“There shall be no more snow,
No weary, wandering feet.”
IT was one of the early days of a genuine Russian winter. The vast and desolate plain between Moscow and Smolensko was white with snow; bitter winds thick with falling flakes were sweeping over it; and the wintry sun struggled in vain to pierce a dense frosty fog. A regiment of French infantry, weary, dispirited, and famishing with hunger, was toiling through the snowdrifts. Already the ranks were thinned terribly, while the ghastly faces and shrunken limbs of the survivors told the story of their sufferings. All the soldier’s pride in his appearance, in the brightness of his arms, in the trim perfection of his accoutrements, had vanished long ago; half the disorderly crowd had thrown away the muskets they were too weak to carry, nor was a dress to be seen that deserved the name of a uniform. Any warm garment found amongst the spoils of Moscow was made to do duty as an overcoat, without regard to the sex of its original wearer. Our old friend Seppel wore a lady’s fur-lined dressing-gown, whilst the practical Feron contented himself with a sheepskin shuba which had once enveloped the ample form of a Russian coachman. But no fur was warm enough to keep the bitter cold of that wintry day from the weakened frames of men whose only food since leaving Moscow had been a few handfuls of rye soaked in water or a little horseflesh.
Clinging to the arm of Peron was a form slight and worn, and evidently ready to sink with fatigue. “Peste! Mind what you are about there!” cried Peron sharply, as Henri de Talmont stumbled and sank to his knees in a snowdrift a little deeper than usual. Then, pulling him up again by main force and setting him on his feet― “Can’t you see where you are going?” he asked.
“No, I cannot see,” answered Henri in a weary voice. “Peron, you have been very good to me. But it is no use. You must let me go.”
“I shall do no such thing. Here, my boy, take a pull at this;” and he put a flask filled with vodka to the lips of his friend. “Now you can see a little better,” he said with a laugh, as the stimulant brought a momentary color to the pale cheek of Henri. “Can’t you hear too? Listen! there are wheels coming near us, and horse-hoofs. God grant it may be stores of some kind, and if so”―Féron paused a moment and set his teeth resolutely― “the Old Guard themselves, with the Emperor at their head, shall not keep them from us.”
The wheels were already quite close, else under the circumstances they could not have heard them at all. A carriage drawn by four horses, and attended by outriders, came dashing by. It had only one occupant, a general of division, wrapped from head to foot in rich furs; but every available spot was crammed with packages and bottles. Some of the men sprang towards it, and clinging to the back or the sides, begged in piteous accents for bread, meat, spirits, even a little tobacco―anything “Monsieur le General” would be good enough to spare them. The coachman and the outriders had to use their whips pretty freely to get rid of them. It was only surprising that they did not take what they wanted by force; but either the lack of courage and mutual understanding, or perhaps some remains of military discipline, prevented an outbreak of open violence.
“Fools for their pains!” said Feron bitterly. “They might know by this time that the general never has anything to spare for the soldier. But I am glad he is gone, for the sight of his luxuries made me mad. May his horses break their knees in the next snowdrift! Sure to do it before long. That’s one comfort!”
“And then,” said a comrade, “perhaps we may overtake him, and get horses, stores, and all. What a supper we should have!”
“Ay,” observed another, “his horses are very unlike the last we supped upon. Poor brutes! they were little more than skin and bone.”
“Féron,” asked a third, “are there no horses in this accursed country―no men, no food, no anything?”
“Not much, I suppose, at the best of times. But remember, my lad, we marched over this very ground ourselves a few months ago, and wasted and destroyed all we could find.”
It was too true. In this respect they were filled with the fruit of their own devices; their wanton acts of pillage and devastation recoiled upon their own heads.
“Feron,” murmured once more the faint voice of Henri, “I can go no further. I must lie down and rest.”
“Monsieur Henri, if you lie down on that ground, you rise never more.”
“I know it; but I can bear up no longer. My sight is gone, my limbs are failing. Dear Feron, let me go.” And in spite of the sustaining arm of his friend, he staggered and fell. Feron bent over him, entreating him to rise, and offering his help.
