These two individuals have recounted to me facts which, singularly agreeing as they do, although the parties have not the slightest knowledge of each other even by name, have appeared to me sufficiently interesting to merit publication.
The following is the summary of M. Girard's relation.
He was made prisoner during the retreat, and immediately sent, with 3000 other Frenchmen, under charge of a body of Cossacks, into the interior of the empire, where the prisoners were dispersed among the different governments.
The cold became daily more intense. Dying of hunger and fatigue, the unfortunate men were often obliged to stop on the road, until numerous and violent blows had done the office of food for them, and inspired them with, strength to march on until they fell dead. At every stoppage, some of these scarcely clad and famished beings were left upon the snow. When they onee fell, the frost glued them to earth, and they never rose again. Even their ferocious guards were horrified at their excess of suffering.
Devoured by vermin, consumed by fever and want, carrying everywhere with them contagion, they became objects of terror to the villagers, among whose abodes they were made to stop. They advanced, by dint of blows, towards the places destined
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for their taking rest; and it was still with blows that they were received there, without being suffered to approach persons, or even to enter houses. Some were seen redueed to such a state, that, in their furious despair, they fell upon each other with stones, logs of wood and their own hands ; and those who came alive
out of the conflict devoured the limbs of the dead ! !!
To these horrible excesses did the inhumanity of the Eussians drive our countrymen.
It has not been forgotten that at the very same time, Germany gave a different example to the Christian world. The Protestants of Frankfort still remember the devoted charity of the Bishop of Mayenee, and the Italian Catholies reeolleet with gratitude the succour they received among the Protestants of Saxony.
At night, in the bivouaes, the men who felt themselves about to die rose in terror to struggle, standing, against the death agony ; surprised whilst in its contortions by the frost, they remained supported against the walls, stiff and frozen. The last sweat turned to iee over their emaeiated limbs; and they were found in the morning, their eyes open, and their bodies fixed and eongealed in convulsive attitudes, from which they were snatched only to be burnt. The foot then eame away from the anele more easily than it is, when living, lifted from the soil. When daylight appeared, their comrades, on raising their heads, beheld themselves under the~guard of a circle of yet scarcely lifeless statues, who appeared posted round the eamp like sentinels of another world. The horror of these awakings cannot be described.
Every morning, before the departure of the column, the Ptussians burnt the dead; and — shall I say it — they sometimes burnt the dying!
All this M. Girard has seen ; these are the sufferings he has shai`ed, and, favoured by youth, survived. Frightful as the facts are, they do not appear to me more so than a multitude of other reeitals attested by historians : but what I consider as inexplicable, and almost incredible, is the silenee of a Frenchman escaped from this inhuman land, and again in his own eountry.
M. Girard would never publish the aeeount of his sufferings, through respect, he says, for the memory of the Emperor Alexander, who retained him nearly ten years in Russia, and employed him as French master in the Imperial schools. How
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many arbitrary acts, how many frauds, has he not witnessed in those vast establishments ! Nothing, however, has been able to induce him to break silence, and to proclaim to Europe these glaring abuses.
Before permitting him to return to France, the Emperor Alexander met him one day during a visit to some provincial college. After addressing to him some gracious words on his long expressed desire to quit Russia, he at last gave him the permission, with even some money for the journey. M. Girard has a gentle countenance, which no doubt pleased the emperor. The unhappy prisoner, who had previously escaped death by a miracle, thus ended his ten years' captivity. He quitted the country of his tormentors and gaolers, loudly repeating the praises of the Russians, and protesting his gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them.
" You have not published any thing ? " I said to him, after having attentively listened to his narration.
" It was my intention to have related all that I witnessed," he answered ; " but, not being known. I should have found neither publisher nor readers."
" Truth will always eventually make its own way," I replied. " I do not like to say anything against that country," continued M. Girard, " the Emperor was so kind to me."
" Yes; but remember it is very easy to appear kind in Russia."
■' On giving me my passport, they recommended to me discretion."
Such is the influence of a ten years' residence in- that country upon the mind of a man born in France, brave, and true-hearted. After such an instance, it is easy to conceive what the moral sentiment must be which is transmitted among the native Russians from generation to generation.
In the montlTof February, 1842, I was at Milan, where I met i\I. Grassini, who informed me that in 1812, while serving in the army of the Viceroy of Italy, he had been made prisoner during the retreat, in the neighbourhood of Smolensk. He afterwards passed two years in the interior of Russia. The following is our dialogue. I copy it with scrupulous exactness, for I took notes of it the same day.
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" You must," I said, " have greatly suffered in that country from the inhumanity of the inhabitants, and the rigour of the climate ? "
" From the cold I did," he replied; " but I cannot say that the Russians want humanity. "We received in the interior of the country unhoped-for succours. The female peasants, and the ladies, sent us clothes to protect us from the cold, medicines to cure our sick, food, and even linen; nay, some of them braved the risk of contagion by coming to nurse us in our bivouacs, for our miseries had spread frightful maladies among us. To induce any one to approach us, there was required not merely a sentiment of common compassion, but a high courage, a lofty virtue; and I call this humanity."
" I do not pretend to say that there are no exceptions to the general hardness of heart which I observed in Russia. "Wherever there is woman, there is pity; the women of all countries sometimes become heroic in compassion: but it is not the less true that in Russia, the laws, the manners, the habits, the characters are impressed with a spirit of cruelty, from which our unhappy prisoners sufíered too greatly to allow of our saying much about the humanity of the inhabitants of that country."
" I suffered among them like the others, and more than many others, for since returning to my own country I have continued nearly blind. For thirty years I have had recourse, without success, to every means of art, but my sight is almost lost: the influence of the night dews in Russia, even during the fine season, is pernicious to those who sleep in the open air."
" You slept, then, beneath the open heavens ? "
" It was necessary during the military marches imposed upon us."
" Thus, during frosts of twenty or thirty degrees, you were without shelter ? "
" Yes : but it is the inhumanity of the climate, not of the men, that must be accused of our sufferings during these unavoidable halts."
" Did the men never add their unnecessary severities to those of nature ? "
" It is true I have witnessed acts of ferocity worthy of savages; but I banished the thoughts of these horrors by my love of life: I said to myself, if I indulge in any expressions of indignation,