Marechal Victor, when he started, about nine at night, from the
heights of Studzianka, which he had defended, as the rear-guard of the
retreating army, during the whole day of November 28th, 1812, left a
thousand men behind him, with orders to protect to the last possible
moment whichever of the two bridges across the Beresina might still
exist. This rear-guard had devoted itself to the task of saving a
frightful multitude of stragglers overcome by the cold, who obstinately
refused to leave the bivouacs of the army. The heroism of this generous
troop proved useless. The stragglers who flocked in masses to the banks
of the Beresina found there, unhappily, an immense number of carriages,
caissons, and articles of all kinds which the army had been forced to
abandon when effecting its passage of the river on the 27th and 28th of
November. Heirs to such unlooked-for riches, the unfortunate men, stupid
with cold, took up their abode in the deserted bivouacs, broke up the
material which they found there to build themselves cabins, made fuel of
everything that came to hand, cut up the frozen carcasses of the
horses for food, tore the cloth and the curtains from the carriages
for coverlets, and went to sleep, instead of continuing their way
and crossing quietly during the night that cruel Beresina, which an
incredible fatality had already made so destructive to the army.
The apathy of these poor soldiers can only be conceived by those who
remember to have crossed vast deserts of snow without other perspective
than a snow horizon, without other drink than snow, without other bed
than snow, without other food than snow or a few frozen beet-roots, a
few handfuls of flour, or a little horseflesh. Dying of hunger, thirst,
fatigue, and want of sleep, these unfortunates reached a shore where
they saw before them wood, provisions, innumerable camp equipages,
and carriages,--in short a whole town at their service. The village of
Studzianka had been wholly taken to pieces and conveyed from the heights
on which it stood to the plain. However forlorn and dangerous that
refuge might be, its miseries and its perils only courted men who had
lately seen nothing before them but the awful deserts of Russia. It was,
in fact, a vast asylum which had an existence of twenty-four hours only.
Utter lassitude, and the sense of unexpected comfort, made that mass of
men inaccessible to every thought but that of rest. Though the
artillery of the left wing of the Russians kept up a steady fire on this
mass,--visible like a stain now black, now flaming, in the midst of the
trackless snow,--this shot and shell seemed to the torpid creatures only
one inconvenience the more. It was like a thunderstorm, despised by all
because the lightning strikes so few; the balls struck only here and
there, the dying, the sick, the dead sometimes! Stragglers arrived in
groups continually; but once here those perambulating corpses separated;
each begged for himself a place near a fire; repulsed repeatedly, they
met again, to obtain by force the hospitality already refused to them.
Deaf to the voice of some of their officers, who warned them of probable
destruction on the morrow, they spent the amount of courage necessary to
cross the river in building that asylum of a night, in making one meal
that they themselves doomed to be their last. The death that awaited
them they considered no evil, provided they could have that one night’s
sleep. They thought nothing evil but hunger, thirst, and cold. When
there was no more wood or food or fire, horrible struggles took place
between fresh-comers and the rich who possessed a shelter. The weakest
succumbed.
At last there came a moment when a number, pursued by the Russians,
found only snow on which to bivouac, and these lay down to rise no more.
Insensibly this mass of almost annihilated beings became so compact, so
deaf, so torpid, so happy perhaps, that Marechal Victor, who had
been their heroic defender by holding twenty thousand Russians under
Wittgenstein at bay, was forced to open a passage by main force through
this forest of men in order to cross the Beresina with five thousand
gallant fellows whom he was taking to the emperor. The unfortunate
malingerers allowed themselves to be crushed rather than stir; they
perished in silence, smiling at their extinguished fires, without a
thought of France.
It was not until ten o’clock that night that Marechal Victor reached the
bank of the river. Before crossing the bridge which led to Zembin, he
confided the fate of his own rear-guard now left in Studzianka to Eble,
the savior of all those who survived the calamities of the Beresina.
