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There was not the slightest breeze, the snowflakes fell vertically, crystal-clear, the snow blinded the eyes, the sun appeared like a red hot ball with a halo, the sign of greatest cold. The details of the descriptions which Holzhausen has collected from old papers surpass by far all we have learned from von Scherer's and Beaupre's writings.
Holzhausen, whose book has furnished the most valuable material of which I could avail myself besides the dissertation of von Scherer, the book of Beaupre and the report of Krantz, and numerous monographs, has brought to light valuable papers of soldiers who had returned and had left their remembrances of life of the soldiers during the Russian campaign to their descendants and relatives who had kept these papers a sacred inheritance during one hundred years.
Holzhausen gives the following description: After Smolensk had been evacuated by the Russians, most houses had been burnt out; the retreating Russians had destroyed everything that could be of any use. Corpses everywhere. Nobody had time to remove them, and the cannons, the freight wagons, the horses, and the infantry passed over them.
"I wonder I have never seen you, at Holzhausen," Ralph continued. "Well," the woman said, "it is years since I have been there. You see, it is a long way, and my sister often comes into Wiesbaden, and I see her; but in truth, her husband and I don't get on very well together. You know his temper is " and she lifted up her hands. "Yes, indeed," Ralph said. "His temper is, as you say, terrible.
Besides the tales collected by Holzhausen I can refer to many other writers, Frenchmen, the Englishman Wilson, and even Russians among them, but the material is so voluminous that I shall confine myself to select only what concerned physicians who were taken prisoners.
When a certain Frau von Holzhausen was looking for a man who would have the ability to lead her spoiled sons into the right path, and Froebel had been recommended, he separated from Gruner and performed his task with rare fidelity and a skill bordering upon genius.
From the days of Consul Drusus to those of the Emperor Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Archbishop Willigis, from Willigis to the merchant Montemagno, and from Montemagno to the visionary Holzhausen, the town gradually increased in the number of its houses, as the dew gathers drop by drop in the cup of a lily.
In almost all larger Russian cities there were German physicians, and this was a blessing to many of the prisoners. Holzhausen gives the names of several of the sick and the names of the physicians who spared no pains in attending to the sufferers.
Cases like the latter have been described also by First Lieutenant von Schauroth. Under these circumstances, says Holzhausen, it appears almost incomprehensible that there were men who withstood a misery which surpassed all human dimensions.
Holzhausen describes scenes which were not less atrocious than those enacted by Russian peasants. And those who were treated kindly had the most serious difficulties: the sudden change from misery to regular life caused many serious disorders of the organs of digestion, ennervation and circulation.
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