Dantzic appears made by nature for a fortress: washed on the north by the Vistula, protected on the south-west by a chain of precipitous heights, it is defended on all other sides by an inundation, which is spread by means of two rivers which traverse it, the Radaune, and the Mottlaw. Struck with the advantages of so fine a situation, Napoleon had resolved to render it impregnable; he had caused some immense works to be began. TÊtes-de-pont, forts, intrenched camps, were to protect it from insult and overlook the course of the river; but time had been wanting, and most of the works were either imperfect or scarcely traced out. No magazine was bomb-proof, no shelter sufficiently solid to keep the garrison in security; the casemates were uninhabitable, the quarters were in ruins, and the parapets tumbling down. The cold, still very severe, had frozen the waters; and Dantzic, the situation of which is naturally so happy and so strong, was nothing more than a place open at every point.

The garrison was not in a better state; it was composed of a confused mass of soldiers of all kinds and of all nations: there were French, Germans, Poles, Africans, Spaniards, Dutch, and Italians. The greater number, worn out or diseased, had been thrown into Dantzic because they were unable to continue their march: they had hoped to find some relief there; but destitute of all medicines, of animal food and vegetables, without spirits or forage, I was obliged to send away those who were not absolutely incapable of leaving the place. Nevertheless I had 35,000 left, out of which there were not above 8 or 10,000 fighting men; even these were nearly all recruits who had neither experience nor discipline. This circumstance, indeed, did not much alarm me; I was acquainted with our soldiers; I knew that for them to fight well they only wanted an example. I was resolved not to spare myself.

Such was the deplorable state in which the place and the troops charged with defending it were found. It was necessary first to provide for the most important point—to shelter ourselves from attack. The thing was not easy; the snow covered the fortifications; it obstructed all the covert ways, all the avenues: the cold was extreme; the thermometer was more than twenty degrees below zero[2], and the ice was already several inches thick. Nevertheless there was no time for hesitation; it was necessary to resolve to be carried by assault, or to submit to fresh fatigues almost as excessive as those we had experienced. I concerted with two men whose devotedness was equal to their intelligence; these were Colonel Richemont and General Campredon, both were attached to the engineer corps of which the latter had the command.

[2] Of Reaumur. Translator.

I gave orders to raise new works, and to clear the waters of the Vistula. This undertaking appeared impracticable, on account of the severity of the season; nevertheless the troops undertook it with their accustomed zeal. Notwithstanding the cold which overwhelmed them, they never suffered a murmur or a complaint to escape them. They executed the tasks which were prescribed to them with a devotion and constancy beyond all praise. At last, after unparalleled difficulties, they surmounted every obstacle; the ice, broken by hatchets and moved with levers towards the sea, assisted by the force of the stream, opened in the middle of the river a channel from sixteen to seventeen metres broad, and two leagues and a half in length. But we were destined to see difficulties return as soon as they were overcome: scarcely had an unexpected success crowned our efforts, when the cold set in with redoubled severity; in one night the Vistula, the ditches, were covered with a sheet of ice almost as thick as the one we had broken. In vain were boats moved up and down incessantly, to keep up by agitation the fluidity of the water; neither these precautions nor the rapidity of the river could preserve it. It was necessary to resume those labours, which had cost us so much, and which a moment had destroyed. Day and night were employed in breaking the ice; we could not nevertheless prevent its forming again a third time: but more obstinate even than the elements which combined against us, our soldiers opposed their courage to these obstacles, and at last succeeded in triumphing over them.

On all the remainder of the front of the plain the same zeal was shown and the same difficulties occurred: the earth, frozen several feet deep, resisted the spade and braved the efforts of the pioneers; nothing could separate this compact mass;—even the axe rebounded. It was necessary to have recourse to fire to melt it; great piles of wood, placed at distances from each other, and kept up for a long time, were the only means which enabled us to make excavations and to raise the necessary palisades. With great labour and perseverance, we had at last the satisfaction of seeing in a state of defence works that had only just been begun. The Holm, Weichselmunde, the entrenched camp of Neufahrwasser, and the multitude of forts which protect the approaches of Dantzic, were put in a situation to be able to offer a noble resistance; and, if this town was not raised to the degree of strength of which it was susceptible, it was at least capable of supporting a siege, the duration and adventures of which are not amongst those events which do most honour to foreign arms.

These fatigues were more than human power could support. Bivouacking, privations, continual service, aggravated their severity: disease, consequently, was not slow in making its appearance. From the first days of January every sun took from us fifty men: at the end of the following month we were losing as many as a hundred and thirty; and we counted more than 15,000 sick. From the troops, the epidemic had passed to the inhabitants: it committed among them the most dreadful ravages; no age nor sex was spared; those who were afflicted by poverty, and those who were surrounded by ease and luxury, were alike its prey. All gave way, all perished; the young, first entering on the path of life—the old, whose career was nearly run. Grief reigned in every family; consternation was in every breast. Dantzic, at other times so lively, now plunged in a melancholy silence, only offered in every direction to the saddened eye the pomp and processions of funerals. The sound of the bells, the hearses, the images of death reproduced under every form, aggravated a situation already so deplorable. The minds of the troops began to be shaken. I hastened to cut up the evil by its root; I interdicted these funeral solemnities which the piety of the living consecrates to the dead.

I had not waited for the epidemic to rage in all its violence before I opposed it. As soon as the first symptoms had been observed, I had caused hospitals to be opened, medicines, beds, and every thing which is necessary for this part of the service to be purchased. A wholesome and plentiful food would have been more efficacious; but we were so badly provisioned, that we could scarcely furnish for each day's allowance two ounces of fresh meat. A little salt meat, some dried beans, composed all that we had in our power to offer to men worn out by long privations. This state of things was cruel; I could not, however, remedy it any way. I had, in vain, despatched a vessel for Stralsund, in order to draw from Swedish Pomerania, which we still possessed, food and medicines; the sloop, charged with my despatches, assailed by a violent tempest, was driven on shore. We were approaching the Equinox: the Baltic was already agitated by storms: it was not possible to make a second attempt.

Courage was the only resource we had left. It was only at the point of the sword that we could obtain the means of subsistence; but, whatever was the devotedness of the troops, prudence did not warrant conducting them against the enemy, exhausted as they were by disease and misery. It was necessary to resign ourselves to fate, and patiently hope that the gentle influence of the fine season would come to recruit our strength: this was not far distant; all the signs which announce it were already showing themselves The weather was milder, the ice was beginning to melt, the breaking up of the frost was near, and we flattered ourselves that the inundation would relieve, to a certain degree, the fatigues that we were suffering; but that which was expected to solace our misfortunes was always that which raised them to their height.

The Vistula cleared itself with violence: since 1775 there had never been an example of such impetuosity in the current: the finest part of Dantzic, its magazines, its arsenals, became a prey to the waves; the country was covered with water; nothing presented itself, for the extent of several leagues, but the afflicting spectacle of trees torn up by their roots, of houses in ruins, of men, of cattle floating lifeless and in confusion among the loose ice. Our destruction appeared inevitable: all our works were demolished; our palisades carried away, our sluices broken, our forts opened and undermined by the waves, left us without the means of defence before a numerous enemy. We could no longer communicate with the Holm, a position so important, and of which the fortifications were nearly annihilated. The island of Heubude was in a deplorable state: our posts of the Werder, those of the Nerhung, had been submerged. To complete our misfortunes, we were threatened, when the Vistula should resume its course, with seeing the inundation which habitually surrounded the place dried up.