Such medical history cannot be intelligible without some details of the
history of events causing and surrounding the deaths from cold and hunger
and fatigue. And such a history I have attempted to write.
Casting a glance on the map on which the battle fields on the march to and
from Moscow are marked, we notice that it was not a deep thrust which the
attack of the French army had made into the colossus of Russia. From the
Niemen to Mohilew, Ostrowno, Polotsk, Krasnoi, the first time, Smolensk,
Walutina, Borodino, Conflagration of Moscow, and on the retreat the battles
of Winkonow, Jaroslawetz, Wiasma, Vop, Krasnoi, the second time, Beresina,
Wilna, Kowno; this is not a great distance, says Paul Holzhausen in his
book "Die Deutschen in Russland 1812" but a great piece of history.
Holzhausen, whose book has furnished the most valuable material of which I
could avail myself besides the dissertation of von Scherer, the book of
Beaupre and the report of Krantz, and numerous monographs, has brought to
light valuable papers of soldiers who had returned and had left their
remembrances of life of the soldiers during the Russian campaign to their
descendants and relatives who had kept these papers a sacred inheritance
during one hundred years.
The picture in the foreground of all histories of the Russian campaign is
the shadow of the great warrior who led the troops, in whose invincibility
all men who followed him Anno 1812 believed and by whom they stood in their
soldier's honor, with a constancy without equal, a steadfastness which
merits our admiration.
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