1812, page 56
The cold, it seems to Boulart,
‘has become more intense. I sleep in a church, on a pew and close to a nice fire which brings on the most acute pains in my feet. The nave is packed, lots of men are dying there. Terrifying cries of “Run away! Get out! Everyone here’s dying!” awaken me. I’m in a maddening state of exhaustion.’
Jomini’s suffering from pleurisy. Before reaching Ochmiana the intense cold had forced him to get down from Eblé’s travelling coupé and bivouac, together with the Duke of Piacenza, inside the hard-frozen cadaver of a horse, where he’d paid 3 ducats for as many spoonfuls of honey. Even so they’d had to drive away marauders armed with axes. Buying a sledge off a soldier, together with the little pony that’s drawing it, he’d stipulated as condition that the soldier should take him as far as Vilna. Dozed off in the sledge. But been woken up abruptly – in a ditch. The soldier had simply tossed him into it! Now a gigantic Swiss drum-major is shaking him by the shoulders and a familiar voice is asking in a Vaudois accent: Does he really intend to end his brilliant military-literary career in a Lithuanian ditch? Helped on to Ochmiana by the drum-major, he finds a fine house intact at the entrance to the town which is in flames. The drum-major hammers on the locked door. And who should come and open if not General Barbanègre, he who five months ago had been governor of Vilna town and welcomed him as his successor? ‘Along a road marked only by rigid frozen corpses’ Vilna’s two ex-governors pursue their way in the latter’s carriage.
There are occasional Cossack incursions. Already Caulaincourt has noticed that, glutted with booty, they’re neither bothering to kill men nor even take prisoners. At one point Paul de Bourgoing sees some and some Russian hussars lying dead by the roadside. But is too cold to pay much attention. And in fact the Russians are finding the going almost as hard:
‘The Russian general headquarters wasn’t able to follow the French as swiftly as we were, the route being so pillaged, burnt and devastated that there was no means of engaging any other troops.’
All along the road Rochechouart and Wilson have been seeing
‘both sides littered with dead bodies in all postures, or with men expiring from cold, hunger and fatigue. Each of us could individually take an incredible number of prisoners. Most, stripped of their clothes by the Cossacks, were wandering about half-naked, begging us, for mercy sake, to take them prisoner. Some said they knew very well how to cook, others that they were clever hairdressers, valets, etc. We were deafened by those cries: ‘Monsieur le Baron, take me with you. I can do this, I can do that. For the love of God a bit of bread, of anything at all.’
As for the body of the Russian army, it has
‘spread itself out to left and right, where it at least could subsist, even though submitting to the effects of the lethal cold which was falling equally on us all’.
In a tavern at Ochmiana the French émigré sees something which
‘put the finishing touch to the picture of the horrible sufferings the most beautiful, the most valiant army in the world was having to endure. Two big thin faces, with no flesh on them.’
They’re two Portuguese officers, stripped of their uniforms by Cossacks. One of them is
‘dressed in the most bizarre fashion, long underpants, torn stockings, shoeless, a wretched waistcoat, a shirt in shreds, and for head-dress only a black silk stocking whose foot dangled negligently behind his head.’
To their astonishment Rochechouart, who’d spent some time in Portugal in 1801–2, addresses them in Portuguese. The man so oddly dressed turns out to be ‘the Viscount d’Asseca, from the house of Souza’, from d’Alorna’s Portuguese Legion. Only by threats can he prevail on the Jewish innkeeper to provide them with sheepskins; and provides them with ‘a pair of boots taken at the Berezina and destined for myself’. They’ll serve for both of them until they get to Vilna with him. Just as they’re about to leave Ochmiana
‘a skeleton of a woman presented herself to our shocked eyes, asking for something to eat, and adding after having devoured what we’d given her: “Messieurs, take me with you. I’m young and beautiful, I’ll do anything you want.” Poor woman, we left her there.’
And all they can do while passing through ‘the miserable town of Ochmiana’ is to get the town’s starotz (elder), against payment, to light a fire in the town gaol, where
‘a hundred or so prisoner officers were behind bars, in their shirtsleeves, having been stripped of their coats, trousers, etc., by Cossacks and Jews’.
