ith them, were steadily growing stronger in
position and men.

"The rapidly shortening days meant long cold nights. The soldiers in
Moscow made camp-fires of the costly pieces of furniture that remained
in the palaces, but those who were encamped on the plains outside had no
fire at all in the long hours of darkness. Many of them, too, were from
the south of France, unaccustomed to the cold, and, besides, were
equipped for a summer campaign, not garbed in the heavy clothing of the
Russian troops. In that country which had been abandoned for purposes of
war, there was not even wood enough to light the fires for cooking. Ever
the days grew shorter and the red sunrises and the red sunsets--which
would have meant so much had any one understood--continued.

"Then into the city came Fire! In the middle of the night, at a dozen
different points, Moscow was set aflame by the Russians. A great wave of
fire started from all quarters at the same time, swept over the city,
for the Russians had waited for the moment when the wind was high and
the night was cold. Houses and palaces flared upward in the
conflagration, then sank to smoking ashes, for almost the entire city
was built of wood.

"All in a jumble--infantry, cavalry and artillery--the French got away,
the flames howling so closely after them that the backs of their necks
were singed. Suddenly they found themselves in the midst of a tremendous
rush of water and ice. On one side, to windward, the Russians had
started the fire, on the other, where there was a possible escape from
its fury, they had turned the river into the streets. The French were
caught between the two. Some of the horses, fairly maddened, turned
backward and plunged with their riders into the flames. For an instant,
horse and man would flare up like tow and then there would be a black
twisting thing that dwindled to nothing in the blaze. Out from the
burning city, in wild and utter retreat, flew the French Grand Army, out
to a land without food, without forage, without inhabitants, and the
nearest help a thousand miles away.

"Then came the snow. No longer was the red sunrise before them, but
behind them. The victorious march was a defeat. Black-gray clouds came
over the sky and obscured the sun. At first the snow was to the ankles,
then to the calves, and then to the knees. The wind was bitterly cold
and the men ill-clad. It froze the French to their marrow. Every few
minutes a soldier dropped from sta