“On the 6th of November the sky declared itself. Its azure disappeared. The army marched enveloped in cold vapours, which soon thickened into a vast cloud, and descended in large flakes of snow upon us. It seemed as if the sky were coming down, and uniting with this hostile land and people to complete our ruin. All things are indistinguishable; while the soldier struggles to force his way through the drifting whirlwind, the driven snow fills up all hollows, and its surface conceals unknown depths which yawn under our feet. The men are swallowed by them, and the weakest, resigning themselves to fate, there find a grave. Those who follow turn aside, but the storm dashes in their faces the snow from heaven and the drift from the earth, and seems to oppose itself rancorously to their march. The Russian winter under this new form attacks them from all sides; it pierces their thin dress and torn shoes. Their wet clothes freeze on them, a sharp and strong wind impedes their breath, which at the instant of expiration forms round the mouth icicles depending from the beard. The wretches, shivering, still drag themselves on, till the snow which clogs their feet, or some chance obstacle, causes them to stumble and fall. There they groan in vain: the snow soon covers them; slight elevations alone distinguish them: behold their graves! Everywhere the road is strewn with these undulations like a burial–ground: the most fearless, the most unfeeling are moved, and turn aside their eyes as they pass in haste. But before, around, every thing is snow—the sight is lost in this immense and sad uniformity; the imagination is astounded: it is like a huge winding–sheet, with which nature envelops the army. The only objects which appear from out it are sombre pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure; and the gigantic fixedness of their black trunks and their deep gloom complete this desolate aspect of a general mourning, and of an army dying amid the decease of nature.... Then comes the night, a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow which covers all things, one knows not where to stop, where to rest, where to find roots for food, or dry wood for firing. However, fatigue, darkness, and repeated orders stop those whom their own physical and moral force, and the efforts of their officers, have retained together. They seek to establish themselves; but the ever–active storm scatters the first preparations for a bivouac. The pines, laden with hoar–frost, resist the flames; and the snow upon them, mixed with that which falls continually from the sky, and that lying on the earth, which melts with the efforts of the soldier and the first effect of the fires, extinguishes those fires and the strength and courage of the men.