Comrades! I must confess that my spirit, discouraged, refused to penetrate farther into the recollection of so many horrors. Having arrived at the departure of Napoleon, I had flattered myself that my task was completed. I had announced myself as the historian of that great epoch, when we were precipitated from the highest summit of glory to the deepest abyss of misfortune; but now that nothing remains for me to retrace but the most frightful miseries, why should we not spare ourselves, you the pain of reading them, and myself that of tasking a memory which has now only to rake up embers, nothing but disasters to reckon, and which can no longer write but upon tombs?

But as it was our fate to push bad as well as good fortune to the utmost verge of improbability, I will endeavour to keep the promise I have made you to the conclusion. Moreover, when the history of great men relates even their last moments, how can I conceal the last sighs of the grand army when it was expiring? Every thing connected with it appertains to renown, its dying groans as well as its cries of victory. Every thing in it was grand; it will be our lot to astonish future ages with our glory and our sorrow. Melancholy consolation! but the only one that remains to us; for doubt it not, comrades, the noise of so great a fall will echo in that futurity, in which great misfortunes immortalize as much as great glory.

Napoleon passed through the crowd of his officers, who were drawn up in an avenue as he passed, bidding them adieu merely by forced and melancholy smiles; their good wishes, equally silent, and expressed only by respectful gestures, he carried with him. He and Caulaincourt shut themselves up in a carriage; his Mameluke, and Wonsowitch, captain of his guard, occupied the box; Duroc and Lobau followed in a sledge.

His escort at first consisted only of Poles; afterwards of the Neapolitans of the royal guard. This corps consisted of between six and seven hundred men, when it left Wilna to meet the Emperor; it perished entirely in that short passage; the winter was its only adversary. That very night the Russians surprised and afterwards abandoned Youpranoui, (or, as others say, Osmiana,) a town through which the escort had to pass. Napoleon was within an hour of falling into that affray.

He met the Duke of Bassano at Miedniki. His first words to him were, "that he had no longer an army; that for several days past he had been marching in the midst of a troop of disbanded men wandering to and fro in search of subsistence; that they might still be rallied by giving them bread, shoes, clothing, and arms; but that the Duke's military administration had anticipated nothing, and his orders had not been executed." But upon Maret replying, by showing him a statement of the immense magazines collected at Wilna, he exclaimed, "that he gave him fresh life! that he would give him an order to transmit to Murat and Berthier to halt for eight days in that capital, there to rally the army, and infuse into it sufficient heart and strength to continue the retreat less deplorably."

The subsequent part of Napoleon's journey was effected without molestation. He went round Wilna by its suburbs, crossed Wilkowiski, where he exchanged his carriage for a sledge, stopped during the 10th at Warsaw, to ask the Poles for a levy of ten thousand Cossacks, to grant them some subsidies, and to promise them he would speedily return at the head of three hundred thousand men. From thence he rapidly crossed Silesia, visited Dresden, and its monarch, passed through Hanau, Mentz, and finally got to Paris, where he suddenly made his appearance on the 19th of December, two days after the appearance of his twenty-ninth bulletin.

From Malo-Yaroslawetz to Smorgoni, this master of Europe had been no more than the general of a dying and disbanded army. From Smorgoni to the Rhine, he was an unknown fugitive, travelling through a hostile country; beyond the Rhine he again found himself the master and the conqueror of Europe. A last breeze of the wind of prosperity once more swelled his sails.

Meanwhile, his generals, whom he left at Smorgoni, approved of his departure, and, far from being discouraged, placed all their hopes in it. The army had now only to flee, the road was open, and the Russian frontier at a very short distance. They were getting within reach of a reinforcement of eighteen thousand men, all fresh troops, of a great city, and immense magazines. Murat and Berthier, left to themselves, fancied themselves able to regulate the flight. But in the midst of the extreme disorder, it required a colossus for a rallying point, and he had just disappeared. In the great chasm which he left, Murat was scarcely perceptible.

It was then too clearly seen that a great man is not replaced, either because the pride of his followers can no longer stoop to obey another, or that having always thought of, foreseen, and ordered every thing himself, he had only formed good instruments, skilful lieutenants, but no commanders.

