The pen has no colors to depict the horrors of the grand army’s retreat amid the fierce storms of a Russian winter. Though “horrors upon horror’s head” accumulate, there is always lacking something which shall picture to the heart the full truth of that disastrous march.

The Emperor reached Wiazma in two days’ march from Gjatz. Here he halted for the arrival of Prince Eugene and Davoust; and to reconnoitre the road from Medyn and Juknof. Hearing no tidings of the Russians, he set off after thirty-six hours’ stay, leaving Ney at Wiazma to relieve Davoust, who was accused of dilatoriness; but he said that the artillery and wagons were constantly precipitated into deep ravines which crossed the road, and that it was nearly impossible to drag them up the opposite icy slope, the horses’ shoes not having been turned. Nevertheless, both he and the Viceroy arrived within two leagues of Wiazma on the 2d of November, and might have passed through it; but neglecting to do so, the Russian advanced-guard under Miloradowich (called the Russian Murat) turned their bivouacs in the night, and posted themselves along the left bank of the road, between the French generals and Wiazma. On the 3d of November, Prince Eugene was preparing to take the road to that town, when the first dawn of day showed him his situation, his rear-guard cut off, and Ney, who was to have come to his assistance, fighting in his own defence in the direction of Wiazma. He immediately took his resolution. He stopped, faced about, formed in line along the main-road, and kept the foremost of the enemy’s troops in check, till Ney marched up one of his regiments, and attacking them in the rear, compelled them to retire. At the same time, Compans, one of Davoust’s generals, joined his division to the Italian guard; and while they fought together, Davoust passed, and got between Wiazma and the Russians. The battle was not over, but begun. The French amounted to thirty thousand, but were in great disorder. The Russian artillery, superior in number, advanced at a gallop, and mowed down their lines. Davoust and his generals were still surrounded with many of their bravest men. Several of the officers who had been wounded at the Mosqua were still seen, one with his arm in a sling, another with his head covered with bandages, encouraging the soldiers, keeping them together, throwing themselves upon the enemy’s field-pieces and seizing them, and thus preventing the effects of bad example by good. Miloradowich saw that his prey would escape him, and sent the Englishman Wilson to summon Kutusoff to his aid; but the old general laughed at him. The fight had already lasted seven hours; when night approached, the French began to retire. This retrogade movement encouraged the enemy; and had it not been for a signal effort of the 25th, 57th, and 85th regiments, Davoust’s corps would have been turned, broken, and destroyed. Prince Eugene made good his retreat to Wiazma; Davoust followed, but Morand’s division, which entered first, found a number of Russians there before them, and had to cut their way through them. Compans, who brought up the rear, put an end to the affair by facing about, and making a furious assault upon Miloradowich. The bivouacs were set up by the light of the burning of Wiazma, and amidst repeated discharges of artillery. During the night the alarm continued. Several times the troops thought they were attacked, and groped about for their arms. On the following morning, when they returned to their ranks, they were astonished at the smallness of their numbers.

