Page:Picture of war (2).pdf/19



19 on their features, and when the soldiers approached them, they ran crying into the arms of their mothers."

The soldiers, vainly struggling with the snow and the wind which rushed upon them with the violence of a whirlwind, could no longer distinguish the road, and, falling into the ditches which bordered it, there found a grave. Others pressed on towards the end of their journey, scarcely able to drag themselves along, badly mounted, badly clothed, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, shivering with cold, and groaning with pain. Becoming selfish through despair, they afforded neither succour, nor even one glance of pity to those who, exhausted by fatigue and disease, expired around them. How many unfortunate beings, on that dreadful day, dying of cold and famine, struggled hard with the agonies of death! We heard some of them faintly bidding their last adieu to their friends and comrades. Others, as they drew their last breath, pronounced the name of their mother, their wives, their native country, which they were never more to see. The rigour of the frost soon seized on their benumbed limbs, and penetrated through the whole frame. Stretched on the road, we could distinguish only the heaps of snow which covered them, and which, at almost every step, formed little indulations like so many graves. At the same time, vast