What is this brilliant company

Dressed in silks and satins gay

They are draped in bales of linen

That they found along the way

They ride in gilded carriages

And they eat off china plates

Finest shawls across their shoulders

Weird and wonderful freight

There are generals and officers

And every rank of men

They are straggled, and have struggled

On the road back home again

They are all weighed down with silvеr

They have booty rich and fine

Thеy're a motley mix of rabble

How they shimmer, how they shine

Mostly they have got no rifles

Nor no guns of any sort

But laden with their spoils

By their greed they are caught

For the Cossacks they have chased them

They have harried them to death

And the frost has bit their fingers

Taking ears and nose and breath

One hundred thousand are returning

All the men that now remain

They are broken and defeated

By the weary Russian plain

Ambition drove Napoleon to Moscow

He thought that he would rule the world

But even snow couldn't smother

The noise of such a mighty fall

The sound of great misfortune

Will ring and echo down the years

And bring him immortality

As sure as any great victory