Horses were lacking for the artillery, and at this critical moment the artillery was the safeguard of the army. The Emperor gave orders that his horses should be taken; he estimated that the loss of even one cannon or artillery wagon would be incalculable; the artillery was confided to a corps composed entirely of officers; it amounted to about five hundred men. It affected His Majesty to see these brave officers become soldiers once more, putting their hands to the pieces like simple cannoneers, and going back through devotion to the lessons of the school. The Emperor called this his sacred squadron! For the same reason which made the officers become soldiers, the other superior commanders descended from their rank without disturbing themselves about the designation of their grade. Generals of division Grouchy and Sebastiani resumed the rank of simple captains.

Near Borozino we were arrested by loud shouting; we thought ourselves cut off by the Russian army; I saw the Emperor turn pale, this was a thunderbolt; several lancers were despatched as quickly as possible; we saw them return waving their flags, His Majesty comprehended the signals, and long before we could have been reassured by the cuirassiers, he said: "I bet that it is Victor!"; so accurately present to his mind were even the possible positions of each corps of the army. Marshal Victor was, in fact, awaiting our passage with keen impatience. It seemed that his army had received some vague tidings of our misfortunes, and was, therefore, prepared to give the Emperor an enthusiastic welcome. His soldiers, still fresh and vigorous, at least in comparison with the rest of the army, could not believe their eyes when they saw us in such a miserable condition; the shouts of Long live the Emperor! resounded none the less on that account.

But when the rear portion of the army began to defile before them, another impression was produced. A great confusion ensued. All those in the Marshal's army who recognized any of their companions left their ranks and ran toward them, offering bread and clothes; they were frightened by the voracity with which these wretches ate; many embraced each other weeping. One of the brave and kindly officers of the Marshal took off his own uniform to give it to a poor soldier whose ragged garments exposed him naked to the cold, putting on his own back a tattered old infantry coat, because he was more capable of resisting the rigors of the weather. If excessive misery withers the soul, on the other hand it sometimes expands it to the highest point, as one may see. Many of the most wretched blew their brains out in despair. In that act, the last which nature indicates to put an end to wretchedness, there was a resignation and coolness that made one shudder. Those who thus assailed their own lives were not seeking death so much as a term to insupportable sufferings, and in this disastrous campaign I saw what vanities are physical force and human courage where that moral force which is born of a determined will is non-existent.

The Emperor marched between the army of Marshal Victor and that of Marshal Oudinot. It was frightful to see these moving masses sometimes halting progressively, the advance corps first, then those that followed, then the last; when Marshal Oudinot, who was ahead, suspended his march for some unknown reason, there would be a movement of general uneasiness, then alarming speeches would begin, and, as men who have seen everything are inclined to believe everything, both true and false tidings easily found credit; the fright would last until the front of the army began to move on, when a degree of confidence was restored.

By five o'clock in the evening of the 25th some trestles had been fixed above the stream, constructed of wooden beams taken from Polish cabins. It was rumored in the army that the bridge would be finished during the night. The Emperor was much annoyed when the army deceived itself in this way, because he knew that people grow much more quickly discouraged when they have indulged in vain hopes; for this reason he took great care to have the rear of the army made acquainted with the slightest incidents, so as never to leave the soldiers under so cruel an illusion. The trestles gave way at a little past five o'clock. They were not strong enough. It was necessary to wait until the next day, and the army relapsed into its dismal conjectures. It was plain that next day it would have to sustain the enemy's fire; but there was no room for choice. At the end of that night of anguish and sufferings of every sort, the first trestles were driven down into the river. People do not comprehend that the soldiers had stood up to their lips in water full of floating ice, summoning every force with which nature had endowed them, and all the remaining courage born of energy and devotion in order to drive the piles several feet deep into a miry river bed; struggling against the most horrible fatigues; pushing away with their hands enormous masses of ice which would have knocked them down and submerged them by their weight; fighting, in a word, and fighting unto death with cold, the greatest enemy of life. Well, that is what our French pontonniers did. Several of them were either dragged down by the currents or suffocated by the cold. That is a glory, it seems to me, which outweighs many another.