“O Monsieur Henri, think of your mother―of your sister, Mademoiselle Clemence. If you hope ever to see their sweet faces again, rouse yourself, exert all your strength.”
But already Henri seemed half-asleep. A look of rest stole over his worn features, and his eyes were closed. Opening them for a moment, he murmured, “Feron―my mother―Clemence. Ask them to forgive me. Good-bye, dear Feron. God bless thee!”
The others meanwhile continued their march. In those terrible days the fall of a comrade scarcely made a Frenchman turn his head. Seppel called to Feron, “Come along, man! For what are you lingering?”
To stay behind would be to share the fate of Henri, not to rescue him. Feron turned sadly away; but after taking two or three steps, turned back once more, murmuring, “What a fool I am! No good to him, and a sore loss to me. Still, if he should awake, even for a moment.” Stooping down, he slipped his flask of vodka into the benumbed hand of Henri. “Adieu, comrade,” he said “If ever I see France again, I will tell thy mother and Mademoiselle Clemence.”
He rejoined his comrades, and marched on; but as long as it continued in sight, he could not help looking back, every now and then, to that black spot in the snow where a comrade had lain down to die. “Soon enough,” he thought, “it will be covered with white, and all trace of my poor friend gone forever. Perhaps I may be the next―who knows?”
But at least there was one sufferer unconscious of suffering now. A feeling of utter peace, of deep content, unknown for many days, steeped the weary senses of Henri. He seemed to be sinking into the heart of a profound and dreamless sleep. Pain and fatigue―cold and hunger of body―aching, feverish unrest of spirit―all had ceased together. The last sounds that reached his dulled ear before he passed into unconsciousness were the words of Feron, “Thy mother and Mademoiselle Clemence.” And once again those beloved faces drew near—bent over him―glimmered faintly and yet more faintly―at last vanished into air. But he did not even know that they had vanished. All was oblivion now.
Assuredly never again in this world would Henri de Talmont have awakened, had not a sudden thrill of agony called him roughly back to life. He started up to wrestle with a great half-savage wolf-dog, which had fixed its sharp fangs in his arm. Pain and desperation lent him a momentary strength, and clenching his hand, he dealt his antagonist a blow between the eyes that sent it howling away over the snow. Then he picked up Feron’s flask, and having thanked in his heart that generous friend, he drank some of its contents, which seemed to infuse new life into his frame.
Thus strengthened, he rose and stood upon his feet. It was midnight. The snow had ceased to fall, and the fierce winds of winter had dropped into utter stillness. Above his head the moon shone forth from a cloudless sky, and a thousand stars glittered with frosty brightness. Not a living thing was in sight, not a tree, not even a stone. Nothing met his gaze but a broad expanse of stainless white, covering the whole horizon like a veil of silver. How desolate it looked, yet how fair and pure! With what bright softness the moonbeams touched the snow I and how calmly the majestic eyes of those sleepless, starry watchers looked down from on high, as though they would say to the toiling, suffering sons of men, “We have seen ten thousand times ten thousand nights like this since the making of the world. We know the secret of the Lord. He means something by every star and every snowflake; and what he means is very good.”
“He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.” The words flashed unbidden through the mind of Henri. He remembered that in this solitude he was not alone. God was here. He could not turn to God as his friend, and he knew that he could not. Brought up in a religious atmosphere, he was all the more distinctly conscious that he himself was not religious―that he stood outside some sacred enclosure Clemence had entered, that he had not something which she had But had it been a stranger or an enemy whose presence he felt amidst that immense, dreary, aching solitude, still he would have flung himself at his feet and implored his help and pity. Surely he might cast himself upon the God who counted the shining host above his head; surely that God would look down with pity on the creature his hand had made, who was “wandering in dumb dismay” over the untrodden snow. If He would only bring him home, and let him see his mother’s face again, and ask her forgiveness before he died!
