attempts to bring over the baggage wagons. But, to cap the climax, there
arrived 3 or 4 thousand Cossacks shouting savagely. With the greatest
difficulty only was the rear guard able to keep them at a distance so that
they could not come near enough to make use of their lances. Their
artillery, however, caused veritable desolation.

Among the poor fugitives from Moscow there were a number of Italian and
French women; these unfortunates stood at the border of the river, crying
and embracing their children, but not daring to wade through it. Brave
soldiers, full of humanity, took the little ones in their arms and passed
with them, some repeating this two and three times, in order to bring all
the children safely over. These desolate families, not being able to save
their vehicles, lost with them the means of subsistence brought from
Moscow. All the baggage, the entire artillery with the exception of seven
or eight pieces, had been lost, and a thousand men had been killed by the
fire of the Cossacks.

This dreadful event on the retreat from Moscow is called the disaster of
Vop and was the precursor of another disaster of the same nature, but a
hundred times more frightful, the disaster of the Beresina.

* * * * *

There was another cause of death of which we have not spoken yet: this was
the action of the heat at the campfires. Anxious to warm themselves, most
of the soldiers hastened to bring their limbs near the flame; but this
sudden exposure to extreme heat, after having suffered from the other
extreme--cold--was acting on the feeble circulation in the tissues and
produced gangraene of the feet, the hands, even of the face, causing
paralysis either partial, of the extremities, or general, of the whole