“For that discomfort I have little pity,” replied the Frenchman. “A ride on the railway is soon over, and a good fire or a brisk walk is a quick and easy remedy. Mine is a different case. For forty years I have never known warm feet.”
“For forty years?” I repeated, thinking I had misunderstood him.
“Yes, sir, forty years; since the winter of 1812—the winter of the Russian campaign.”
“You were in that terrible campaign?” I inquired, in a tone of interest and curiosity. My companion, previously taciturn, suddenly became communicative.
“All through it, sir,” he replied; “from the Niemen to the Kremlin, and back again. It was my first campaign, and was near being my last. I was in others afterwards; in Germany in 1813, when the combined Germans and Russians drove us before them, for want of the brave fellows we had left in Muscovy’s snows; in France in 1814, when the Emperor made his gallant struggle against overwhelming forces; and at the closing scene in Flanders: but not all those three campaigns put together, nor, as I believe, all that this century has witnessed, can match the horrors of that dreadful winter in Russia.”
He paused, and, leaning back in his corner, seemed to revolve in his mind events of powerful interest long gone by. I waited a while, in hopes he would resume the subject. As he did not do so, I asked him to what arm he belonged when in Russia.
“I was assistant-surgeon in a regiment of hussars,” he answered, “and in my medical capacity I had abundant opportunity to make acquaintance with the horrors of war. On the 7th of September, for instance, at the Moskwa—Heavens! what a shambles that was! Ah, it was fine to see such valour on both sides—for the Russians fought well—gallantly, sir, or where would have been the glory of beating them? But Ney! Ney! Oh! he was splendid that day! His whole countenance gleamed, as he again and again led the bloody charge, exposing himself as freely as any corporal in the ranks. And Eugene, the Viceroy, with what vigour he hurled his masses against that terrible redoubt! When at last it was his, what a sight was there! The ground was not strewn with dead; it was heaped, piled with them. They had been shot down by whole ranks, and there they lay, prostrate, in line as they had stood.”
The surgeon paused. I thought of Byron’s beautiful lines, beginning, “Even as they fell, in files they lay;” but I said nothing, for I saw that my companion was now fairly started, and needed no spurring.
“Monsieur,” he presently resumed, “all those things have been brought strongly to my mind by the letter you saw me just now reading. It is from an old friend, a captain in 1812, a general now, who went through the campaign, and whom I was so fortunate as to save from a grave in those infernal plains where most of our poor comrades perished. I will tell you how it happened. We were talking of the battle of Borodino. Seventy thousand men, it is said, were killed and wounded in that murderous fight. We surgeons, as you may well think, had our hands full, and still could not suffice for a tithe of the sufferers. It was a rough breaking-in for a young hand, as I then was. Such frightful wounds as were there, of every kind and description—from shot, shell, and bullet, pike and sabre. Well, sir, all the misery and suffering I then saw, all that vast amount of human agony and bloodshed, whose steam, ascending to Heaven, might well have brought down God’s malediction on His creatures, who could thus destroy and deface each other, was nothing compared with the horrible misery we witnessed on our retreat. I have read everything that has appeared in France concerning that campaign—Ségur, Labaume, and other writers. Their narratives are shocking enough, but nothing to the reality. They would have sickened their readers had they told all they saw. If anybody, who went through the campaign, could remember and set down all he witnessed, he would make the most heart-rending book that ever yet was printed, and would be accused of gross exaggeration. Exaggeration, indeed! there was no need to heighten the horrors of the winter of 1812. All that frost and famine, lead and steel, could inflict, was then endured; all the crimes that reckless despair and ruthless cruelty could prompt were then perpetrated.”
“And how,” I asked, “did you escape, when so many, doubtless as strong and courageous, and more inured to hardship, miserably perished?”