Most of those who escaped the danger of the cold ultimately fell sick. In
1813 a number of soldiers, more or less seriously injured by cold, filled
the hospitals of Poland, Prussia, and other parts of Germany. From the
shores of the Niemen to the banks of the Rhine it was easy to recognize
those persons who constituted the remainder of an army immolated by cold
and misery the most appalling. Many, not yet arrived at the limit of their
sufferings, distributed themselves in the hospitals on this side of the
Rhine, and even as far as the south of France, where they came to undergo
various extirpations, incisions, and amputations, necessitated by the
physical disorder so often inseparable from profound gangraene.
Mutilation of hands and feet, loss of the nose, of an ear, weakness of
sight, deafness, complete or incomplete, neuralgy, rheumatism, palsies,
chronic diarrhoea, pectoral affections, recall still more strongly the
horrors of this campaign to those who bear such painful mementos.
* * * * *
But now let us return to the dissertation of von Scherer which gives the
most graphic and complete description of the effect of cold.
After the battle of Borodino, on September 5th. and 7th., the army marched
to Moscow and arrived there on September 11th., exhausted to the highest
degree from hunger and misery. The number of Wuerttembergians suffering
from dysentery was very large. A hospital was organized for them in a sugar
refinery outside of Moscow.
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