the face of the earth, and every object upon it that was not consider ably above its surface. The cold was intolerable; and now it was that the loud complaints of human nature, suffering under every ill, burst from every lip. Then, O Napoleon! were thy magnificent titles of Conqueror, King, and Emperor, forgotten in the general accusation of Tyrant, Betrayer, Murderer!

"The morning broke, and the usual track of their march had disappeared. The weltering bodies of their companions, the stiffened corses of those who had perished by famine, all were hidden from their sight under one wide waste of snow. The cry which broke from their hearts at this desolate spectacle, this whitened world, which shut from their emaciated hands every root of the earth, every blade of grass for their fainting cattle, was like the cry at the judgment day --all hope was vain, and the direst perdition seemed to await them at every point."

The winter set in more early than usual, and with an intensity seldom experienced in its commencement.

"The wretched fugitives of Napoleon were obliged to bivouac upon the naked snow, with no other covering than the drifting sleet which drove against their exposed bodies like the piercing points of arrows. In these terrible nights of more than mortal cold, they attempted to light fires; and round the half kindled sparks they huddled together, to participate the vital heat each yet contained. But it was so small, that in a few hours many hundreds died, and when morning dawned, their surviving comrades beheld them in ghastly cireles of death around the glimmering ashes."

«** The emperor, and the patriotic spirit of his nobles, had abundantly furnished the Russian army with provisions and winter clothing; and, though out under all the inclemencies of the season, they hardly felt its fierceness.

"Not so the French army. The persons who composed its legions were most of them born under more genial suns; their constitutions knew no habits answerable to the attacks which would be made on them in cold climates, and as no fictitious means had been prepared of shielding them from such inevitable evils, the consequence could not be but fatal.

"Day after day these unhappy men dragged on their wretched existence. All military ideas were thrown aside; it was no longer an army that was retreating, but a multitude of famishing individuals, each seeking his own preservation, and careless of all other objects in the world. To speak of discipline, or order, was mockery to them. They spurned at a command so impotent, that it could only issue its decrees to their perishing ranks. "Give us bread," they would cry, "and we will obey you!" Officer and private alike contemned every effort of the generals to maintain subordination, and the visible appearance of an army. They broke away in bands, like wild beasts howling for their prey; and rushing together, or in desperate solitary attempts, tore down every obstacle in their path to procure food and

tents.

raiment. Friend and foe were assailed, self preservation was their sole motive, and when no Russian property presented itself for plunder, they fell upon their own wagons, and pillaged them of their conA horrible distraction seized upon thousands, and wherever they moved the direst spectacles tracked their steps. Their figures now appeared hardly human; the faces of some were disfigured by the loss of various features from the inveteracy of the frost; others had lost their hands or feet, some whole limbs, but even these injuries were small, when compared with the combination of bodily sufferings (hitherto unknown in the annals of the world) which fell upon many, and produced diseases for which there is yet no name."

The horses which had long been without sufficient forage, and were, in fact, emaciated and enfeebled before the frost commenced, were the first to perish by its inclemency. Death seemed, as if in mercy, sooner to contract their interval of suffering. Day and night they perished by hundreds.

"Instead of the usual complement of horses to draw a heavy piece of artillery or a wagon, twelve, fourteen, and often twenty, were put to the task. But even with this addition, should they arrive at a rising ground up which the load was to be drawn, it became an insurmountable barrier, and guns and wagons were abandoned. The cavalry (all excepting the cavalry of the guards) were hourly dismounted to assist with their horses in these often vain attempts to save their artillery and baggage. Sometimes, to preserve the horses, the baggage was left, and frequently both were lost together; the horses sinking at once under the unequal labour, and the abandoned wagons seized in the sight of their owners by the hovering Cossacks."

