Standing up to their lips in the freezing current of the river, soldiers worked all night, fixing the timbers for the bridge. It was a terrible labor, and several lost their lives, drowned or frozen. Those who toiled on, had to keep the masses of ice pushed away while they worked.
The Emperor sat in a wretched hovel, waiting for day. Great tears rolled down his cheeks. “Berthier, how are we to get out of this?” Murat urged him to take an escort of a few Poles, cross the river higher up, and escape. The Emperor silently shook his head, and Murat said no more.
Suddenly came news that was almost too good for belief: the Russians had disappeared! Tchitchagoff, deceived by Napoleon’s feint to cross elsewhere, or misled by Kutusoff’s despatches, had led his army away. The line of retreat was now open, the bridges were rapidly finished, and with shouts of “Live the Emperor!” the jubilant French began to cross. When in their hurry a jam occurred in the passage, and artillery teams got blocked, Napoleon himself sprang on the bridge, caught the horses, and helped to free the pieces.
The bridges, constructed under so many difficulties and in such haste, were frail, the crush of the crowd in going over became greater and greater. Finally the bridges gave way. They were repaired, but broke again. Beginning with this, the tumult, the terror, the frantic struggle for place, the loss of life, became frightful. The weak fell, they were trampled by men and horses, and ground to pulp by wheels. Some perished on the bridges, others were pushed off and drowned in the river. There were no side-rails or ledges, nothing to keep those on the outer edge from being crowded off—and they went over by hundreds, by thousands. The Russians under Wittgenstein having come up, a fierce battle ensued between them and the French rear-guard. Amid wild confusion, the passage of the river continued, while a storm raged and the cannon roared. In the evening the large bridge, crushed by the weight upon it, gave way, and with a fearful cry, which rose above the storm and the battle, the multitude that was crossing sank forever. Next day the battle raged again, while the crossing continued. Early in the night, Victor’s rear-guard began to cross, the Russians cannonading the bridge, and covering it with the dead. Next morning the bridge was burned, and all the thousands of stragglers and camp-followers were cut off, and perished miserably.
Beyond the Beresina, the regulars of the Russian army did not press the pursuit, but the Cossacks hung on, inflicting heavy losses. From cold, from hunger, from disease, the French continued to lose fearfully; but the broken remnant of the Grand Army was now comparatively safe from the enemy.
Full details of the Malet conspiracy having reached Napoleon, he became anxious and restless. He believed he could render greater service to himself and the Empire by being in Paris. Turning over the command to Murat, at Smorgoni, the Emperor entered a covered sleigh, and set out for France.
Accompanied by Duroc, Caulaincourt and Lobau, Roustan the Mameluke, and a Polish officer, the Emperor sped across the snow on his way homeward. Almost captured by Cossacks, he reached Warsaw on the 15th of December, 1812, where he put up at the English Hotel, and sent for the Abbé de Pradt, his minister to the Grand Duchy. Here, in a small room of the hotel, moving about restlessly, stamping his feet for circulation while a servant girl bent over the hearth trying to make a fire from green wood, he gave his instructions to his treacherous minister, and announced that in the following spring he would be back in the Niemen at the head of three hundred thousand men. Then he sped onward toward Saxony.
Late at night, December 14, 1812, the sledge of the flying Emperor reached Dresden, where there was a brief conference between Napoleon and his faithful ally. Bitter beyond description must have been the reflections of the lonely fugitive in hurrying through those streets, where a few months before kings had crowded to his antechamber!
Escaping the conspiracies aimed at his life in Germany, he safely entered France, and reached Paris, late at night, December 18, 1812, arriving at the Tuileries almost alone, in a hackney coach.
There was an outburst of indignation in the Grand Army remnants when it was known that the Emperor had gone. “The same trick he played us in Egypt,” said one General to another. Murat had on his hands a thankless task at best, and under his management the situation did not improve. At Wilna the Cossack “Hourra!” stampeded the French, who fled, loosing six thousand prisoners. At the steep hill, a few miles beyond, the horses could not drag the artillery up the ice-covered road, and it was abandoned.