Napoleon's starving and frost-bitten army soon became a rabble. As he approached the river Beresina[50] he learned that the Russians were waiting to oppose the passage. A battery of guns commanded the bridge, and as the French tried to cross thousands of them were mowed down, and heaps of dead and wounded blocked the way. A miserable, crushed remnant of 20,000 men was all that struggled back to Germany. The downfall of Napoleon had begun. [Footnote 38: A form of government in which the head of the state is not a king, but a citizen elected by the people for a number of years.] [Footnote 39: _Mar-sā-yāz´_.] [Footnote 40: _Roo-zhā´ d´lēl´_ (1760-1836).] [Footnote 41: Capital of Alsace-Lorraine, on a small tributary of the Rhine. It became German in 1871.] [Footnote 42: _Mar-selz´_, chief city of South France, on the Gulf of Lions, one of the two great ports (the other is Genoa) on the Mediterranean Sea.] [Footnote 43: Native of Corsica (_Kōr´si-ka_), large French island, 110 miles south of the coast of France. The chief town is Ajaccio, in which Napoleon's birthplace is still shown.] [Footnote 44: _Too-lon´_. French naval port, 42 miles east of Marseilles.] [Footnote 45: German town on the left bank of the Saale, 14 miles E.S.E. of Weimar.] [Footnote 46: _Nē'men_, river rising in the Russian government of Minsk, and flowing to the Baltic Sea in East Prussia.] [Footnote 47: _Boo-lō'ny_, town on the English Channel, connected with Folkestone by a daily cross-Channel service.] [Footnote 48: Old capital of Russia, on the Moskva, a tributary of the Oka, 390 miles south-east of Petrograd. Its huge citadel is called the Kremlin.] [Footnote 49: People living in the south and east of Russia who give military service to the Czar in return for the lands on which they live. They are very fierce and warlike, and are the best light cavalry in the Russian army.] [Footnote 50: _Byer-ye-zē´na_, tributary of the Dnieper, in the Minsk government of Russia.] [Illustration: The Retreat of Napoleon from Moscow. (_After the picture by Meissonier._)] CHAPTER V. HOW THE GREAT WAR LORD FELL. This unexpected blow seemed to the enslaved peoples of Europe a sign that their hour of deliverance had struck. Everywhere they began to take fresh courage, and ere long there was a general rising of the nations against Napoleon. Berlin was still in the hands of the French; but when the King of Prussia called upon his people to rise against the common enemy, every able-bodied man was ready to throw off the hated yoke. The news reached Napoleon's ears; but he only exclaimed, "Pah! Germans can't fight like Spaniards." However, he got together another French army, and many of the German princes were so terrified that they let their troops join him. Prussia stood almost alone.