Striedinger, of Munich, and Mr. Franz Herrmann, of
New York, who have loaned me most valuable books and pointed out important
literature, and finally to Miss F. de Cerkez, who has aided me in the
translation of some of the chapters.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Transportation of Cannon under Difficulties
Attack of Cossacks
"And Never Saw Daylight Again,"
Beresina
Gate of Wilna
In the Streets of Wilna
Retreat Across the Niemen
"No Fear, We Shall Soon Follow You"
In Prison
CROSSING THE NIEMEN
On May 10th., 1812, the Moniteur published the following note: "The emperor
has left to-day to inspect the Grand Army united at the Vistula." In
France, in all parts of the Empire, the lassitude was extreme and the
misery increasing, there was no commerce, with dearth pronounced in twenty
provinces, sedition of the hungry had broken out in Normandy, the gendarmes
pursuing the "refractories" everywhere, and blood was shed in all thirty
departments.
There was the complaint of exhausted population, and loudest was the
complaint of mothers whose sons had been killed in the war.
Napoleon was aware of these evils and understood well their gravity, but he
counted on his usual remedy, new victories; saying to himself that a great
blow dealt in the north, throwing Russia and indirectly England at his
feet, would again be the salvation of the situation.
Caulaincourt, his ambassador to the Tzar, had told him in several
conversations, one of which had lasted seven hours, that he would find more
terrible disaster in Russia than in Spain, that his army would be destroyed
in the vastness of the country by the iron climate, that the Tzar would
retire to the farthest Asiatic provinces rather than accept a dishonorable
peace, that the Russians would retreat but never cede.
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