The very first night, a general refused to obey. The marshal who commanded the rear-guard was almost the only one who returned to the royal head-quarters. Three thousand men of the old and young guard were still there. This was the whole of the grand army, and of that gigantic body there remained nothing but the head. But at the news of Napoleon's departure, these veterans, spoiled by the habit of being commanded only by the conqueror of Europe, being no longer supported by the honour of serving him, and scorning to act as guards to another, gave way in their turn, and voluntarily fell into disorder.

Most of the colonels of the army, who had hitherto been such subjects of admiration, and had marched on, with only four or five officers or soldiers around their eagle, preserving their place of battle, now followed no orders but their own; each of them fancied himself entrusted with his own safety, and looked only to himself for it. Men there were who marched two hundred leagues without even looking round. It was an almost general sauve-qui-peut.

The Emperor's disappearance and Murat's incapacity were not, however, the only causes of this dispersion; the principal certainly was the severity of the winter, which at that moment became extreme. It aggravated every thing, and seemed to have planted itself completely between Wilna and the army.

Till we arrived at Malodeczno, and up to the 4th of December, the day when it set in upon us with such violence, the march, although painful, had been marked by a smaller number of deaths than before we reached the Berezina. This respite was partly owing to the vigorous efforts of Ney and Maison, which had kept the enemy in check, to the then milder temperature, to the supplies which were obtained from a less ravaged country, and, finally, to the circumstance that they were the strongest men who had escaped from the passage of the Berezina.

The partial organization which had been introduced into the disorder was kept up. The mass of runaways kept on their way, divided into a number of petty associations of eight or ten men. Many of these bands still possessed a horse, which carried their provisions, and was himself finally destined to be converted to that purpose. A covering of rags, some utensils, a knapsack, and a stick, formed the accoutrements and the armour of these poor fellows. They no longer possessed either the arms or the uniform of a soldier, nor the desire of combating any other enemies than hunger and cold; but they still retained perseverance, firmness, the habit of danger and suffering, and a spirit always ready, pliant, and quick in making the most of their situation. Finally, among the soldiers still under arms, the dread of a nickname, by which they themselves ridiculed their comrades who had fallen into disorder, retained some influence.

But after leaving Malodeczno, and the departure of Napoleon, when winter with all its force, and doubled in severity, attacked each of us, there was a complete dissolution of all those associations against misfortune. It was no longer any thing but a multitude of isolated and individual struggles. The best no longer respected themselves; nothing stopped them; no speaking looks detained them; misfortune was hopeless of assistance, and even of regret; discouragement had no longer judges to condemn, or witnesses to prove it; all were its victims.

Henceforward there was no longer fraternity in arms, there was an end to all society, to all ties; the excess of evils had brutified them. Hunger, devouring hunger, had reduced these unfortunate men to the brutal instinct of self-preservation, all which constitutes the understanding of the most ferocious animals, and which is ready to sacrifice every thing to itself; a rough and barbarous nature seemed to have communicated to them all its fury. Like savages, the strongest despoiled the weakest; they rushed round the dying, and frequently waited not for their last breath. When a horse fell, you might have fancied you saw a famished pack of hounds; they surrounded him, they tore him to pieces, for which they quarrelled among themselves like ravenous dogs.

The greater number, however, preserved sufficient moral strength to consult their own safety without injuring others; but this was the last effort of their virtue. If either leader or comrade fell by their side, or under the wheels of the cannon, in vain did they call for assistance, in vain did they invoke the names of a common country, religion, and cause; they could not even obtain a passing look. The cold inflexibility of the climate had completely passed into their hearts; its rigour had contracted their feelings equally with their countenances. With the exception of a few of the commanders, all were absorbed by their sufferings, and terror left no room for compassion.

Thus it was that the same egotism with which excessive prosperity has been reproached, was produced by the excess of misfortune, but much more excusable in the latter; the first being voluntary, and the last compulsive; the first a crime of the heart, and the other an impulse of instinct entirely physical; and certainly it was hazarding one's life to stop for an instant. In this universal shipwreck, the stretching forth one's hand to a dying leader or comrade was a wonderful act of generosity. The least movement of humanity became a sublime action.

There were a few, however, who stood firm against both heaven and earth; these protected and assisted the weakest; but these were indeed rare.