te.
Others, again, were left on the icy steep, which they had to climb to
reach the upper town. The rest ran to the magazines, where many fell
exhausted while they beset the doors; for here also they were repulsed.
"Who were they?" it was asked. "To what corps did they belong? What had
they to prove it? The persons appointed to distribute the provisions
were responsible for them: they had orders to deliver them only to
authorized officers bringing receipts, for which alone they could
exchange the rations committed to their care." These poor famished
creatures had no officers, nor could they tell where their regiments
were: two-thirds of the army were in this predicament.

These miserable men then dispersed themselves through the streets,
having no longer any hope but in pillage. But horses dissected to the
very bones everywhere denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the
houses had been all broken and torn away to feed the fires of the
bivouacs; they found no shelter in them, no winter quarters prepared, no
wood. The sick and wounded were left in the streets, in the carts which
had brought them. It was again, it was always the same fatal high road,
passing through a town which was but an empty name: it was a new bivouac
among deceitful ruins, colder even than the forests they had just
quitted.

Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colors: they rejoined
them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread that could
be baked had been distributed; and there was no biscuit, no butcher's
meat. Rye flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were dealt out to them. It
required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the detachments of the
different corps from murdering each other at the doors of the magazines;
and when, after long formalities, their wretched fare was at last
delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their regiments;
they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds of flour,
and ran to secrete themselves till they had devoured it. The same was
the case with the spirits; and the next day the houses were found full
of the bodies of these miserable creatures.

In short, that Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to, as the
term of their sufferings, marked, as it were, only their commencement.
Inexpressible hardships still awaited us: we had yet to march forty days
under that yoke of iron. Some, already borne down by present miseries,
sank under the frightful prosp