It was towards midnight when this great general, followed by one brave
officer, left the cabin he occupied near the bridge, and studied the
spectacle of that improvised camp placed between the bank of the river
and Studzianka. The Russian cannon had ceased to thunder. Innumerable
fires, which, amid that trackless waste of snow, burned pale and
scarcely sent out any gleams, illumined here and there by sudden flashes
forms and faces that were barely human. Thirty thousand poor wretches,
belonging to all nations, from whom Napoleon had recruited his Russian
army, were trifling away their lives with brutish indifference.
“Let us save them!” said General Eble to the officer who accompanied
him. “To-morrow morning the Russians will be masters of Studzianka. We
must burn the bridge the moment they appear. Therefore, my friend, take
your courage in your hand! Go to the heights. Tell General Fournier
he has barely time to evacuate his position, force a way through this
crowd, and cross the bridge. When you have seen him in motion follow
him. Find men you can trust, and the moment Fournier had crossed
the bridge, burn, without pity, huts, equipages, caissons,
carriages,--EVERYTHING! Drive that mass of men to the bridge. Compel all
that has two legs to get to the other side of the river. The burning of
everything--EVERYTHING--is now our last resource. If Berthier had let
me destroy those damned camp equipages, this river would swallow only
my poor pontoniers, those fifty heroes who will save the army, but who
themselves will be forgotten.”
The general laid his hand on his forehead and was silent. He felt that
Poland would be his grave, and that no voice would rise to do justice
to those noble men who stood in the water, the icy water of Beresina, to
destroy the buttresses of the bridges. One alone of those heroes still
lives--or, to speak more correctly, suffers--in a village, totally
ignored.
The aide-de-camp started. Hardly had this generous officer gone a
hundred yards towards Studzianka than General Eble wakened a number
of his weary pontoniers, and began the work,--the charitable work of
burning the bivouacs set up about the bridge, and forcing the sleepers,
thus dislodged, to cross the river.
Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp reached, not without difficulty, the
only wooden house still left standing in Studzianka.
“This barrack seems pretty full, comrade,” he said to a man whom he saw
by the doorway.
“If you can get in you’ll be a clever trooper,” replied the officer,
without turning his head or ceasing to slice off with his sabre the bark
of the logs of which the house was built.
“Is that you, Philippe?” said the aide-de-camp, recognizing a friend by
the tones of his voice.
“Yes. Ha, ha! is it you, old fellow?” replied Monsieur de Sucy, looking
at the aide-de-camp, who, like himself, was only twenty-three years of
age. “I thought you were the other side of that cursed river. What are
you here for? Have you brought cakes and wine for our dessert? You’ll be
welcome,” and he went on slicing off the bark, which he gave as a sort
of provender to his horse.
“I am looking for your commander to tell him, from General Eble, to make
for Zembin. You’ll have barely enough time to get through that crowd of
men below. I am going presently to set fire to their camp and force them
to march.”
“You warm me up--almost! That news makes me perspire. I have two friends
I MUST save. Ah! without those two to cling to me, I should be dead
already. It is for them that I feed my horse and don’t eat myself. Have
you any food,--a mere crust? It is thirty hours since anything has gone
into my stomach, and yet I have fought like a madman--just to keep a
little warmth and courage in me.”
“Poor Philippe, I have nothing--nothing! But where’s your general,--in
this house?”
“No, don’t go there; the place is full of wounded. Go up the street;
you’ll find on your left a sort of pig-pen; the general is there.
Good-bye, old fellow. If we ever dance a trenis on a Paris floor--”
He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that moment with
such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being frozen,
and the lips of Major de Sucy stiffened. Silence reigned, broken only
by the moans which came from the house, and the dull sound made by the
major’s horse as it chewed in a fury of hunger the icy bark of the trees
with which the house was built. Monsieur de Sucy replaced his sabre in
its scabbard, took the bridle of the precious horse he had hitherto been
able to preserve, and led it, in spite of the animal’s resistance, from
the wretched fodder it appeared to think excellent.
“We’ll start, Bichette, we’ll start! There’s none but you, my beauty,
who can save Stephanie. Ha! by and bye you and I may be able to
rest--and die,” he added.
