[The following is in relation to Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from his failed conquest of Russia. In particular, the following excerpt details a moment following the frantic (and incomplete) evacuation of French and Allied forces across the Berezina river, with Russian forces closing the distance behind them.]
On November 28, as Wittgenstein’s men began to approach, Victor destroyed the bridges: around 15,000 stragglers and 8,000 camp followers and civilians who hadn’t crossed the night before were left to the Russians’ mercy. ‘On the bridge I saw an unfortunate woman sitting,’ recalled the émigré Comte de Rochechouart, ‘her legs dangled outside the bridge and were caught in the ice. For twenty-four hours she had been clasping a frozen child to her breast. She begged me to save this child, unaware that she was holding out a corpse to me!’
A Cossack eventually ‘put an end to her appalling agony’ by blowing her brains out.
Source:
Roberts, Andrew. "Retreat." Napoleon: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2014. 628. Print.
Original Source Listed:
ed. Brett-James, Eyewitness Accounts p. 260.
Further Reading:
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