On
the contrary, far from allowing themselves to relax, they have doubled
their activity to ameliorate sufferings. We have seen physicians
in the midst of the carnage and the terror of the battles extend their care
and bring consolation; we have seen them sacrificing day and night in
hospital service, succumbing to murderous epidemics; in one word, despising
all danger when it was a question of relieving the sufferings of the
warriors, immaterial whether Russian or French. We can speak of many sick
or wounded left in ambulances or hospitals in want of food and medicines,
many of such unfortunates deprived of everything, dragging themselves under
the ruins of cities or villages, who found help from honest physicians.
THE GRAND ARMY IN MOSCOW
Three fifths of the houses and one half of the churches were destroyed. The
citizens had burned their capital. Before this catastrophe of 1812 Moscow
was an aristocratic city. According to old usage, the Russian nobility
spent the winter there, they came from their country seats with hundreds of
slaves and servants and many horses; their palaces in the city were
surrounded by parks and lakes, and many buildings were erected on the
grounds, as lodgings for the servants and slaves, stables, magazines. The
number of servants was great, many of them serving for no other purpose
than to increase the number, and this calling was part of the luxury of the
noblemen. The house of the seigneur was sometimes of brick, rarely of
stone, generally of wood, all were covered with copper plates or with iron,
painted red or green.
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