NAPOLEON’S GRAND ARMY CROSS THE BRIDGES AT BEREZINA

I take this incident from Phillippe-Paul de Segur Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow. It occurs near the end of the retreat when the Grand Army has been reduced to few fighting units and a great horde of stragglers. What is left of the ninth corps of General Victor is making its way toward the partially iced-over river of Berezina. Accompanying the soldiers, many of whom have abandoned their arms, is an unorganized mass of thousands—in many cases whole families—who supplied the Grand Army’s needs. Two bridges cross the river, one for artillery. Rumors of an engagement and another defeat of a corps of the Grand Army begin to spread through the retreating rabble. Then wounded soldiers arrive, fleeing the Russian army. Russian batteries begin to shell the people. They panic and rush the bridges.

Segur says, “Then it was, as in all cases of extremity that the real dispositions of men exhibited themselves without disguise.” Some soldiers clear a way for themselves with their swords. Some drive their baggage wagons over whoever was in their way. Many of the desperate are pushed over the bridge and cling onto the piles until they fall into the river. Mothers drown holding with outstretched arms their children above the water.

Then the artillery bridge collapses.

The heavy cannon and the ammunition wagons are now driven onto the remaining bridge crushing those poor souls in their path. In the midst of this, an artilleryman, struggling with others to cross the bridge, sees a small boat with a mother and her two children overturn and sink beneath the ice. He throws himself into the icy water and manages, after great exertion, to save the youngest child, who is wailing for his mother. According to Segur: “the brave artilleryman man was heard telling him not to cry that he had not rescued him from the water only to desert him on the bank, that he should want for nothing and that he would be his father and his family.”

With cold correct military logic that evening, Napoleon burns the remaining bridge leaving thousands at the mercy of the Cossacks.

Commonly, terror and panic overwhelm our impulse for compassion and deprives us of our humanity. Less common is for compassion to prevail over the fierce instinct for survival in the same circumstances.