Philippe, wrapped in a fur pelisse, to which he owed his preservation
and his energy, began to run, striking his feet hard upon the frozen
snow to keep them warm. Scarcely had he gone a few hundred yards from
the village than he saw a blaze in the direction of the place where,
since morning, he had left his carriage in charge of his former orderly,
an old soldier. Horrible anxiety laid hold of him. Like all others who
were controlled during this fatal retreat by some powerful sentiment, he
found a strength to save his friends which he could not have put forth
to save himself.
Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a
spot sheltered from the enemy’s balls, he had stationed the carriage,
containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being most
dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the vehicle he now
found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an immense
fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers, wheels, and
broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the last comers of that
crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to the fatal river,
formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and huts,--a living
sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible, and giving forth
a murmuring sound that rose at times to frightful outbursts. Driven by
famine and despair, these poor wretches must have rifled the carriage
before de Sucy reached it. The old general and his young wife, whom he
had left lying in piles of clothes and wrapped in mantles and pelisses,
were now on the snow, crouching before the fire. One door of the
carriage was already torn off.
No sooner did the men about the fire hear the tread of the major’s horse
than a hoarse cry, the cry of famine, arose,--
“A horse! a horse!”
Those voices formed but one voice.
“Back! back! look out for yourself!” cried two or three soldiers, aiming
at the mare. Philippe threw himself before his animal, crying out,--
“You villains! I’ll throw you into your own fire. There are plenty of
dead horses up there. Go and fetch them.”
“Isn’t he a joker, that officer! One, two--get out of the way,” cried a
colossal grenadier. “No, you won’t, hey! Well, as you please, then.”
A woman’s cry rose higher than the report of the musket. Philippe
fortunately was not touched, but Bichette, mortally wounded, was
struggling in the throes of death. Three men darted forward and
dispatched her with their bayonets.
“Cannibals!” cried Philippe, “let me at any rate take the horse-cloth
and my pistols.”
“Pistols, yes,” replied the grenadier. “But as for that horse-cloth, no!
here’s a poor fellow afoot, with nothing in his stomach for two days,
and shivering in his rags. It is our general.”
Philippe kept silence as he looked at the man, whose boots were worn
out, his trousers torn in a dozen places, while nothing but a ragged
fatigue-cap covered with ice was on his head. He hastened, however, to
take his pistols. Five men dragged the mare to the fire, and cut her
up with the dexterity of a Parisian butcher. The pieces were instantly
seized and flung upon the embers.
The major went up to the young woman, who had uttered a cry on
recognizing him. He found her motionless, seated on a cushion beside the
fire. She looked at him silently, without smiling. Philippe then saw
the soldier to whom he had confided the carriage; the man was wounded.
Overcome by numbers, he had been forced to yield to the malingerers who
attacked him; and, like the dog who defended to the last possible moment
his master’s dinner, he had taken his share of the booty, and was now
sitting beside the fire, wrapped in a white sheet by way of cloak, and
turning carefully on the embers a slice of the mare. Philippe saw upon
his face the joy these preparations gave him. The Comte de Vandieres,
who, for the last few days, had fallen into a state of second childhood,
was seated on a cushion beside his wife, looking fixedly at the fire,
which was beginning to thaw his torpid limbs. He had shown no emotion
of any kind, either at Philippe’s danger, or at the fight which ended in
the pillage of the carriage and their expulsion from it.
At first de Sucy took the hand of the young countess, as if to show her
his affection, and the grief he felt at seeing her reduced to such utter
misery; then he grew silent; seated beside her on a heap of snow which
was turning into a rivulet as it melted, he yielded himself up to the
happiness of being warm, forgetting their peril, forgetting all things.
His face assumed, in spite of himself, an expression of almost stupid
joy, and he waited with impatience until the fragment of the mare given
to his orderly was cooked. The smell of the roasting flesh increased his
hunger, and his hunger silenced his heart, his courage, and his love.
He looked, without anger, at the results of the pillage of his carriage.
All the men seated around the fire had shared his blankets, cushions,
pelisses, robes, also the clothing of the Comte and Comtesse de
Vandieres and his own. Philippe looked about him to see if there was
anything left in or near the vehicle that was worth saving. By the light
of the flames he saw gold and diamonds and plate scattered everywhere,
no one having thought it worth his while to take any.
