There is no campaign in the history of the world which has left such a deep impression upon the heart of the people than that of Napoleon in Russia, Anno 1812. Of the soldiers of other wars who had not come home it was reported where they had ended on the field of honor. Of the great majority of the 600 thousand who had crossed the Niemen in the month of June Anno 1812, there was recorded in the list of their regiments, in the archives “ Disappeared during the Retreat ” and nothing else. When th

On May 10th., 1812, the Moniteur published the following note: “The emperor has left to-day to inspect the Grand Army united at the Vistula.” In France, in all parts of the Empire, the lassitude was extreme and the misery increasing, there was no commerce, with dearth pronounced in twenty provinces, sedition of the hungry had broken out in Normandy, the gendarmes pursuing the “refractories” everywhere, and blood was shed in all thirty departments. There was the complaint of exhausted population,

Arrived in Russia the French were soon disappointed; gloomy forests and sterile soil met the eye, all was sad and silent. After the army had passed the Niemen and entered into Poland the misery, instead of diminishing, increased, the hour had struck for these unfortunates. The enemy destroyed everything on retreating, the cattle were taken to distant provinces; the French saw the destruction of the fields, the villages were deserted, the peasants fled upon the appearance of the French army, all

Three fifths of the houses and one half of the churches were destroyed. The citizens had burned their capital. Before this catastrophe of 1812 Moscow was an aristocratic city. According to old usage, the Russian nobility spent the winter there, they came from their country seats with hundreds of slaves and servants and many horses; their palaces in the city were surrounded by parks and lakes, and many buildings were erected on the grounds, as lodgings for the servants and slaves, stables, magazi

The conflagration of Moscow in 1812 and the fall of the French empire are two facts which cannot be separated, but to the name of Moscow is attached another name, that of Rostopchine. Count Fedor Wassiljavitch Rostopchine is connected with one of the greatest events in universal history. He caused a crisis which decided the fate of Russia and arrested the march of ascending France by giving the death blow to Napoleon. The latter, in admitting that Rostopchine was the author of his ruin, meant hi

During the night from October 18th. to October 19th., all soldiers were busy loading vehicles with provisions and baggage. On October 19th., the first day of the retreat, forever memorable on account of the misfortune and heroism which characterized it, the grand army presented a strange spectacle. The soldiers were in a fair condition, the horses lean and exhausted. But, above all, the masses following the army were extraordinary. After an immense train of artillery of 600 cannon, with all its

About a mile and a half from Wiasma the enemy appeared to the left of the road, and his fire happened to strike the midst of the tail of the army, composed of disbanded soldiers without arms, with wounded and sick among them, and women and children. Every artillery discharge of the Russians caused frightful cries and a frightful commotion in the helpless mass. And the rear guard, in trying to make them advance, ill-treated them, the soldiers who had clung to the flag assumed the right to despise

In order to give an idea of the great difficulties the soldiers had to face, and examples of their heroic behavior under trying circumstances, let us relate the disaster of Vop. While Napoleon, with the imperial guard, the corps of Marshal Davout and a mass of stragglers, all escorted by Marshal Ney, was marching on the road to Smolensk, Prince Eugene had taken the road to Doukhowtchina. The prince had with him 6 or 7 thousand men under arms, including the Italian guard, some Bavarian cavalry wh

All the corps marched to Smolensk where they expected to reach the end of all their misery and to find repose, food, shelter; in fact, all they were longing for. Napoleon entered the city with his guards and kept the rest of the army, including the stragglers, out of doors until arrangements could have been made for the regular distribution of rations and quarters. But together with the stragglers the mass of the army became unmanageable and resorted to violence. Seeing that the guards were give

In order to understand the disaster of the Beresina it is necessary to cast a glance at the condition of Napoleon’s army at that time. After the battle at Krasnoe, Napoleon at Orscha, on November 19th., happy to have found a place of safety at last, with well furnished magazines, made a new attempt to rally the army by means of a regular distribution of rations. A detachment of excellent gendarmes had come from France and was employed to do police duty, to engage everybody, either by persuasion

