The soldier watched impassively as the man in front of him fell to the ground. Not dead, but given up. What was the point? The soldier trudged on, passing the fallen man. He glanced back, something he didn’t usually do, and noticed that already other soldiers had descended upon the dying man, fighting over his few belongings. Some plunder from Moscow – that was ignored – and a ragged woman’s fur coat – the object of the soldiers’ scuffle.

The soldier had reached the summit of a moderate-sized hill; a vantage point from which he could look down upon the remnants of the army straggled out before him. A pitiful sight. He was with the rearguard, which was diminishing even faster than the rest of the army. Daily attacks by the merciless Russian Cossacks, the chronic lack of food and the biting, painful, unimaginable cold had killed off nearly half a million men. A disastrous campaign, in which error and misfortune had compounded each other, and where events had seemed to conspire against them.

But the solider wasn’t thinking about these things. He hadn’t the energy. His mind was solely concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, on breathing in and out as regularly as he could through the shivering, and on the search for food – he was reduced to the very basics of humanity.

A cry went up from behind the solider, towards the rear of the column. ‘Cossacks!’ Panic immediately broke out. Men who had previously been almost crawling along the ground, suddenly found strength to run. The panic was threatening to turn into a stampede. The soldier stood emotionless, observing the rush in a detached manner. He had ceased caring a long time ago. He just wanted someone to tell him what to do.

From behind him, he heard a thundering voice bellow ‘form square!’ Turning around, he saw Marshal Ney, the flame-haired hero of Friedland and Elchingen, a Duke, soon to be a Prince, a Marshal of the Empire, with musket in hand, face blackened with gunpowder and a tattered uniform covered in blood, his own and that of his enemies, screaming at the torrent of retreating Frenchmen. He was manhandling them into a rudimentary square formation to defend against the cavalry, swearing at them and hitting the terrified troops into place with the force of his personality, and the butt of his gun. The soldier ran to join them, and stood next to Ney, who had taken up a position in the front rank of the square as the Cossacks hit.

The Russian horsemen smashed into the square like a wave against a cliff face, causing some of the French soldiers to buckle and fall under the impact, but the square remained intact. The Cossacks swarmed around the small formation, reaching out of their saddles to hack and slash down at the Frenchmen, many of them unarmed except for their fists. The soldier had no ammunition left for his musket, and so thrust upwards whenever a Russian came into range. But they were too high on their horses to make for easy pickings, he wounded two and knocked one from his horse, but he was not sure if they were dead.

Then, a few yards in front of him, he saw the Cossack officer have his horse shot from under him. Almost unthinkingly, the soldier ran out from the relative protection of the square and made to tackle the Russian officer, who had picked himself up off the ground and was trying to find a way out of his mess. He saw the solider, and raised his sword. Bringing his arm down, the officer struck at the soldier, who parried the blow with his musket, and returned with a bayonet lunge. He struck the officer in the stomach, and the unfortunate man sank to the snow screaming in agony. The soldier was not a cruel man, and rather than let the officer suffer, he killed him outright with a blow to the head. The soldier returned to his position.

Marshal Ney had watched the soldier, and grasped his shoulder as he rejoined the square. ‘Good lad’, he said. ‘Be sure and stand firm, you’ll do fine.’ The heroic marshal had received a wound to the forehead, and blood was streaming down his face. Ney left his position and began to walk up and down in front of the square, in full view of the enemy, shouting encouragements to his men.

It was a hellish circumstance. Despite the temperatures below zero, the heat of battle had descended on the little area, and the soldier was sweating profusely and out of breath. His ears were dulled and ringing from the muskets that had been going off next to his head, he was winded and had a stitch, his arm ached from the stabbing and thrusting he had been doing; he was in pain all over his body. He felt no emotions. Yet still the Russians came, circling the square then lunging into it, trying to smash through one of the four, thin blue walls of French soldiers. On and on and on, until, quite without warning, the Cossacks began to disperse. They often did that – one might have got word of some baggage train in the area. Looting was always more important than killing for these men.

Eventually, they had all disappeared. For a moment, a horrific silence hung over the beleaguered Frenchmen. Before long, it was broken by the continuous low groaning of the wounded and dying and punctuated by the occasional musket shot – a man killing his dying horse, perhaps. Or a man killing himself.

Marshal Ney called for the troops to keep marching – no time to rest. He walked on ahead of the shattered remnants of the rearguard, knowing that good leadership was more important than anything else at a time like this. The soldier watched him with admiration, and resolved to fight alongside the marshal for as long as he could; it seemed like Ney offered the best chance of survival. The band of men moved off, back onto the road on which they had previously so triumphantly marched east, and on which they were now so sorrowfully marching back west, back to France.