Anna

EPILOGUE

Nobody knows exactly how many men crossed the River Nieman into Russia in June 1812; probably the total of the Allied French forces taking part in the campaign was between five and six hundred thousand. Those who straggled back over the frozen river in December numbered between thirty and forty thousand.

In the six months in between, half a million men had been lost: some in battle, killed or taken prisoner; others from starvation, exhaustion, typhus, pneumonia, dysentery, gangrene; and on the long march back from Moscow, others still perished from the effects of the pitiless Russian winter. Unprepared for the terrifying cold, without food, fuel or adequate clothing, they died by the thousand. Frozen to death, they fell like winter sparrows, unheeded beside the road, and no one ever recorded their names.

The name of Napoleon Bonaparte is known throughout the world as the greatest soldier who ever lived, and the man who, more than any other, shaped modern Europe.