ould commit many
excesses. Immediately after a battle, they plundered all they met, and
at all times, and in all places, they looked on horses as fair game,
insomuch that it was often remarked in the allied armies, that they
believed horses to have been created for none but Cossacks. It was said,
that almost every Cossack of the corps of Czernicheff was worth from L.
300 to L. 400 in money and watches, which most of them spent much after
the manner of British sailors.

* * *

Some idea of the expenditure of human life, during the campaign of 1812,
may be formed from the following facts, which we had from unquestionable
authority: The number of killed and wounded on both sides at the battle
of Borodino, which did not extend from flank to flank more than three
English miles, was ascertained to exceed 75,000 men. Eighteen thousand
wounded Russians were dressed on the field, and sent off in carts. When
the Russian army crossed the Niemen, in pursuit of the French, they left
behind them 87,000 sick and wounded in hospitals, of which number 63,000
were wounded. The whole number of human bodies, Russian and French, men,
women, and children, which were collected and buried or burnt, after the
retreat from Moscow to the Niemen, exceeded 300,000.

The officers of the Russian medical staff spoke in terms of the utmost
indignation of the conduct of the French medical staff, in deserting
their charge on the approach of the Russian armies. A great part of the
town of Wilna, and surrounding villages, had been converted into
hospitals for the French army, and when the Russians arrived, they
found these hospitals wholly deserted by the medical men. The sick (many
of them labouring under infectious fevers), and the wounded, were
huddled together, without provisions, attendants, or the slightest
regard to their situation. The first step of the Russian officers who
were entrusted with the care of these hospitals, was to employ a number
of Jews to clear out the corpses, some of which had lain there for three
weeks; and when these were collected and burnt, their number was found
to exceed 16,000; the sick were then separated from the wounded; and as
soon as order was re-established, the Emperor of Russia visited the
hospitals himself, to be assured that every possible attention was paid
to their surviving inmates.

During the whole of the winter of 1812 and the year 1813, a typhus fever
was very prevalent in the French army, and in many