Far greater was the danger at the River Beresina.  The Russian army of the south had seized the bridge at Borisoff on which Napoleon’s safety depended, and Oudinot vainly struggled to wrest it back.  The Muscovites burnt it under his eyes.  Such was the news which Napoleon heard at Bobr on November 24th.  It staggered him; for, with his usual excess of confidence, he had destroyed his pontoons on the banks of the Dnieper; and now there was no means of crossing a river, usually insignificant, but swollen by floods and bridged only by half-thawed ice.  Yet French resource was far from vanquished.  General Corbineau, finding from some peasants that the river was fordable three leagues above Borisoff, brought the news to Oudinot, who forthwith prepared to cross there.  Napoleon, coming up on the 26th, approved the plan, and cheeringly said to his Marshal, “Well, you shall be my locksmith and open that passage for me."[276]

To deceive the foe, the Emperor told off a regiment or two southwards with a long tail of camp-followers that were taken to be an army.  And this wily move, harmonizing with recent demonstrations of the Austrians on the side of Minsk, convinced the Muscovite leader that Napoleon was minded to clasp hands with them.[277] While the Russians patrolled the river on the south, French sappers were working, often neck deep in the water, to throw two light bridges across the stream higher up.  By heroic toil, which to most of them brought death, the bridges were speedily finished, and, as the light of November 26th was waning Oudinot’s corps of 7,000 men gained a firm footing on the homeward side.  But they were observed by Russian scouts, and when on the next day Napoleon and other corps had struggled across, the enemy came up, captured a whole division, and on the morrow strove to hurl the invaders into the river.  Victor and the rearguard staunchly kept them at bay; but at one point the Russian army of the Dwina temporarily gained ground and swept the bridges and their approaches with artillery fire.

Then the panic-stricken throngs of wounded and stragglers, women and camp-followers, writhed and fought their way until the frail planks were piled high with living and dead.  To add to the horrors, one bridge gave way under the weight of the cannon.  The rush for the one remaining bridge became yet more frantic and the day closed amidst scenes of unspeakable woe.  Stout swimmers threw themselves into the stream, only to fall victims to the ice floes and the numbing cold.  At dawn of the 29th, the French rearguard fired the bridge to cover the retreat.  Then a last, loud wail of horror arose from the farther bank, and despair or a loathing of life drove many to end their miseries in the river or in the flames.