The best means they knew,
says Q. Curtius, to escape that mortal numbness, was not to stop, but to
force themselves to keep marching, or else to light great fires at
intervals. Charles XII, a great warrior alike rash and unreflecting, in
1707 penetrated into Russia and persisted in his determination of marching
to Moscow despite the wise advice given him to retire into Poland. The
winter was so severe and the cold so intense that the Swedes and Russians
could scarcely hold their arms. He saw part of his army perish before his
eyes, of cold, hunger, and misery, amid the desert and icy steppes of the
Ukraine. If he had reached Moscow, it is probable that the Russians would
have set him at bay, and that his army, forced to retire, would have
experienced the same fate as the French.
In the retreat of Prague in 1742 the French army, commanded
by Marshal Belle-Isle, little accustomed to a winter campaign,
was forced to traverse impracticable defiles across mountains and ravines
covered with snow. In ten days 4 thousand men perished of cold and misery;
food and clothing were deficient, the soldiers died in anguish and despair,
and a great many of the officers and soldiers had their noses, feet and
hands frozen. The Russians regard the winter of 1812 as one of the most
rigorous of which they have any record; it was intensely felt through all
Russia, even in the most southerly parts. As a proof of this fact the
Tartars of the Crimea mentioned to Beaupre the behavior of the great and
little bustard, which annually at that season of the year quit the plain
for protection against the cold and migrate to the southern part of that
peninsula toward the coasts.
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