Napoleon's Campaign in Russia, Anno 1812; Medico-Historical Part 7

After the severity of the sickness had abated he again began to search anxiously for something, and after the fever had left him he explained that thirty thousand florins, which he had brought with him to the hospital, had been taken away.

It was learned that this cavalryman had been sent, together with other comrades, with dispatches to Murat; that these men had defended Murat with great bravery when he was in danger in the battle of Borodino.

Murat, in recognition of their bravery, which had saved him, had given them a wagon with gold, which they were to divide among themselves.

The share of each of these cavalrymen amounted to over thirty thousand florins, and the gold was transported on four horses, but these horses, for want of food, had broken down under the load, and the gold had fallen into the hands of the Cossacks.

The patient became quite ecstatic when, during his convalescence, he was told that he had brought no gold with him into the hospital; only gradually could he be made to understand that he had been mistaken.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He said, however, that he could not recollect having been robbed during the retreat, although this fact had been testified to by two witnesses.

Two years after he had left the hospital and quitted the military service, when he was perfectly well and vigorous again, he recollected that on a very cold day he had been taken prisoner by Cossacks, who had left him, naked and unconscious, in the snow.

He could not remember how and when he had come into the hospital.

Notwithstanding all these later recollections, he still imagined from time to time that he had brought the gold with him into the hospital.

Surgeon General von Schmetter reported further the case of a cavalryman of the King's regiment who, like many others, had returned from Russia in an imbecile condition.

He spoke alternately, or mixed up, Polish, Russian, and German; he had to be fed like a child, could not remember his name or the name of his native place, and died from exhaustion eight days after admittance into the hospital.

On necropsy of the quite wrinkled body, the cerebral vessels were found full of blood, the ventricles full of serum. On the surface of the brain between the latter and the meninges were found several larger and smaller sacs filled with lymph, the spinal ca.n.a.l full of serum; in the spinal cord plain traces of inflammation. In the lungs there was much dark coagulated blood, and likewise in the vena cava; in the stomach and intestines, many cicatrices; the mesenteric glands and pancreas were much degenerated and filled with pus; the r.e.c.t.u.m showed many cicatrices and several ulcers.

In the hospital of Mergentheim eight necropsies were held on corpses of soldiers who had returned mentally affected in consequence of exposure to extreme cold. Similar conditions had presented themselves in all these cases.

Surgeon General von Kohlreuter attended an infantry officer who had arrived at Inorawlow, in Poland, where the remainder of the Wuerttembergian corps had rallied. He showed no special sickness, had no fever, but fell into complete apathy. For a long time he had great weakness of mind, but recovered completely in the end.

Of another patient of this kind, an officer of the general staff, who had been treated after that fatal retreat from Moscow, von Kohlreuter reports that later on he recovered completely from the mental derangement, but died on his return, near the borders of Saxony, from exhaustion.

An infantry officer became mentally deranged sometime after he had returned to his home; it took a long time, but finally he recovered without special medical aid.

Recovery of such cases was accomplished by time, a mild climate, by social intercourse, and good nourishment; many of them, on the way through Germany and before they reached their own home, had completely regained their mental faculties, and only in a small number of cases did it take a long period of time and medication before recovery was a.s.sured.

The effect of intense cold on wounds was very severe: Violent inflammation, enormous swelling, gangraene--the latter often due to the impossibility of proper care. Larger wounds sometimes could not be dressed on the retreat, and while the cold weather lasted gangraene and death followed in quick succession. The effect of cold was noticed also on wounds which had healed and cicatrized.

Von Happrecht, an officer of the regiment Duke Louis, had been wounded in the foot by a cannon ball in the battle of Borodino on September 7th., and Surgeon-General von Kohlreuter had amputated it. Fairly strong and cheerful, this officer arrived safely at the Beresina. The pa.s.sage over this river was, as is well known, very dangerous, and von Happrecht had to wait, exposed to cold, for some time before he could cross. Soon after traversing on horseback he felt as if he had lost the stump; he had no sensation in the leg the foot of which had been amputated. Unfortunately, he approached a fire to warm himself and felt a severe pain in the stump; extensive inflammation, with swelling, set in; gangraene followed and, notwithstanding most skillful attendance, he died soon after his arrival at Wilna.

So far von Scherer. Beaupre, speaking of his own observations of the effects of extreme cold, gives the following account:

Soldiers unable to go further fell and resigned themselves to death, in that frightful state of despair which is caused by the total loss of moral and physical force, which was aggravated to the utmost by the sight of their comrades stretched lifeless on the snow. During a retreat so precipitate and fatal, in a country deprived of its resources, amid disorder and confusion, the sad physician was forced to remain an astonished spectator of evils he could not arrest, to which he could apply no remedy. The state of matters remarkably affected the moral powers. The consternation was general. Fear of not escaping the danger was very naturally allied with the desperate idea of seeing one's country no more.