From the barred unglazed windows they call out to Rochechouart and his three companions that they’re dying of cold and hunger,
‘adding to their screams signs that were well understood by my comrades, who hastened to given them what was left of our provisions, adding some clothing’.
His companion Wlodeck explains that they’re Freemasons, ‘and that being Freemasons like them and being able to do so they had to come to their brothers’ help’.
Miedniki, ‘a village of 40 houses, with a brick manor house, 28 versts (17½ miles) from Vilna’, is the Lancer Brigade’s goal for the day. There Dumonceau catches up with his fellow-captain Post and the remains of his detachment that had escorted Napoleon. The road is hilly. Castellane’s following on:
‘The King’s headquarters goes on to Miednicky (thirteen miles). Leaving at 9 a.m., we get there at 3 p.m. Horrible day. We’ve seen lots of corpses of the Neapolitan division. First it had come to meet us, then fallen back toward Vilna. Its soldiers fall. A little blood comes out of their mouths, then it’s over. Seeing this sign of imminent death on their lips, their comrades are often giving them a blow on the shoulders, throwing them to the ground and stripping them before they’re quite dead. Any number of frost-bitten feet, hands, ears.’
During that terrible night, Larrey’s little Réaumur thermometer, still hanging from his coat lapel, falls to −26°, −27° and −28° (−16.25°, – 17.5°). Afterwards he’ll realise that 8/9 December had been the coldest days of the entire retreat.5
Griois’ misery is at its height. His clothing ‘suitable at best for a mild southern autumn, is wholly inadequate in a Russian winter’. Ever since the Winkovo camp back in October it’ has consisted of
‘a gold-laced red kerseymere waistcoat, a tailcoat of light cloth, over it a one-piece riding-coat, a pair of cloth trousers buttoning up on the side, no underpants, very tight Suvarov-style boots and woollen socks. However, it had been impossible to change it, and the bearskin I’d got hold of was no substitute for the mantle-style overcoat I’d been robbed of when crossing the Berezina.’
Excellent to sleep in at nights, his bearskin is far too heavy for the road, and he has to drape it over his horse. Cutting some strips from it he’s made himself
‘a kind of sheath, 7 or 8 inches long, attached at the ends by a string I passed round my neck. When on the march I thrust my hands into it, for lack of gloves, and made a kind of sleeve. But when on horseback I put it in my stirrups, and it was then my feet, more sensitive to the cold than my hands, that profited from it. From another strip of bearskin I’d made myself a chin-band which covered the lower part of my face and which I attached behind my head.’
It’s in this ‘singular getup, my head sheltered by a tattered hat, my skin chapped by the cold and smoke-blackened, my hair powdered by hoarfrost and my moustaches bristling with icicles’, he’s struggling on toward Vilna. Yet he’s one of the few
‘whose costume still kept something of a uniform about it. Most of our wretched companions seemed to be phantoms dressed up for a carnival [en chienlits]. One day I saw Colonel Fiéreck wrapped in a soldier’s old greatcoat, wearing on his head over his forage cap a pair of trousers buttoned up under his chin. All these grotesque accoutrements were passing unnoticed. Or if anyone did notice them, it was only to profit from such inventions as seemed most appropriate to keep out the cold.’
The future Margrave of Baden, with IX Corps, sees
‘a cavalry general on a konya, his legs wrapped in tatters, enveloped up to the ears in a fur. A cuirassier officer in a fur-bordered satin mantle on a similar horse, trailing his feet along the ground. A civilian employee with a gold-embroidered collar, wearing a woman’s hat and toddling along in yellow pantaloons, etc’
Surgeon-General Larrey, just as exposed to the cold and to hunger as everyone else, is keeping himself alive by noting, scientifically, the exact effects of extreme cold on starving men:
‘The deaths of these unfortunates was preceded by a facial pallor, by a sort of idiocy, by difficulty in speaking, feeble-sightedness or even the total loss of this sense. And in this state some went on marching for a while, longer or shorter, led by their comrades or friends. The muscular action became noticeably weaker. Individuals staggered like drunken men. Their weakness grew progressively until the subject fell – a sure sign that life was totally extinct. The swift and uninterrupted march of men en masse,’
he goes on remorselessly,
‘obliged those who couldn’t keep up with it to leave the centre of the column to get to the roadside and flank it. Separated from the closed column, abandoned to themselves, they soon lost their balance and fell into snow-filled ditches, which they found it hard to get up out of again. Instantly they were stricken by a painful stupor, from which they went into a state of lethargic stupor, and in a few moments they’d ended their painful existence. Often, before death, there was an involuntary emission of urine. In some, nasal haemorrhages, something we’d noticed more particularly on the heights of Miednicky, one of the points in Russia which seemed to me to have the greatest altitude. I have reason to believe the barometer, in this high region, had fallen considerably.’
