The 

 Human 

 Harvest 



[74] 



French began to feel their weakness, the 

 Grand Army was not the army which fought 

 at Ulm and Jena. " Raw conscripts raised 

 before their time and hurriedly drafted into 

 the line had impaired its steadiness." 



On to Moscow/ "amidst ever-deepening 

 misery they struggled on, until of the six 

 hundred thousand men who had proudly 

 crossed the Niemen for the conquest of 

 Russia, only twenty thousand famished, 

 frost-bitten, unarmed spectres staggered 

 across the bridge of Korno in the middle 

 of December." 



"Despite the loss of the most splendidarmy 

 marshalled by man. Napoleon abated no 

 whit of his resolve to dominate Germany 

 and discipline Russia. . . He strained every 

 effort to call the youth of the empire to 

 arms . . . and 3 50,000 conscripts were prom- 

 ised by the Senate. The mighty swirl of the 

 Moscow campaign sucked in 1 50,000 lads 

 of under twenty years of age into the de- 

 vouring vortex." "The peasantry gave up 

 their sons as food for cannon." But "many 



^ These quotations are from the ** History of Napo- 

 leon I," by J. H. Rose. 



