On August 18, the French army entered Smolensk which had been
destroyed by projectiles and by fire; ruins filled with the dead and dying;
and in the midst of this desolation the terror-stricken inhabitants running
everywhere, looking for members of their families--many of whom had been
killed by bullets or by flames--or sitting before their still smoking
homes, tearing their hair, a picture of distress truly heartrending. The
soldiers who were the first to enter Smolensk found flour, brandy and wine,
but these things were devoured in an instant. There were 10 thousand
wounded in the so-called hospitals, and among these unfortunates typhus and
hospital gangraene developed rapidly; the sick lying on the floor without
even straw.
Holzhausen gives the following description:
After Smolensk had been evacuated by the Russians, most houses had been
burnt out; the retreating Russians had destroyed everything that could be
of any use. Corpses everywhere. Nobody had time to remove them, and the
cannons, the freight wagons, the horses, and the infantry passed over them.
On August 17th and 18th, was the battle of Polotsk in which the Bavarians
distinguished themselves. There were no medicines for the wounded, not even
drinking water, no bread, no salt. Of the many unhealthy places in Russia
this is the worst, it swarms with insects. Nostalgia was prevailing. They
had a so-called dying chamber in the hospital for which the soldiers were
longing, to rest there on straw, never to rise again.
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