Such a death doesn’t seem to Larrey to be a cruel one:
‘The vital forces being gradually extinguished, they drew with them the overall sensitivity, and with it disappeared any awareness of the sensitive faculties. It seems probable that at the last moment the heart became paralysed, and at the same time the vital organs ceased to function. The fluids, already reduced in volume by privations and the lack of calories, promptly coagulated. We found almost all the individuals who’d perished like this prone on their stomachs. Their bodies were stiff, their limbs inflexible. The skin remained discoloured and apparently without any gangrenal blemishes. In general, death was more or less prompt, according to whether the subject had suffered from a longer or shorter abstinence.’
All this he’s noting with scientific eye though
‘we ourselves were all in such a state of prostration and torpor that we could scarcely recognise one another. We marched in a depressed silence. The organ of life and of the muscular forces was enfeebled to a point where it was very hard to keep a sense of direction and maintain one’s equilibrium. Death was heralded by the pallor of the face, by a sort of idiocy, by difficulty in speaking, by weakness of vision.’
Lejeune, like Bourgogne before him, like thousands of others, has an irresistible desire to sit down. And does so. He’s just letting the blissful torpor of death overcome him when his comrades at Davout’s headquarters force him to get up and keep going. At every step Kergorre’s seeing men drop:
‘The habit of seeing them grow weaker enabled us to predict the moment when an individual would fall down and die. As soon as a man began to totter you could be sure he was lost. Still he went on a little way, as if drunk, his body still leaning forward. Then he fell on his face. A few drops of blood oozed from his nose. And he expired. In the same instant his limbs became like bars of iron.’
Von Muraldt’s companions are
‘giving vent to our pain in various ways. Some wept and whimpered. Others, totally stupefied, didn’t utter a sound. Many behaved like lunatics, especially at the sight of a rousing fire or when, after starving for several days, they got something to eat. Only very few indeed were still themselves.’
That day Castellane, for the first time but for a very good – or rather, painful – reason, ceases to make entries in his journal. His swollen right hand isn’t merely useless. It’s agonising. At the evening meal he can’t even raise it to ‘dispute the morsels’ of food. But one of Berthier’s ADCs, d’Hautpoul6 ‘an excellent comrade, took my plate and had the maître d’hôtel put everything into it.’ That night of 7/8 December d’Hautpoul is his bedfellow. ‘Some thirty of us were heaped up in that barn: generals, ADCs to the Emperor, officers.’
Now despondency has even hit a member of the marshalate. At 8 a.m. on 8 December the générale was being beaten in the King’s courtyard. Castellane, helped to attach his last portmanteau (‘my servants, chilled, frost-bitten, demoralised, were telling me it was impossible’) by Augustin, the only one of Narbonne’s domestics who’s still ‘quite healthy’, hears why:
‘It’s due to the arrival of the Duke of Bellune, who’s abandoned his two army corps. He only had 50 men under arms, and therefore has chosen to return in person to general headquarters. The Prince of Neuchâtel, who’d lost his head, came into the room where we were having our breakfast, shouting at us that we were dishonouring ourselves by finishing it and pointing out that the stand-to was being beaten. We didn’t pay him much attention. They weren’t even being able to assemble the Old Guard’s service battalion. It was leaving its dead at its bivouac and a sentry frozen to death on his feet. The cold didn’t permit the men to hold their muskets.’
