At the barracks and the hospitals they were equally repulsed, but not by the living, for there death held sway supreme.  The few who still breathed complained that for a long time they had been without beds, even without straw, and almost deserted.  The courts, the passages, and even the apartments were filled with heaps of dead bodies; they were so many charnel houses of infection.

At last, the exertions of several of the commanders, such as Eugene and Davoust, the compassion of the Lithuanians, and the avarice of the Jews, opened some places of refuge.  Nothing could be more remarkable than the astonishment which these unfortunate men displayed at finding themselves once more in inhabited houses.  How delicious did a loaf of leavened bread appear to them, and how inexpressible the pleasure of eating it seated! and afterwards, with what admiration were they struck at seeing a scanty battalion still under arms, in regular order, and uniformly dressed!  They seemed to have returned from the very extremities of the earth; so much had the violence and continuity of their sufferings torn and cast them from all their habits, so deep had been the abyss from which they had escaped!

But scarcely had they begun to taste these sweets, when the cannon of the Russians commenced thundering over their heads and upon the city.  These threatening sounds, the shouts of the officers, the drums beating to arms, and the wailings and clamour of an additional multitude of unfortunates, which had just arrived, filled Wilna with fresh confusion.  It was the vanguard of Kutusoff and Tchaplitz, commanded by O’Rourke, Landskoy, and Seslawin, which had attacked Loison’s division, which was protecting the city, as well as the retreat of a column of dismounted cavalry, on its way to Olita, by way of Novoi-Troky.

At first an attempt was made to resist.  De Wrede and his Bavarians had also just rejoined the army by Naroc-Zwiransky and Niamentchin.  They were pursued by Wittgenstein, who from Kamen and Vileika hung upon our right flank, at the same time that Kutusoff and Tchitchakof pursued us.  De Wrede had not two thousand men left under his command.  As to Loison’s division and the garrison of Wilna, which had come to meet us as far as Smorgoni, and render us assistance, the cold had reduced them from fifteen thousand men to three thousand in the space of three days.

De Wrede defended Wilna on the side of Rukoni; he was obliged to fall back after a gallant resistance.  Loison and his division, on his side, which was nearer to Wilna, kept the enemy in check.  They had succeeded in making a Neapolitan division take arms, and even to go out of the city, but the muskets actually slipped from the hands of these “children of the sun” transplanted to a region of ice.  In less than an hour they all returned disarmed, and the best part of them maimed.

At the same time, the generale was ineffectually beat in the streets; the old guard itself, now reduced to a few platoons, remained dispersed.  Every one thought much more of disputing his life with famine and the cold than with the enemy.  But when the cry of “Here are the Cossacks” was heard, (which for a long time had been the only signal which the greater number obeyed,) it echoed immediately throughout the whole city, and the rout again began.