the French army into Russia offers a sad proof of this truth, but history
has recorded similar experiences. The army of Alexander the Great suffered
frightfully from cold on two occasions: first, when that ambitious
conqueror involved himself amid snows, in savage and barbarous regions of
northern Asia before reaching the Caucasus; the second time, when, after
having crossed these mountains, he passed the Tanais to subdue the
Scythians, and the soldiers were oppressed with thirst, hunger, fatigue,
and despair, so that a great number died on the road, or lost their feet
from congelation; the cold seizing them, it benumbed their hands, and they
fell at full length on the snow to rise no more. The best means they knew,
says Q. Curtius, to escape that mortal numbness, was not to stop, but to
force themselves to keep marching, or else to light great fires at
intervals. Charles XII, a great warrior alike rash and unreflecting, in
1707 penetrated into Russia and persisted in his determination of marching
to Moscow despite the wise advice given him to retire into Poland. The
winter was so severe and the cold so intense that the Swedes and Russians
could scarcely hold their arms. He saw part of his army perish before his
eyes, of cold, hunger, and misery, amid the desert and icy steppes of the
Ukraine. If he had reached Moscow, it is probable that the Russians would
have set him at bay, and that his army, forced to retire, would have
experienced the same fate as the French.

In the retreat of Prague in 1742 the French army, commanded
by Marshal Belle-Isle, little accustomed to a winter campaign,
was forced to traverse impracticable defiles across mountains and ravines
covered with snow. In ten days 4 thousand men perished of cold and misery;
food and clothing were deficient, the soldiers died in anguish and despair,
and a great many of the officers and soldiers had their noses, feet and
hands frozen. The Russians regard the winter of 1812 as one of the most
rigorous of which they have any record; it was intensely felt through all