An enemy more vicious than the one that had decimated the beautiful army
was lying in wait for the last remainder which tried to rally again.
It was the typhus that on the road from Moscow all through Germany and
through France did its destructive work.
This disease had been observed, as Dr. Geissler reports, first in Moscow,
ravaged most terribly in Wilna and held a second great harvest in
Koenigsberg, where the first troops arrived on December 20th.
One-half of those who had been attacked succumbed, although the hospitals
of Koenigsberg were ideal ones compared with those of Wilna.
Geissler and his colleague had to work beyond description to ameliorate and
to console; help was impossible in the majority of cases.
The physicians of Koenigsberg were not as lucky as Dr. Krantz, whose
patients were in the open air instead of being confined in a hospital.
It is heartrending to read how so many who had withstood so much, escaped
so many dangers, had to die now. One of these was General Eble, the hero of
the Beresina.
LITERATURE.
BEAUPRE, MORICHEAU. A Treatise on the Effects and Properties of Cold with a
Sketch, Historical and Medical, of the Russian Campaign. Translated by John
Clendining with Appendix xviii, 375 pp., 8 vo. Edinburgh, Maclachnan and
Stewart 1826.
BLEIBTREU, CARL. Die Grosse Armee. Zu ihrer Jahrhundertfeier. 3. Band.
Smolensk--Moskau--Beresina. Stuttgart, 1908.
----, Marschalle, Generale. Soldaten, Napoleon's I.
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