The Emperor awaited day in a wretched hovel. In the morning he said to Prince Berthier: "Well! Berthier, how are we to get out of this?" He was sitting in his chamber; great tears were rolling down his cheeks, which were paler than usual. The Prince was near him.

But they exchanged very few words. The Emperor seemed overwhelmed with sadness. What was passing in his mind I leave to the imagination. It was then that the King of Naples spoke frankly to his brother-in-law, entreating him, in the name of the army, to think of his own safety, the peril being so imminent. Some brave Poles offered to form the escort of the Emperor. They could go further up the Beresina and reach Wilna in five days. The Emperor shook his head in sign of refusal, but said nothing. The King understood, and there was no further mention of it.

In great misfortunes, the least relief is doubly appreciated. A thousand times I have observed this in the case of His Majesty and his unhappy army. On the banks of the Beresina, when the first supports of the bridge had scarcely been thrown out, Marshal Ney and the King of Naples rode up at full speed toward the Emperor, shouting that the enemy had abandoned his positions. I saw the Emperor, quite beside himself and unable to believe his ears, run at full speed to look in the direction which Admiral Tschitzakoff was said to have taken. The news was true. The Emperor, transported with joy and out of breath with running, exclaimed: "I have tricked the Admiral!" This retrograde movement of the enemy, when he had so good a chance to crush us, was not easy to comprehend; and I do not know whether the Emperor, in spite of his apparent satisfaction, was very sure about the happy results which were to accrue to us from this retreat.

Before the bridge was finished, some four hundred men were partially transported from the other side of the river on two miserable rafts which they could with difficulty steer against the current. From the shore, we saw them greatly shaken by the great pieces of ice which clogged the river. These masses would come to the very edge of the raft; meeting an obstacle, they would stop for a while and then be drawn underneath those feeble planks and produce horrible shocks. Our soldiers would stop the largest ones with their bayonets and make them deviate insensibly beyond the rafts.

The impatience of the army was at its highest pitch. The first to arrive on the other bank were the brave M. Jacqueminot, aide-de-camp of Marshal Oudinot, and Count Predziecski. This was a brave Lithuanian whom the Emperor greatly liked, especially when he shared our sufferings through fidelity and devotion. Both of them crossed the river on horseback. The army uttered shouts of admiration on seeing that its leaders were the first to give the example of intrepidity. There was, in fact, enough to disturb the strongest minds. The current forced the poor horses to swim obliquely across, which doubled the length of the passage. Then came the masses of ice, which, striking against their chests and sides, inflicted piteous gashes.

At one o'clock, General Legrand and his division blocked up the bridge constructed for the infantry. The Emperor was on the opposite side. Several cannons got entangled in each other and stopped the march for an instant. The Emperor sprang on to the bridge, put his own hands to the teams, and aided in freeing the pieces. The enthusiasm of the soldiers was extreme. It was to shouts of Long live the Emperor! that the infantry landed on the other shore.

Not long after the Emperor learned that General Partonneaux had laid down his arms. He was keenly affected by the news, and broke into somewhat unjust reproaches against the General. Later on, when better informed, he did full justice to the claims of necessity and despair. It is fair to say that this brave general did not take such an extreme step without having done all that a courageous man could do in such circumstances. It is permissible for a man to reflect when he can do nothing but allow himself to be killed to no purpose.

