ost; but York, their commander, entered into a truce with the Russians
and remained stationary. They had been forced to join the French, and
took the first opportunity to abandon their hated allies.

A place of safety was at length reached, but the grand army was
represented by a miserable fragment of its mighty host. Of the
half-million who crossed the Russian frontier, but eighty thousand
returned. Of those who had reached Moscow, the meagre remnant numbered
scarcely twenty thousand in all.

_THE DEATH-STRUGGLE OF POLAND._

The French revolution of 1830 precipitated a similar one in Poland. The
rule of Russia in that country had been one of outrage and oppression.
In the words of the Poles, "personal liberty, which had been solemnly
guaranteed, was violated; the prisons were crowded; courts-martial were
appointed to decide in civil cases, and imposed infamous punishments
upon citizens whose only crime was that of having attempted to save from
corruption the spirit and the character of the nation."

On the 29th of November the people sprang to arms in Warsaw and the
Russians were driven out. Soon after a dictator was chosen, an army
collected, and Russian Poland everywhere rose in revolt.

It was a hopeless struggle into which the Polish patriots had entered.
In all Europe there was not a hand lifted in their aid. Prussia and
Austria stood in a threatening attitude, each with an army of sixty
thousand men upon the frontiers, ready to march to the aid of Russia if
any disturbance took place in their Polish provinces. Russia invaded the
country with an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, a force
more than double that which Poland was able to raise. And the Polish
army was commanded by a titled incapable, Prince Radzivil, chosen
because he had a great name, regardless of his lack of ability as a
soldier. Chlopicki, his aide, was a skilled commander, but he fought
with his hands tied.

On the 19th of February, 1831, the two armies met in battle, and began a
desperate struggle which lasted with little cessation for six days.
Warsaw lay in the rear of the Polish army. Behind it flowed the Vistula,
with but a single bridge for escape in case of defeat. Victory or death
seemed the alternatives of the patriot force.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN PEASANTS.]

The struggle was for the Alder Wood, the key of the position. For the
possession of this forest the fight was hand to hand. Again and again it
was lost a