ing
into its chilling waves, they all hesitated.

An Italian, Colonel Delfanti, was obliged to set the example and cross
first. The soldiers then moved and the crowd followed. The weakest, the
least resolute, or the most avaricious, staid behind. Such as could not
make up their minds to part from their booty, and to forsake fortune
which was forsaking them, were surprised in the midst of their
hesitation. Next day the savage Cossacks were seen amid all this wealth,
still covetous of the squalid and tattered garments of the unfortunate
creatures who had become their prisoners: they stripped them, and then
collecting them in troops, drove them along naked on the snow, by hard
blows with the shaft of their lances.

The army of Italy, thus dismantled, thoroughly soaked in the waters of
the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow
near a village, where its officers expected to have found lodging for
themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They
rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on each habitation, profiting by the
darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being
known by them. They tore down every thing, doors, windows and even the
wood-work of the roofs, feeling little compunction to compel others, be
they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.

Their generals strove in vain to drive them off; they took their blows
without murmur or opposition, but without desisting; and even the men of
the royal and imperial guards: for, throughout the whole army, such were
the scenes that occurred every night. The unfortunate fellows remained
silently but actively engaged on the wooden walls, which they pulled in
pieces on every side at once, and which, after vain efforts, their
officers were obliged to relinquish to them, for fear they should fall
upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in
their design, and respect for the anger of their generals.

Having kindled good fires they spent the night in drying themselves,
amid the shouts, imprecations, and groans of those who were still
crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated
into it and drowned.

It is a fact which reflects disgrace on the enemy, that during this
disaster, and in sight of so rich a booty, a few hundred men, left at
the distance of half a league from the Viceroy, on the other side of the
Wop, were sufficient to curb, for twenty hours, no