When the artillery and the baggage were crossing, the bridge was so thronged that it broke. Then ensued that retrograde movement which crowded back in horrible confusion the whole multitude of stragglers who were advancing, like driven cattle, behind the artillery. Another bridge had been hastily constructed, as if in sad prevision of the breaking of the first one; but the second one was narrow and unprotected at the sides. However, it was a makeshift which at first glance seemed very precious in such an appalling calamity; but what miseries ensued ! The laggards flocked thither in droves. As the artillery, the baggage, — in a word, the entire material of the army, — had been in advance on the first bridge, when it broke, and by the sudden recoil which took place the catastrophe became known, then those who had been behind were the first to gain the other bridge. But it was necessary that the artillery should cross first. It pressed forward then with impetuosity toward the only way of salvation which was left. Here the pen refuses to describe the scene of horrors that took place. It was literally over a road of crushed bodies that the wagons of every sort reached the bridge. On this occasion one saw what hardness, what systematic ferocity even, can be imparted to the soul by the instinct of self-preservation. There were some of the stragglers, the craziest of any, who wounded and even killed with bayonet thrusts the unfortunate horses who did not obey the whip of their drivers. Several wagons had to be abandoned in consequence of this odious proceeding.

I have said that the bridge had no ledges at the sides. Crowds of poor wretches who were trying to cross it were seen to fall into the stream and be sucked under the masses of ice. Others tried to cling to the miserable planks of the bridge, and would remain hanging over the abyss until their hands, crushed by the wheels of the wagons, would let go their hold; then they went to rejoin their comrades and were engulfed by the waters. Whole artillery wagons, horses and drivers alike, were plunged into the stream.

Poor women were seen holding their children out of the water, as if to retard their death by a few moments, and the most frightful of deaths. A truly admirable maternal scene, which the genius of painting has believed itself to divine in delineating the deluge, and of which we have seen the touching and terrible reality! The Emperor wished to retrace his steps, hoping that his presence might restore order; he was dissuaded from this, and in a manner so significant that he struggled against the impulse of his heart and stayed where he was, and assuredly, it was not his grandeur that riveted him to the shore. You could see what sufferings he endured when, at every instant, he would ask how the passage was getting on, if the cannons could still be heard rolling over the bridge, if there were fewer cries from that side. "Imprudent people!" he would say; "why could they not have waited a little longer?"

There were fine examples of devotion on this unfortunate occasion. A young artilleryman sprang into the water to save a poor woman who, encumbered by her two children, was trying to reach the other shore in a small boat. The load was too heavy. An enormous piece of ice struck the boat and it foundered. The cannoneer seized one of the children and swam to shore with it. The mother and the other infant perished. This good young man brought up the little orphan as his son. I do not know whether he had the happiness of returning to France.

Some officers harnessed themselves to sledges so as to fetch along a number of their companions who had been made helpless by their wounds. They wrapped the poor fellows up as warmly as possible, comforted them occasionally with a glass of brandy when any could be procured, and lavished on them the most touching attentions.

There were many who acted thus; and yet how many whose names are unknown! how few returned to enjoy in their own country the most beautiful memories of their life!

The bridge was burned at eight o'clock in the morning. The 29th, the Emperor left the banks of the Beresina, and we went to pass the night at Kamen. There His Majesty occupied a wretched wooden house. A freezing wind entered it on every side through windows nearly every pane of which was broken. We closed the apertures with trusses of hay. Not far away from us, on a vast, open space, the unfortunate Russian prisoners, whom the army was driving before it, were penned up like cattle. Truly, I found difficulty in comprehending that air of being victorious which our soldiers still assumed by dragging along a wretched superfluity of prisoners, who could only hamper them by requiring superintendence. When the victors are dying of hunger, what becomes of the vanquished? Hence these miserable Russians, worn out by want and marching, nearly all perished that night. In the morning we saw them huddled close together. They had hoped to find a little warmth in this way. The feeblest of them had succumbed, and all night long their dead bodies had been embraced by the survivors without the latter having noticed it. There were some who, in their voracity, devoured their dead companions. The firmness with which the Russians endure pain has often been spoken of; I can give an instance of it which almost surpasses belief. One of these poor fellows, having wandered away from the corps to which he belonged, was struck by a cannon ball which cut off both his legs and killed his horse. A French officer, making a reconnaissance on the bank of the river where the Russian had fallen, perceived, at a distance, a mass which he recognized as a dead horse, and yet he saw that this mass was not without movement. He approached it and saw the head and shoulders of a man whose extremities were hidden in the body of the horse. The unfortunate man had been there four days, shutting himself up inside his horse as a shelter from the cold, and feeding on infected Scraps from this frightful lodging.

