s and told them he had found
nothing. Taking his place near their fire, he scooped out his bed in
the snow, lay under his bearskin, and clasped his now precious
knapsack, while the others moaned with hunger. Yet, as his narrative
shows, he was not naturally a heartless man: in such a situation man
is apt to sink to the level of the wolf. The best food obtainable was
horseflesh, and hungry throngs rushed at every horse that fell,
disputing its carcass with the packs of dogs or wolves that hung about
the line of march.[274]

Smolensk was now the thought dearest to every heart; and, buoyed with
the hope of rest and food, the army tottered westwards as it had
panted eastwards through the fierce summer heats with Moscow as its
cynosure. The hope that clung about Smolensk was but a cruel mirage.
The wreck of that city offered poor shelter; the stores were exhausted
by the vanguard; and, to the horror of Eugene's Italians, men swarmed
out of that fancied abode of plenty and pounced on every horse that
stumbled to its doom on the slippery banks of the Dnieper. With
inconceivable folly, Napoleon, or his staff, had provided no means for
roughing the horses' shoes. The Cossacks, when they knew this,
exclaimed to Wilson: "God has made Napoleon forget that there was a
winter here."

Disasters now thickened about the Grand Army. During his halt at
Smolensk (November 9th-14th), Napoleon heard that Victor's force on
the Dwina had been worsted by the Russians, and there was ground for
fearing that the Muscovite army of the Ukraine would cut into the line
of retreat. The halt at Smolensk also gave time for Kutusoff to come
up parallel with the main force, and had he pressed on with ordinary
speed and showed a tithe of his wonted pugnacity, he might have
captured the Grand Army and its leader. As it was, his feeble attack
on the rearguard at Krasnoe only gave Ney an opportunity of showing
his dauntless courage. The "bravest of the brave" fought his way
through clouds of Cossacks, crossed the Dnieper, though with the loss
of all his guns, and rejoined the main body. Napoleon was greatly
relieved on hearing of the escape of this Launcelot of the Imperial
chivalry. He ordered cannon to be fired at suitable intervals so as to
forward the news if it were propitious; and on hearing their distant
boomings, he exclaimed to his officers: "I have more than 400,000,000
francs in the cellars of the Tuileries, and would gladly have given
the whole