Nevertheless, the example of the chiefs and the hope of finding rest at Smolensk kept up the men’s spirits. Besides, so far they had been cheered by the sight of the sun; but on the 6th of November, the snow came on, and every thing underwent a total change. The consequences were most disastrous. The troops marched on without knowing where, and without distinguishing any object; and while they strove to force their way through the whirlwinds of sleet, the snow drifted in the cavities where they fell, and the weakest rose no more. The wind drove in their faces not only the falling snow, but that which it raised in furious eddies from the earth. The Muscovite winter attacked them in every part, penetrated through their thin dress and ragged shoes. Their wet clothes froze upon them; this covering of ice chilled their bodies, and stiffened all their limbs. A cutting and violent wind stopped their breath or seized upon it as it was exhaled, and converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards. The unhappy men crawled on with trembling limbs and chattering teeth till the snow, collecting round their feet in hard lumps, like stones, some scattered fragment, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their companions, made them stagger and fall. Their cries and groans were vain; soon the snow covered them, and small hillocks marked where they lay. Such was their sepulture. The road was filled with these undulations, like a burying-place. A number of them froze as they stood still, and looked like posts, covered with snow. The most intrepid or obdurate were affected; they hurried past with averted eyes. But before them, around them, all was snow; the horizon seemed one vast winding-sheet, in which nature was enveloping the whole army. The only objects which came out from the bleak expanse were a few gloomy pines skirting the plain, and adding to the horror of the scene with their funeral green and the motionless erectnesserectness of their black trunks! Even the weapons of the soldiers were a weight almost insupportable to their benumbed limbs. In their frequent falls they slipped out of their hands and were broken or lost in the snow. Many others had their fingers frozen on the musket they still grasped. Some broke up into parties; others wandered on alone. If they dispersed themselves in the fields, or by the cross-paths, in search of bread or a shelter for the night, they met nothing but Cossacks and an armed population, who surrounded, wounded, and stripped them, and left them with ferocious laughter to expire naked upon the snow. Then came the night of sixteen hours. But on this universal covering of snow, they knew not where to stop, where to sit, where to lie, where to find a few roots for food, or dry sticks to light their fires. At length fatigue, darkness, and repeated orders induced a pause, and they tried to establish themselves for the night; but the storm scattered the preparations for the bivouacs, and the branches of the pines covered with ice and snow only melted away, and resisted the attempts of the soldiers to kindle them into a blaze. When at length the fire got the better, officers and soldiers gathered round it, to cook their wretched meal of horse-flesh, and a few spoonfuls of rye mixed with snow-water. Next morning, circles of stiffened corpses marked the situation of the bivouacs, and the carcasses of thousands of horses were strewed round them. From this time disorder and distrust began to prevail. A few resisted the strong contagion of insubordination and despondency. These were the officers, the subalterns, and some of the soldiers, whom nothing could detach from their duty. They kept up each other’s spirits by repeating the name of Smolensk, which they were approaching, and looked forward to as the end of their sufferings.

At the lake of Semlewo, it was found necessary to sacrifice the spoils of Moscow. Cannon, armor, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of the Great Iwan, all sunk at once in the waters of the lake. On the 6th of November, just as the snow was beginning to fall, Napoleon had reached Mikalewska. There he took up his quarters in a palisaded house. He had scarcely arrived, before news of Mallet’s conspiracy in Paris reached him, and added new trouble to his already perturbed spirit. Under all the gloomy circumstances of the time, when the fabric of his power, which he had reared with so much skill, and maintained with such vast energy, seemed to “totter to its fall,” the fortitude of the Emperor was remarkable. He preserved a firm countenance, and strove to induce those around him to believe that his star had not yet begun to decline.

As the Emperor sat in his cheerless hut, with the white storm howling far around, he was aroused by the entrance of Dalbignac, one of Ney’s aid-de-camps.

From Wiazma that general had commenced protecting the retreat, which, though fatal to so many others, conferred immortal renown upon him. As far as Dorogobouje, he had been molested only by some bands of Cossacks, troublesome insects, attracted by the dying, and the forsaken carriages, flying away the moment a hand was lifted against them, but still annoying from their continual return.

It was not these that were the subject of Ney’s message. On approaching Dorogobouje, he was shocked at the traces of disorder left behind them by the corps which had preceded him, and which it was not in his power to efface. He had made up his mind to leave the baggage to the enemy; but he blushed with shame at the sight of the first pieces of cannon abandoned before Dorogobouje.

The marshal had halted there. After a dreadful night, during which snow, wind, and famine had driven most of his men from the fires, the dawn, which is always waited for with so much impatience in a bivouac, brought with it at once a tempest, the enemy, and the spectacle of an almost general defection. In vain he fought in person at the head of what men and officers he had left; he had been obliged to retreat precipitately behind the Dnieper; and of this he now sent to apprise the Emperor.

