more
successful comrades. The latter, without so much as turning their
heads, and hurried along by the instinct of self-preservation, pushed on
towards the goal with unabated fury, regardless of the imprecations of
rage and despair uttered by their companions or officers whom they had
thus sacrificed.

But, on the other hand, how many noble instances there were of devotion!
and why are time and space denied me to relate them? Soldiers, and even
officers, harnessed themselves to sledges, to snatch from that fatal
bank their sick or wounded comrades. Farther off, and out of reach of
the crowd, were seen soldiers, motionless and watching over their dying
commanders, who had confided themselves to their care: in vain did the
latter conjure them to think only of their own preservation; they
refused; and sooner than abandon their expiring leaders, resolved to
take their chance of slavery or death.

Above the first passage, where young Lauriston had thrown himself into
the river, in order more promptly to execute the orders of Napoleon, a
little boat, carrying a mother and her two children, was upset and sank
under the ice: an artilleryman, who, like the others, was struggling on
the bridge to open a passage for himself, observed the accident, and all
at once, unmindful of his own life, he threw himself into the river, and
by great exertion succeeded in saving one of the three victims. It was
the youngest of the two children: the poor little thing kept calling for
his mother in tones of despair, when the brave artilleryman was heard
telling him "not to cry; that he had not rescued him from the water only
to desert him on the bank; that he should want for nothing; and that he
would be his father and his family."

The night of the 28th added to all these calamities. Its darkness was
insufficient to conceal from the artillery of the Russians its miserable
victims. Amid the snow, which covered everything, the course of the
river, the black mass of men, horses, and carriages, and the noise
proceeding from them, were enough to enable the enemy's artillerymen
unerringly to direct their fire.

At about nine o'clock in the evening their desolation became complete,
when Victor commencing his retreat, his divisions opened for themselves
a passage through these despairing wretches, whom they had till then
been protecting. A rear guard, however, having been left, the multitude,
benumbed with cold, or still anxious to preserve their bag