All had provided themselves with muskets picked
up on the road, and with cartridges taken from the dead. In the general
destruction of the bonds of discipline and duty holding together the
companies, the battalions, the regiments, the brigades, and divisions
of an armed host, this body of men put its pride in preserving some
semblance of order and formation. The only stragglers were those who
fell out to give up to the frost their exhausted souls. They plodded
on, and their passage did not disturb the mortal silence of the plains,
shining with the livid light of snows under a sky the colour of
ashes. Whirlwinds ran along the fields, broke against the dark column,
enveloped it in a turmoil of flying icicles, and subsided, disclosing it
creeping on its tragic way without the swing and rhythm of the military
pace. It struggled onwards, the men exchanging neither words nor looks;
whole ranks marched touching elbow, day after day and never raising
their eyes from the ground, as if lost in despairing reflections. In the
dumb, black forests of pines the cracking of overloaded branches was the
only sound they heard.
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