On the heights of Studzianka, Victor, who commanded the French rear-guard, amounting perhaps to 8000 or 10,000 men, was prepared to cover the retreat over the bridges. The right of this corps d'armée rested on the river; a ravine full of bushes covered their front, but the left wing had no point of support. It remained, according to the military phrase, _in the air_, and was covered by two regiments of cavalry. Behind this defensive line were many thousands of stragglers, mingled with the usual followers of a camp, and with all those individuals who, accompanying, for various reasons, the French from Moscow, had survived the horrors of the march. Women, children, domestics, the aged and the infants, were seen among the wretched mass, and wandered by the side of this fatal river, like the fabled spectres which throng the banks of the infernal Styx, and seek in vain for passage. The want of order, which it was impossible to preserve, the breaking of the bridges, and the time spent in the repair--the fears of the unhappy wretches to trust themselves to the dangerous and crowded passages, had all operated to detain them on the right bank. The baggage, which, in spite of the quantity already lost, of the difficulty of transportation, and of Napoleon's precise orders, amounted still to a very great number of carts, wains, and the like, and which was now augmented by all that belonged to the troops of Oudinot and Victor, was seen, some filing towards the bridges, and the greater part standing in confusion upon the shore. The artillery itself, such as remained, was in no better state. Such was the condition of matters at the bridge, when Witgenstein, warm from his victory over Partouneaux, marching down the left bank of the Beresina, engaged in a fierce combat with the rear-guard under Victor; and the balls of the Russians began to fall among the mingled and disordered mass which we have endeavoured to describe. It was then that the whole body of stragglers and fugitives rushed like distracted beings towards the bridges, every feeling of prudence or humanity swallowed up by the animal instinct of self-preservation. The horrible scene of disorder was augmented by the desperate violence of those who, determined to make their own way at all risks, threw down and trampled upon whatever came in their road. The weak and helpless either shrunk back from the fray, and sat down to wait their fate at a distance, or, mixing in it, were thrust over the bridges, crushed under carriages, cut down perhaps with sabres, or trampled to death under the feet of their countrymen. All this while the action continued with fury, and, as if the Heavens meant to match their wrath with that of man, a hurricane arose, and added terrors to a scene which was already of a character so dreadful. [Sidenote: DREADFUL LOSSES OF THE FRENCH.]