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Updated: June 20, 2025
The marshal therefore did not hesitate. In the night of the 23d, the general of artillery, a company of pontonniers, a regiment of infantry, and the brigade Corbineau, took possession of Studzianka. At the same time the other two passages were reconnoitred, and both found to be strongly observed. The object therefore was to deceive and displace the enemy.
Marechal Victor, when he started, about nine at night, from the heights of Studzianka, which he had defended, as the rear-guard of the retreating army, during the whole day of November 28th, 1812, left a thousand men behind him, with orders to protect to the last possible moment whichever of the two bridges across the Beresina might still exist.
In the night of the 27th the disorder ceased by the effect of an opposite disorder. The bridges were abandoned, and the village of Studzianka attracted all these stragglers; in an instant, it was pulled to pieces, disappeared, and was converted into an infinite number of bivouacs. Cold and hunger kept these wretched people fixed around them; it was found impossible to tear them from them.
Numbers of them continued to cross the river after him as long as daylight lasted. The army of Victor, at the same time, succeeded the guard in its position on the heights of Studzianka. Hitherto all had gone on well. But Victor, in passing through Borizof, had left there Partouneaux with his division.
He recalled into his ranks such of his stragglers as yet retained their arms; he wanted to make a last effort, and clear a sanguinary passage to the bridge of Studzianka; but these men, who were formerly so brave, were now so degraded by their miseries, that they would no longer make use of their arms.
The marshal's first care was to secure the road to Zembin, by a detachment which chased some Cossacks from it; to push the enemy towards Borizof, and to keep him as far back as possible from the passage of Studzianka.
When, at nine o'clock at night, on the 28th of November 1812, Marshal Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, which he had held through the day, he left a thousand men behind with instructions to protect, till the last possible moment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina that still held good.
The village of Satout, on the heights above, closed in, like Studzianka, the scene of horror. The colonel collected workmen to deepen the banks, and by the help of his memory, he copied in his park the shore where General Eble destroyed the bridge. He planted piles, and made buttresses and burned them, leaving their charred and blackened ruins, standing in the water from shore to shore.
A corps of grenadiers of the guard, and Latour-Maubourg, out of pure compassion, declined clearing themselves a way through these poor wretches. The imperial head-quarters were established at the hamlet of Zaniwki, which is situated in the midst of the woods, within a league of Studzianka.
Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp reached, not without difficulty, the only wooden house still left standing in Studzianka. "This barrack seems pretty full, comrade," he said to a man whom he saw by the doorway. "If you can get in you'll be a clever trooper," replied the officer, without turning his head or ceasing to slice off with his sabre the bark of the logs of which the house was built.
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