example of pillage had been set by the Russians themselves. Koutouzof had
commanded the destruction of the mansions. The slaves burned the palaces of
their masters.

All eye-witnesses speak of the extreme destitution of the soldiers in
regard to clothing after one month's stay in Moscow. Already at this time,
even before the most terrible and final trials of the retreat which awaited
them, one had to consider them lost. When they first took to woman's
clothes or shoes or hats it was considered an amusement, a joke, but very
soon a mantilla, a soutane, a veil became a precious object and nobody
laughed at it when frozen members were wrapped in these garments. The
greatest calamity was the want of shoes. Some soldiers followed women
simply for the purpose of taking their shoes from them. A special chapter
of horrors could be written on the sufferings of the soldiers on the
retreat over ice and snow fields on account of the miserable supply of
shoes.

At first Napoleon reviewed the regiments near the ponds of the Kremlin, and
at the first reviews the troops marched proudly, briskly, with firm step,
but soon they began to fail with astonishing rapidity. They answered the
roll of the drums calling them together, clad in dirty rags and with torn
shoes, in fast diminishing numbers. During the last weeks of their stay in
Moscow many had reached the last stage of misery, after having wandered
through the streets looking for a little bit of nourishment, dressed up as
for a carnival, but without desire to dance, as one remarked in grim humor.

These were the men whose destination had brought them many hundreds of
miles from home to the semi-Asiatic capital of the Ivans, who had been
drinking in the glory and the joy of warriors, and who now died from hunger
and cold, with their laurels still intact. Thanks to the authorized