The author remarks, p. 204. that Bonaparte's generals, either secretly or openly, condemned his encumbering himself with such an immense train of artillery in his retreat, which rendered so many horses necessary for its transport, and, from the effect which it had in retarding the march of the troops at a period when safety depended principally upon rapidity of movement, contributed in no small degree to the destruction of the army. The cavalry were dismounted to provide horses for the guns. The horses perished; and the guns were left behind; but not till the delay had occasioned disasters which could not afterwards be repaired.

Bonaparte with his chosen band of satellites arrived at Smolensko on the 9th of November, and on the 13th he departed for Krasnoy. Here he found that his pursuers were much nearer than he had supposed; and he anxiously awaited the coming up of Davoust, who had been left to blow up the fortifications around Smolensko before the evacuation of the town. Davoust with his VOL. III. New Series.

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troops having arrived within about three wersts of Krasnoy was surprised by the army under Miloradovitch, and assailed with such fury that all resistance was vain.

"The Great Napoleon," says our author, "from amidst his guards, witnessed the commencement of this terrific rout; but not waiting to behold its issue, he turned his horse, and fled at full gallop with his suite towards the town of Laidy. Thus did he abandon a division of his army, to which he had hitherto affixed so much consequence, and leave to the fury of an incensed enemy, a field-marshal whom he had always affected to regard with peculiar esteem.

"The complete destruction of the whole corps of Davoust succeeded to the acclaim of victory from the Russian lines. The cries of his deserted and dying soldiers must have followed the flying steps of Napoleon, as he vanished from the field. He was deaf to the appeal, and was seen no more. The wretched creatures who escaped the swords of their conquerors, sought shelter in the neighbouring woods which skirt the Dneiper, for an extent of five wersts. There these desolate beings, wounded, starving, and naked, laid them down under the frozen thickets, and soon forgot the desertion of their leader and their own miseries in the sleep of death."

The author allows that Davoust, instead of taking to flight like his master, "maintained his character of general to the last," and did not recede a step "until the total destruction of his division, and the flight of the few who survived, drew him along with them into the woods." The corps of Ney was cut off by the destruction of that of Davoust, and appears to have experienced nearly a similar fate. Ney had pressed forward with confidence, and "arrived within half a cannon shot of the Russian batteries,' which were disposed so as to command the only passage to Krasnoy by the highway, when he received a

kr summons to surrender. At this he laughed, still believing that the troops he now saw were, at the best, but a small detachment. Je saurai me faire jour!' exclaimed he, and rushed to put into execution his determination.

"The answer to this reply was immediately made by the Russian guns, and then, indeed, was he convinced of his mistake. He saw his men, at the distance of two hundred paces from the cannon's mouths, fall in whole ranks, but the instantaneous slaughter did not check the resolution either of the soldiers or their commander. The surprise only seemed to elicit the full blaze of their courage, and they charged upon the batteries with the most furious impetuosity. The carnage was dreadful: showers of grape mowed down hundreds, but still the vacuum was filled. A valour worthy of the noblest cause was exhibited by column after column pressing towards the batteries, to glory or the grave."

***The wretched survivors followed the track in the snow

yet left them by the fugitives of the preceding day, and fled into the woods. Ney crossed the Boristhenes at the extremity of these thickets, leaving in the hands of his conquerors his colours, cannon, and baggage."

When Bonaparte reached Orcha, in his rapid flight, he learned that his magazines at Minsk had fallen into the hands of Admiral Tchitchagoff. He had not evacuated Orcha long before it was entered by the Cossacks. Fortune favoured Bonaparte, personally, as much in his flight from Moscow as in that from Egypt; and he is perhaps doomed to pay the forfeit of his crimes by some more ceremonious weapon than the Cossack spear. if Bonaparte escaped, it was not owing to the want of vigilant pursuit on the part of Platoff, of Tchitchagoff, or of Vigtenstein. Vigtenstein nearly came up with Bonaparte at the moment of his crossing the Berezina; over which two bridges had been thrown. We shall quote the author's account of the passage of this river by Napoleon and his suite, and of the accumulation of misery, which overtook thousands of his followers at this point. The description is altogether one of the best in the present work. The horrors which it details, and the sufferings which were endured, were so great as to render all exaggeration impossible; and, therefore, we here give our author credit for fidelity of representation.

