[The following is in regards to Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Russia.]
By the second week of November, ‘The army utterly lost its morale and its military organization. Soldiers no longer obeyed their officers, officers paid no regard to their generals; shattered regiments marched as best they could. Searching for food, they dispersed over the plain, burning and sacking everything in their way… Tormented by hunger, they rushed on every horse as soon as it fell, and like famished wolves fought for the pieces.’
Meanwhile toes, fingers, noses, ears and sexual organs were lost to frost-bite. ‘The soldiers fall,’ Castellane recalled of the Italian Royal Guard, ‘a little blood comes to their lips, and all is over. When they see this sign of an approaching death, their comrades often give them a push, throw them to the ground, and take their clothes before they are quite dead.’
Source:
Roberts, Andrew. "Retreat." Napoleon: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2014. 622. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Labaume, Crime of 1812 p. 206.
Bell, First Total War p. 261.
The Nation, 16/7/1896 p. 45.
Further Reading:
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