Towards midnight they began to pass. Those who first tried the ice warned their companions that it bent under them, and sunk so low that they were up to their knees in water. The deep, threatening sound of cracks was heard on all sides, and those who still remained on the bank hesitated to trust themselves to so frail a support. Ney ordered them to pass one by one. Much precaution was necessary, for large chasms had opened, doubly concealed by the darkness of night, and by the general covering of water. Men hesitated, but they were driven on by the impatient cries of those who remained on the bank, still ignorant of the dangers of the passage, and goaded by the constant fear of the enemy’s approach. The carriages and cannon attendant on the army were of necessity left behind, and those of the wounded who were unable to make their way across. The chief of the hospital department tried the experiment of sending some waggon–loads of sick and wounded men across the ice. A scream of agony was heard when they had reached the middle of the stream, succeeded by a deep silence. The ice had given way, and all perished except one officer, severely wounded, who supported himself upon a sheet of ice, and, crawling from one piece to another, reached the bank. Ney had now placed the river between himself and the Russian army by a stroke of promptitude and courage rarely equalled. But his situation was far from enviable. He was in a desert of forests, without roads and without guides, two days’ march from Orcza, where he expected to meet Napoleon. As the troops advanced, the foremost men observed a beaten way; but there was little comfort to be derived from this, for they distinguished the marks of artillery and horses proceeding in the same direction as themselves. Ney as usual took the lion’s counsel, and followed those menacing tracks to a village, which he surrounded and assaulted, in which there were 100 cossacks, who were roused from their sleep only to find themselves prisoners. Here the French found comforts of which they had known little since their departure from Moscow; food, clothes, comfortable quarters, and rest. What a blessed relief to men who within the last twelve hours had been hopeless of escape from death in battle, and then exposed to scarce less imminent danger of perishing in a half–frozen river! From hence it was two days’ march to Orcza, where Ney arrived on November 20, his followers being reduced to 1500 men. He had baulked the Russian regular troops; but he found Platoff and his cossacks upon the right bank of the Dnieper, and suffered severely from their marauding warfare. Napoleon had given him up for lost; when he heard that he had rejoined the army he leaped for joy, as he exclaimed, “Then I have saved my eagles! I have 200,000,000 in the Tuileries: I would have given them all rather than lose such a man!”[164]