"The instant the work" (meaning the bridge) "was passable, the impatient Emperor of the French ordered over a sufficient number of his guards to render the way tolerably safe from immediate molestation; and the moment that was ascertained, he followed with his suite and principal generals, a promiscuous crowd of soldiers pressing after him. The bridge was hardly cleared of his weight and of that of his chosen companions, when the rush of fugitives redoubled. No order could be kept with the hordes that poured towards its passage for escape and life, for the Russians were in their rear; the thunder of Vigtenstein was rolling over their heads. No pen can describe the confusion and the horror of the scenes which ensued. The French army had lost its rear guard, and they found themselves at once exposed to all the operations of the vengeful enemy. On the right and on the left there was no escape; cannon, bayonets, and sabres, menaced them on every side; certain death was on their rear; in their front alone was there any hope of safety; and, frantic with the desperate alternative, thousands upon thousands flew towards the Berezina, some plunging into the river, but most directing their steps to the newly constructed bridges, which seemed to offer them a passage from their enemies. Misery had long disorganized the French army, and in the present dismay no voice of order was heard: the tumult was tremendous, was destructive of each other, as the despairing wretches pressed forward and struggled for precedence in the moment of escape.

"Vigtenstein stood in horror, viewing this chaos of human misery to close it at once in death or in capitulation was the wish of his brave heart: but the enemy was frantic; nothing could be heard but the roar of cannon and the cries of despair. The wounded and the dying covered the surface of the ground; the survivors rushed in wild fury upon their affrighted comrades on the bridges. They could not penetrate, but only press upon a crowd at the nearest extremity; for the whole bodies of these passages were so filled with desperate fugitives that they crushed on each other to suffocation and to death. Trains of artillery, baggage, cavalry, and wagons of all kinds, being intermixed and driven pell-mell to one point, hundreds of human beings were trodden down, trampled on, torn and mashed to pieces. Officers and soldiers were mingled in one mass; self preservation was the only stimulus, and seeking that, many a despairing wretch precipitated his comrade to destruction, that he might find his place on the bridge. Thousands fell into the river, thousands threw themselves into the hideous stream, hoping to save themselves by swimming, but in a few minutes they were jammed amidst the blocks of ice which rolled along its floods, and either killed in the concussion, or frozen to death by the extremity of the cold. The air resounded with the yells and shrieks (it was something more horrible than cries) of the dying, wounded, and drowning; but they were only heard at intervals, for one continued roar seemed to fill the heavens, of the Russian artillery pouring its floods of deathful retribution on the heads of the desolators of its country. Welcome indeed were the deaths it sent; few were his pangs who fell by the ball or the sabre, compared with his torture who lay mangled beneath the crowding feet of his comrades, who expired amid the crashing horrors of a world of ice. But the despair of these fated wretches was not yet complete. The head which had planned all these evils might yet be amongst them: and the bridges, groaning beneath the weight of their loads, were to be fired! The deed was done: and still crowd upon crowd continued to press each other forward, choking up the passage amid bursting flames, scorched and frozen at the same instant, till at length the whole sunk with a death-like noise into the bosom of the Berezina."

At Smorgoni, Bonaparte resigned the command of the army to Murat, and, having put on a disguise, according to the statement of our author,

"stole with Caulincourt into a wretched sledge, and proceeded over the snows as swiftly as his fears would carry him towards Warsaw. On the 17th he passed through Wilna without hardly a minute's delay; and on the evening of the 20th, sheltered his head in safety in the Polish capital! The final escape of Napoleon was known to a very few only for some time after it was effected; but as he shot through Wilna he found it expedient to see Maret. The conference did not last many minutes, and then he departed with as much secrecy and haste as if a pursuer were in every gale."