The night of the 28th added to all these calamities.  Its darkness was insufficient to conceal its victims from the artillery of the Russians.  Amidst the snow, which covered every thing, the course of the river, the thorough black mass of men, horses, carriages, and the noise proceeding from them, were sufficient to enable the enemy’s artillerymen, to direct their fire.

About nine o’clock at night there was a still farther increase of desolation, when Victor began his retreat, and his divisions came and opened themselves a horrible breach through these unhappy wretches, whom they had till then been protecting.  A rear-guard, however, having been left at Studzianka, the multitude, benumbed with cold, or too anxious to preserve their baggage, refused to avail themselves of the last night for passing to the opposite side.  In vain were the carriages set fire to, in order to tear them from them.  It was only the appearance of daylight, which brought them all at once, but too late, to the entrance of the bridge, which they again besieged.  It was half-past eight in the morning, when Eble, seeing the Russians approaching, at last set fire to it.

The disaster had reached its utmost bounds.  A multitude of carriages, three cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were abandoned on the hostile bank.  They were seen wandering in desolate troops on the borders of the river.  Some threw themselves into it in order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice which were floating along:  some there were also who threw themselves headlong into the flames of the burning bridge, which sunk under them; burnt and frozen at one and the same time, they perished under two opposite punishments.  Shortly after, the bodies of all sorts were perceived collecting together and the ice against the tressels of the bridge.  The rest awaited the Russians.  Wittgenstein did not show himself upon the heights until an hour after Eble’s departure, and, without having gained a victory, reaped all the fruits of one.

CHAP.  X.

While this catastrophe was accomplishing, the remains of the grand army on the opposite bank formed nothing but a shapeless mass, which unravelled itself confusedly, as it took the road to Zembin.  The whole of this country is a high and woody plain of great extent, where the waters, flowing in uncertainty between different inclinations of the ground, form one vast morass.  Three consecutive bridges, of three hundred fathoms in length, are thrown over it; along these the army passed, with a mingled feeling of astonishment, fear, and delight.