He wished him to know the worst. His aid-de-camp, Colonel Dalbignac, was instructed to say that “the first movement of retreat from Malo-Yaroslawetz, for soldiers who had never yet fallen back, had greatly dispirited the army; that the affair at Wiazma had shaken its firmness; that the deluge of snow, and the increased cold which it had brought with it, had completed its disorganization; and that a multitude of officers, having lost everything, their platoons, battalions, regiments, and even divisions, had joined the roving masses; so that generals, colonels, and officers of all ranks were seen mingled with the privates, and marching at random, sometimes with one column, sometimes with another; that, as order could not exist in the midst of disorder, this example was seducing even the veteran regiments, which had served through all the wars of the revolution; and that, accordingly, the best soldiers were heard asking one another why they alone were required to fight to secure the escape of the rest; and how it could be expected that they should keep up their courage, when they heard the cries of despair issuing from the neighboring woods, in which the large convoys of them wounded, who had been dragged to no purpose all the way from Moscow, had just been abandoned? Such, no doubt, was the fate which awaited themselves; what had they, then, to gain by remaining with their colors? Incessant toils and combats by day, and famine at night, with shelterless bivouacs, still more destructive than battle; hunger and cold effectually drove sleep from their eyes; or if, perchance, fatigue got the better of these for a moment, the repose which should refresh them put a period to their lives. In short, the eagles had ceased to protect them—they only destroyed. Why, then, remain around them to perish by battalions, by masses? It would be better to disperse; and, since there was no other course than flight, to try who could run the fastest. It would not then be the bravest and best that would fall; the poltroons behind them would no longer have a chance to eat up the relics of the high road.” Lastly, the aid-de-camp was commissioned to explain to the Emperor all the horrors of the marshal’s situation, the responsibility of which that commander absolutely refused to assume.

But Napoleon saw enough around himself to judge of the rest. The fugitives were that moment passing by him; he was sensible that nothing could now be done but to sacrifice the army successively, part by part, beginning at the extremities, in order to save the head. When, therefore, the aid-de-camp was beginning to state farther particulars, he sharply interrupted him with these words: “Colonel, I do not ask you for these details.” The colonel said no more; aware that, in the midst of these terrible disasters, now irremediable, and in which every one had occasion for all his energies, the Emperor was afraid of complaints, which could have no other effect than to discourage as well those who indulged in them as those who listened to them.

He remarked the attitude of Napoleon, the same as he retained throughout the whole of this dismal retreat. It was grave, silent, and resigned; suffering much less in body than others, but far more in mind, and brooding with speechless agony over his misfortunes. At that moment General Carpentier sent him from Smolensk a convoy of provisions. Bessieres wished to take possession of them; but the Emperor instantly ordered them to be forwarded to the Prince of Moskwa, saying that “those who were fighting ought to eat before the rest.” At the same time, he sent word to Ney to “defend himself long enough to allow him some stay at Smolensk, where the army should eat, rest, and be reorganized.”

But if this hope kept some still to their duty, many others abandoned every thing to hasten towards that promised goal of their sufferings. As for Ney, he saw that a sacrifice was required, and that he was marked out as the victim; he nobly resigned himself, therefore, prepared to meet the whole of a danger great as his courage; and thenceforward he neither attached his honor to baggage, nor to cannon, which the winter alone wrested from him. An elbow of the Borysthenes stopped and kept back part of his guns at the foot of its icy slopes: he sacrificed them without hesitation, passed that obstacle, faced about, and made the hostile river, which crossed his route, serve him as the means of defence.

The Russians, however, advanced under favor of a wood and of the forsaken carriages, whence they kept up a fire of musketry on Ney’s troops. Half of the latter, whose icy arms froze their stiffened fingers, became discouraged; they gave way, excusing themselves by their want of firmness on the preceding day; and fleeing because they had before fled, which, but for this, they would have considered as impossible. But Ney, rushing in among them, seized one of their muskets, and led them back to action, which he was himself the first to renew; exposing his life like a private soldier, with a firelock in his hand, the same as though he had been neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor consideration; in short, as if he had still every thing to gain, when in fact he had every thing to lose. But, though he had again turned soldier, he ceased not to be general: he took advantage of the ground, supported himself against a height, and covered his approach by occupying a palisaded house. His generals and colonels, among whom he particularly remarked Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who had expected to pursue, was obliged to retreat.

By this action Ney afforded the army a respite of twenty-four hours; and it profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and every succeeding day, he displayed the same heroism. Between Wiazma and Smolensk he fought ten whole days.

