Crossing of the Berezina
The remnant of Napoleon's army crossed the Berezina river in late November 1812 and the crossing became a French word for disaster. The retreat from Moscow had been running for five weeks. The Grande Armée had entered Russia with over 400,000 men in the main body and had perhaps 40,000 still in formation, followed by tens of thousands of stragglers, in temperatures that fell below minus twenty. The Berezina was the last obstacle, and it should have finished them: three Russian armies converging on it, and the bridge at Borisov burned. The river had thawed unexpectedly and was running with ice, so it could not be crossed on foot. Two things saved the crossing. A feint downstream persuaded Chichagov to move his army south, and Eblé's Dutch and French pontoon engineers built two trestle bridges at Studienka, working in chest-deep water in the ice, in relays, for hours. Almost all of them died within days. The fighting units crossed on 26 and 27 November and held both banks against attacks from two directions. The catastrophe was on the eastern bank, where the stragglers refused to cross at night while the bridges were clear, panicked in the morning, and were caught by artillery fire in a crush; the bridges were burned at nine on the 29th with thousands still waiting. Perhaps 25,000 to 40,000 people died there. The army got out and ceased to exist as an army a fortnight later. Napoleon left it on 5 December for Paris.
- Year: 1812 CE
- Category: Military
