“One’s pen,” says Constant, “simply refuses to depict the scenes of horror that were witnessed at the Beresina. Vehicles of all kinds drove up to the bridge literally over heaps of bodies that lay blocking up the road. Whole crowds of wretched soldiers fell into the river and perished among the blocks of ice. Others clung to the planks of the bridge, suspended over the abyss, until the wheels of the carts passed over their fingers and compelled them to relinquish their hold. Caissons, wagons, drivers, and horses went down together.” “One woman was seen,” says de B., “caught between the blocks of ice, holding up her baby in the air and imploring the passers-by to save it from a watery grave.” [Illustration: NEY AND THE STAFF.] “I saw soldiers,” says the author of the _Journal de la Guerre_, “clinging to their neighbours to save themselves from falling. I saw the feeble, tottering as they went, yet still pressing feverishly forward, jostling one another so that whole rows of them fell into the water together, toppling over like houses of cards. If a Cossack showed himself, or any one repeated the word ‘Cossack’ two or three times, the whole army of fugitives were seized with such panic that they dashed hither and thither, backwards and forwards, slipping and falling headlong into the river.” * * * * * Beyond the Beresina the cold became even more severe. The whole country round was covered with snow. Even the villages, buried in the drifts, no longer broke the monotony of the horizon, and they could only be distinguished by the smoke and flame of burning houses fired by the inhabitants or by fugitives from the French army. “The soldiers,” says Ségur, “were perpetually burning down whole houses, merely for the sake of warming themselves for a few minutes at the blaze. The glare would attract some poor creatures who had partly lost their wits through cold and privation. Grinding their teeth, and yelling with unearthly laughter, they would leap into and perish in the flames, while their comrades looked on with calm unconcerned countenances. The bystanders sometimes pulled out their burnt and disfigured bodies and, horrible to relate, devoured them.” “The road was so thickly covered with dead and dying,” says the author of the _Journal de la Guerre_, “that one had to exercise the greatest care to avoid treading on them. Marching, as we were, in a compact mass, one had no choice but to step on or over these poor wretches who lay writhing in their death agony. One could hear the death rattle in their throats, but it was useless to think of giving them any assistance.”