SUWARROW'S PASSAGE OF THE PRAGEL.

XI.

SUWARROW'S PASSAGE OF THE GLARUS.

55

AT the head of Lake Lucerne stands the little village of Fluellen. It was here that Suwarrow, after forcing the passage of St. Gothard, was finally stopped in his victorious course. The lake stretched away before him, while there was not a boat with which to transport his weary army over. There was no other course left him on his route to Zurich but to ascend the heights of the Kinzig Culm, a desperate undertaking at the best; and cross into the Muotta Thal. This wonderful retreat was made while his army, as it hung along the cliffs, was constantly engaged in resisting the attacks of the enemy.

It was forty-six years ago, one night in September, that the peaceful inhabitants of the Muotta Thal were struck with wonder at the sudden appearance among them of multitudes of armed men of a strange garb and language. They had just gathered their herds and flocks to the fold, and were seeking their quiet homes that slept amid the green pasturages, when, like a mountain torrent, came pouring out from every defile and giddy pass, these strange, unintelligible beings. From the heights of the Kinzig Culmfrom precipices the shepherds scarce dared to tread, they streamed with their confused jargon around the cottages of these simple children of the Alps. It was Suwarrow, with twenty-four thousand Russians at his back, on his march from Italy to join the allied forces at Zurich. He had forced the passage of St. Gothard, and had reached thus far when he was stopped by Lake Lucerne, and was told that Korsakow and the main Russian army at Zurich had been defeated. Indignant and incredulous at the report, he would have hung the peasant who informed him, as a

spy, had not the lady-mother of St. Joseph's Nunnery interceded in his behalf. Here in this great Alpine valley the bold commander found himself completely surrounded. Molitor and his battalions looked down on him from the heights around the Muotta Thal: Mortier and Massena blocked its mouth: while Lecourbe hung on his rear. The Russian bear was denned, and compelled, for the first time in his life, to order a retreat. He wept in indignation and grief, and adopted the only alternative left him, to cross the Pragel into Glarus. Then commenced one of those desperate marches unparalleled in the history of man. The passage of the St. Bernard, by Bonaparte, was a comfortable march compared to it, and Hannibal's world-renowned exploit mere child's play, beside it. While the head of Suwarrow's column had descended the Pragel and was fighting desperately at Naefels, the rear-guard, encumbered with the wounded, was struggling in the Muotta Thal with Massena and his battalions. Then these savage solitudes shook to the thunder of cannon and roar of musketry. The startled avalanche came leaping from the heights, mingling its sullen thunder with the sound of battle. The frightened chamois paused on the high precipice to catch the strange uproar that filled the hills.-The simple-hearted peasantry saw their green pasturages covered with battling armies, and the snow-capped heights crimson with the blood of men. Whole companies fell like snow-wreaths from the rocks while the artillery ploughed through the dense mass of human flesh that darkened the gorge below. For ten successive days had these armies marched and combated, and yet here, on the eleventh, they struggled with unabated resolution. Unable to force the passage at Naefels, Suwarrow took the desperate and awful resolution of leading his weary and wounded army over the mountains into the Grisons.

Imagine, if you can, an awful solitude of mountains and precipices and glaciers piled one above another in savage grandeur. Cast your eye up one of these mountains, 7,500 feet above the level of the sea, along whose bosom, in a zigzag line, goes a narrow path winding over precipices and snow-fields till finally lost on the distant summit. Up that difficult path and into the very

DIFFICULTIES OF THE PASSAGE.

57

heart of those fearful snow-peaks has the bold Russian resolved to lead his 24,000 men.

