to, in order to tear them from them. It was only the appearance of
daylight, which brought them all at once, but too late, to the entrance
of the bridge, which they again besieged. It was half-past eight in the
morning, when Eble, seeing the Russians approaching, at last set fire to
it.

The disaster had reached its utmost bounds. A multitude of carriages,
three cannon, several thousand men and women, and some children, were
abandoned on the hostile bank. They were seen wandering in desolate
troops on the borders of the river. Some threw themselves into it in
order to swim across; others ventured themselves on the pieces of ice
which were floating along: some there were also who threw themselves
headlong into the flames of the burning bridge, which sunk under them;
burnt and frozen at one and the same time, they perished under two
opposite punishments. Shortly after, the bodies of all sorts were
perceived collecting together and the ice against the tressels of the
bridge. The rest awaited the Russians. Wittgenstein did not show himself
upon the heights until an hour after Eble's departure, and, without
having gained a victory, reaped all the fruits of one.

CHAP. X.

While this catastrophe was accomplishing, the remains of the grand army
on the opposite bank formed nothing but a shapeless mass, which
unravelled itself confusedly, as it took the road to Zembin. The whole
of this country is a high and woody plain of great extent, where the
waters, flowing in uncertainty between different inclinations of the
ground, form one vast morass. Three consecutive bridges, of three
hundred fathoms in length, are thrown over it; along these the army
passed, with a mingled feeling of astonishment, fear, and delight.

These magnificent bridges, made of resinous fir, began at the distance
of a few wersts from the passage. Tchaplitz had occupied them for
several days. An _abatis_ and heaps of bavins of combustible wood,
already dry, were laid at their entrance, as if to remind him of the use
he had to make of them. It would not have required more than the fire
from one of the Cossacks' pipes to set these bridges on fire. In that
case all our efforts and the passage of the Berezina would have been
entirely useless. Caught between the morass and the river, in a narrow
space, without provisions, without shelter, in the midst of a tremendous
hurricane, the grand army and its Emperor must have been compelled to
surrender withou