Army In A Retreat
(c.s.Forester)
AN ARMY IN RETREAT.
The long column of mystery tended continually to grow longer, as the more robust struggle forward to get as far as possible from the pursuing French, and as the weaker fell farther and farther behind There were enough weakling in all conscience, even in summer the men had been badly clothed and even in victory insufficiently fed, and now it was winter, and Espinosa had been fought and lost, and the route of the retreat lay away from the fertile plains and up into the inhospitable maintains. The rain had fallen upon them in deluges for days, and now as they climbed higher it was turning into sleet, and a biter cold wind blew. Ahead of them could see the snow lying thick on the mountain passes through which they would have to climb, without food or fuel or rest, and with the terror of the French to urge them on- Disease had come, inevitably, to complete the work so well begun by hunger, exposure and the sword. The typhus- the black death-was among them? along with dysentery and rheumatism and pneumonia. Men dropped dying in the very middle of the road to be trodden and spurned by comrades too sick and to step out of the way, and whose shoeless feet left blood at every stage.
If such were the state of affairs at the head of the column. The condition of the rear can hardly be imagined. Here were the men whose legs had given way beneath them and who still tried to struggle along on hands and knees. Here were the women and children, left even farther and farther behind, gunning back comprehensively down the road to see when dreaded helmets of the French dragons would appear over the rise. Here were the last relics of the impediment of the army, all that had survived the disaster of Espinosa and the hundred miles of the retreat.
The horses were all dead, and the few guns wagons were being dragged by dying mules, goaded by drivers, who limped along at their sides. It was bad luck on the sick who fell in the high way incapable of moving, for the gun teams were quite incapable of hauling the gun out of the deep central ruts; they could only go straight on regardless.
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