L'Expiation, part 1, by Victor Hugo

It snowed. We were defeated in the battle.
For the first time the eagle’s head hung down.
Sombre days! The emperor came back slowly;
Behind him in the smoke, Moscow burned.
It snowed. The biting winter melted in avalanche.
After the white plain, another white plain.
We no longer knew our flag, our leaders.
Yesterday the splendid army, now
A herd in which one saw no wings or centre.
It snowed. The wounded sheltered from the wind
Behind dead horses. From doors of sorry camps
One saw the buglers frozen at their posts,
Still upright in the saddle, white with frost,
Their lips as hard as stone, stuck to their bugles.
Round-shot, grape-shot, shells, snowed with the white flakes;
The grenadiers, surprised that they were trembling,
Walked, brooding, with ice on their grey moustaches.
It snowed, it always snowed! The cold wind whistled;
In unknown towns, the people had no bread
And walked in bare feet on the frosty ground.
This was no longer living hearts, men of war:
It was a dream wandering in the fog,
A mystery; shades crossed the black sky.
Vast solitude, appalling to the eyes,
The mute avenger, appeared everywhere.
The sky dropped its thick snow noiselessly:
For an immense army, an immense shroud.
Each felt that he was dying, he was alone.
—Will we never leave this deadly empire?
Two enemies! The Tsar and, worse, the North.
We threw away our cannons to burn their mountings.
Whoever stopped to rest died in the snow.
A sad, confused group, we fled,
The wilderness devouring our procession.
Snow-hills showed where regiments had gone to sleep.
Oh, Hannibal’s downfall! Attila’s carnage!
The fleeing, the wounded, the dying; wagons, carts, stretchers;
Men trampled each other trying to cross the bridges;
Ten thousand fell asleep, and one hundred woke.
Ney, not long before followed by an army,
Now ran away, quarrelling
Over his pocketwatch with three Cossacks.
Every night, Who goes there? Alert! Attacks!
These phantoms took their guns, and saw a charge,
A dreadful, terrifying pounce, coming upon them
With vulture cries, a whirlwind of wild men;
And so, in the night, an entire army was lost.
The emperor was there, and stood, watching.
He was like a tree under the feller’s axe.
This giant’s grandeur had, until then, been spared,
But misfortune, that sinister woodsman, rose up,
And this proud oak, insulted by the axe,
Recoiled from the spectre’s bitter revenge
And saw his branches fall all around him.
Leaders, soldiers: each died in his turn.
Surrounding his tent loyally, those who stayed
To guard his moving shadow on the canvas—
Believing always in the power of the stars—
Accused destiny of treason,
And felt a sudden terror in their hearts.
Dazed by disaster, knowing only that
He had to believe, the emperor turned to God;
This glorious man trembled; Napoleon, sensing that it
Might atone for something, said—livid and restless
Before his scattered legions on the snow—
“Is this my punishment, God of war?”
Then he heard his name called,
And something in the darkness said: “No.”