the results of the crossing were much less disastrous to the French--in
guns and men lost--than Krasnoe had been, as the figures show.

The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans for
cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only possible
line of action--the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the army
demanded--namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd fled
at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed to
reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was impossible
to block its path. This was shown not so much by the arrangements it
made for crossing as by what took place at the bridges. When the bridges
broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with
children who were with the French transport, all--carried on by vis
inertiae--pressed forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and
did not, surrender.

That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of pursuers
was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own people each
might hope for help from his fellows and the definite place he held
among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining in the same
pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share in the
necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed of the fact
that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not know what to
do--perished of cold and hunger despite their captors' desire to save
them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate
Russian commanders, those favorable to the French--and even the
Frenchmen in the Russian service--could do nothing for the prisoners.
The French perished from the conditions to which the Russian army was
itself exposed. It was impossible to take bread and clothes from our
hungry and indispensable soldiers to give to the French who, though not
harmful, or hated, or guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians
even did that, but they were exceptions.

Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was hope.
Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in collective
flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was concentrated.

The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of the
Petersburg plan) special hopes had bee