3719N 2633E: Blood

La Grande Armee
by georges Blond
(translated by Marshall May)

Below i have included some scans of pictures from the book - La Grande Armee by Georges Blond (translated by Marshall May). It is a 'Tour De Force" historical account of the Napoleonic campaigns from Boulogne and Austerlitz to Spain and Moscow to the dramatic conclusion at Waterloo.

i will only refer to the start of the Russian campaign of Napoleon's Grand Army and end with their retreat "in a cold hell". And from there, i will pick only passages and pictures of interest to the medical military enthusiasts.

The campaign in Russia

Napoleon entered Smolensk at about 6am. This was not the first time that he had ridden into a conquered city through smoking ruins and dead piled high...In his progress across the city, the Emperor was constantly confronted by scenes of desolation. 24 hours would be needed before the streets could be cleared enough to allow the collection of the French and Russian wounded - those seemed to have a chance of survival - and once again, where should they be put? Fifteen large buildings were chosen as hospitals, according to the official reports; in fact, only a few houses were still standing. As usual, the sick and wounded were piled into them. Lacking straw, they were laid out on paper and parchments taken from the archives. 'In the hospitals of Smolensk,' wrote the Belgian surgeon Kerchove, 'or more accurately, in these cloaca of misery and infection, one could observe the impact of these putrid miasmas on the production of hospital gangrene.' For 24 hours, the wounded had practically nothing to eat or drink...

'In less than a month,' said Napoleon to caulaincourt, 'we shall be in Moscow and in ten weeks we shall have peace.' - chapter: The scorched earth of Russia (pg. 311)

On his arrival on 5 September, Napoleon had wished to take the Schwardino redoubt, the farthest west and the first encountered on the Smolensk road. His order was carried out, not without difficulty. It took three assaults. Next day ambulance crews passing by saw a ditch filled with limbs and bodies. Apparently, Larrey and his colleagues had been operating there the previous day. - chapter: The scorched earth of Russia (pg. 316)

Casualty evacuation: this scene, observed by Albrecht Adam at Smolensk in 1812, shows a common method of carrying a wounded man, using a musket as an improvised stretcher.

There was an immense cheer from the French side - 'as if from all the voices of Europe in every language' when the Three Fleches strong-point fell. It was heard by the surgeons and doctors who had established their ambulance in a coppice 50m behind the lines. Later they were ordered to bring it forward. 'We started to receive wounded Saxons, Westphalians, Wurttembergers and even Russians. They were mainly cavalrymen with deep wounds or crushed limbs. An unusually tall Saxon cuirassier had been wounded in the thigh by an explosion. The shattered muscles had exposed the femur bone from the knee to the great trochanter. The wound did not bleed. Wounds from tissue torn away paralyses the vessels, while wounds from cutting instruments bleed copiously. The Saxon was alert and said "My wound is serious, but i shall heal quickly as i am healthy and my blood is pure." The French were quiet and patient. many died before their turn came to be bandaged. - chapter: The scorched earth of Russia (pg. 320)

Officers and men at rest ...

Convoys from Smolensk arrived daily, but too often they brought nothing, having been harrassed and pillaged by the Cossacks en route. The escorts brought horrific tales of the makeshift hospitals set up between Smolensk and Moscow, sepulchres they are called. Their presence could be discerned from afar by the putrid smell and the piles of rotting corpses, excrement and mud, forming a frightful cloaca around the building. - chapter: Moscow - The horizon aflame (pg. 336)

The retreating Russian army remained invisible, but each day the French were harassed by Cossacks. Daily the advance-guard gained ground but lost men. Orders were to evacuate the sick and wounded to Moscow - but how? The orders did not specify and the advance-guard had no transport. Of the seven senior surgeons at the crossing of the Niemen, only von Roos remained; the others had stayed behind or were sick or wounded or in charge of one of the putrid hospitals on the road to Moscow. - chapter: Moscow - The horizon aflame (pg. 337)

Field surgery: Napoleon with Marshal Lannes, mortally wounded at Essling. At the left stands Dominique-Jean Larrey, chief surgeon of the imperial guard, who performed the amputation on Lannes' leg.

They said they had seen mutilated soldiers on the devastated battlefield of Borodino, alive but incapable of moving, who survived inside the cadavers of horses from which they tore strips of festering meat. They were black and resembled animals. The arms and ammunition had been collected, but no one had bothered about these unfortunates...Segur reported that these abandoned wounded exhibited signs of cannibalism. - chapter: Moscow - The horizon aflame (pg. 339)

There were some 15,000 sick and wounded in the hospitals in Moscow. - chapter: Moscow - The horizon aflame (pg. 339)

The retreat ...

