boring houses during the night, for the purpose
of building a bridge with the materials. But those who had taken shelter
in them opposed their being destroyed; and, as the viceroy was more
beloved than feared, his instructions were not obeyed. The
bridge-builders became disheartened, and when daylight, with the
Cossacks, appeared, the bridge, after being twice broken down, was at
last abandoned.

Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of
disbanded men, the sick and wounded, upward of a hundred pieces of
cannon, ammunition-wagons, and a multitude of vehicles of every kind,
lined the bank and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to
ford the river through the floating ice which was carried along by its
current. The first guns that were attempted to be got over reached the
opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while at the same
time the bed of the stream at the place of passage was continually
deepened by the wheels and by the efforts of the horses. One carriage
stuck fast, others did the same, and at length the stoppage became
general.

Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in
vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the
viceroy finally found himself compelled to order his artillery and all
his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The
owners were allowed scarcely a moment to part from their effects: while
they were selecting from them such articles as they most needed, and
loading their horses with them, a multitude of soldiers came rushing up:
they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; these they broke in
pieces and rummaged every part, avenging their poverty on the wealth,
and their privations on the superfluities they here found, and snatching
them from the Cossacks, who were in the meantime looking on at a
distance.

But it was provisions of which most of them were in quest. They threw
aside embroidered clothes, pictures, ornaments of every kind, and gilt
bronzes for a few handfuls of flour. In the evening it was a strange
sight to behold the mingled riches of Paris and of Moscow, the luxuries
of two of the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised
on the snow of the desert.

At the same time, most of the artillerymen spiked their guns in despair,
and scattered their powder about. Others laid a train with it as far as
some ammunition-wagons, which had been left