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Updated: May 13, 2025
On the evening of the first day's march the troops camped in a birch forest. Russian people are fond of melancholy music; Schehl played for them adagios on his clarinette, and the Cossacks gave him the best they had to eat. His comrades, now reduced to 400 in number, received no food and were so terror-stricken or so feeble that only from time to time they emitted sounds of clamor.
For the Cossacks would send the superfluous guardsmen away and retain only as many as one for every four prisoners. They saw that the completely exhausted Frenchmen could be driven forward like a herd of sick sheep, and hardly needed any guard. In the morning we passed a village, writes Schehl, in which stood some houses which had not been burned.
All crawled from their rooms, 80 in number, and stood at attention before the colonel, who was a very handsome and strong man, six foot tall, with expressive and benevolent features. The youth of Schehl made an impression on him, and he asked in German: "My little fellow, are you already a soldier?" S. At your service, colonel. C. How old are you? S. Fifteen years, colonel.
And, says Schehl, I could narrate still other savageries, but they are too revolting, they are worse than those of the savage Indians. Fortunately, Schehl himself was protected from all molestations by the peasants by the two Cossacks of the escort. He was even taken into the provision wagon where he could ride between bundles of hay and straw.
Now the jailors were called and had to deliver everything which they had taken from their prisoners; unfortunately, Schehl's clarinette was not among the articles that were returned. And now Schehl witnessed the most severe punishment executed on the jailors.
Quite different was the experience of a very young German, Karl Schehl, a private whose memoirs have been kept in his family, and were recently published by one of his grand-nephews. After a battle on the retreat from Moscow he, with many others, was taken prisoner by Cossacks, who at once plundered the captives. Schehl was deprived of his uniform, his breeches, his boots.
Of the 700 prisoners, many of them deprived of their clothing, as Schehl had been deprived, who had to camp without a fire, quite a number did not see the next morning, and the already described snow hills indicated where these unfortunates had reached the end of their sufferings. The commanding officer of the Cossacks ordered the surviving prisoners to fall in line for the march back to Moscow.
The peasant soldiers took the most comfortable places; for Schehl and his nine comrades, who were lodged with him in one of the houses, straw was given to make a bed on the floor, but most of the nine syntrophoi were so sick and feeble that they could not make their couch, and six could not even eat the pound of bread which every one had received; they hid the remaining bread under the rags which represented their garments.
The surviving prisoners were now treated well, the colonel took Schehl with him to do service in his castle. The case of Karl Schehl is a typical one. Holzhausen has collected a great many similar ones from family papers, which never before had been published.
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