He knelt down and prayed; if indeed the words were not a cry of agony rather than a prayer. But they were breathed into the ear of One who heareth the young ravens when they cry and the beasts of the forest when they seek their food. As he rose, he noticed some bright thing glistening in the moonlight near the spot where he had been lying. He took it up, and found that it was a tin case containing preserved meat. No doubt it had belonged to the general of division, and had fallen out of his carriage as he passed. But to Henri it seemed the beginning of an answer to his prayer. He ate a portion of the meat, reserving the rest for future use, and drank a little more vodka. Thus a degree of animation was restored to his exhausted system. “Even yet,” he thought, “I may rejoin my companions.”
There was no wind, yet so intense was the cold that it seemed to pierce him through and through. He felt as though he were in a bath of ice. He determined to keep moving, to walk on straight before him as long as he had strength to do so. He supposed that he was still upon a road of some kind, because when he diverged to the right or to the left the snow became deeper, while if he kept his direct course it did not reach above his ankles.
Onwards he toiled, and still onwards, weary and footsore, yet not quite despairing. He knew well that if he yielded to his ever-increasing fatigue so far as to lie down again, he should rise no more. It seemed as if years had passed since he parted with his comrades, a lifetime since he quitted Moscow; and, as to his old happy life in France, that belonged to another and earlier stage of existence, almost beyond his recollection.
Red rose the sun over the snowy landscape, to sink again, after the brief wintry day, in clouds of purple and amber. Once more the stars came out, and still Henri toiled on. But his strength was well-nigh spent; he was ready to sink from fatigue, and his little store of meat and vodka had long since been exhausted. “After all,” he thought, “it is hopeless. As well die first as last.―But what is this? Have the stars come down upon the ground? or whence are those lights I see in the distance?”
He tried to collect his failing senses and to think. Could this be a town he was approaching? No; the lights were not numerous enough. Perhaps it might be a Russian village? Scarcely; for that the lights seemed too far apart, ―though, even if it were, he would take his chance and go forward. Better to fall, like some of his comrades, beneath the axes of the mujiks, than to perish with cold and hunger in the trackless wilderness.
Suddenly he cried aloud, making his voice ring over the snow, “Bivouac fires!” A gush of joy, long unknown to him, filled his heart, bringing with it, from its very intensity, a kind of momentary pain, as the warmth for which he was longing would bring a tingling pain to his half-frozen limbs. “Bivouac fires!” he cried once more, with a glad, weak voice. “I shall see the faces of my comrades; I shall hear their voices. Thank God!”
Hope and joy lent new strength to his weary feet. As he drew nearer to the lights, he saw that the snow was trampled by footsteps and crushed by wheels. And then the thought occurred to him, “If these should be our enemies? If I should find myself in the midst of Russians?” But as the cheerful blaze of the nearest fire grew clearer and more distinct, and he saw figures moving around it, fear and hesitation vanished. He felt nothing but a wild longing to get close to it, which grew every moment more intense. Running, slipping, staggering along as best he could, at last he threw himself on the ground before the fire, in the very midst of the group that surrounded it “Eh! what have we got here?” cried someone with an oath. The words were French, so much at least was plain to Henri’s bewildered senses; and at the same time a very savory odor reaching his nostrils reminded him that he was famishing with hunger.
The next moment he was roughly seized and dragged upon his knees. “What do you want here? You are none of us. Be off with you, and pretty quick too!” cried a fellow dressed in a velvet coat which had once belonged to some Moscow exquisite.
Slowly and stiffly Henri rose to his feet “Comrades,” he said with a bewildered air, “it is you who are making a mistake. I am one of you―a Frenchman―a private in the Tenth Infantry―”
“Hang the Tenth Infantry! It is every man for himself here. You are not one of our coterie. We cannot feed all the stragglers of the grand army. Begone this instant, or—” A push with the butt end of his musket finished the sentence.
The heartless cruelty of his countrymen filled up the measure of Henri’s cup of suffering. His spirit was broken. With no power, with scarcely even a wish to struggle any longer for his life, he staggered slowly away, intending to lie down in the nearest snowdrift and die.
