Ségur has preserved to us the order of march of the French troops. The army advanced in column ready for instant battle, the Emperor on horseback in the centre. Rivers were crossed by fords which soon, however, became impassable, and the regiments in the rear crossed elsewhere, wherever they could; no one troubled his head about them. The staff neglected these details. No one remained behind to point out the dangers, if there were any, or the route, where several roads met. Each _corps d’armée_ was left to shift for itself.
Duverger is yet more categorical—“The retreat has often been described, but the long and difficult march which preceded our misfortunes has never been sufficiently mentioned. Worn out by the rays of a tropical sun, we were reduced to drink foul stagnant water, to eat biscuits served out with a sparing hand. Famine and dysentery destroyed as many soldiers as did the war.”
Labaume, another eye-witness, completes this picture—“This immense gathering of men on one spot increased the confusion and disorder that reigned on the high-roads. Stray soldiers sought their regiments in vain; orderlies with urgent despatches were unable to deliver them; while on the bridges and in the ravines a frightful tumult arose. Our soldiers, deprived of their rations, had to provide for themselves by pillage, and the result was the utmost disorder and paralysis of discipline, the usual forerunners of the approaching decay of an army.”
The disorganization of the French army was thrown into stronger relief by the excellent order in which Barclay-de-Tolly drew off his men from position to position. There were no deserted wagons, no dead horses, not a single straggler or deserter.
The French troops moved, of course, not only along the high-road, but also by by-roads, and often by hardly perceptible footpaths, destroying everything they came across on their way, and feeding their horses on the standing corn. They camped at night in the midst of the crops, trampling and destroying them without scruple in the hope of getting some shelter, however slight, from the heat and rain. The soldiers, according to the account of French eye-witnesses, roamed the neighbourhood searching for food, ill-treated the inhabitants, and turned them out of their homes, looted the houses, carried off all the live stock, and indulged in excesses strangely at variance with their vaunted mission of civilization.