The villages which had but lately given us shelter were level with the ground: under their ashes were the bodies of hundreds of soldiers and peasants....

But most horrible was the field of Borodino, where we saw the forty thousand men, who had perished there, yet lying unburied." For a time, Kutusoff forbore to attack the sore-stricken host; but, early in November, the Russian horse began to infest the line of march, and at Viasma their gathering forces were barely held off: had Kutusoff aided his lieutenants, he might have decimated his famished foes.
Hitherto the weather had been singularly mild and open, so much so that the superstitious peasants looked on it as a sign that God was favouring Napoleon.

But, at last, on November the 6th, the first storm of winter fell on the straggling array, and completed its miseries.
The icy blasts struck death to the hearts of the feeble; and the puny fighting of man against man was now merged in the awful struggle against the powers of the air.

Drifts of snow blotted out the landscape; the wandering columns often lost the road and thousands forthwith ended their miseries.

Except among the Old Guard all semblance of military order was now lost, and battalions melted away into groups of marauders.
The search for food and fuel became furious, even when the rigour of the cold abated.