Someone took a blazing brand out of the fire and flung it after him. “If you want fire, take it!” cried he, and a mocking laugh rang in the ears of Henri. He turned, and said, “Would that I had met this night, instead of you Frenchmen, a company of Russians―or, still better, a pack of wolves!”
“What is all this about?” asked a deep, hoarse voice, and a tall figure rose slowly from the opposite side of the fire.
“It is a straggler, a polisson, who was trying to join our coterie. We have just been sending him about his business,” was the answer.
“What a hurry you were in! Bring him to me,” said the voice of authority.
There was no need to bring him. Henri himself turned gladly, though very feebly, towards this new arbiter of his fate. But when he saw him, he started in surprise. It is true that part of his uniform was concealed by a long cloak lined with fur, but his great hairy cap, and his white waistcoat and gaiters, showed him to be one of the Old Guard, the very elite of the French army. These veterans were objects of envy to all their fellow-soldiers; for while the rest had been treated with cruel neglect and indifference, receiving between Moscow and Smolensko absolutely no rations whatever, the Old Guard were well and carefully fed, and supplied abundantly with wine or spirits. The reason was obvious. Upon them devolved a duty of paramount importance, that of guarding the person of Napoleon. Therefore, when the bulk of the army, demoralized by its sufferings, had broken up into fragments, the Old Guard was still able to keep rank, to present a noble appearance, and oppose a firm front to the enemy. Hence the surprise of Henri at finding one of its number amongst a group of wretched-looking stragglers belonging to various regiments.
Meanwhile the Guardsman surveyed him with a critical eye. “Why, this is only a slip of a lad, un petit jeune homme,” he said. “He looks half dead already. Mes enfants, he shall stay with us.”
Faint tones of remonstrance began to make themselves heard, but they were silenced in a very summary fashion. The Guardsman laid his bronzed hand, hard as iron, upon the shoulder of Henri. “Sacre!” he cried. “You shall take him and me together. Both of us, or neither!”
This was decisive. The poor, abject, half-starved wretches knew their master; they felt their lives depended upon his care and guidance; and they obeyed him as, in a time of need, the incapable usually obey any capable person who undertakes to direct them. Room was made for Henri beside the fire, and the very man who had flung the brand after him a few minutes before now volunteered to chafe one of his ears, which showed symptoms of being frozen.
Supper was served, consisting of a piece of roasted horseflesh without bread or salt, and a very small quantity of rum, carefully measured out to each member of the party, and mixed with snow-water. Then every man crept as close to the fire as he could, wrapped about him what garments he had, and tried to sleep; every man, that is to say, except the Guard, who, explaining to Henri that someone must always watch, and that the first watch of the night devolved upon him, lit his pipe with a meditative air, and seated himself beside the fire.
Weary as Henri was, he could not help asking one or two questions. “Garde,” he said, “do you know where we are?”
“Somewhere on the way to Smolensko, which, if we live, we may reach perhaps in two days or three.”
“Shall we find our regiments again, do you think?”
“I cannot answer for yours, my boy; the new ones seem to be melting like snow-flakes. The Old Guard,” he added with a flash of pride, “is always to be found, whether by friend or foe.”
“These men around us, who are they?”
“Waifs and strays, like yourself. We are gathering together in coteries of a dozen or so, to try and keep one another alive in this horrible desert.”
“Little life they would have left in me, but for you, Garde. God bless you for your kindness.”
“Thank you, comrade. Blessings do a man as little harm as curses any day. Here, take a pull at my pipe.”
“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”
“More fool you! That is the way you young conscripts die off, because you never know what is good for you, nor how to keep your souls inside your bodies. Now, when I was in Egypt,” here he stopped suddenly, and a look of emotion passed over his bronzed, weather-beaten features― “ay, Egypt, Italy, Spain, ―Lodi, Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Friedland, ―why go over all these now? Why recall the past―the glorious past? Why, indeed! Have our eagles floated over all the world to lie buried in a Russian snowdrift? Bah! This confusion is only temporary. You shall soon see the Emperor rise again in his glory, and overwhelm our hounds of enemies with destruction. I tell thee, boy, he is unconquerable. A cloud―a little fleeting cloud―may pass over his star and hide it for a moment, but it will shine out again all the more brightly afterward.”