Each of the individuals collected by chance around this fire maintained
a silence that was almost horrible, and did nothing but what he judged
necessary for his own welfare. Their misery was even grotesque. Faces,
discolored by cold, were covered with a layer of mud, on which tears had
made a furrow from the eyes to the beard, showing the thickness of that
miry mask. The filth of their long beards made these men still more
repulsive. Some were wrapped in the countess’s shawls, others wore the
trappings of horses and muddy saddlecloths, or masses of rags from which
the hoar-frost hung; some had a boot on one leg and a shoe on the other;
in fact, there were none whose costume did not present some laughable
singularity. But in presence of such amusing sights the men themselves
were grave and gloomy. The silence was broken only by the snapping of
the wood, the crackling of the flames, the distant murmur of the camps,
and the blows of the sabre given to what remained of Bichette in search
of her tenderest morsels. A few miserable creatures, perhaps more weary
than the rest, were sleeping; when one of their number rolled into the
fire no one attempted to help him out. These stern logicians argued that
if he were not dead his burns would warn him to find a safer place. If
the poor wretch waked in the flames and perished, no one cared. Two or
three soldiers looked at each other to justify their own indifference by
that of others. Twice this scene had taken place before the eyes of the
countess, who said nothing. When the various pieces of Bichette, placed
here and there upon the embers, were sufficiently broiled, each man
satisfied his hunger with the gluttony that disgusts us when we see it
in animals.
“This is the first time I ever saw thirty infantrymen on one horse,”
cried the grenadier who had shot the mare.
It was the only jest made that night which proved the national
character.
Soon the great number of these poor soldiers wrapped themselves in what
they could find and lay down on planks, or whatever would keep them from
contact with the snow, and slept, heedless of the morrow. When the major
was warm, and his hunger appeased, an invincible desire to sleep weighed
down his eyelids. During the short moment of his struggle against that
desire he looked at the young woman, who had turned her face to the
fire and was now asleep, leaving her closed eyes and a portion of her
forehead exposed to sight. She was wrapped in a furred pelisse and a
heavy dragoon’s cloak; her head rested on a pillow stained with blood;
an astrakhan hood, kept in place by a handkerchief knotted round her
neck, preserved her face from the cold as much as possible. Her feet
were wrapped in the cloak. Thus rolled into a bundle, as it were, she
looked like nothing at all. Was she the last of the “vivandieres”?
Was she a charming woman, the glory of a lover, the queen of Parisian
salons? Alas! even the eye of her most devoted friend could trace no
sign of anything feminine in that mass of rags and tatters. Love had
succumbed to cold in the heart of a woman!
Through the thick veils of irresistible sleep, the major soon saw the
husband and wife as mere points or formless objects. The flames of the
fire, those outstretched figures, the relentless cold, waiting, not
three feet distant from that fugitive heat, became all a dream. One
importunate thought terrified Philippe:
“If I sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep,” he said to himself.
And yet he slept.
A terrible clamor and an explosion awoke him an hour later. The sense
of his duty, the peril of his friend, fell suddenly on his heart. He
uttered a cry that was like a roar. He and his orderly were alone afoot.
A sea of fire lay before them in the darkness of the night, licking up
the cabins and the bivouacs; cries of despair, howls, and imprecations
reached their ears; they saw against the flames thousands of human
beings with agonized or furious faces. In the midst of that hell, a
column of soldiers was forcing its way to the bridge, between two hedges
of dead bodies.
“It is the retreat of the rear-guard!” cried the major. “All hope is
gone!”
“I have saved your carriage, Philippe,” said a friendly voice.
Turning round, de Sucy recognized the young aide-de-camp in the flaring
of the flames.
“Ah! all is lost!” replied the major, “they have eaten my horse; and how
can I make this stupid general and his wife walk?”
“Take a brand from the fire and threaten them.”
“Threaten the countess!”
“Good-bye,” said the aide-de-camp, “I have scarcely time to get across
that fatal river--and I MUST; I have a mother in France. What a night!
These poor wretches prefer to lie here in the snow; half will allow
themselves to perish in those flames rather than rise and move on. It is
four o’clock, Philippe! In two hours the Russians will begin to move.
