Ebstein says that the cause of the sad, the wretched condition
concerning supplies was due to the fact that incompetent officers had been
appointed as commissaries of the army; they held high military rank, were
independent and could not be easily reached for their faults. It happened
that soldiers were starving near well filled magazines, such magazines at
Kowno, Wilna, Minsk, Orcha being not only well, but over, filled, while the
passing troops were in dire need. We shall later on come to frightful
details of this kind.
The miserable maintenance had from the beginning a demoralizing effect on
the men, manifested by desertion, insubordination, marauding, vandalism.
General Sir Robert Wilson, British commissioner with the headquarters of
the Russian army, quoted by Ebstein, says: "The French army, from its very
entrance into the Russian territory (and this cannot be repeated too often
to lend the proper weight to the consequences resulting therefrom),
notwithstanding order on order and some exemplary punishments, had been
incorrigibly guilty of every excess. It had not only seized with violence
all that its wants demanded, but destroyed in mere wantonness what did not
tempt its cupidity. No vandal ferocity was ever more destructive. Those
crimes, however, were not committed with impunity. Want, sickness, and an
enraged peasantry, inflicted terrible reprisals, and caused daily a fearful
reduction of numbers."
But this description of the Englishman will apply to every army in which
there are such difficulties in obtaining the necessary supplies as they
existed here on the forced marches.
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