None could flatter himself that his courage and strength would suffice so that he would be able to withstand privations and sufferings beyond human endurance. Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, those from the temperate and southern parts of France, obliged to brave an austere climate unknown to them, directed their thoughts toward their country and with good reasons regretted the beauty of the heaven, the softness of the air of the regions of their birth.

Nostalgia was common.... The army was but three days from Smolensk when the heavens became dark, and snow began to fall in great flakes, in such a quant.i.ty that the air was obscured. The cold was then felt with extreme severity; the northern wind blew impetuously into the faces of the soldiers and incommoded many who were no longer able to see. They strayed, fell into the snow--above all, when night surprised them--and thus miserably perished.

Disbanded regiments were reduced to almost nothing by the loss of men continually left behind either on the roads or in the bivouacs.

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 hara.s.sed; toward 5 in the morning, a feeling of la.s.situde 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 a.s.sisted 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.

It was in vain; they could neither advance nor support themselves, and they fell again in the same place, where of necessity they had to be abandoned to their unhappy lot. Their pulse was small and imperceptible. Respiration, infrequent and scarcely sensible in some, was attended in others by complaints and groans. Sometimes the eyes were open, fixed, dull, wild, and the brain was seized by a quiet delirium; in other instances the eyes were red and manifested a transient excitement of the brain; there was marked delirium in these cases. Some stammered incoherent words, others had a reserved and convulsive cough. In some blood flowed from the nose and ears; they agitated their limbs as if groping. (This description of Beaupre complements the account given by von Scherer.)

Many had their hands, feet, and ears frozen. A great many were mortally stricken when obliged to stop to relieve nature; the arrival of that dreaded moment was in fact very embarra.s.sing, on account of the danger of exposing oneself to the air as well as owing to the numbness of the fingers which rendered them unable to readjust the clothes....

And they traveled day and night, often without knowing where they were.

Ultimately they were obliged to stop, and, complaining, s.h.i.+vering, forced to lie down in the woods, on the roads, in ditches, at the bottom of ravines, often without fire, because they had no wood at hand, nor strength enough to go and cut some in the vicinity; if they succeeded in lighting one, they warmed themselves as they could, and fell asleep without delay.

The first hours of sleep were delightful, but, alas! they were merely the deceitful precursor of death that was waiting for them.

The fire at length became extinct for want of attention or owing to the great blast. Instead of finding safety in the sweets of sleep, they were seized and benumbed by cold, and never saw daylight again....

I have seen them sad, pale, despairing, without arms, staggering, scarce able to sustain themselves, their heads hanging to the right or left, their extremities contracted, setting their feet on the coals, lying down on hot cinders, or falling into the fire, which they sought mechanically, as if by instinct.

Others apparently less feeble, and resolved not to allow themselves to be depressed by misfortune, rallied their powers to avoid sinking; but often they quitted one place only to perish in another.

Along the road, in the adjacent ditches and fields, were perceived human carca.s.ses, heaped up and lying at random in fives, tens, fifteens and twenties, of such as had perished during the night, which was always more murderous than the day.

When no longer able to continue walking, having neither strength nor will power, they fell on their knees.

The muscles of the trunk were the last to lose the power of contraction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "And never saw daylight again."]

Many of those unfortunates remained for some time in that posture contending with death.

Once fallen it was impossible for them, even with their utmost efforts, to rise again. The danger of stopping had been universally observed; but, alas! presence of mind and firm determination did not always suffice to ward off mortal attacks made from all directions upon one miserable life!

WIASMA

About a mile and a half from Wiasma the enemy appeared to the left of the road, and his fire happened to strike the midst of the tail of the army, composed of disbanded soldiers without arms, with wounded and sick among them, and women and children. Every artillery discharge of the Russians caused frightful cries and a frightful commotion in the helpless ma.s.s.

And the rear guard, in trying to make them advance, ill-treated them, the soldiers who had clung to the flag a.s.sumed the right to despise those who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, had abandoned it.

Of the old generals of Davout some had been killed, Friant was so severely wounded that he could not be about, Compans had been wounded in the arm, Moraud in the head, but these two, the former with one arm in a sling, the other with a bandaged head, were on horseback, surrounding the marshal commanding the first corps which had been reduced to 15 thousand from 20 thousand at Moshaisk, from 28 thousand in Moscow, and from 72 thousand crossing the Niemen. The remaining 15 thousand were all old warriors whose iron const.i.tution had triumphed.

The battle of Wiasma took place on the 2d. of November. The Russians under Miloradovitch had 100 cannon, whereas the French under Ney, Davout, and the wounded generals named above, had only 40. This day cost the French 1,500 to 1,800 men in killed and wounded, and, as mentioned, these were of the oldest and best; the loss of the Russians was twice that number, but their wounded were not lost, while it was impossible to save a single one of the French, for the latter had no attendance at all; the cold being very severe it killed them, and those who did not perish by the frost were put to death by the cruel, ferocious Russian peasants.