howling wind, and scattered in a fine powder which cut like steel. Soon everything was obliterated: the summer had finished before our eyes. Where there had been green grass and verdant woods, and even wild flowers by the roadside, there was now nothing but a monstrous sea, with here and there the white woods standing up as so many mighty ships upon a frozen ocean.

The army, marching hitherto in such good spirits, became but specks in this white wilderness. Never had Frenchmen known such cold, and great was the terror with which it inspired them. We saw cloaks flying and heads bent before the blast; we heard the curses of the transport men, the shrill complaints of cantinières; but above all the ceaseless howling of the blast, as though the God of Russia cried a vengeance upon us, and this was the hour of it.

All this was bad enough, but more was to follow when the Cossacks came like so many devils from the darkness.

They wheeled about us, piping a shrill defiance and waving their lances ominously. In our turn we were too sore stricken to attack them, and we rode like cravens, who submitted to fate without lifting a finger. Not until Marshal Ney himself came up with cannon did we drive the scarecrows off, and even then it was but a brief respite, for they were as swift as eagles and as elusive. Many a good fellow had a Russian lance in him that night, and the snow-field for his bed. It was a new page in the story of a triumph we had hoped to celebrate in Paris.

For myself I felt the cold bitterly, and I do not doubt that Léon suffered no less. We had heavy cloaks and we rode good horses; but the frost was beyond anything I have known or could imagine, and presently the trail of the army could be followed by the dead and dying it shed upon the march.

Dreadful was it to see those poor fellows, and to know that we could not help them. There they lay, some already white and still in the death sleep; others moaning for pain of the cold; others, again, imploring their fellows to shoot them for God's sake. All, however, passed on without pity. The wind devoured us; the snow had become a very avalanche.