“This disorderly rabble was clad in the most extraordinary garments—in the skins and hides of various animals, in women’s petticoats of every conceivable hue, in great shawls, in scraps of blankets, in old horse-cloths with a hole in the middle for the head, and hanging down all round. As their boots were gone, their feet were wrapped in tattered rags and shreds of felt and sheep-skin, tied up with bits of straw.... Above these vermin-infested rags were to be seen sunken faces black with the smoke of camp-fires, smeared with all manner of filth—faces on which were imprinted horror, despair, and the haunting terror of hunger, cold, and all their other ills. There was no centre or flank; the whole army was huddled into a heap, with no cavalry or artillery, and moved forward, baggage and all, in indescribable confusion.” * * * * * At last the French army arrived at the Beresina, where it must have been annihilated but for the folly of the Russian General Chichagof, who had been directed to cut off its retreat. “It must be admitted,” says René Bourgeois, “that throughout the campaign the Russians made the most astounding blunders. At the Beresina, in particular, they might have taken the whole French army prisoner without spilling a drop of blood. Our escape was due solely to the incapacity of the Russian commander, Admiral Chichagof, who took over the command of the army of Moldavia from Kutuzof.... He was a young courtier, self-confident and vain, who enjoyed the fullest confidence and favour of the Emperor Alexander.” A perusal of the despatches which this youthful favourite wrote, with the pompous French periods, the confident and condescending criticisms of anybody and everybody, not even excepting Kutuzof, enables us to appreciate his fatuity and incompetence. The French, having hoodwinked the Russian general—or rather, admiral—proceeded to throw bridges over the Beresina. “_Esprit de corps_ in the different arms of the service,” says Marbot, “is of course worthy of all honour, but it does no harm now and then to moderate it under certain circumstances. This was a task beyond the powers of those in command of the artillery and engineers at the passage of the Beresina; for sappers and gunners each insisted that they alone, and no others, were going to build the bridges. The result was that the work remained at a complete standstill until the Emperor, who arrived on the 26/14, settled the dispute by ordering the artillery to build one bridge and the engineers the other.” “Who shall number the victims of this passage,” says S. U., “or describe the scenes of horror and destruction? Amid inconceivable confusion the Emperor endeavoured to facilitate the passage by ordering a multitude of vehicles to be burned under his own eyes; the Prince of Neufchâtel led several horses over with his own hands.”