I assure you you will again see the Beresina choked with corpses.
Philippe! think of yourself! You have no horses, you cannot carry the
countess in your arms. Come--come with me!” he said urgently, pulling de
Sucy by the arm.
“My friend! abandon Stephanie!”
De Sucy seized the countess, made her stand upright, shook her with the
roughness of a despairing man, and compelled her to wake up. She looked
at him with fixed, dead eyes.
“You must walk, Stephanie, or we shall all die here.”
For all answer the countess tried to drop again upon the snow and sleep.
The aide-de-camp seized a brand from the fire and waved it in her face.
“We will save her in spite of herself!” cried Philippe, lifting the
countess and placing her in the carriage.
He returned to implore the help of his friend. Together they lifted the
old general, without knowing whether he were dead or alive, and put him
beside his wife. The major then rolled over the men who were sleeping
on his blankets, which he tossed into the carriage, together with some
roasted fragments of his mare.
“What do you mean to do?” asked the aide-de-camp.
“Drag them.”
“You are crazy.”
“True,” said Philippe, crossing his arms in despair.
Suddenly, he was seized by a last despairing thought.
“To you,” he said, grasping the sound arm of his orderly, “I confide
her for one hour. Remember that you must die sooner than let any one
approach her.”
The major then snatched up the countess’s diamonds, held them in one
hand, drew his sabre with the other, and began to strike with the flat
of its blade such of the sleepers as he thought the most intrepid. He
succeeded in awaking the colossal grenadier, and two other men whose
rank it was impossible to tell.
“We are done for!” he said.
“I know it,” said the grenadier, “but I don’t care.”
“Well, death for death, wouldn’t you rather sell your life for a pretty
woman, and take your chances of seeing France?”
“I’d rather sleep,” said a man, rolling over on the snow, “and if you
trouble me again, I’ll stick my bayonet into your stomach.”
“What is the business, my colonel?” said the grenadier. “That man is
drunk; he’s a Parisian; he likes his ease.”
“That is yours, my brave grenadier,” cried the major, offering him a
string of diamonds, “if you will follow me and fight like a madman.
The Russians are ten minutes’ march from here; they have horses; we are
going up to their first battery for a pair.”
“But the sentinels?”
“One of us three--” he interrupted himself, and turned to the
aide-de-camp. “You will come, Hippolyte, won’t you?”
Hippolyte nodded.
“One of us,” continued the major, “will take care of the sentinel.
Besides, perhaps they are asleep too, those cursed Russians.”
“Forward! major, you’re a brave one! But you’ll give me a lift on your
carriage?” said the grenadier.
“Yes, if you don’t leave your skin up there--If I fall, Hippolyte, and
you, grenadier, promise me to do your utmost to save the countess.”
“Agreed!” cried the grenadier.
They started for the Russian lines, toward one of the batteries which
had so decimated the hapless wretches lying on the banks of the river.
A few moments later, the gallop of two horses echoed over the snow, and
the wakened artillery men poured out a volley which ranged above the
heads of the sleeping men. The pace of the horses was so fleet that
their steps resounded like the blows of a blacksmith on his anvil. The
generous aide-de-camp was killed. The athletic grenadier was safe and
sound. Philippe in defending Hippolyte had received a bayonet in his
shoulder; but he clung to his horse’s mane, and clasped him so tightly
with his knees that the animal was held as in a vice.
“God be praised!” cried the major, finding his orderly untouched, and
the carriage in its place.
“If you are just, my officer, you will get me the cross for this,” said
the man. “We’ve played a fine game of guns and sabres here, I can tell
you.”
“We have done nothing yet--Harness the horses. Take these ropes.”
“They are not long enough.”
“Grenadier, turn over those sleepers, and take their shawls and linen,
to eke out.”
“Tiens! that’s one dead,” said the grenadier, stripping the first man he
came to. “Bless me! what a joke, they are all dead!”
“All?”
“Yes, all; seems as if horse-meat must be indigestible if eaten with
snow.”
The words made Philippe tremble. The cold was increasing.
“My God! to lose the woman I have saved a dozen times!”