December 3, we arrived at Malodeczno. All day long the Emperor seemed thoughtful and unquiet. He had frequent confidential interviews with his grand equerry, M. de Caulaincourt. I suspected some extraordinary measure. Nor was I deceived in my conjectures. At two leagues from Smorghoni, the Duc de Vicenza had me summoned, and told me to go forward and give orders for the six best horses of the teams to be harnessed to my calash, which was the lightest of the carriages, and kept constantly in the traces. I was at Smorghoni before the Emperor, who only arrived at nightfall. The weather was excessively cold. The Emperor alighted at a poor house in the place, where he established his headquarters. He ate a light repast, wrote the twenty-ninth bulletin of his army with his own hand, and sent for all his marshals.

Nothing had as yet transpired concerning the Emperor's project; but in great and final measures there is always something unwonted which does not escape those who are clear-sighted. The Emperor had never been so amiable, so communicative. He felt that it was necessary to prepare his most devoted friends for this overwhelming news. He talked for a long time of vague matters; then he spoke of the great things that had been done during the campaign, returning with pleasure to the retreat of Marshal Ney, whom they had at last found again.

Marshal Davoust seemed thoughtful; the Emperor said to him: "But talk a little, Marshal." For some days there had been a slight coolness between him and the Emperor. His Majesty reproached him with the infrequency of his visits; but he could not dispel the cloud which lowered on all brows, for the secret had not been kept so well as he had hoped. After the repast, the Emperor requested Prince Eugène to read the twenty-ninth bulletin; then he frankly unbosomed himself about his plan, adding that his departure was essential in order to send assistance to the army. He gave his orders to the marshals; all were gloomy and discouraged. It was ten o'clock in the evening when the Emperor said it was time to go to rest; he embraced all the marshals affectionately, and withdrew. He felt the need of this separation, for he had suffered greatly from the constraint of this interview; one might conclude so, at least, from the extreme agitation of his countenance after the council. About half an hour later the Emperor summoned me to his chamber and said: "Constant, I am starting, I thought I could take you with me; but I have reflected that several carriages would attract attention; it is essential that I should experience no delay; I have given orders that you shall start at once after the return of my horses, so you will not be far behind me." I was suffering greatly from my malady; that is why the Emperor was unwilling to have me go on the seat as I requested, in order to be able to render him all the attentions to which he was accustomed; he said to me: "NO, Constant; you will follow me in a carriage, and I hope you will arrive not more than a day at most after I do." He set off with the Duc de Vicenza and Roustan on the seat; the horses were taken from my carriage, and I remained behind, to my great regret. The Emperor started in the night. By daybreak next morning, the army knew all. The impression produced by the news is indescribable. Discouragement was at its height. Many soldiers blasphemed and reproached the Emperor for having abandoned them. There was a universal cry of malediction. Prince de Neufchâtel was in great anxiety, and asking every one if they had heard the news, although he must have been the first to receive it; he feared lest Napoleon might be taken by the Cossacks, for he had an insufficient escort, and if his departure were known, no doubt great efforts would be made to capture him.

On that night of the 6th the cold increased; it must have been very great when we found birds lying frozen on the ground. Some soldiers who were sitting down, their heads in their hands and leaning forward, so as to feel the emptiness of their stomachs somewhat less, fell asleep and were found dead in that position. When we breathed, the vapor of our breath congealed on our eyebrows; tiny white icicles formed in the beards and moustaches of the soldiers; to get rid of them they would warm their chins at the bivouac fires, and as one may fancy, a good many did not do so with impunity; the artillerymen held their hands to the nostrils of their horses, seeking a little warmth from the powerful breath of these animals. Their flesh was the ordinary nutriment of the soldiers; you could see them throwing large cuts of this meat on the coals, and as the cold froze it, it could be carried along without spoiling, like salted pork, the powder of the cartridge boxes taking the place of salt.