Berthier’s been unnerved by Victor’s attitude. ‘Having asked him where his corps was,’ he’ll write in his next report to Napoleon,
‘he replied that it was several leagues away. I told him that when one has the honour of commanding the Grand Army’s rearguard one should be with those of its men who are closest to the enemy. To this he countered that he only had 300 men left.’
Murat and Berthier tell Victor he’s ‘a miserable wretch’ [le traitaient en misérable]. All he replies is
‘“Don’t attack me. I’m quite unhappy enough as it is.”’
How are things with the Treasure? That morning Davout writes to Berthier:
‘Monseigneur. I have the honour to inform Your Highness that the Treasure is having the greatest difficulty in keeping up. The wagons are too heavily loaded and won’t move at all. At every moment it’s being cut off without any human strength being able to prevent it. It seems to me necessary to replace the wagons by sledges which we would use our authority to seize in the columns or obtain in some other way. If this measure isn’t taken the Treasure will never be able to keep up and be lost at the first slightly steep hill.’
‘One Treasury wagon was looted by stragglers,’ Berthier will write, passing on Davout’s report to Napoleon, now far away:
‘Only 12,000 francs were saved. We’ve done everything humanly possible to save the other wagons. But each hill is an obstacle. On the downward slopes, despite putting the brakes on, the cannon carry away the horses. Yesterday six out of a post of eight men of the Chasseurs à Cheval died.’
Only yesterday their Captain Dieudonné (ever-famous from Géricault’s heroic masterpiece, just now being exhibited at the Paris Salon) was seriously wounded, evidently in some affray with a Cossack.
But in spite of everything, Captain Duverger, I Corps’ paymaster, has managed to keep his Treasury wagon on the move. Now he’s only got three more hours to go to reach Vilna. Alas, just then another wagon, containing 2 million francs, gets stuck in a deep snowdrift. Least of all does Duverger want to spend another horrible night under the open sky. His comrade who’s in charge of it implores his help. Only when the Paymaster-General himself implores him to give a hand does he do so. And he and his fellow-treasurers have to pass the night in a little shed. There, sharing some provisions filched from the Paymaster-General’s cook, whose wagon’s been looted by Cossacks, they find ‘an old sapper’.7 He could symbolise the whole vanished army:
‘His long red beard, sprinkled with icicles, flashed like diamonds. A bear’s skin, fixed by a rope on his right shoulder, draped part of his bust. Aslant his head he was wearing his regulation bearskin, but it been shaved bare on one side by being habitually rubbed against the ground as a pillow, and on the other preserved only a few short hairs. The old sapper was pale and shattered. A deep bleeding wound furrowed his brow. His grey sombre eyes wandered mournfully around him.’
And when they try to wake him in the morning he too is dead.
That last night, only six miles from Vilna but in a temperature of −28° Réaumur (−19.5° C), Boulart too, whose feet are hurting so much that he’s travelling ‘in the cart of a vivandière of my artillery – though deep in its straw, I’m suffering cruelly from the cold’ – has to sleep ‘in a wretched forge, without a door or windows, open to all the winds’. Le Roy too, after the house where he and Jacquet have spent that icy sleepless night has nearly burnt down, spends its last hours going over his experiences in detail. Only the reflection that very likely his sergeant son would have succumbed during this – at last he gets the word out – ‘rout’ if the Cossacks hadn’t captured him outside Moscow8 consoles him for his probable death. As for Vilna, which is now so near, he’s fearing it may be ‘Smolensk all over again’. At this thought the convinced deist and hater of all priests and theologians is reduced to again praying to that God he believes in, but who, he assumes, takes but scant interest in the sufferings of mortal men. “My God,” I said fervently,
‘“I who find such happiness in living and admiring your beautiful sun, accord me the mercy of once again being warmed by him [sic] and not leaving my wretched remains in this barbarous icy country! Let me see my family again for one hour! only one hour! I’ll die content. I’ve never asked anything of you, God, as you know! I’ve only thanked you in all circumstances, happy or unhappy, as they’ve befallen me. But this one’s beyond my strength, and if you don’t come to my aid I’m going to succumb under its weight.”