On the 13th of November, Ney was approaching that city, which he was not to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to beat off the enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his left were seen covered with a multitude of fugitives. In their terror, these unfortunate wretches fell, and rolled down to where he was, upon the frozen snow, which they stained with their blood. A band of Cossacks, which was soon perceived in the midst of them, sufficiently accounted for this disorder. The astonished marshal, having caused this horde of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of Italy, returning completely stripped, without baggage and without cannon.

Platoff had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje. Near that town Prince Eugene had quitted the high road, and, in order to proceed towards Witepsk, had taken that which, two months before, had brought him from Smolensk; but the Wop, which, when he had crossed it before, was a mere brook and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swollen into a river. It ran over a muddy bed, and was bounded by two steep banks. It was found necessary to cut a passage in these precipitous and frozen banks, and to give orders for the demolition of the neighboring houses during the night, for the purpose of building a bridge with the materials. But those who had taken shelter in them opposed their being destroyed; and, as the viceroy was more beloved than feared, his instructions were not obeyed. The pontonniers became disheartened, and when daylight, with the Cossacks, appeared, the bridge, after being twice broken down, was at last abandoned.

Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of disbanded men, the sick and wounded, upward of a hundred pieces of cannon, ammunition wagons, and a multitude of vehicles of every kind, lined the bank and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford the river, through the floating ice which was carried along by its current. The first guns that were attempted to be got over reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while at the same time the bed of the stream at the place of passage was continually deepened by the wheels and by the efforts of the horses, and at length the stoppage became general.

Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts; hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the viceroy finally found himself compelled to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners were allowed scarcely a moment to part from their effects; while they were selecting from them such articles as they most needed, and loading their horses with them, a multitude of soldiers came rushing up; they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; these they broke in pieces and rummaged every part, avenging their poverty on the wealth, and their privations on the superfluities they here found, and snatching them from the Cossacks, who were in the meantime looking on at a distance.

But it was provisions of which most of them were in quest. They threw aside embroidered clothes, pictures, ornaments of every kind, and gilt bronzes for a few handfuls of flour. In the evening it was a strange sight to behold the mingled riches of Paris and of Moscow, the luxuries of two of the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised on the snow of the desert.

At the same time, most of the artillerymen spiked their guns in despair, and scattered their powder about. Others laid a train with it as far as some ammunition wagons, which had been left at a considerable distance behind the baggage. They waited till the most eager of the Cossacks had come up to them, and when a great number, greedy of plunder, had collected about them, they threw a brand from a bivouac upon the train. The fire ran, and in a moment reached its destination; the wagons were blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not killed on the spot, dispersed in dismay.

A few hundred men, who were still called the 14th division, were opposed to these hordes, and sufficed to keep them at a respectful distance till the next day. All the rest, soldiers, sutlers, women, and children, sick and wounded, driven by the enemy’s balls, crowded the bank of the river. But at the sight of its swollen current, of the sharp and massive fragments of ice floating down its stream, and the necessity of aggravating their already intolerable sufferings from cold by plunging into its chilling waves, they all started back.

Colonel Delfanti, an Italian, was obliged to set the example and cross first. The soldiers then moved, and the crowd followed. The weakest, the least resolute, and the most avaricious, stayed behind. Such as could not make up their minds to part from their booty, and to forsake fortune which was forsaking them, were surprised in the midst of their hesitation. The next day, amid all this wealth, the savage Cossacks were seen still covetous of the squalid and tattered garments of the unfortunate creatures who had become their prisoners: they stripped them, and then, collecting them in troops, drove them along over the snow, hurrying their steps by hard blows with the shafts of their lances.

The army of Italy, thus completely dismantled, soaked in the waters of the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow near a village where its officers expected to have found lodgings for themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on every habitation, profiting by the darkness, which prevented them from recognising their officers or being known by them. They tore down every thing, doors, windows, and even the woodwork of the roofs, feeling but little compunction in compelling others, be they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.

Their generals attempted in vain to drive them off: they took their blows without a murmur or the least opposition, but without desisting—even the men of the royal and imperial guards; for, throughout the whole army, such were the scenes that occurred every night. The unfortunate fellows kept silently but actively at work on the wooden walls, which they pulled in pieces on every side at once, and which, after vain efforts, their officers were obliged to relinquish to them, for fear they would fall upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in their design and of respect for the anger of their superiors.

