When you have seen him in
motion follow him. Find men you can trust, and the moment Fournier had
crossed the bridge, burn, without pity, huts, equipages, caissons,
carriages,--EVERYTHING! Drive that mass of men to the bridge. Compel
all that has two legs to get to the other side of the river. The
burning of everything--EVERYTHING--is now our last resource. If
Berthier had let me destroy those damned camp equipages, this river
would swallow only my poor pontoniers, those fifty heroes who will
save the army, but who themselves will be forgotten."
The general laid his hand on his forehead and was silent. He felt that
Poland would be his grave, and that no voice would rise to do justice
to those noble men who stood in the water, the icy water of Beresina,
to destroy the buttresses of the bridges. One alone of those heroes
still lives--or, to speak more correctly, suffers--in a village,
totally ignored.
The aide-de-camp started. Hardly had this generous officer gone a
hundred yards towards Studzianka than General Eble wakened a number of
his weary pontoniers, and began the work,--the charitable work of
burning the bivouacs set up about the bridge, and forcing the
sleepers, thus dislodged, to cross the river.
Meanwhile the young aide-de-camp reached, not without difficulty, the
only wooden house still left standing in Studzianka.
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