The French "retreat from Moscow was perhaps the most disastrous on record since the days of Xerxes.... On the night of 6th November, the temperature suddenly fell to that of the most rigorous winter. In that dreadful night thousands of men perished, and nearly all the horses, which compelled the abandonment of the greater part of the convoys. From this point the road began to be strewn with corpses, presenting the aspect of one continuous battlefield.... At Smolensk the cold was at 20 degrees of Réaumur." (Dyer's History of Modern Europe, vol. iv. pp. 518, 519.)—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[160] 1827.
The original title was Composed in Recollection of the Expedition of the French into Russia.
1816. February 1816.
[161] 1820.
Hath painted Winter like a shrunken, old,
And close-wrapt Traveller—through the weary day—
Propped on a staff, and limping o'er the Plain,