eat commenced, with all its attendant horrors of cold, hunger, and
physical pain, to Ney was assigned the honorable but arduous task of
protecting the rear of the fleeing troops. At the start Ney's force
numbered 7000 men, and on leaving Smolensk he found himself confronted
by an army four times as large.

He was summoned to surrender before commencing the attack, and his
characteristic reply, "A Marshal of France never surrenders," has passed
into history, though it must be confessed that, in the light of recent
events, history does not always bear out the assertion. Repeatedly
driven back with awful loss, Ney determined to outwit the enemy; so,
under cover of darkness, he and his troops made a wide circuit, and
reached the bank of the river Dnieper far in advance of the pursuers.

But here a new foe confronted the gallant Marshal. How should he cross
the stream? He had no boats, and although the weather was intensely
cold, the rapid current was covered only by a thin coating of ice that
bent beneath the weight of a single man. However, to deliberate was to
be lost; so, dividing his forces into small companies, he caused the
advance to be sounded, himself stepping first upon the glassy surface.

What a subject for a painter is here presented!--the frozen snowy
landscape; the bare skeleton trees; the broad serpentine course of the
frost-bound river, with here and there patches of open water showing
darkly against the snow-covered ice; the scattered groups of soldiers
treading carefully, and with the possibility before them that at the
next step the treacherous floor might precipitate them into an icy
grave.

But the hazardous passage was safely effected, and after a series of
conflicts with forces in every case far superior to his own, Ney
succeeded in rejoining the Emperor at Orsha, where he was received with
open arms, and hailed as "the bravest of the brave"--a name which clung
to him from that time.

After Napoleon left the army, Ney still continued to fight in the rear
against the ever-increasing hordes of Russians that harassed the flanks
of the fugitive army. Three times was the rear-guard that he commanded
melted away by death, captivity, or flight, and as often was it
reorganized by the indomitable Marshal who "never surrendered."

At last, with a poor remnant of only thirty men, Ney defended the gate
of the town of Kovno--the last place in the Russian dominions through
which the French retreated--against