nd marshals of his Empire, sits the sardonic somnambulist, while
before him on the left the Cuirassiers of the Guard, on their
tremendous horses gathered out of Normandy, plunging at full gallop,
bearing down through the broken wheat, with buglers in the van and
sabers flashing high and bearded mouths wide open with yellings that
resound through the world till now, charge wildly, irresistibly onward
against the unseen enemy, reckless alike of life and death, but
choosing rather death if only the marble face but smile!

UNDER THE RUSSIAN SNOWS.

The first empire of France was buried between the Niemen and Moscow.
The funeral was attended by vultures and Cossacks.

It was on the twenty-fourth of June, 1812, that Napoleon began the
invasion of Russia. The dividing line was the River Niemen. The
inhabitants fell back before him. He had not advanced far when he
encountered a new commander, with whom he was unfamiliar. It was
Field-Marshal Nature. Marshal Nature had an army that the Old Guard
had never confronted. His herald was Frost, and his aid-de-camp was
Zero. One of his army corps was Snow. His bellowing artillery was
charged with Lithuanian tempests. Hail was his grape and shrapnel. The
Emperor of the French had never studied Marshal Nature's tactics--not
even in the Alps.

The Russian summer was as midwinter to the soldiers of France and
Spain and Italy. Some of the invading divisions could hardly advance
at all. The howling storms made impassable the ungraded roads; the
1200 guns of the Grand Army sank into the mire. Horse-life and
man-life fell and perished in the sleet of the mock-summer that raged
along the watershed between the Dwina and the Dnieper.

The Russians under Kutusoff fell back to Smolensko. There on the
sixteenth of August they fought and were defeated with a loss of
nearly twelve thousand men. The way was thus opened as far as the
Moskwa. At that place on the seventh of September Kutusoff a second
time gave battle, at the village of Borodino. This was one of the most
murderous conflicts of modern times. A thousand cannon vomited death
all day. Under the smoke a quarter of a million of men struggled like
tigers. At nightfall the French had the field. The defeated Russians
hung sullenly around the arena where they had left more than 40,000 of
their dead and wounded. The Frence losses were almost equally
appalling. "Sire," said Marshal Ney, "we would better withdraw and
reform." "_Thou_ advise a