Surgeon Huber of the Wuerttembergians, writes to his friend, Surgeon Henri de Roos, who settled in Russia after the campaign of 1812, how he crossed the Beresina, and in this connection he describes the following dreadful episode: “A young woman of twenty-five, the wife of a French colonel killed a few days before in one of the engagements, was near me, within a short distance of the bridge we were to cross. Oblivious of all that went on about her, she seemed wholly engrossed in her daughter, a

The threatening barrier had been surmounted, and on went the march to Wilna, without any possibility of a day’s rest, because the miserable remainder of the French army was still followed by light Russian troops. During the first days after the crossing of the Beresina the supply of food had improved, it was better indeed than at any time during the retreat. They passed through villages which had not suffered from the war, in which the barns were well filled with grain and with feed for the hors

While the prisoners of Wilna were suffering these nameless cruelties, the unfortunate army marched to reach the border of Russia at Kowno, the same Kowno where the Grand Army six months before had been seen in all its military splendor, crossing the Niemen. They had now to march 75 miles, a three days’ march to arrive there. The conditions were about the same as those on the march from the Beresina to Wilna. Still the same misery, frost, and hunger, scenes of murder, fire. The description of the

Beaupré was taken prisoner at the passage of the Beresina and remained in captivity for some time. His lot as a prisoner of war was an exceptionally good one. He tells us that prisoners when they were out of such parts of the country as had been ravaged by the armies, received regular rations of a very good quality, and were lodged by eight, ten, and twelve, with the peasants. In the provincial capitals, they received furs of sheep skin, fur bonnets, gloves, and coarse woolen stockings, a sort o

Among the old publications referring to the medical history of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia I found one of a Prussian army physician, Dr. Krantz, published in the year 1817 with the following title: Bemerkungen ueber den Gang der Krankheiten welche in der königlich preussischen Armee vom Ausbruch des Krieges im Jahre 1812 bis zu Ende des Waffenstillstandes (im Aug.) 1813 geherrscht haben. (Remarks on the course of the Diseases which have reigned in the Royal Prussian Army from the Beginning of

Out of the enemy’s country, on their way home, the soldiers had by no means reached the limit of their sufferings. Instead of being able now to take the much longed for and so much needed rest they were compelled to keep on marching in order to reach the meeting places designated to them, the principal one of which was Koenigsberg. Before entering Prussia they had to pass through a district which was inhabited by Lithuanians who had suffered very much from the army passing on the march to Moscow

BEAUPRE, MORICHEAU. A Treatise on the Effects and Properties of Cold with a Sketch, Historical and Medical, of the Russian Campaign. Translated by John Clendining with Appendix xviii, 375 pp., 8 vo. Edinburgh, Maclachnan and Stewart 1826. BLEIBTREU, CARL. Die Grosse Armee. Zu ihrer Jahrhundertfeier. 3. Band. Smolensk—Moskau—Beresina. Stuttgart, 1908. ——, Marschälle, Generäle. Soldaten, Napoleon’s I. Berlin (without date). VON BORCKE, JOHANN. Kriegerleben 1806-1815. Berlin, 1888. BONOUST, MARTIN.

3 Dr. H.J. Achard, Ravenswood, Chicago. 1 Dr. Fred. H. Albee, 125 W. 58th Street, N.Y. City. 1 Dr. W.T. Alexander, 940 St. Nicholas Avenue, N.Y. City. 1 Rev, Mother Alphonsus, School of St. Angela, N.Y. City. 1 Mr. Gustav Amberg, N.Y. City. 1 Dr. Ernest F. Apeldom, 2113 Howard St., Philadelphia, Pa. 1 Dr. S.T. Armstrong, Hillbourne Farms, Katonah, N.Y. 1 Dr. M. Aronson, 1875 Madison Avenue, N.Y. City. 1 Dr. C.E. Atwood, 14 E. 60th Street, N.Y. City. 1 Dr. John Waite Avery, 295 Atlantic Street, S

PHYSICIAN VS. BACTERIOLOGIST. BY PROF. O. ROSENBACH, M.D. Translated from the German by ACHILLES ROSE, M.D., New York. This volume embraces Rosenbach’s discussion on the clinico-bacteriologic and hygienic problems based on original investigations. They represent a contest against the overgrowth of bacteriology, principally against the overzealous enthusiasm of orthodox bacteriologists. PARTIAL CONTENTS—Significance of Animal Experiments for Pathology and Therapy, The Doctrine of Efficacy of Spec