ACCORDING to Correspondance du Napoleon ler, publiee par ordre de l'Empereur Napolean HI, the former, safely back in France after the debacle in Russia some months previously, put pen to paper 183 years ago this morning.
He was writing to King Frederick IV of Denmark who, ever since 1807 when Nelson had unkindly bombarded Copenhagen, was not surprisingly a staunch ally of the French.
"Paris, 3th January, 1813.
Monsieur my Brother,
My Minister in Copenhagen has forwarded to me a number of Russian military bulletins and I have to assure your Majesty that they are entirely false. The enemy was always beaten.
"On the 7th of November, the cold became excessive and all the roads were found impassable. Thirty thousand of our horses perished, baggage, weapons and artillery were abandoned and our soldiers, unaccustomed to protect ourselves against such cold, could not endure the 30 degrees of frost."
Now, in military matters, Napoleon was taking same liberties with les actualites the enemy, as we know, was by no means always beaten. About the weather, however, he was right.
The Russian winter of 1812 was one of the most severe ever to have been experienced in that country amid it descended mercilessly an the retreating French before they had covered half the distance to the frontier. The frozen rivers of Russia, running north south across their path, played cat and mouse with the retreating French.
Sometimes they worked to their advantage an army corps commanded by Marshal Ney escaped from Russian troops by marching across the frozen River Dnieper east of Minsk.
A few days later, however, a temporary thaw made the crossing of the Berezina very hazardous indeed. The swollen river contained large blocks of swiftly moving ice, and building the necessary bridges was a Herculean task.
But the cold soon set in again with fresh intensity and, by December 3rd, as the emperor records, it had reached an unbelievable low of -30"C.
Of the great army of 100,000 men that crossed into Russia on June 24th, 1812, only a small fraction remained as men staggered through the snow, dying where they fell. Napoleon himself, however, managed to escape the horrors.
He dined well on mutton, beef and lentils, washed dawn by vintage Chambertin, and his linen was always crisp and fresh. Such was the devotion of the troops to their "little corporal" that despite their discomfort, not a ward of reproach was heard about his privileged position.