The wearisome nature of military marhes on campaign

Mojaisk was reached on the night of 28 October in a full-blooded snow storm and a temperature of -4 degree C. The town was a miserable collection of wooden houses, in varying states of dilapidation. They emitted a frightful stench and torch light revealed piles of decomposing corpses; these were the wounded from the Moskowa who had been left in intact houses and public buildings where they had died. In the abbey of Kolotskoi there were still 2,000 wounded; the doctors who had been left with them had no medicaments and could do nothing against typhus and gangrene. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 347)

On the morning of 29 October, the following order was circulated: 'Each regiment is to identify their wounded and to put those who can be moved into the carriages... The wounded were rapidly sorted out and those who were dying were abandoned; this was to become routine during the retreat. ...Soldiers and civilians had been able to see on the sides of the road the distorted bodies of French soldiers that looked as if they had been thrown there. And, in truth, they had been; dead, near-dead or even patients in reasonable shape were thrown out. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 347)

On the march in bad weather ...

It started to snow on the night of 5/6 November, but the temperature stayed at minus 20 degree C. The wife of a company barber of the Guard, one Madame Dubois, gave birth to a boy in a shelter of branches hastily constructed on the border of a wood. The company surgeon was present and the colonel donated his cloak to cover the shelter. He also gave the mother his horse which she rode, carrying her new-born in her arms wrapped in a sheepskin; she herself wore two claoks taken from soldiers who had died from cold during the night. The baby died from cold some days later; the sappers dug a grave with their axes. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 350)

The misery of war: a column of French troops on the retreatfrom moscow

Towards night the temperature fell again, with, as a bonus, icy snow. The horses began to drop in their hundreds...

In every war before armies were motorised, the horses had been the martyrs. The supreme crown of martyrdom should be awarded to the horses of the Grand Armee in Russia. Massacred (like the men) on the battlefields, wounded and abandoned (often, like the men) legs broken, bellies ripped open, dying by inches, pecked by crows while still alive, then on the frozen snow, eaten alive by the men.

Fallen horses were attacked even before they were dead; the frost would harden them too quickly. They were seen whinnying and shaking their heads as the butchers went to work. ...When a horse fell, and was being cut into, the gourmands went in quest of the liver, reputed to be the most succulent morsel, others cut the throat in order to collect the blood in their big cooking pots. ...men would cut steaks from a horse's thigh while the beast was still walking, harnessed to a cart. In the cold, the animal scarcely bled, continuing to walk, apparently without being aware of what was happening - a kind of local anaesthetic - at least temporarily, thanks to the cold.

When they left Moscow, the soldiers had some well-loved dogs. No dogs now - all eaten.

Sergeant Bourgogne has this to say: 'We fell in with some soldiers of the Line. ...they had seen some foreign soldiers (Croats) enlisted in our army, withdraw from a fire in a barn a roasted cadaver, which they cut up and consumed. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 351)

That was the evening when, shortly before reaching Smolensk, the surgeon Larrey saw a young woman push into a crowd of soldiers who had just disembowelled a horse. She plunged her hands in the animal's belly in order to tear away the liver. ...Some have it that she was a cantiniere, others, a colonel's wife. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 352)

The plight of the women and children who accompanied the army was sometimes desperate, most notably during the retreat from moscow.

Smolensk, its houses burned and churches become makeshift hospitals, presented a frightful spectacle. The so-called hospitals were virtually morgues; on entering one had to walk across rigid cadavers. But life continued. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 352)

Profiteering (increased GDP) but no $ for its people [Link] ? A German officer of light infantry and his staff. His carriage was full of sacks of tea. At the halts, having little to eat, he would brew up, and would allow his staff to do the same only using the tea-leaves he had already boiled. Another officer criticised this 'cruel parsimony': 'My dear fellow, if I can manage to get this tea to Germany I shall make a fortune.' ...[This] German [officer] lingered to have his tea. The Cossacks arrived and 'we have seen no more of him'. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 353)

The long march was resumed in a temperature of minus 28 degree C. ...the wounded... were under-nourished, verminous beneath their rags and psychologically in a deplorable state; each morning the frozen corpses of their comrades were left behind on the snow. Larry has described the apprearanc of these cadavers: 'The skin and the muscles exfoliate as in wax statues, the bone remaining exposed, the nose removes itself like a false nose and the hands putrefy and fall off.' - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 355)

On the road they had chosen, the town of Orcha on the Dniper... 600Km from Moscow. For cash or jewels they obtained shelter. The wounded who wished to remain prayed for lodging, as the hospitals at Orcha were already full. But they either had nothing to offer in return, or not enough: 'They were chased away, often falling and being trampled underfoot.'

These men who had marched for weeks in a white waste were now suffering from acute ophthalmia, aggravated by the smoke from bivouac fires and by the irritation caused from rubbing their eyes with filthy hands, or with snow - in the hope of alleviating the pain - but few of the blind reached the Beresina. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 357)

$$ ...a Westphalian soldier was sitting on the ground, holding in his hands a silver ingot, which appeared to weigh 15 - 20 pounds. He had carried it all this way and was now offering it in exchange for a loaf of bread. There were no takers and he was chaffed to 'eat his ingot'. - chapter: 1812 - Retreat in a cold hell (pg. 358)