The major shook the countess.
“Stephanie! Stephanie!”
The young woman opened her eyes.
“Madame! we are saved.”
“Saved!” she repeated, sinking down again.
The horses were harnessed as best they could. The major, holding his
sabre in his well hand, with his pistols in his belt, gathered up the
reins with the other hand and mounted one horse while the grenadier
mounted the other. The orderly, whose feet were frozen, was thrown
inside the carriage, across the general and the countess. Excited by
pricks from a sabre, the horses drew the carriage rapidly, with a sort
of fury, to the plain, where innumerable obstacles awaited it. It was
impossible to force a way without danger of crushing the sleeping men,
women, and even children, who refused to move when the grenadier awoke
them. In vain did Monsieur de Sucy endeavor to find the swathe cut
by the rear-guard through the mass of human beings; it was already
obliterated, like the wake of a vessel through the sea. They could only
creep along, being often stopped by soldiers who threatened to kill
their horses.
“Do you want to reach the bridge?” said the grenadier.
“At the cost of my life--at the cost of the whole world!”
“Then forward, march! you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs.”
And the grenadier of the guard urged the horses over men and bivouacs
with bloody wheels and a double line of corpses on either side of them.
We must do him the justice to say that he never spared his breath in
shouting in stentorian tones,--
“Look out there, carrion!”
“Poor wretches!” cried the major.
“Pooh! that or the cold, that or the cannon,” said the grenadier,
prodding the horses, and urging them on.
A catastrophe, which might well have happened to them much sooner, put a
stop to their advance. The carriage was overturned.
“I expected it,” cried the imperturbable grenadier. “Ho! ho! your man is
dead.”
“Poor Laurent!” said the major.
“Laurent? Was he in the 5th chasseurs?”
“Yes.”
“Then he was my cousin. Oh, well, this dog’s life isn’t happy enough to
waste any joy in grieving for him.”
The carriage could not be raised; the horses were taken out with serious
and, as it proved, irreparable loss of time. The shock of the overturn
was so violent that the young countess, roused from her lethargy, threw
off her coverings and rose.
“Philippe, where are we?” she cried in a gentle voice, looking about
her.
“Only five hundred feet from the bridge. We are now going to cross the
Beresina, Stephanie, and once across I will not torment you any more;
you shall sleep; we shall be in safety, and can reach Wilna easily.--God
grant that she may never know what her life has cost!” he thought.
“Philippe! you are wounded!”
“That is nothing.”
Too late! the fatal hour had come. The Russian cannon sounded the
reveille. Masters of Studzianka, they could sweep the plain, and by
daylight the major could see two of their columns moving and forming
on the heights. A cry of alarm arose from the multitude, who started
to their feet in an instant. Every man now understood his danger
instinctively, and the whole mass rushed to gain the bridge with the
motion of a wave.
The Russians came down with the rapidity of a conflagration. Men, women,
children, horses,--all rushed tumultuously to the bridge. Fortunately
the major, who was carrying the countess, was still some distance from
it. General Eble had just set fire to the supports on the other bank. In
spite of the warnings shouted to those who were rushing upon the bridge,
not a soul went back. Not only did the bridge go down crowded with human
beings, but the impetuosity of that flood of men toward the fatal bank
was so furious that a mass of humanity poured itself violently into the
river like an avalanche. Not a cry was heard; the only sound was like
the dropping of monstrous stones into the water. Then the Beresina was a
mass of floating corpses.
The retrograde movement of those who now fell back into the plain
to escape the death before them was so violent, and their concussion
against those who were advancing from the rear so terrible, that numbers
were smothered or trampled to death. The Comte and Comtesse de Vandieres
owed their lives to their carriage, behind which Philippe forced them,
using it as a breastwork. As for the major and the grenadier, they found
their safety in their strength. They killed to escape being killed.
This hurricane of human beings, the flux and reflux of living bodies,
had the effect of leaving for a few short moments the whole bank of the
Beresina deserted. The multitude were surging to the plain. If a few men
rushed to the river, it was less in the hope of reaching the other bank,
which to them was France, than to rush from the horrors of Siberia.
