their dying officers, and exposed themselves to captivity or death to solace their last moments. Mothers were seen lifting their children above their heads in the water, raising them as they sunk, and even holding them aloft for some moments after they themselves were buried in the waves. An infant abandoned by its mother near the gate of Smolensko, and adopted by the soldiers, was saved, by their care, from the horrors of the Beresina; it was again saved at Wilna, on the bridge of Kawno, and it finally escaped all the horrors of the retreat."

The dreadful passage of the Beresina completed the ruin of the grand army. Soon after Napoleon abandoned its miserable remnant to make his way to Paris, where his presence was so much needed. Arriving in Poland, which had been reduced to absolute beggary and wretchedness by the exactions of the emperor, who had been esteemed its friend and destined liberator, he summoned the Abbé de Pradt to meet him at Warsaw, and demanded what contributions and men the grand duchy could furnish. "Sire," said he, "there were 85,000 Poles in your ranks; and now the country has neither men, money, nor credit left." It was indeed impossible that the system could continue; and the departure of their leader from the miserable remnant of his mighty armament dissolved the last tie which had influence over them. "The departure of the emperor, though a matter of congratulation to the troops, completed the disorganization of the army. The cold increased

in intensity as they approached Wilna, and at length reached twenty-six and thirty degrees of Reaumur, corresponding to twenty-eight and thirty-six below zero of Fahrenheit. The officers ceased to obey their generals; the generals disregarged the marshals; and the marshals contested the authority of Murat. The private soldiers, relieved of the duty of preserving the Emperor, forgot everything but the instinct of self-preservation. The colonels hid the eagles in their haversacks, or buried them in the ground; the officers who had hitherto marched round that sacred standard, dispersed to attend to their own safety; nothing was thought of in the army but the urgent pangs of hunger, or the terrible severity of the cold. If a soldier dropped, his comrades instantly fell upon him, and before life was extinct, tore from him his cloak, his money, and the bread which he carried in his bosom; when he died, one of them frequently sat upon his body, for the sake of the temporary warmth which it afforded; and when it became cold, fell beside his companion, to rise no more. The watch-fires at night were surrounded by circles of exhausted men, who crowded like spectres round the blazing piles. As the wood was consumed, they continued to gaze with indifference on the decaying embers, incapable either of rising to renew the fuel, or of seeking another bivouac; and when at length the flames were extinguished, fell dead beside the ashes. The position of these melancholy bivouacs was marked in the morning by the circles of dead

bodies which surrounded them, and attested the successive groups who, during the night, had been attracted by their light."

Out of 500,000 who composed the proper French army of invasion, not more than 37,000 succeeded in effecting their return to France; so that 463,000 men perished in this frightful campaign, in the brief period of five months. The whole annals of ancient and modern warfare leave the overthrow of so mighty an army, overwhelmed with such disasters, altogether without a parallel. In this disastrous campaign, Poland, as we have seen, bore a prominent share, buoyed up by hopes which were all in vain, and enduring sufferings as utterly unavailing for the recovery of her own rights, as for achieving the aims of the ambitious invader. The Cossacks, too, Poland's ancient foes, took a prominent part throughout the defensive and retaliatory warfare of Russia, until at length their flying squadrons hovered like the demons of destruction around the fugitive wreck of the grand army, and gave to thousands relief from worse miseries in a bloody grave.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MODERN COSSACK.

WHEN the Russian Czar Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, was laid in his tomb, in 1677, Russia dreaded the power and ambition of Poland; when Sobieski's death, only nineteen years afterwards, left Poland once more a defenceless prey to factions, the downfall of the republic had already begun. Bit by bit, Russia, Prussia, and Austria have advanced, checked only by the jealousy of each other; but ever ready to seize the favourable moment for further aggression, until at length we have witnessed the extinction of the republic of Cracow, the last fragment of the ancient kingdom, seized by Russia in defiance of every treaty and engagement.

Throughout that later period, the wild Cossack cavalry have ever been found on the side of Russia, the scourge of the Poles, and the avenger of the wrongs inflicted on their ancestors. When, in successive wars and revolutions, the Polish victims of Russian cupidity and despotism have been driven by thousands to the remote wilds of Siberia, the Cossacks have been the most frequent instruments of the punishment. Terrible, indeed, has been the requital of the wrongs which first roused the Cossack chief Bogdan to resistance and revenge; and which has awakened the sympathy of thousands in our own country, and

in France and America, on behalf of the Polish patriots, struggling in vain against such fearful odds for the defence of their country's freedom. Thenceforth patriotism has been a crime in the unhappy Pole, and even the suspicion of liberal sentiments has proved reason enough for consigning both men and women of noble birth to the dreaded exile. A work published in Russia, giving an account of the manners and habits of the Siberians, and the nature of the country, has recently been translated and published by Colonel Lach Szyrma, a Polish exile, under the title of "Revelations of Siberia, by a banished lady." In his preface, the editor remarks:

"The subject of the work is Siberia; a region dreary by nature, and not only in name synonymous, but actually identical with, a vast prison—a locality associated in our minds with the most poignant of human sufferings. As such, it could only be properly described under the influence of those painful impressions, and while the writer is writhing under the most acute mental agony.

"The authoress of the 'Revelations' was one of the numerous exiles who are yearly sent to that desolate wilderness. She was a lady of quality, who had the misfortune to incur the displeasure of the Russian government; and, in consequence, was included in the class of the nestchastri ludi, or 'unfortunates,' as the exiles, in pity for their hard lot, are called by the people.

"With regard to her personal history, we need