Of the days of Smolensk he writes: In the streets one met with none but
sick and wounded men asking for hospitals, soldiers of every sort, of every
nation, going and coming, some of them trying to find a place where
provisions were sold or distributed; others taciturn, incapable of any
effort, absorbed by grief, half dead with cold, awaiting their last hour.
On all sides there were complaints and groans, dead and dying soldiers, all
of which presented a picture that was still further darkened by the ruinous
aspect of the city.... At Smolensk Beaupre himself had a narrow escape from
freezing to death; he narrates: During the frightful night when we left
Smolensk I felt much harassed; toward 5 in the morning, a feeling of
lassitude impelled me to stop and rest. I sat down on the trunk of a birch,
beside eight frozen corpses, and soon experienced an inclination to sleep,
to which I yielded the more willingly as at that moment it seemed
delicious. Fortunately I was aroused from that incipient somnolency--which
infallibly would have brought on torpor--by the cries and oaths of two
soldiers who were violently striking a poor exhausted horse that had fallen
down.

I emerged from that state with a sort of shock.

The sight of what was beside me strongly recalled to my mind the danger to
which I exposed myself; I took a little brandy and started to run to remove
the numbness of my legs, the coldness and insensibility of which were as if
they had been immersed in an iced bath.

He then describes his experience in similar cases: It happened three or
four times that I assisted some of those unfortunates who had just fallen
and began to doze, to rise again and endeavored to keep them in motion
after having given them a little sweetened brandy.