That very night we had with us a young Parisian belonging to a very wealthy family, who had desired employment in the Emperor's household. He was very young, and had been received as one of the apartment waiters; the poor child was making his first journey. He had been attacked with fever as we were leaving Moscow, and he was so ill that night that he could not be taken from the wardrobe wagon in which he had been put until he should be better. He died there during the night, greatly regretted by all who knew him. Poor Lapouriel was a charming character, very well taught, and the hope of his family; he was an only son. The ground was so hard that we could not dig a grave, and we experienced the grief of abandoning his remains without sepulture.

I set off the next day, provided with an order from Prince de Neufchâtel that I should be furnished with horses all along the route in preference to any other person. At the first post beyond Smorghoni, which the Emperor had left with the Duc de Vicenza, this order was of the greatest utility, for there were only horses enough for one carriage; I found myself competing for them with Count Daru, who arrived when I did. I need not say that but for the Emperor's order to rejoin him as soon as possible, I could not have availed myself of my right to take precedence of the intendant-general of the army; but commanded by my duty, I showed Prince de Neufchâtel's order to Count Darn, who, after examining it, said to me: "That is right, M. Constant; take the horses; but, I entreat you, send them back to me as soon as possible."

How disastrous was that retreat! After many pains and privations we arrived at Wilna. It was necessary to cross a long and narrow bridge to enter the city; the artillery and baggage wagons so obstructed the space as to prevent all other vehicles from passing, it was all very well to say "Service of the Emperor;" we were received with maledictions. Seeing that it was impossible to advance, I alighted from my calash, and saw Prince d'Aremberg, an orderly officer of the Emperor, in a pitiable condition; his face was distorted, his nose, ears, and feet were frozen. He was sitting down behind my carriage. I was heart-broken. I said to the Prince that if he had acquainted me with his distress, I would have given him my place. He could scarcely answer me. I supported him for some time; but seeing how urgent it was for both of us to go forward, I concluded to carry him. He was slight, supple, and of medium height. I took him in my arms, and with this burden, elbowing, pushing, hurt and hurting, I at last  arrived and deposited the Prince at the headquarters of the King of Naples, advising that he should be given the care demanded by his condition; after which I looked out for my carriage.

We lacked everything. Long before reaching Wilna, the horses being dead, we had received orders to burn our carriages with all they contained. I lost considerable in this journey. I had made several costly purchases. All were burned with my effects, of which I had always a great quantity on my journeys. A large part of the Emperor's effects were burned in the same way.

A very fine carriage belonging to Prince Berthier, which had just arrived and not yet been used, was also burned. Four grenadiers were stationed at each fire, who with presented bayonets were to prevent anyone from taking what must be sacrificed. The next day, the carriages which had been spared were examined to see that no luggage of any sort was left in them. All I was able to keep were two shirts. We slept at Wilna. But the alarm was given early next morning. The Russians were at the gates of the city. Frightened men arrived shouting: "We are lost!" The King of Naples, rudely awakened, sprang from his bed, and in an instant orders were given that the service of the Emperor should set off at once. I leave to the reader's imagination the confusion that all this occasioned. There was no time to make any provision. We were obliged to start without delay. Prince d'Aremberg was put into one of the King's carriages with whatever could be procured for the most pressing needs. Hardly had we left the city when we heard loud cries behind us, and discharges of cannon, accompanied by quick volleys of musketry. We had to ascend a mountain of ice. The horses were fatigued. We made no progress. The treasure wagon was abandoned, and part of the money was stolen by men who, a hundred paces further on, were obliged to throw away what they had taken in order to save their lives.