Despair proved an aegis to some bold hearts. One officer sprang
from ice-cake to ice-cake, and reached the opposite shore. A soldier
clambered miraculously over mounds of dead bodies and heaps of ice. The
multitude finally comprehended that the Russians would not put to death
a body of twenty thousand men, without arms, torpid, stupid, unable
to defend themselves; and each man awaited his fate with horrible
resignation. Then the major and the grenadier, the general and his wife,
remained almost alone on the river bank, a few steps from the spot where
the bridge had been. They stood there, with dry eyes, silent, surrounded
by heaps of dead. A few sound soldiers, a few officers to whom the
emergency had restored their natural energy, were near them. This group
consisted of some fifty men in all. The major noticed at a distance
of some two hundred yards the remains of another bridge intended for
carriages and destroyed the day before.
“Let us make a raft!” he cried.
He had hardly uttered the words before the whole group rushed to the
ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood
and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable for
the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers, who were
armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the workers
against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the crowd,
if their scheme was discovered. The instinct of freedom, strong in all
prisoners, inspiring them to miraculous acts, can only be compared with
that which now drove to action these unfortunate Frenchmen.
“The Russians! the Russians are coming!” cried the defenders to the
workers; and the work went on, the raft increased in length and breadth
and depth. Generals, soldiers, colonel, all put their shoulders to the
wheel; it was a true image of the building of Noah’s ark. The young
countess, seated beside her husband, watched the progress of the work
with regret that she could not help it; and yet she did assist in making
knots to secure the cordage.
At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it on the river, a
dozen others holding the cords which moored it to the shore. But no
sooner had the builders seen their handiwork afloat, than they sprang
from the bank with odious selfishness. The major, fearing the fury of
this first rush, held back the countess and the general, but too late
he saw the whole raft covered, men pressing together like crowds at a
theatre.
“Savages!” he cried, “it was I who gave you the idea of that raft. I
have saved you, and you deny me a place.”
A confused murmur answered him. The men at the edge of the raft, armed
with long sticks, pressed with violence against the shore to send off
the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way through
corpses and ice-floes to the other shore.
“Thunder of heaven! I’ll sweep you into the water if you don’t take the
major and his two companions,” cried the stalwart grenadier, who swung
his sabre, stopped the departure, and forced the men to stand closer in
spite of furious outcries.
“I shall fall,”--“I am falling,”--“Push off! push off!--Forward!”
resounded on all sides.
The major looked with haggard eyes at Stephanie, who lifted hers to
heaven with a feeling of sublime resignation.
“To die with thee!” she said.
There was something even comical in the position of the men in
possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans and
imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth they
were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might send half
of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a cavalry captain
endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter, seeing the
hostile movement of the officer, seized him round the waist and flung
him into the water, crying out,--
“Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!--Here are
two places,” he cried. “Come, major, toss me the little woman and follow
yourself. Leave that old fossil, who’ll be dead by to-morrow.”
“Make haste!” cried the voice of all, as one man.
“Come, major, they are grumbling, and they have a right to do so.”
The Comte de Vandieres threw off his wrappings and showed himself in his
general’s uniform.
“Let us save the count,” said Philippe.
Stephanie pressed his hand, and throwing herself on his breast, she
clasped him tightly.
“Adieu!” she said.
They had understood each other.
The Comte de Vandieres recovered sufficient strength and presence of
mind to spring upon the raft, whither Stephanie followed him, after
turning a last look to Philippe.
“Major! will you take my place? I don’t care a fig for life,” cried the
grenadier. “I’ve neither wife nor child nor mother.”
“I confide them to your care,” said the major, pointing to the count and
his wife.
“Then be easy; I’ll care for them, as though they were my very eyes.”
The raft was now sent off with so much violence toward the opposite side
of the river, that as it touched ground, the shock was felt by all. The
count, who was at the edge of it, lost his balance and fell into the
river; as he fell, a cake of sharp ice caught him, and cut off his head,
flinging it to a great distance.
“See there! major!” cried the grenadier.
“Adieu!” said a woman’s voice.
Philippe de Sucy fell to the ground, overcome with horror and fatigue.