All succeeding generations will ask in half incredulous wonder how it came to pass that a splendid army, numbering over six hundred thousand men, and commanded by perhaps the greatest military genius that ever existed, could fall so suddenly and swiftly into a state of utter disorganization and abject misery. Certainly never, since those ancient days when the Red Sea rolled over the hosts of Pharaoh, or the angel of the pestilence smote the sleeping myriads of Sennacherib, was the arm of the Lord stretched out more visibly in the sight of the nations. Yet it is the glory of Infinite Wisdom, not to interpose amongst the wheels of human action with arbitrary breaks and changes, but so to direct the whole stupendous machine that wrong works out its own punishment and right its ultimate justification by the operation of everlasting laws. In gaining Moscow, Napoleon expected to gain everything--food and shelter for his troops, stores of all descriptions, treasures enough to satisfy the greed of those soldiers of fortune whom the hope of plunder had attracted to his standards. He expected to dictate a humiliating peace to the crushed and trembling Czar, and to make yet one more submissive tributary of hitherto unconquered Russia. But in the flames of Moscow and the heroic resolution of Alexander he found the destruction of his plans. Retreat became a necessity; and it had to be made through a country already devastated by the license of his armies--license for which he made himself responsible, which indeed he forced upon them, by neglecting to provide them with the necessaries of life. This cruel neglect recoiled upon his own head: even before the severities of a northern winter set in[41] the hosts of Napoleon were _perishing with hunger_. “If he expected us to fight for him, he ought to have fed us,” was the mournful accusation that fell from the dying lips of many a gallant soldier, who, faithful to the end, would allow himself to utter no other reproach. What famine and pestilence--the result of insufficient and unwholesome food--had begun, was completed by the arrows of the winter in the hand of God himself. As, on the occasion of another memorable national deliverance, “he blew with his wind,” and the foes of his people were scattered; so now he cast forth his ice like morsels, and who was able to abide his frost? Snow and vapour and stormy wind fulfilled his word. Of the six hundred thousand warriors who crossed the Niemen in the pride of their strength, only about forty thousand miserable fugitives--diseased, forlorn, and famished--straggled back again five months later. CHAPTER XXI. OVER THE BERESINA.