“But,” said Henri sadly, “if he expected us to fight for him, he ought to have fed us.”
“My lad,” said the Guardsman sternly, laying his hand upon Henri’s shoulder, and turning him round away from the fire, “you see that snow?”
“I have seen too much of it,” returned Henri. “I think I shall never see anything else.”
“Out there you go, to have part or lot with us never more, the first word you speak against the Emperor. With his own hand he gave me these medals, this cross” ―touching his breast― “and, moreover, he said to me once when he was reviewing us, ‘Pierre Rougeard, I know you for a brave man. It was you―was it not?―who took that pair of colors at Lodi?’”
“Garde, how were you separated from the rest?”
“You will see tomorrow that I am lame. In a skirmish near Moscow I got a ball in my leg and a saber cut on my shoulder. We who were wounded were all put into wagons by the Emperor’s orders, to be sent on to Smolensko; but those in charge of us, thinking our lives less precious than the plunder they were bringing from Moscow, flung us out by the wayside to die.”
“Wretches! May the Emperor punish them as they deserve.”
“The Emperor has much more important things to think about. We of the Old Guard do not die easily; what would kill conscripts like you, only hardens us. I contrived to live and to creep along, picking up every day a comrade or two in distress, until we formed the little coterie you see now. I hope to overtake the Old Guard at Smolensko―if not, farther on. All I live for is to rejoin my colors, and to fight once more for the Emperor. But you are almost asleep. Sleep on, my boy; tonight, at least, you shall neither freeze nor starve.”
Henri was almost asleep. But he roused himself for a moment or two to breathe a thanksgiving to Almighty God for the help sent him in his need; together with an earnest prayer that he would be pleased to bring him through all dangers again to his native land, to see the face of his mother and of Clarence.
All succeeding generations will ask in half incredulous wonder how it came to pass that a splendid army, numbering over six hundred thousand men, and commanded by perhaps the greatest military genius that ever existed, could fall so suddenly and swiftly into a state of utter disorganization and abject misery. Certainly never, since those ancient days when the Red Sea rolled over the hosts of Pharaoh, or the angel of the pestilence smote the sleeping myriads of Sennacherib, was the arm of the Lord stretched out more visibly in the sight of the nations. Yet it is the glory of Infinite Wisdom, not to interpose amongst the wheels of human action with arbitrary breaks and changes, but so to direct the whole stupendous machine that wrong works out its own punishment and right its ultimate justification by the operation of everlasting laws. In gaining Moscow, Napoleon expected to gain everything―food and shelter for his troops, stores of all descriptions, treasures enough to satisfy the greed of those soldiers of fortune whom the hope of plunder had attracted to his standards. He expected to dictate a humiliating peace to the crushed and trembling Czar, and to make yet one more submissive tributary of hitherto unconquered Russia. But in the flames of Moscow and the heroic resolution of Alexander he found the destruction of his plans. Retreat became a necessity; and it had to be made through a country already devastated by the license of his armies―license for which he made himself responsible, which indeed he forced upon them, by neglecting to provide them with the necessaries of life. This cruel neglect recoiled upon his own head: even before the severities of a northern winter set in the hosts of Napoleon were perishing with hunger. “If he expected us to fight for him, he ought to have fed us,” was the mournful accusation that fell from the dying lips of many a gallant soldier, who, faithful to the end, would allow himself to utter no other reproach. What famine and pestilence―the result of insufficient and unwholesome food―had begun, was completed by the arrows of the winter in the hand of God himself. As, on the occasion of another memorable national deliverance, “he blew with his wind,” and the foes of his people were scattered; so now he cast forth his ice like morsels, and who was able to abide his frost? Snow and vapor and stormy wind fulfilled his word. Of the six hundred thousand warriors who crossed the Niemen in the pride of their strength, only about forty thousand miserable fugitives―diseased, forlorn, and famished―straggled back again five months later.