[Footnote 14: Everything was wanting, lint, linen, even necessary food. The wounded men lay for days and weeks under the open sky and fed upon the carcasses of horses.] [Footnote 15: This combustible matter had been prepared by Schmid, the Dutchman, under pretext of preparing an enormous balloon from which fire was to be scattered upon the French army.] [Footnote 16: As early as the 2d of November the remainder of the Würtembergers tore off their colors and concealed them in their knapsacks.--_Roos's Memorabilia of 1812._] [Footnote 17: On the 18th of October, the Bavarians, who were intermixed with Swiss, performed prodigies of valor, but were so reduced by sufferings of every description as to be unable to maintain Poloczk. Segur says in his History of the War that St. Cyr left Wrede's gallant conduct unmentioned in the military despatches, and that when, on St. Cyr's being disabled by his wounds, Wrede applied for the chief command, which naturally reverted to him, the army being almost entirely composed of Bavarians, Napoleon refused his request. Völderndorf says in his Bavarian Campaigns that St. Cyr faithlessly abandoned the Bavarians in their utmost extremity, and when all peril was over returned to Poland in order to retake the command. During the retreat from Poloczk he had ordered the bridges to be pulled down, leaving on the other side a Bavarian park of artillery with the army chest and two-and-twenty ensigns, which for better security had been packed upon a carriage. The whole of these trophies fell, owing to St. Cyr's negligence or ill-will, into the hands of the Russians. "The Bavarians with difficulty concealed their antipathy toward the French." On St. Cyr's flight, Wrede kept the remainder of the Bavarians together, covered Napoleon's retreat, and, in conjunction with the Westphalians and Hessians, stood another encounter with the Russians at Wilna. Misery and want at length scattered his forces; he, nevertheless, reassembled them in Poland and was able to place four thousand men, on St. Cyr's return, under his command. He returned home to Bavaria sick. Of these four thousand Bavarians but one thousand and fifty were led by Count Rechberg back to their native soil. A great number of Bavarians, however, remained under General Zoller to garrison Thorn, and about fifteen hundred of them returned home.--At the passage of the Beresina, the Würtembergers had still about eighty men under arms, and in Poland about three hundred assembled, the only ones who returned free. Some were afterward liberated from imprisonment in Russia.] [Footnote 18: This was Austria's natural policy. In the French despatches, Schwarzenberg was charged with having allowed Tschitschakow to escape in order to pursue the inconsiderable force under Sacken.]