Now that they had recovered from their terrible ordeal Roger hired a sledge to take them in to Riga. On Boxing Day they crossed the Baltic to Stockholm. Bernadotte was in residence at the Castle. He received them most kindly and from him they learned the fate of the Grand Army.
Far out on the Eastern flank Schwarzenberg had retreated across the frontier of his own country, having lost comparatively few of his men. To the west, the bulk of Macdonald's corps had escaped down the Baltic coast, and out in that direction St. Cyr had also got most of his troops away. But the whole of the rest of the army had piled up at Borisov on the Berezina.
That it had not been totally destroyed was due to four things: Kutuzov, cautious as ever, had ignored the Czar's order to launch an all out offensive; he was content to let the weather continue to do its worst and drive the enemy out of Russia. The Generals under him were hypnotized by Napoleon's unique reputation and, fearing to fall into a trap, had failed to press home their individual attacks. The Emperor's genius for waging war was no myth; his energy and initiative returned to him; within the limits that were possible he handled magnificently such units as were still capable of putting up a resistance. The tireless energy, the skill and the valour with which, with his rearguard, Ney held the Cossack hordes at bay.
But the bridges for the crossing of the Berezina were hopelessly inadequate. Only a few thousand could cross each hour, while tens of thousands remained massed and waiting to do so on the eastern bank. Platoff, Maloradovitch, Tchitchagov, Wittgenstein and Tormasov had all closed in from different directions. For three days and nights their hundreds of guns shelled the helpless host, sending it stampeding on to the ice of the river, which broke under their weight. Sergeant Gobbett had not exaggerated in his account of the ghastly scenes that had been enacted there. On the banks of the Berezina and in its icy waters Napoleon left thirty-two thousand dead.
By December 2nd the Grand Army had been reduced to eight thousand eight hundred effectives. There was no longer any talk of wintering behind the Berezina. The only hope left to the survivors was that the Russians would not pursue them across the Niemen into Poland. On the 3rd Napoleon prepared the world for his defeat by issuing the 29th Bulletin. In it, he blamed the loss of his army on the early commencement of the Russian winter. After admitting that the greater part of the greatest army ever assembled was dead, the Bulletin ended with a statement the cynicism of which can rarely, if ever, have been surpassed, 'The Emperor's health has never been better.'
Shortly afterwards he received news from Paris that small group of conspirators, led by a General Malet had sought to take advantage of his absence to launch a coup d'etat. He used this as an excuse to leave the remnant of his army. On December 5th, he assembled those of his senior Generals who were available at Smorgoni and told them that he was returning to Paris to raise another army. Then he drove off in his sleigh, leaving Murat in command.
As the leader of a cavalry charge, the King of Naples had no equal, but he had no stomach for the task with which he had been entrusted. Without even appointing a successor, he made off as swiftly as he could for Poland. Realising the utter hopelessness of further attempts to stem the Russian tide, Davout, Eugene and Mortier went with him.
Brave Oudinot managed to keep a thousand or so men together, and Ney continued to perform prodigies with his rearguard. With him remained old Lefebvre, whose washerwoman wife had once laundered Lieutenant Bonaparte's small clothes for nothing and who, for old times' sake, the Emperor had made a Marshal and Duke of Danzig. In the retreat he displayed all the finest qualities of the courageous Sergeant Major he once had been, and above which rank he was never qualified to be promoted.
From the Berezina the rabble fell back on Vilna. When it left the ruined city the Grand Army numbered only four thousand three hundred men. By then everything that the French had managed to drag with them, the last guns, baggage and trophies, had been lost. The suffering of the men was beyond description. At times the temperature fell to forty-five below zero. From Vilna twelve thousand boy conscripts, most of whom had only just left their schools, came out to reinforce the army; within four days nine out of every ten of them were dead.
On December 14th a starved, freezing remnant reached the Niemen at Kovno. Of all the vast host that had crossed it in June, only one thousand of the Old Guard and Ney's rearguard, which numbered fewer than that,' remained disciplined units. Up to the bitter end the Russians continued to attack, but they had received orders from Alexander that they were not to invade Poland. During those desperate weeks Ney's deeds had won for him immortality. Musket in hand, he was the last man of the once Grande Armee to cross the bridge at Kovno to the safety of Polish soil.
During the campaign one hundred and fifty thousand reinforcements had reached the Grand Army, so the total number of men who took part in it was in the neighborhood of six hundred and fifty thousand. Only thirty thousand survivors succeeded one way or another, in reaching Poland. Of these only the corps on the flanks escaped the holocaust and only some ten thousand had made the journey to Moscow and back. To the dead must be added about one hundred thousand camp-followers. Horses to the number of one hundred and sixty thousand had been lost and over one thousand guns. It was the greatest military disaster in history.
When Bernadotte had given these particulars, acquired through his intelligence service, to Roger and Mary, he told them that the Swedish army would be ready to take the field in the spring, and would join with the Austrians and Prussians in a final campaign to crush the monster murderer. He then invited them to stay as long as they liked in Stockholm and promised, when they wished, to send them safely home.
Next day Roger took Mary into the city, to buy her suitable clothes, and an outfit for himself. In the Castle they had naturally been given separate rooms, and he observed the proprieties by not going into hers until the morning of the fourth day of their stay.
He then went in to her carrying an enormous cardboard box, put it on the bed and told her to open it. Packed in layers of tissue paper, it contained a magnificent wedding dress, which he had secretly ordered after the dressmaker had measured her. Mary had been sitting up in bed, a pink eye shade now covering her injured eye. At the sight of the dress she could not contain her delight, and kissed him fondly, as he said:
'Although you are a widow, I should like you to wear this today.'
For all their lives his relationship with Georgina would remain a thing apart; but he had no doubt whatever that she would be happy for him, and during the past four months he had come to love Mary very dearly. She had no dowry, no relations who moved in high society, was no great beauty; but she had courage, steadfastness and gaiety. He knew that she would make him a wonderful wife.
Later that morning, New Year's Day of 1813, when they met in the chapel of the Castle, Roger caught his breath with surprise and delight when he saw that Mary was no longer wearing pink eye shade. The only remaining sign of her injury was a white scar severing her left eyebrow, and she assured him that her sight was improving every day.
With the Swedish Royal Family as witnesses, they were married by a Lutheran pastor, and the Prince Royal of Sweden gave the divinely happy bride away.