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Updated: May 16, 2025
In all the literature which I have examined I did not find a better description of the life and the struggle of the soldiers on the retreat than that given by General Heinrich von Brandt of his march from Zembin to Wilna. It is a vivid picture of many details from which we derive a full understanding of the great misery on the retreat in general.
Before crossing the bridge which led to Zembin, he confided the fate of his own rear-guard now left in Studzianka to Eble, the savior of all those who survived the calamities of the Beresina.
My debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will put a 'P' on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. I was alone with him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall slip into his skin.... Mille diables! the woman who is to follow after me might give them a clew!
They were directed to go along the road to Zembin. The Emperor and the Guard followed. Then came the remains of several regiments, and finally 2nd Corps, for whom Castex's brigade formed the last rear-guard.
I have already explained that the Zembin road, the only way left open for us, goes through an immense marsh by means of a great number of bridges which Tchitchakoff neglected to burn when he occupied this position a few days previously.
The Emperor had left Count Lobau and several hundred men of his old guard at Malodeczno, at which place the road to Zembin rejoins the high-road from Minsk to Wilna. It was necessary to guard this point until the arrival of Victor, who in his turn would defend it until that of Ney. For it was still to this marshal, and to the second corps commanded by Maison, that the rear-guard was entrusted.
While this catastrophe was accomplishing, the remains of the grand army on the opposite bank formed nothing but a shapeless mass, which unravelled itself confusedly, as it took the road to Zembin. The whole of this country is a high and woody plain of great extent, where the waters, flowing in uncertainty between different inclinations of the ground, form one vast morass.
With two short interruptions, of three and four hours respectively, due to the breaking of the heavier bridge, the crossing went forward irregularly, at times almost intermitting, until the morning of the twenty-eighth. About noon on the twenty-seventh the Emperor passed; having superintended certain repairs to the bridge, he started next morning for Zembin.
At every step Ney and General Maison protected the retreat, and again met the Russians at Molodeczno, after burning the bridges of Zembin. From league to league the march of the army was indicated by a long series of corpses soldiers who had fallen in the snow without rising again, runaways who had at last succumbed under the weight of their hardships.
He was pledged to protect the husband, bound to defend him as he would have defended the woman herself. "Now, in the hovel beyond Zembin, where I was so well received, this captain was sitting opposite to me, and his wife was at the other end of the table, facing the Colonel.
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