To increase the difficulties that beset him and render his destruction apparently inevitable, the snow fell, on the morning he set out, two feet deep, obliterating all traces of the path, and forming as it were a winding sheet for his army. In single file, and with heavy hearts, that mighty host one after another entered the snow-drifts and began the ascent. Only a few miles could be made the first day; and at night, without a cottage in sight, without even a tree to kindle for a light around their silent bivouacs, the army lay down in the snow with the Alpine crags around them for their sentinels. The next day the head of the column reached the summit of the ridge, and lo! what a scene was spread out before them. No one who has not stood on an Alpine summit can have any conception of the utter dreariness of this region. The mighty mountains, as far as the eye can reach, lean along the solemn sky, while the deep silence around is broken by the sound of no living thing. Only now and then the voice of the avalanche is heard speaking in its low thunder tone from the depth of an awful abyss, or the scream of a solitary eagle circling round some lofty crag. The bold Russian stood and gazed long and anxiously on this scene, and then turned to look on his straggling army that far as the eye could see wound like a huge anaconda over the white surface of the snow. column of smoke arose in this desert wild to cheer the sight, but all was silent, mournful and prophetic. The winding sheet of the army seemed unrolled before him. No path guided their footsteps, and ever and anon a bayonet and feather disappeared together as some poor soldier slipped on the edge of a precipice and fell into the abyss below. Hundreds overcome and disheartened, or exhausted with their previous wounds, laid down to die, while the cold wind, as it swept by, soon wrought a snow-shroud for their forms.

No

The descent on the southern side was worse

than the ascent. A freezing wind had hardened the snow into a crust, so that it frequently bore the soldiers. Their bayonets were thrust into it to keep them from slipping, and the weary and worn creatures were compelled to struggle every step to prevent being borne away over the precipices that almost momentarily

stopped their passage. Yet even this precaution was often vain Whole companies would begin to slide together, and despite every effort would sweep with a shriek over the edge of the precipice and disappear in the untrodden gulfs below. Men saw their comrades, by whose side they had fought in many a battle, shoot one after another, over the dizzy verge, striking with their bayonets as they went, to stay their progress. The beasts of burden slipped from above, and rolling down on the ranks below, shot away in wild confusion, men and all, into the chasms that yawned at their feet. As they advanced, the enemy appeared around on the precipices pouring a scattered yet destructive fire into the straggling multitude. Such a sight these Alpine solitudes never saw-such a march no army ever made before. In looking at this pass the traveller cannot believe an army of 24,000 men were marched over it through the fresh fallen snow two feet deep. For five days they struggled amid these gorges and over these ridges, and finally reached the Rhine at Ilanz. For months after, the vulture and the eagle hovered incessantly along the line of march, and beasts of prey were gorged with the dead bodies. Nearly 8,000 men lay scattered among the glaciers and rocks, and piled in the abysses, amid which they had struggled for eighteen days since they first poured down from the St. Gothard, and the peasants say that the bones of many an unburied soldier may still be seen bleaching in the ravines of the Jatser.

No Christian or philanthropist ever stood on a battle field without mourning over the ravages of war and asking himself when that day would come when men would beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Yet the evil is not felt in all its dreadful reality there. The movements of the armies the tossing of plumes-the unrolling of banners-the stirring strains of martial music-the charging squadrons, and the might and magnificence of a great battle field disturb the imagination and check the flow of human sympathy.

If he wishes the feelings of horror and disgust in their full strength, let him go into the solitude and holiness of nature, and see where her pure bosom has been disfigured with the blood of her children. Let him see his fellow beings falling by thousands, not amid the uproar and excitement of battle, but under exhaus

SUWARROW AND BONAPARTE.

59

tion, heart-sickness, and despair. Let him behold the ranks lying down one after another under the last discouragement to die, while their comrades march mournful and silent by. There is a cold-bloodedness, a sort of savage malice about this that awakens all the detestation of the human bosom.

Yet the Russian could do no better. The scourge of nations had driven him into the strait. belong to Bonaparte, who thus his generation into the grave. brave and resolute man.'

*

The crime and the judgment directly and indirectly crowded Suwarrow's act was that of a

* The reader of " Napoleon and his Marshals" need not be told that I have changed my opinion on this point.