1812: The March on Moscow by Paul Britten Austin

Author:Paul Britten Austin [Austin, Paul Britten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new
ISBN: 9781848327047
Amazon: 1848327048
Goodreads: 1798110
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 1993-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

But it’s thumbs down for the brave Brunswickers.

‘With a thousandfold hurrah the galloping Cossacks break into our defenceless group from all sides. After a mere couple of minutes our front ranks are lying on the ground, stabbed through by a thousand lances. Our muskets’ smoke disperses to reveal a horrible bloodbath. None of us sees the least chance of escaping the slaughter now beginning. The Cossacks are making such easy work of us, our inability to resist seems to stir their blood-lust to madness. Surrender is out of the question. As if driven by some obscure instinct, anyone who’s still alive throws himself down on the ground and plays dead. Comes a moment of horrible waiting. Happy he who finds himself lying under heaps of corpses! Even if the blood of those of our comrades who’ve been stabbed through seeps down over our bodies, if their limbs twitch and jerk on top of ours, if the dying breathe their last sighs into our ears and their corpses press upon us – at least there’s still a chance of surviving underneath this terrible rampart. In such lethal need it’s every man for himself!

‘The lances stab furiously into heaps of dead and living, many a chest or neck is crushed under the horses’ hoofs. The Russians’ green hussars, avid to join in in this monstrous feast of slaughter, are only prevented from making free use of their sabres by their own densely packed masses as they advance.

‘I was one of the few still alive. Blood was seeping through my uniform, soaking me to the skin and glueing my eyelids together. Though still not wounded, I could hear the clash of lances and sabres, mingled with our assassins’ dull oaths, muttering between their teeth their terrible “Pascholl! Sabacki Franzusky!” [Die, dog of a Frenchman!] as they exerted all their strength to probe the bodies of the dead with their lances and sabres, to see whether beneath them there mightn’t be something still alive. Finally my turn comes. A lance-thrust, passing through the chest and back of a comrade who was lying on top of me, strikes my skull a glancing blow and rips open the skin. Yet I feel no pain. Lying there half-conscious, all I long for is an end to the slaughter.’

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