carcely a platoon. The soldiers remaining had no longer their
accustomed places, comrades, or officers.

This sad reorganization took place by the light of the conflagration of
Viazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and
Miloradovitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double
gloom of the night and of the forests. Several times the remnants of
these brave battalions, conceiving they were attacked, crawled to their
arms. The next morning, when they again fell into their ranks, they were
astonished at the smallness of their numbers.

Sec. 14. Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November; its effects upon the
troops.

The spirits of the troops were nevertheless still supported by the
example of their leaders, by the hopes of finding all their wants
supplied at Smolensk, and still more by the aspect of a yet brilliant
sun, that universal source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict
and deny the spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed
us.

But on the 6th of November the heavens changed. Their azure disappeared.
The army marched enveloped in a chilling mist. This mist became thicker,
and presently a blinding storm of snow descended upon it. It seemed as
if the sky itself were falling, and uniting with the earth and our
enemies to complete our destruction. All objects rapidly changed their
appearance, becoming utterly confounded, and not to be recognized any
more: we proceeded without knowing where we were, without perceiving the
point to which we were bound; everything was converted into an obstacle
to stop our progress. While we were struggling with the tempest of wind
and snow, the latter, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated in
every hollow, concealing unknown abysses, which perfidiously opened
beneath our feet. There the soldiers were ingulfed, and the weakest,
resigning themselves to their fate, found their grave in these
treacherous pits.

Those who followed turned aside; but the tempest, driving into their
faces the snow that was descending from the sky and that which it raised
from the earth, seemed resolved to arrest their farther progress. The
Russian winter, in this new form, attacked them at every point: it
penetrated through their light garments, and their rent and worn-out
shoes. Their wet clothes froze to their bodies: an icy envelope encased
them, and stiffened all their limbs. A piercing and violent wind almost
prevented respiration; a