In short, that fatal Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to as the term of its sufferings, marked only their commencement.  Inexpressible hardships awaited us:  we had yet to march forty days under that yoke of iron.  Some, already overloaded with present miseries, sunk under the alarming prospect of those which awaited them.  Others revolted against their destiny; finding they had nothing to rely on but themselves, they resolved to live at any rate.

Henceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the weaker, they plundered their dying companions by violence or stealth, of their subsistence, their garments, and even the gold, with which they had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions.  These wretches, whom despair had made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their infamous booty, profiting by the general condition, an obscure name, a uniform no longer distinguishable, and night, in short, by all kinds of obscurities, favourable to cowardice and guilt.  If works already published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed in silence details so disgusting; for these atrocities were rare, and justice was dealt to the most criminal.

The Emperor arrived on the 9th of November, amid this scene of desolation.  He shut himself up in one of the houses in the new square, and never quitted it till the 14th, to continue his retreat.  He had calculated upon fifteen days’ provisions and forage for an army of one hundred thousand men; there was not more than half the quantity of flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all.  Cries of rage were set up against one of the persons appointed to provide these supplies.  The commissary saved his life only by crawling for a long time on his knees at the feet of Napoleon.  Probably the reasons which he assigned did more for him than his supplications.

“When he arrived,” he said, “bands of stragglers, whom, when advancing, the army left behind it, had, as it were, involved Smolensk in terror and destruction.  The men died there of hunger as upon the road.  When some degree of order had been restored, the Jews alone had at first offered to furnish the necessary provisions.  More generous motives subsequently engaged the aid of some Lithuanian noblemen.  At length the foremost of the long convoys of provisions collected in Germany appeared.  These were the carriages called comtoises, and were the only ones which had traversed the sands of Lithuania; they brought no more than two hundred quintals of flour and rice; several hundred German and Italian bullocks had also arrived with them.

“Meanwhile the accumulation of dead bodies in the houses, courts, and gardens, and their unwholesome effluvia, infected the air.  The dead were killing the living.  The civil officers as well as many of the military were attacked:  some had become to all appearance idiots, weeping or fixing their hollow eyes stedfastly on the ground.  There were others whose hair had become stiff, erect, and ropy, and who, amidst a torrent of blasphemies, a horrid convulsion, or a still more frightful laugh, had dropped down dead.