Having kindled good fires, they spent the night in drying themselves, amid the shouts, imprecationsimprecations, and groans of those who were still crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated into it, and drowned.

It is a fact by no means creditable to the enemy, that during this disaster, and in sight of so rich a booty, a few hundred men, left at the distance of half a league from the viceroy, on the other side of the Wop, were sufficient to curb for twenty hours not only the courage, but even the cupidity of Platoff’s Cossacks.

It is possible, indeed, that the hetman made sure of destroying the viceroy on the following day. In fact, all his measures were so well planned, that at the moment when the army of Italy, after an unquiet and disorderly march, came in sight of Dukhowtchina, a town yet uninjured, and was joyfully hastening forward to shelter itself there, several thousand Cossacks sallied forth from it with cannon, and suddenly stopped its progress; while at the same time Platoff, with all his hordes, came up and attacked its rear guard and both flanks.

Several eye-witnesses assert that a complete tumult and confusion then ensued; that the disbanded men, the women, and the attendants ran headlong over each other, and broke quite through the ranks; that, in short, there was a moment when this unfortunate army was but a shapeless mass, a mere rabble rout hurrying to and fro. All seemed to be lost; but the coolness of the prince and the efforts of his officers, saved all. The best men disengaged themselves, and the ranks were again formed. They advanced, and, firing a few volleys, the enemy, who had every thing on his side excepting courage, the only advantage yet left the French, opened and retired, confining himself to a useless demonstration.

The army occupied his quarters still warm in that town, while he went beyond to bivouac, and to prepare for similar surprises to the very gates of Smolensk. For this disaster at the Wop had made the viceroy give up the idea of separating from the Emperor, near to whom these hordes became still bolder; they surrounded the 11th division. When Prince Eugene would have gone to its relief, his men and officers, stiffened with a cold of twenty degrees, which the wind rendered most piercing, remained stretched on the warm ashes of the fires. To no purpose did he point out to them their comrades surrounded, the enemy approaching, the bullets and balls which were already reaching them; they refused to rise, protesting that they would rather perish where they were than any longer endure such cruel hardships. The videttes themselves had abandoned their posts. Prince Eugene nevertheless contrived to save his rear guard.

It was in returning with it towards Smolensk that his stragglers had been driven back on Ney’s troops, to whom they communicated their panic; all hurried confusedly towards the Dnieper, where they crowded together at the entrance of the bridge, without thinking of defending themselves, when a charge made by the 4th regiment stopped the advance of the enemy.

Its colonel, young Fezenzac, contrived to infuse fresh life into these men, who were half perished with cold. There, as in every thing that can be called action, was manifested the triumph of the sentiments of the soul over the sensations of the body; for every physical feeling tended to encourage despondency and flight; Nature advised it with her hundred most urgent voices; and yet a few words of honor alone were sufficient to produce the most heroic devotedness. The soldiers of the 4th regiment rushed like furies upon the enemy, against the mountains of snow and ice of which he had taken possession, and in the teeth of the northern hurricane, for they had every thing against them. Ney himself was obliged to moderate their impetuosity.

Such fighting could only be the work of heroes, who were determined to triumph or perish. Ney proved himself worthy to command the rear guard, upon which the safety of the army depended. He was equal to a host, and around his stalwart form the troops rallied, as they would around a rock of salvation. He seemed even determined to conquer the Russian storm.

At length the army once more came in sight of Smolensk: it had reached the goal so often announced to it of all its sufferings. The soldiers exultingly pointed it out to each other. There was that land of promise where their hunger was to find abundance, their fatigue rest; where bivouacs in a cold of nineteen degrees would be forgotten in houses warmed by good fires. There they would enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel; there they would be furnished with new shoes, and clothing adapted to the climate.

But Smolensk was a heap of blackened ruins, and the commissary found there, was compelled to own that he had not enough provisions to supply half the army for the required time, fifteen days. If any thing was wanted to increase the wretchedness of this doomed army it was this disastrous disappointment. Napoleon himself displayed a consciousness of the terrors by which he was surrounded, and seemed to apprehend the destruction of his entire army.