For now began to unroll the most awful series of calamities, and the
most extensive, which is anywhere recorded to have visited the sons and
daughters of men. It is possible that the sudden inroads of destroying
nations, such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mongol Tartars, may
have inflicted misery as extensive; but there the misery and the
desolation would be sudden--like the flight of volleying lightning.
Those who were spared at first would generally be spared to the end;
those who perished would perish instantly. It is possible that the
French retreat from Moscow may have made some nearer approach to this
calamity in duration, though still a feeble and miniature approach; for
the French sufferings did not commence in good earnest until about one
month from the time of leaving Moscow; and though it is true that
afterwards the vials of wrath were emptied upon the devoted army for
six or seven weeks in succession, yet what is that to this Kalmuck
tragedy, which lasted for more than as many months? But the main
feature of horror, by which the Tartar march was distinguished from the
French, lies in the accompaniment of women [Footnote: Singular it is,
and not generally known, that Grecian women accompanied the
_Anabasis_ of the younger Cyrus and the subsequent Retreat of the
Ten Thousand.
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