DREADFUL RAVAGES OF COLD.

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action impossible. The only hope was in reaching VVilna,and in collecting a fresh army to save the remains of thefirst, to resume operations in the spring. Nothing but theimmediate presence of Napoleon in France could achievethe latter condition. Marshal Duroc, therefore, receivedorders to prepare for the Emperor’s journey to Paris . Hedeparted, and left the King of Naples as his lieutenant andlocum tenens, commander in chief of the army. PrinceEugene Beauharnais , Viceroy of Italy, Marshal Berthier,Count Daru, and all the other marshals, remained andserved as though the Emperor had been still present.

It now appeared easy for Murat, Berthier, and the othermarshals, to conduct the army along the open road toWilna, especially as a corps of eighteen thousand freshItalian troops were about to join the army. But on thevery night after the departure of the Emperor , the coldincreased to such an insupportable degree, that on the 5th, to6th, 7th, and 8th of December, the thermometer of Reaumurfell to twenty-eight degrees below zero, or the freezing point.The ground that each night had served for the bivouac ofthe army, in the morning resembled a field of battle, beingstrewed with heaps of dead. For example, the division ofGeneral Loison, even on quitting Wilna, consisted of aboveten thousand fighting men; but in only forty-eight hoursafter, it was reduced to three thousand wretched cripples,scarcely one of whom could possibly hold his musket in hishands. Eight hundred Neapolitans of the Royal Guard inreserve at Wilna, who were ordered out to meet the French ,to assist them in their distress and in their entrance intoWilna, all perished in one night , except about a dozen,amongst whom was my friend Rambaud, who, however, losta couple of toes. Until this moment almost every colonelof the army had contrived to march with some few officersand men around his eagle; but now nothing of the kind