Napoleon's Soldiers Finally Get a Burial

Moscow Times ^ | 2 June 03 | Liudas Dapkus

[RussianConservative]

By The Associated Press VILNIUS, Lithuania -- About 3,000 French soldiers finally received a proper funeral Sunday in a hilltop cemetery in Lithuania's capital, where they froze or starved to death during Napoleon's catastrophic invasion of Russia two centuries ago.

Guns from an honor guard echoed through the trees and French flags were raised over the solemn ceremony in the Atakalnis Cemetery. The forested, city-center graveyard traditionally is reserved for Lithuanian independence heroes, writers and leading politicians.

Lithuanian leaders and French diplomats oversaw the consecration of the remains -- discovered two years ago in a nearby mass grave seen at the time as a major archaeological find.

The French ambassador to Lithuania, Jean Bernard Harth, said the day was a time to reflect on European unity.

"Napoleon was on a quest for a united Europe, but it failed because it attempted to unite a continent by force," he said just before a band played the French and Lithuanian national anthems. "Today, we see this dream of a united Europe coming true because it's done peacefully."

A granite, wall-like monument to the soldiers -- among the last remnants of a French force that had numbered over 500,000 men -- was also blessed by priests at the burial site.

The actual remains, wrapped in white plastic bags, had been taken from a nearby chapel and placed in the ground by workers several days earlier. But organizers said they considered Sunday to be the funeral for the fallen soldiers.

In more festive commemorations the day before, 1,000 men in costumes staged re-enactments of battles during the ill-fated French attack on Russia in 1812. Russian Cossacks and French hussars crossed swords and dashed with horses through thick cannon smoke.

When bulldozers uncovered the French soldiers' remains at a housing development in 2001, many thought they were dissidents executed by secret police during Soviet rule.

But as coins with Napoleon's image and buttons of his Grand Army were found, it became clear they were remnants of the French force, said Arunas Barkus, a researcher from Vilnius University who examined them.

When Napoleon's army marched into Lithuania bound for Moscow, it was one of the largest forces ever assembled. Six months later, what was left of it, 40,000 men, retreated to Vilnius in bitter winter weather. Cold and starving, some are said to have raided medical schools in Vilnius to eat preserved human organs.

Most quickly died, and reoccupying Russians spent months removing the dead. They couldn't dig graves in the frozen ground, so they burned many bodies.

But the smoke and stench became unbearable. So the Russians threw the bodies into a V-shaped defensive trench dug months earlier by the French themselves. It was the trench, forgotten for centuries, that the Lithuanian bulldozers accidentally unearthed.

Archeologists said there should be at least 20,000 other skeletons of French troops buried around Vilnius and that they intend to keep searching for them.

[RussianConservative]

Actually, Cossaks mostly on edges, main fighting at Borodino by regular Russian troops.